TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

I associate certain songs, and even musical artists, with people, and places, and times. Hearing a song may take me back to a particular moment, but also, some songs fit into the cycle of the year. There is music that feels like spring to me, and summer, and fall, and winter. Now that fall is upon us, I’m back on my fall tracks.

Even my kids are making their own playlists for the season. I don’t know exactly what’s on them, but when I asked my son, he said, “Indie stuff with chill vibes.” That made me laugh, but I think I get it. Summer is more bright, sunshiny pop—and fall is when it gets darker and colder, so the music slows down and mellows out with the weather.

When I think of fall, I think of records like Neil Young’s “Harvest” and Son Volt’s “Trace.” I’m going back to Bon Iver’s perfect first record, “For Emma, Forever Ago.” I’m cuing up Iron & Wine’s “The Creek Drank the Cradle.” If you don’t know these records, I hope you’ll look them up. There’s a lot of poetry in those songs, and they feel very fall to me. It’s the music of bonfire smoke and the crunch of leaves underfoot and a big orange moon rising over the houses.

Scrolling back to the season we just left, summer, makes me think of different artists. Summer, to me, is the sound of crickets and cicadas, the feeling of cold dew on your feet when you walk barefoot across the lawn, the smell of mud and creek water and sunscreen. One artist that feels very summer to me is Lucinda Williams: it’s her instrumentation and her imagery and her focus on place. So many of her songs are songs of the American south: Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas. 

Fun fact about Lucinda Williams: her father was the poet and literature professor Miller Williams. There’s an annual poetry book prize named for him at the University of Arkansas, where he last taught. So writing runs in the family!

Today’s poem is as imagistic and musical as a song, and it’s deeply rooted in place. The poem borrows a refrain from a Lucinda Williams song. 

Arkansabop
by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

with Lucinda Williams

Faulkner County reeks of burning leaves;
other days, smelt from the refinery.
A whiff of manure when the breeze
turns just right. All seasons, this air
is heavy with rainwater: ozone 
like burnt sugar & too much sex.

I would kiss the diamondback 
if I knew it would get me to heaven—

After mice kicked through the oatmeal
and those chthonic roaches slipped out
from the drain—their undercarriages
like baskets knotted with mistakes,
forewings a dark & rotting wood—
I ask out loud: what in creation
has inverted? This hell on earth, nowhere
safe now but between the sheets.

I would kiss the diamondback 
if I knew it would get me to heaven—

Cats in a yowling match below the bedroom window
while, next door, Marilyn kicks off her stilettos,
chain-smokes towards kingdom come.
Behind these flowered curtains, four feet
lift from the dusty floor. We hiss until our tongues
touch, rub away all earthly trouble.

I would kiss the diamondback 
if I knew it would get me to heaven—

"Arkansabop" by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers. Used by permission of the poet.