Retro Morn: Re-Reading Jenny (1.) and Her Purple Hat, (2.), Listening to Vonda Shepard

I am a beautiful woman, and reliably informed so,
by handsome. men, lustful fools, and one too many
sideward glances

in a difference place, musical needs call me out to retro smooth me
away from the waves of nausea of news repeats ingested, the lesser
qualities of human beings basic basest nature, I inhale subdued

Jenny’s defiance of life’s expectations and Vonda’s voice
smooth my discordant emotive candles that won’t stay lit,
add in a touch of melting Joni & Divine Ms. Bette,
gets me slow kickstarting

and I have not reached
the lofty plateau of
twenty five years of age

but my mom, the  Queen Regent, reminds me royalty possesses
very old souls, which Is why I’m caught out listening, dancing
awake to the music of her youth* and hear her discreetly humming the tunes, even though the phone connection broken minutes earlier

she signed off with a practised Elizabethan airy disturbance royal wave of her hand, instructing this raining (no, not reigning)
Queen to  “darling go write a poem…”

don’t we all listen to our mothers?

my name is brandychanning

*music inhale subdued kickstarting a poem