Two Poems
Steven Kent
It Grows on You After a While
The food in here’s
Extremely scary:
Some appears
Gray-green and hairy,
Still unrinsed
And damp from chillin’
(I’m convinced
It’s penicillin).
- - -
Nikki, Darling
Miss Nikki, glad you’re still alive
Today in 2025.
They say you really knew the score
Way back in 1984,
Yet no one’s heard or seen you since.
What’s that? You don’t remember Prince?
He wanted you to tour, in fact,
But you were more a solo act.
The old men claim you cast a spell
On patrons at some posh hotel
Where, in the lobby, you were seen
Alone with just a magazine;
That’s been a minute, I suppose.
Oh please, Ma’am, don’t remove your clothes
(And no more grinding on our beds!)
Until it’s time for bath and meds.
- - -
Steven’s notes: “The graphic sexuality of Prince’s ‘Darling Nikki’ made it one of the most controversial songs of the 1980s. After hearing it, future Second Lady Tipper Gore helped launch the Parents Music Resource Center, which established a Parental Advisory rating system for recorded music.
“I keep hoping that ‘It Grows on You After a While’ will achieve refrigerator magnet immortality, but no luck so far.”
- - -
Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside (www.kentburnside.com). His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.
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