Rose Solari Shares New Poem “Hunger” After Jackson Browne

and cheap weed, a late spring evening

leaning into summer in somebody’s

absent parents’ rec room. Black lights

and band posters. “Saturate Before Using”

spinning our smoke-addled heads. Now

someone picks up a guitar, and the still-

though-not-for-much-longer tenor star

of our school chorus starts singing, Doctor,

my eyes, and everyone, even the metal-head

kids, chimes in. We all know this singer’s

story — the loss of his young, suicidal wife,

and earlier, how he’d strummed his way

from California to New York City, fell

in love with Lou Reed’s muse, Nico, who

according to pop legend popped his cherry

when he was just about the age we all

are now.

     Maybe that’s why that summer

even the boys loved Jackson Browne,

working with gels and blow dryers to mimic

the silk-winged fall of his hair, while

every girl believed that she alone could

heal his complicated heart. Now I want to

understand, we sang, and sang again,

facing into the future, hungry, certain

that suffering, when it came, could

only make us wiser and more beautiful.