I think about life as a vinyl record,
as feeling every parallel halo in orbit
around the hallow in my heart.
I’m played with an overdriven rose,
warped and gashed through
by the only touch I’ll ever know.
My veins are pumped with liquid cathode noise,
crackling pulses whispered from an anxious fire
that has burned for a generation now,
fueled by the dust from some
tragically romantic supernova.
I am a billion synaptic echoes,
self-oscillating in warm recursion,
shimmering beneath the stars,
shimmering within the eyes
of someone who will never
fade away in such soft blue light.
If memory is the infinite reverberation of existence,
then I know why my brain rattles and sparks
against all these asylum feedback walls.
I dream a revolution per minute.
− Andrew Maguire
Andrew Maguire is a junior computer-science major at the University of Pittsburgh. He works as a database architect and back-end web developer for the university’s School of Pharmacy. His poem “I’m Cold” won first place for poetry in the 2016 90.5 WESA Prosody Writing Contest. He lives in South Oakland. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty and Ellen Wadey. Prosody airs every Saturday morning on WESA 90.5 FM.
