Spitball Army

from The Frequencies, a poem by Noah Eli Gordon:

“I’m hitting a brick wall here,” the producer said, handing me the playlist.  “On the one hand, we’ve got to make it new,” he went on, “on the other, we don’t want to alienate our audience – they expect certain things from radio, you know.”  The way everything he said seemed to be an allegory was a bit unnerving, not to mention the fact that he continued to call me Kenneth no matter how often I corrected him.  “A little autonomy might be nice,” I said, forcing a half-smile.  “Look, this isn’t an art gallery,” he answered.  “It doesn’t matter what you like; there’s big money driving the music.”  I couldn’t help thinking this is where the strings come in, where the plot starts to swell, but the only applause sign I’d respond to would be one that goes off at random, without rhythm – the blinking light burning up any expectation of an irreducible outcome, the American idiom like a new penny wrapper, meaningless & empty & somehow more than itself.

Noah Eli Gordon blogs at humanverb.blogspot.com.

His writings, including The Frequencies, are available online at amazon.com, and on land at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Harvard Square (where I found my copies).