Party Piece

The years roll back, forty, forty-four,
to someone’s kitchen, somewhere in Dublin,

where the cider’s flowing, there’s Guinness and more,
guitars are tuned, and the girls are gathered in.

We’re smiling, Rita and I, sitting on the floor,
enjoying the music, voices rising and falling.

It’s a proper session, everyone joins in,
but it’s fallen quiet. “Come on,”

someone says, “What are youse singing?”
Someone else says, “How about some Joni?”

There are butterflies in my stomach. Everyone’s waiting.
We start a duet, a capella: “I slept last night

“in a good hotel”, and someone picks
a few notes on a guitar, which turn into chords.

By the time we reach the noisy corner,
other singers recall the words

and a choir of female voices fills the room,
swooping in an attempt to become Joni,

reaching for the notes and catching them,
singing and “playing real good for free”.

Kim M. Russell, 24^th April 2025

On day twenty-four of NaPoWriMo, the daily resource is the Art Institute of Chicago, and the optional prompt focuses on the communal nature of music, which is often made in groups, such as rock bands, orchestras, church choirs, as well as performing music that was written by, or inspired by, other people. Our example poem is ‘Duet’ by Lisa Russ Spaar, which tells the story of two sisters making music together, based on two pre-existing songs by different artists.

Our challenge is to write poems that involve people making music together, and that reference – with a lyric or line – songs or poems that are important to us.

Mine is based on something that happened, a narrative poem.