July 1, 2025

poem in which I attend Glastonbury to see Alanis Morissette **

Having left black fly season, I’ve arrived
into the feral dream that is my first year out
of university, collagen-rich and too nervous
at interviews to land a full-time job, but accepting
any invitation from my new housemates, so a day
later we’re on a National Express bus heading southwest
toward Somerset, a single suitcase between us.
Where we’ll stay is anyone’s guess. We descend
into a humid city square and follow the breadcrumb
scents of sunscreen. Ticket lines sway forward,
then we’re in, and thousands of disparate conversations
become one the moment the stage lights tilt open.
Then she’s there, in a halo of soft waves,
and the clouds disappear as if pardoned, and I’ve lost
track of the bills I haven’t yet paid, and the feeling
of being late to my own life. It’s been however many
years since she leapt around in a pair of leather pants,
however many years of me fidgeting with the controls,
adjusting for temperature and scale and safety,
not letting the engine get too hot, not giving too much away
for free. But here, our bodies move autonomously, like figures
of speech, or funny cartoons, only we are dead serious
in the way we kiss the lyrics back and forth between swigs
of sour ale, in the fact of instantly loving the stranger dancing
beside us. My God, we are the best damn advice anyone
has ever given, and when the rain finally comes, we’re soaked
already, arms daisy-chained all the way down the line,
sweating in a borderless joy I’ll take back across the pond,
flip through years later like a tarot deck or a lottery ticket,
pinching my grandchildren’s cheeks saying, “Can you
believe I was there? Can you?”

** I assembled this poem using select words from Morissette’s “Ironic,” which was released in 1995 on her album “Jagged Little Pill.” The words I used were: black fly, lottery, dream, suitcase, thousand, pardon, paid, late, safety, free, funny, kiss, figure, damn, advice, and rain.