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March 1, 2021

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en temps de peste

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Music to Listen to With Your Significant Other During a Pandemic

  • March 22, 2020
  • 7:03 pm
  • New Orleans
Because we became lost teens of the storm, assigned/ to the refrigerator with garbage bags and bleach/ Amid power outages and school closures/ After Hurricane Katrina, we learned to shrug early/ As the city went through its own awkward stage. 
Paris _ Music to... (Photo by Elion Jashari)

Paris Tate

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Because we became lost teens of the storm, assigned

to the refrigerator with garbage bags and bleach

Amid power outages and school closures

After Hurricane Katrina, we learned to shrug early

As the city went through its own awkward stage. 

 

We had to cancel date night plans again,

But we filled a grocery basket with 

Canned goods, 

Kleenex,

The last bread on the shelf

In silence. We talked about the smell

Of Lenten catfish in the backseat 

On the way to quarantine. 

 

Children of the 90’s, we go there 

When we want to remember optimism.

This is why, with a laptop between us,

I reminisced to Britney Spears

Being my first CD, 

Wiped the dust off of the guitar 

In Tool’s Track #1,

The first songs by Outkast, 

Those one hit wonders we neglect;

 

I explained how “Closing Time” was a metaphor

For parenthood; We shift to “Starman” and earlier

Decades when you confessed never watching

“Saturday Night Fever,” was fooled by the upbeat

Background in “Don’t Stand so Close to Me.”

In the present, there’s a band I went to see 

At a bar last weekend. 

 

The facts are, 

Grateful Dead’s drummer plays alongside 

Papa Mali, and this won’t be the last time we’ll

Fall asleep to trivia,

Slow dance rhythms,

Whisky heavy lyrics

In “King Cotton Blues.” Tomorrow, we can shrug

And do this again to keep the romance.

 As music goes on, so the world.

 


 

Paris Tate
Paris Tate received her BA in English from the University of New Orleans. Her debut poetry collection, 'All the Words in Between' (Portals Press) was published in 2017. She was also a semi-finalist in The New Guard Review's 2015 Knightville Poetry Contest. Her poetry can also be found in LiVE MAG!, Literary Yard, Mojave Heart Review, and the anthology Maple Leaf Rag. Tate currently lives near New Orleans with her husband, where she works as a librarian.

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