09-07-2017
Allison Joseph
The World's Worst Jukebox
plays every song you've ever hated—
maudlin country ballads and stupid novelty hits,
syrupy pop ditties from the Seventies--
tunes so chipper and insistent
you still know them after twenty years,
can remember how these songs sounded
coming out of your hand-held radio,
hiss slithering from the cheap transistor,
static marking spaces between stations.
It's hard to fathom why
someone would put tunes this bad together,
deliberate cruelty, you think,
as you lean over the shimmering machine
in search of one good song
for your shiny quarter.
You can't deal with hearing
the Captain and Tennille gush
that love will keep them together,
but your other choices are no better--
the Swedish schmaltz of Abba's “Dancing Queen,”
the disco version of the theme from Star Wars,
Chuck Berry's number one embarrassment,
“My Ding-A-Ling.” There's no Beatles or Stones
on this Wurlitzer, just bland British Invasion wimps
Chad and Jeremy, that foolish chronicle
of the c.b. craze, Convoy, the simpering corn
of David Gates and Bread. No Sly Stone or Prince
and the Revolution either, but “Kung Fu Fighting”
instead, a song whose phony martial arts shouts
thrilled us all when were eight.
Groups no one's heard of since
their one chart hit live on in infamy
here: the breathy vocals of Andrea True,
former porn star, the disembodied female chants
of Silver Convention, another Eurodisco product
of interchangeable singers. There are
two different versions of “Muskrat Love,”
every smarmy hit by Air Supply,
and singles from bands whose very names
are bad omens: Vanilla Fudge, the Chipmunks,
Pink Lady. You want to grab someone, anyone,
to collar the bar's manager
for an explanation, demanding the name
of who did this, threatening to storm his house
to ask how anyone could give us a jukebox
with no Supremes or Vandellas, but
with the Crystals singing
“He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss,”
a dirge with lyrics so vile
few stations ever played it,
a song no one will punch,
not even on this jukebox.
The Black Santa
I remember sitting on his bony lap,
fake beard slumping off his face,
his breath reeking sweetly of alcohol,
a scent I didn't yet know at five.
And I didn't know that Santa
was supposed to be fat, white, merry—
not shaky and thin like this
department store Santa who listened
as I reeled off that year's list:
a child's oven I'd burn my fingers on,
a mini record player of gaudy plastic
I'd drag from room to room
by its precarious orange handle,
an Etch-a-Sketch I'd ruin by twisting
its dials too hard—my requests
as solemn as prayer, fervid, fueled
by too many hours of television,
too many commercials filled
with noisy children elated
by the latest game or toy.
I bet none of them
ever sat on the lap of a Santa
who didn't ho-ho-ho in jolly mirth,
whose sunken red eyes peered
out from under his oversized wig
and red velveteen cap, his teeth yellow,
long fingers tinged with yellow.
I did not find it strange
to call this man Santa,
to whisper my childish whispers
into his ear, to pull on his sleeve
to let him know I really deserved
all that I'd asked for. I posed
for an instant photo with him,
a woolen cap over my crooked braids,
mittens sewn to my coat sleeves.
No one could have convinced me
this Santa couldn't slide down
any chimney, though his belly
didn't fill his suit, and his hands
trembled, just a bit, as he lifted
me from his lap. No one could
have told me that a pink-cheeked
pale-skinned Santa was the only Santa
to worship, to beg for toys and candy.
I wouldn't have believed them,
wouldn't have believed anyone
who'd tell me Santa couldn't look
like me: brown eyes, face, skin.
Numbers
My father taught me to measure
the worth of any good thing
by the number of black people
involved. Without sufficient numbers,
he wouldn't root for a team,
wouldn't eat in a restaurant,
wouldn't turn on his television
to watch a local newscast
that didn't have a black anchor.
He wanted black people
to appear on Masterpiece Theatre
—he'd lived in England so he knew
black people lived there—
wanted us on Evening at Pops
and Live from Wolf Trap,
the orchestra's black musicians
conveniently placed up front
for his recognition, wanted
every diva who performed at the Met
to be brown, proud, beautiful—
an endless string of Jessye Normans
and Leonytne Prices. He'd rage
at commercials, at The Brady Bunch,
at soap operas, Broadway musicals,
at any bit of American culture
tossed before us as entertainment
that dared not have a black cast member.
So I grew up rooting against the then
all-white Mets, the Boston Red Sox,
(Jim Rice their only saving grace),
the Celtics, hell, the whole city of Boston,
the obscene snowy landscape of New England.
So he probably thought he'd failed
to instill his wisest lesson
when we drove to that college
in middle-of-nowhere Ohio
with its green clapboard shutters
on its white colonial cottages,
its manicured hedges
and windowboxes of tulips.
Resolute, he helped me hoist boxes
to my narrow, undecorated room,
watched glumly as Mom unpacked
suitcases, as my sister folded clothes.
Suspicious, he finally asked,
where are all the black people,
but I could show him only three faces
in the freshman picture book,
including my own photo booth snapshot.
He thought I was crazy to live
so close to them, the white people
who'd conspired so long against him,
the numbers on that campus
far too low for him, my scholarship
bleaching me, making me
less black, less daughter.
-from Imitation of Life, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2003, selected by Guest Editor T.R. Hummer
PROMPT: As in Allison Joseph's "Numbers," explore an unresolved conflict you have had with a parent, parental figure, mentor, etc... (or vice versa) that strikes your core. Write in narrative form, include at least one reference to pop culture, and keep it to two pages or less. Be honest. Do NOT resolve the conflict or EXPLAIN the conflict. PRESENT the conflict; let the reader do the rest.
BIO: Professor Allison Joseph is the author of What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand, 1992), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon, 1997), In Every Seam (Pittsburgh, 1997), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon, 2003) and Worldly Pleasures (Word Press, 2004). Her honors include the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize, fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers Conferences, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is editor and poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review and director of the Young Writers Workshop, an annual summer residential creative writing workshop for high school writers. She holds the Judge Williams Holmes Cook Endowed Professorship. As Director of the SIUC MFA Program in Creative Writing, Professor Joseph maintains a blog about the graduate creative writing program at http://mfacarbondale.blogspot.com.
