Shon Mapp
Bygones & Mixtapes
we’d lie penguin bellied in a makeshift seance circle,
a boombox at our heads, legs bent like L’s spelling laughter into the room,
waiting for songs our mothers wouldn’t let us hear.
we were convinced the play, pause, and record buttons pressed,
made for a cleaner transition.
but in the end, most of them were messy, muddled, clumsy, things
evidenced by our puerile creations, rife with ad snippets for shoes and eczema cream.
we’d listen all afternoon, for songs that never played
and still considered it time well spent.
joyfully expectant.
bright red sugary drink stained tongues singing and sucking teeth,
giddily unaware of how quickly
songs, cassette tapes, and friendships become outdated
i'd mumble-mouth the lyrics to “O.P.P.”
because only immigrants and weirdos didn’t know them, and i was both.
i still don’t know them.
that autumn of pretending robbed me of that, long before its popularity had waned.
and my little coven never even noticed.
only after decades, came my eviction from our group,
and for a lesser offense.
a boombox at our heads, legs bent like L’s spelling laughter into the room,
waiting for songs our mothers wouldn’t let us hear.
we were convinced the play, pause, and record buttons pressed,
made for a cleaner transition.
but in the end, most of them were messy, muddled, clumsy, things
evidenced by our puerile creations, rife with ad snippets for shoes and eczema cream.
we’d listen all afternoon, for songs that never played
and still considered it time well spent.
joyfully expectant.
bright red sugary drink stained tongues singing and sucking teeth,
giddily unaware of how quickly
songs, cassette tapes, and friendships become outdated
i'd mumble-mouth the lyrics to “O.P.P.”
because only immigrants and weirdos didn’t know them, and i was both.
i still don’t know them.
that autumn of pretending robbed me of that, long before its popularity had waned.
and my little coven never even noticed.
only after decades, came my eviction from our group,
and for a lesser offense.
Biography
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Shon Mapp (she/her) is an emerging writer with words appearing or forthcoming in Fourteen Poems, Ghost Heart, and Cathexis Northwest Press. Her works explore queer intimacy, multicultural identities, and nuclear kinship.
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