by Margaret Colangelo | | Poetry
Pump Pump Pump
Nothing.
Pump Pump Pump
Nothing.
Crumpled metal was one option
Soul exits, body flown
Pump Pump Pump, no response
I need a miracle! What’s the chance?
Speed increasing, keep my cool
Pump Pump Pump
I chose this old car, like a fool
One of us will make the grave
Pump Pump Pump
Oh, thank God,
the car’s been saved!
"Poetry is as strong now as it was hundreds of years ago. Kendrick Lamar is doing the same things that John Donne did. One of these we love, the other we get traumatic experiences from High School Lit. We might hesitate to call Lamar’s work “poetry” because it brings to mind old dead white men and incomprehensible Middle English, but the mechanics of poetry are all there.
Rhyme? Yep. Meter? Uh huh. Stanzas? All there. Heck, I would make the argument that sophistication is not even a prerequisite to poetry. “Twinkle Twinkle”? Poetry. “F*ck the Police”? Poetry."
Kevin Chen