If You Play Jolene at 33 rpm
Dolly’s vocals lower
to a cowboy croon:
I’m begging of you please
don’t take my man.
Slow any song
and sorrow blooms
like blood
through a bandage.
Slow sorrow
and it darkens like dusk-
stained windows.
Outside, moths fire-dance
around a porch light,
a black horse breathes
in a field, lungs filling
with night.
The words curve
into prayer: please
don’t take him
even though you can.
Jolene as Jesus
green-eyed with fiery hair,
the god
gay men at bedsides begged
to spare their loves.
Imagine the quiet
when she didn’t answer.
Sound of the stylus lifted,
the record still turning.