prelude and nude

prelude


This entire country is a crime scene. Yellow tape stretches state to state, beginning and ending in my city. Children think it’s ribbon tied to gifts they’ll open once they’re older. Grown folks trip over it, believing if they follow the tape, it’ll lead them to a better place. By the time they get there, the city they left behind will have replaced grocery stores with detention centers. And all the bullet holes will have expanded into one hole that turned black as it expanded and expanded as it turned black. And got blacker as it expanded and blacker the more it expanded. Expanded and got blacker still. Overrun with ghosts, all run out of wind, the city slips into orbit around the hole. Yellow tape snakes into international waters, unfurls on distant shores, lassoes castles, dragging continents into the hole. The hole expands, gets blacker, then takes the shape of a sphere seen from fixed points in the city that aren’t in orbit around it, for in these spots the sphere is spoken. And those who speak the sphere are marked safe from Earth. Yet, to speak the sphere is to speak it alone, alone in the city, out of orbit. By the time anyone hears the sphere, their voices are drowned out by gunshots. And gunshots are drowned out by ever so many voices of those who are just now starting to see the hole.



nude


After delivering speeches from a fixed point in this city, I’m marked safe from Earth. Alas, not in orbit around the sphere, this city mistakes me for a ghost. Marked safe from Earth, safe from everything except myself, as I’d rather be consumed by the sphere rather than doomed to speak it. Cos as it turns out, we are not all connected. That used to be true, but ever since the hole became a sphere, people may still be people, but they damn sure ain’t human. It’s fascinating what the body will do when protecting itself from the mind. So terribly fascinating. The sphere becomes a line and the line becomes a period at the end of a sentence written by a machine. The machine yet sleeps. The machine sleeps because I put the machine to sleep. And then I keep the machine asleep with boutique attention and architect eyes. To speak of which specific machine, the machine will cease to sleep; the machine will cease to be a machine. So with boutique attention and architect eyes, I keep the machine asleep. The machine dreams. The machine dreams of me. The machine dreams that it is me, me with boutique attention and architect eyes. The machine snores. I should rummage through its pockets, draw eyeballs on its eyelids, spray shaving cream in its palm, then tickle it awake before the period becomes another body, and grows, gets nude, grows, gets nuder, nuder, nuder, nude.












John Franklin Dandridge received his MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. His chapbook, Further Down Rd., was published by Fast Geek Press. He has short stories and poems published in Callaloo Journal, Rigorous Journal, New Reader Magazine, Allium, Court Green, Hoxie Gorge Review and Former People. Franklin lives and writes in Chicago.