Ode to T-Pain
Like an octopus crowning itself with mollusks
you took pains to hide your beauty.
Auto-tuned a voice that needed no tuning,
that sounds clear and honest as winter
on the nape of the neck. Often, if not always,
we ask angels to play the kazoo. To suffice.
I like to think most of us is unexplored
potential, songs and poems floating in vials,
embryonic kisses, and the apologies
we should have worn, hanging motheaten.
I wish Grandma, who never raised her voice,
would have. Its sound in the untested register
of rage, woe, glory. And what might she have
to unhide of her plainspoken love?
They glitter and reek,
the wines casked within us.
J.M. Emery
J.M. Emery is a Chicago-based poet. During the day he works for the government, most recently on initiatives around maternal and infant health.
