“Sensual Songs for Eight-Year-Olds,” a Poem by Patricia Lockwood

From the Collection Agate Head / Stone Soup

Everyone was in town for the wheat
Convention. Kansas City, Power
And Light. Our first night I came out
Of the hotel bathroom to find him
With the sheets pulled up to his chin,
Saying in a small high voice,
I just had the most beautiful
Experience of my life. I turned,
Face bare, to the television
To see the Doobie Brothers.
Remember the eleven-year-old
Superfan—Paisley—who was
Crazy for Michael McDonald?
Sounds like an angel somehow,
She said. I heard electric plums
Of an eight-voice synthesizer
Playing people at the beginning
Of the world. The harmonies
Were closer than I remember:
Family, blood harmonies. I am
Hiding from my high part here,
My harmonizers. What does it mean
To thrill to the past? To finger
The zippers on ’70s jumpsuits
And wonder who sold Kenny Loggins
His scarves? Everyone pretending
They were a swamp creature
Or a shaft of circus light falling through
A stained glass window—why?
Art travels forwards and backwards
In time. In the car on the way
Back from the boneyard beach,
We discussed Sensual Songs
For Eight-Year-Olds. Mine was
Old black water, keep on rollin’.
Jason’s was Starship: “We Built
This City.” “When this came on
I would leave my body. Is this
Allowed? Is this even allowed?”
It’s like this. Your parents are driving
You home through some newly
Minted night—after a concert,
Movie, church festival. You are
Resting your head against the window
And your heart is leaping out
Into some filled-to-the-brim future
Skin. Still, you are being carried,
This is necessary to the feeling.
“I just had to deal with it,”
Paisley said, when she realized
Her soft-rock idol was gray.
Her bewildered father drove her
To a concert, where she stood
In the bleachers and screamed,
MICHAEL, I LOVE YOU!
“He looked at me in the eye
And said thank you.” She cried
And composed herself like a song.
Is it allowed, is it even allowed?
To leave the family harmonizers
And send your lone voice up?
Riverboat rat, soaring catfish,
Mississippi queen.
Look at her grooving, carried
Along on black water,
To “What a Fool Believes.”

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From Agate Head / Stone Soup by Patricia Lockwood. Copyright © 2026. Available from Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.