Synthesizers and
maracas and bongo
drums cast their gentle
rain over my brain
folds across my car
cab as I weave through
New Hampshire’s
fabric hills quilted
in autumn’s auburn
patchwork my mind
unraveling from the sunroof
while Erykah Badu croons
into the stratosphere about
her status as an under-
cover overlover the ‘90s
have grown on me the oversized
horizontally-striped tees
the dense denim capable
of halting a bullet mid-flight
the flip-phones with their
ringtones placing the world
in a too-big pocket things
seemed simpler then and I
reach for a time
I can’t have I joke
I’m a #90skid
for having balled my fists
through its last six months
my first six months entering
the earth an asteroid my mother
a river cooling me smoothing
me into stone she went by Tina
then doodled daydreams
unkempt and technicolor
between nursing shifts
she won a contest or two
she likes to remind me
even designed her class
t-shirt before tucking
such frivolities away
onto pages and into closets
beneath baggy sweaters lost
to time back when she drove
a Pontiac Fiero bluer
than the spread of sky
on a summer day bluer
than a lover’s tears
filling an ocean bluer
than the rattled pang
from Erykah’s crumpled
heart tearing mine in two
baby blue and my mother
she racked up speeding tickets
in that two-seat daydream
Aaliyah and Mariah and Lauryn
Hill padding her tires screeching
down New England roads like
her joy might be around the bend
and the quicker she sped there
the sweeter its juice like tomorrow
might not come if she only
beat it to the punch all six
cylinders pummeling her past
into memory those two
marriages one engagement
and so many ups and downs
of loving and not loving
and watching my tumble
downstream and now
I slink down granite streets
my heart in my hands bleeding
baby blue Erykah’s entreatments
raspy and clear brittle and strong
instructing me what to do some days
I’m convinced Brown Sugar
by D’Angelo or Brokenhearted
by Brandy or anything
belted from the balloons
of Erykah Badu’s strange
lungs might be the best song
in the world because each act
as manual for what to do
when what you want
is gone no matter how fast
you sped there or what you
rode in or who sat beside you
gone the person in the passenger
seat gone my mother’s river
slowing to a trickle her dreams
wrung out like those jeans
and I skip across pondface
bleeding emptyhanded smooth
baby blue a recovering under-
cover overlover recovering
from a love I can’t get over
not this time Erykah sings
out my mind just in time
Caleb Jagoda is a poet, journalist, and MFA candidate at the University of New Hampshire. He is managing editor at Barnstorm Journal. His work has appeared in Blue Earth Review, Polaris Literary Magazine, and Down East Magazine. Specifically general and generally specific, Caleb talks in aphorisms until those closest to him demand he stop—but hey, you know what they say: Buy the ticket, take the ride. He lives in Dover, New Hampshire.
