“We Were Talking About Paul Simon” by Joyce Peseroff

Photo credit: Art Institute of Chicago

who violated sanctions by hiring
a South African mbube chorus
to harmonize on Graceland––my go-to

music while pregnant, which later
infant Liz recognized by widening
her eyes each time I hit play.

I call “Paul Simon!” and Alexa
shuffles Graceland exclusively
and creepily, as if she knows

my history–yes, I’m still hankering
after songs of money and love,
love and worry. Liz didn’t need

sleep it seemed for months,
the stereo and TV our sibilant
company on midnight walks

around the living room. After video-
camming her childhood almost
every day, Jeff won’t throw out

the crumbling tapes all our devices
eject, live-action dialogue of the dead mixing with ghosts––

our former selves––too sad to watch.
Paul Simon sold his catalogue
and quit the stage: no more

thunder from jams electric
as a storm cloud’s blitz of light,
random as whatever made him write––

“Father and Daughter” a movie job,
a dish on a Chinese menu egging
“Mother and Child Reunion” on.

Artist Statement

News of novelists who quit writing and musicians who quit performing as they aged made me wonder—when would I know to stop? Not yet, apparently. A longtime fan of Paul Simon, I was struck by the memory of my daughter responding to his music after hearing it in utero. Sometimes we recognize what moves us to create, and sometimes it’s a thunderbolt. My daughter, a musician now, asked me to get us tickets for Ladysmith Black Mambazo when they perform in the tiny Maine town where she now lives.

Petition, Joyce Peseroff’s sixth book of poems, was designated a “must read” by the Massachusetts Book Award, as was her fifth, Know Thyself. Recent poems and reviews are available in ArtsFuse, On the Seawall, Plume, and Sugar House Review. She directed UMass Boston’s MFA Program in its first four years, and currently blogs on poets and poetry at her website SO I GAVE YOU QUARTZ at joycepeseroff.com.