Everyone was in town for the wheat Convention. Kansas City, Power And Light. Our first night I came out Of the hotel bathroom to find him With the sheets pulled up to his chin, Saying in a small high voice, I just had the most beautiful Experience of my life. I turned, Face bare, to the television To see the Doobie Brothers. Remember the eleven-year-old Superfan—Paisley—who was Crazy for Michael McDonald? Sounds like an angel somehow, She said. I heard electric plums Of an eight-voice synthesizer Playing people at the beginning Of the world. The harmonies Were closer than I remember: Family, blood harmonies. I am Hiding from my high part here, My harmonizers. What does it mean To thrill to the past? To finger The zippers on ’70s jumpsuits And wonder who sold Kenny Loggins His scarves? Everyone pretending They were a swamp creature Or a shaft of circus light falling through A stained glass window—why? Art travels forwards and backwards In time. In the car on the way Back from the boneyard beach, We discussed Sensual Songs For Eight-Year-Olds. Mine was Old black water, keep on rollin’. Jason’s was Starship: “We Built This City.” “When this came on I would leave my body. Is this Allowed? Is this even allowed?” It’s like this. Your parents are driving You home through some newly Minted night—after a concert, Movie, church festival. You are Resting your head against the window And your heart is leaping out Into some filled-to-the-brim future Skin. Still, you are being carried, This is necessary to the feeling. “I just had to deal with it,” Paisley said, when she realized Her soft-rock idol was gray. Her bewildered father drove her To a concert, where she stood In the bleachers and screamed, MICHAEL, I LOVE YOU! “He looked at me in the eye And said thank you.” She cried And composed herself like a song. Is it allowed, is it even allowed? To leave the family harmonizers And send your lone voice up? Riverboat rat, soaring catfish, Mississippi queen. Look at her grooving, carried Along on black water, To “What a Fool Believes.”

From Agate Head / Stone Soup by Patricia Lockwood. Copyright © 2026. Available from Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

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