[Ashley Bowen]

Mixtape
--after Laura Kasischke


It’s 1983 and I’ve applied
all my algebra to solve
how many songs a blank cassette
can hold.
I’ve sat behind you
all seventh grade, believing
you’ve never had morning breath
or stubble on your knees.

You’re pulling a “C” in Chemistry
and I want to say
Love is like oxygen,
and slide you the mixtape, side A
the overture, side B
the confession, the silence

between the songs the kisses.
I waited.
Indecision can be a gift:

What if you never
rode the bus after that, whispered
to your friends flanking your locker

every time you saw me? For the rest
of the year, I’d think
every laugh was about me.

Or maybe it was as I imagined:
Your knee against mine, the bus seat

warm between us, your glitter
lipstick gathering sun, love
songs unspooling inside
your Walkman . . .

Who knew I’d be thinking
of you 30 years later, your name
in an obituary,

the tape discovered among boxes
in the basement, the years reversing
like a tape rewound
every time I played it here

beneath my car’s dome light
in the dark of the middle school parking lot,
my thoughts caught

like a tape between the teeth
of a tape deck, worn

and warbly, playing
things out.

[Nick McRae]

I'm not seeing much I'd change here, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks for posting.

[John Boddie]

Ashley - This is very well done. As with your previous piece, your line and stanza breaks are first rate. They inject a strength to the poem as a whole making it not only easier to enjoy but a pleasure to re-read.

Seriously, you should begin looking for an agent or at least collect about fifteen poems that you're proud of and send them off to a good publisher like Black Lawrence Press, an established publisher of chapbooks including those by one of my favorite writers, Frank Matagrano.

Take a look at https://blacklawrencepress.com/fivetips/ to better understand the submission and acceptance process.

JB

[Yves S L]

Hello Ashley,

I have always thought that free verse was not properly named, though I guess the context is free relative to rhyme and meter verse. For me, free verse simply means the poet has to conceive of the structure, the patterning themselves without help of the centuries old conventions of rhyme and meter, so not playing tennis without a net, but creating your own game entirely with its own constraints and ways to win. For me, it is clear that you do see the structures, both on the level of the line and on the level of stanzas. "Who knew I'd be thinking/of you" is a classic turn accented by the stanza break. The way you start and end on the cassette riff. The way you thread memories through the stanzas. The way the past and present is bridged at the close. The way you play of nostalgia and the confront the present.

This is cool! Yeah!

[David Callin]

Hi Ashley. I agree that it's very nicely done. I might quibble - lightly - about whether the coda, or the transition to it, could be better handled, but not that much. It will do very well as it is.

Cheers

David

[Glenn Wright]

A very impressive treatment of the “sliding doors” problem. We all make decisions on the fly and repent them at leisure. The N will never know what would have happened if the tape (which is the perfect metaphor for the lives we lead in time, uncorrectable, but able to be re-experienced in memory again and again) had been given to the girl who died without ever knowing the N’s feelings. The ending, and the teeth of the tape deck torturing the N with imperfect memories, is very powerful. Excellent work.

Glenn

[Carl Copeland]

Ashley, it’s taken me days of trying to open this thread (I kept getting 404 Error), but it was worth the wait.

I found the line and stanza breaks a bit random, but that’s not a nit, not even an intelligent comment, just my first impression as I try to figure things out. I can see, for example, how the second stanza break expresses the silence between songs, but my whys don’t always have easy answers.

I’m unfamiliar with Laura Kasischke, but my epigraph would be “after Cinema Paradiso”! It’s a little early in the day for tears, but this poem will do it to me if I can get it open later when I’m in the right mood. The last poem I wrote dredged up a similar deep regret that I also realize may have been a gift, so I’m on your wavelength. Your poem is the kind of snapshot I’m always trying to get of a haunting moment from my past. Very poignant.

[Joe Crocker]

Has anyone researched the mixtape's role in declarative love? If not, then they should. Another sure squeeze to the heart Ashley.

I never knew stubbly knees were a thing, but they made me smile, especially rubbing together on a warm bus seat.

And the wondering what might have happened,

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
The tape I made for you was never sent
And that has made all the difference.

[Ashley Bowen]

Oh, wow! I'm heartened to read these tender responses to my poem. I'm much appreciative for everyone.

Joe: I don't know if anyone has delved into the study of mixtapes as confession, but that'd be a study I'd love to read. Thanks for stopping in and commenting. Much appreciated.

Carl: Thanks for commenting. I don't disagree with you about the stanza breaks, though some are deliberate and some just based on the seemingly random line and stanza breaks in the Kasischke poem that I was trying to emulate, a much, much better poem.

Glenn: Thank you for the kind words. Yes, the "sliding doors" problem. The what-could've-been moments of our lives.

David: Yes, perhaps that coda's entry is a little abrupt. I'll take a look and see if I can come up with something a little smoother. Thanks for the thoughts on that.

Yves: Thanks for the kind, kind words. Much appreciated. Free verse is a hard beast for me to wrestle. I often find myself just writing chopped up prose, but I'm glad this one rose above that for you.

John: Thanks for the link. I'm familiar with Matagrano's first book and Black Lawrence. I would never have thought my work good enough to send to them. I'm heartened to think that you do!

Nick: Thank you for the kind words!

[James Midgley]

Ashley, hi, how are you?

It's difficult to quibble with much of the poem, which is a sweet and tender homage to nostalgia and what-might-have-been.

That said, it plays out (heh) more or less as one might expect. There isn't much here that surprises -- but it moves confidently; I sensed I was in safe hands throughout. The poem is well drawn, the voice (which is quite firm in its hands-on narratising) very convincing.

I found the ending the most effective part. It helped to settle my nerves about the earlier rather familiar highschool tropes.

Sorry not to be very helpful. Thanks for posting.