warmth and warble and hiss of memory

Think I'll compile all my memories onto cassette tape, yessir yessir.

Think I'll cart all my old tapes out and put a big magnet to 'em.

Wipe 'em all clean, yessir. Stacks and stacks of blank canvas.

Think I'll speak all my memories into a side-address microphone

an old fashioned one drippin' with lots of soul.

Think it'll take me prit'near all of next month to speak all my memories into the tapes, yessir.

Then I'll have 'em all in one place.

All my memories packed into crates and stacked neatly in the corner.

When I'm lonely, all I'll have to do is pick out a tape, yessir.

Pick one out and slot it into the stereo.

That time I won the spelling bee on an old Eric Clapton tape, yessir.

Falling off my bike on a compilation of the Billboard Hits of 1966.

My first kiss on K-Tel's Kings of Rap.

The internal romanticism of my drinking problem across a 10-volume audiobook of Homer's The Iliad.

All my memories in one place, yessir yessir.

Warmth and warble and hiss of memory wrapping me up like a magnetic blanket.

Freelance writer and filmmaker Joseph Johnston made his first movie at the age of 11, an industrial espionage thriller that continues to play to excited crowds in his parent’s living room every Christmas. His work has appeared in Rawboned, GTK Creative Journal, Old Northwest Review, and the Linden Avenue Literary Journal and his movie Fragments was the inaugural winner of the Iron Horse Literary Review's Video Literature contest. You can keep up with him at http://www.joe-johnston.com

For more work by Joe Johnston, visit his page at our Online Sundries site.