Mix Tape to Be Brought to Her in Rehab by David Wojahn

Despite September of 2009 being the globe’s second-hottest September on record (and the records date back to 1880), Nebraska’s autumnal weather was quite unseasonably cool. Indeed, the first two weeks in October were Lincoln’s coldest in 122 years. A temperature of 29F on October 4th set a record low for the date. Several years later, David Wojahn’s poem “Mix Tape to Be Brought to Her in Rehab” was selected for The Best American Poetry 2011; it had first appeared in Prairie Schooner during that frigid fall of 2009.

by Tory Clower

Mix Tape to Be Brought to Her in Rehab
David Wojahn

Black lacquered circle & the sound coaxed
from diamond to rest within the acetate glimmer,
the agon & the joys commingling. Nina Simone

is conjuring The Boat of Ra Little Darling
from a long cold lonely winter, though outside
it is August & is not all right. Double doors,

then again double doors. You will sign in:
& they’ll rifle your pack of oranges & candy bars,
pry open the plastic case & hold the gray

Maxell against the light. Immense are the tears
of Levi Stubbs. How sweet how sweet the honeybee.
The Smiths are in a terrible place. O Oscillate

Wildly Please Please Please Let Me Get What I want,
to be followed in turn by Mr. James Brown,
his own please trembling the Apollo rafters.

Visiting hours—in the TV room the Haldol reigns.
The President struts among the SS gravestones,
pompadour shiny as a new LP, his movie-actor gait

turned thank God to pastel vapor by Miami Vice.
Flamingos starburst from the credits. Shyly
she will walk the corridor to meet you, your offerings

of Earl Grey, the two black turtlenecks.
Nail cobalt—fingers a-tremble. Gun Shy, Screaming
Blue Messiahs, Dylan at his nadir adnoiding

Brownsville Girl—down here even the swap meets
are getting a little corr-upt. Richard Thompson
When the Spell Is Broken, Jimmy Cliff’s

in limbo waiting for the dice to roll.
When her roommate leaves, you’ll sit with her upon the bed.
Awkward, you will small talk, staring

at your hands. More doors, double doors & triple,
the years the years. Down the carved names
the future with its labyrinths & tailspins, rooms

giving way to rooms, the upturned card, the notebooks
cuneiformed with numbers, pivot & gyre, cache
of Rx pads stuffed into a rolltop drawer. 90 rabid

troubled minutes, coda Robert Johnson. Stones on my
passway & my road seem dark as night. Her eyes in memory
an astonished blue. You reach inside your jacket

& she holds it in her upturned palm. From the bedside
table she lifts the Walkman—the button with its triangle,
the click, the whirr, the eddying forward.