Buzzing by Carrie Magness Radna

When we were younger, I kissed you by a Marshall amp
after the guitars of your band stopped all of their buzzing,
& did you feel the same electric buzz 
when we laced our fingers together,
when we stepped away from the microphone?

That same night

I read a poem by a recent refugee
at the makeshift punk club in an abandoned strip mall in OKC—

No one cared to listen at first,
until I screamed out loud: “Shut the fuck up!”
People began to cheer; I can hear fights starting outside—

(Hey, it was the ‘90s)
I don’t need to be high to feel alive. I’m already there—

As the chords died from your guitar,
you motioned me over,
& mouthed: “Sing some words with us, Babe”

So fucking nervous—I kept my eyes closed
as I stumbled over my consonants
& turned my words around

as you strummed out your broken chords
while the others danced & sweated for longer moments
without really listening to us—

& when the amps went spotty suddenly,
breaking down the simple dichotomy too easily,
you sighed & pulled me aside,
& kissed me under the lights—

Carrie Magness Radna is an audiovisual cataloger at New York Public Library, a choral singer and a poet who loves traveling. Her poems have previously appeared in The Oracular Tree, Mediterranean Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poetry Super Highway, Polarity eMagazine, Walt’s Corner, The Poetic Bond (VIII & IX), First Literary Review-East and Jerry Jazz Musician. Her first chapbook, Conversations with dead composers at Carnegie Hall (Flutter Press) was published in January 2019, and her self-published chapbook, Remembering you as I go walking (Boxwood Star Press) was published in August 2019. Her first poetry collection, Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press) was published in December 2019. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, she lives with her husband in Manhattan