When I was nine in my cute hats

It was always nameless radio songs, morning till night

Till David till Daddy till Mommy till Joe—

In Joe’s tubey wire headsets

Fall Out Boy begged to remember me for centuries

And I heard them again and again all summer

Going with Joe on driver’s license training rides

Or sitting around the house waiting for David to escape.

Refrains went up and down the driveway of reality

In the blue cool evening

Pharrell Williams clapped along with the choir as rain fell through the roof

And I didn’t even know the song’s name.

Imagine Dragons was radioactive,

Oh ho ohooho,

Ed Sheeran was thinking out loud

When the cold angels turned the car radio dial

While I never dared to speak

The loud thoughts that crowded my mind

Caught between David, Daddy, Mommy, and Joe.

How did my parents, obsessed with old cassettes

And Seals&Crofts, Stix, David Crosby, and Dan Fogelberg

Never know what this music was doing to us all?

Turn up the dial and there’s another bad day piano

Sam Smith wailing you say I’m crazy

Adele rasping Rumor Has It.

I was like a cold caught in the car’s backseat

Nine years old and listening.

We cough, sniffle, sneeze through winter

And never know how the radio dials

Turn us up and down

Round and round the AM and FM

And the freeway and the highway and cornfields—

Round and round the clocks and the wires we go.