Ryan Fitzpatrick
Winter 2023 | Poetry
Dopamine Lasso
O synapse circle, now don’t you cry for me
No heaven in depression or an auto-playing reel
These are latter-days, we know
The white flight of defacto soundtracks
Doomlooping the news
The constant need for daily trends
Swept lost doom into their billions
The aesthetic sweep of demographic shifts
Radio made me disrespectful
Too few feelings for pop-market research
Radio made me impatient
It’s so tough to pay attention
To the worldwide of fame lust
How could I almighty the wrong dollar
Splicing the 8-Track back into itself
When did information get so personal
Wailing fiddle riff o’er round chillin’
Filed under “Race Records”
Depression used to be a historical event
Roy Rogers picking peaches in a labour camp
Privatizing all the dust in the air
A staid version of the tune
A weary hand brushing away the coal
Tilled like the donation box
No one loves a hobo
Privatized like a sad autonomy
Recession itself is retconned
Jimmy Carter built all those houses
George Bush painted all those dogs
That 1870s Show
When your IQ surpasses your credit score
“Fuck or Die,” reports The New York Times
“They’re replacing us,” reports Reddit chud
The medium is just the wrong size, okay
Like when radio is great-great-grandfathered in
I call it a slop-on-slop transformation
The fantasy cosplay of confederacy
Where in the lyrics he doesn’t dream of reinstating slavery
But he doesn’t not dream of reinstating slavery
Just the love that produced it
Carry me back to ol’ Virginnie
My old Kentucky home
Dixieland delight, etc.
That Bourbon Street steak with the Oreo shake
If the South would’ve won, etc.
Hank Jr.’s rowdy friends settling in, not down
Sunset as economic value
David Allen Coe’s mail-order service
Penthouse doublewide truck cab pundit
Jason Aldean’s Sundown Town
Transatlantic history of the banjo’s circulation
Feeling about no feeling
Refrained in the bandwidthed worth
No feeling in staking yourself
Note slips behind its face
Stetson in the middle eight
A carnival of violation noodling tradition
A note and its subsequent correction
Dragging me back into the Zoom meeting
Quick-baiting despair of the Lay’s bag
Ballad of the weary layman
Laying in bed by force
Folk Rock’s take on alienated labour
Robin Pecknold wanting to pick peaches in a labour camp
Some sunny historical fantasy
A desire to watch the bridges that we’re burning
I didn’t choose this aesthetic
I’m everyone who ever chose this aesthetic
As evidence mounts denial as far my eye can see
For I retweet Alabama with an iPhone on my knee
ryan fitzpatrick is the author of five books including the recent Sunny Ways (Invisible 2023) and the forthcoming Ace Theory (Book*Hug 2025). He is the publisher of the online-based and poetry-focused Model Press. He lives in Toronto/Tkaronto. You can find him at ryanfitzpatrick.ca.