james king

Spotify Wrapped Tells You Exactly What You’ve Been Missing

here’s how to say it
in a mint new language for all
the lack in the world
the touchless greenless
cities you live in in the world
pressed flat like plastic
you could produce
license and identification

the preacher in his sleek-sided box says
you’re in the top 0.1
percent of confessions this year 
because you kept going 
out and making indiscretions
you could confess to later

and what lyric did you scrawl 
into window fog the sun-colored rhombus
the morning after
the night you thought you would die
but woke in the same dirty body
you wore to sleep?

there was a camera inside
the pane perched on a wire
like a big metal crow
peering through the pearlescence
of your in-spite-of-it breath
you reached for it
you almost tapped the glass but stopped
your arm arched a bridge
your fingers a defeated army

today says the application 
let us offer you the service
of a true translation
from the heart its unadorned country

your top five songs
mean: I need love like:

1. shade under the last surviving tree
2. shade under the last surviving tree
3. shade under the last surviving tree
4. shade under the last surviving tree
5. shade under the last surviving tree