But It Got Rave Reviews and A Pulitzer

One final orchestral hit as curtains kiss
boards. (BLACK OUT)
Feet slap a thunder, filling
to the rafters as lungs into brittle ribs,
while palms chirp their sweaty
song in time like brined lightning,
glassing the sands beneath them.
Strung from those aerial bones is
a man now a flatline, he had popped
all the jazz hands and charlestons
he could, to the delight of tapeworms
and yellowjackets who’d paid to see
a sap sing until his song became blood.
And what a show it was— it was a show of blood,
sung by a sap paid in jackets and
yellow tape. Worms of light
charlestoned to his jazz, popping
off lines of bones charmed with sandglass,
lighting rafters in time with the thunder slap—
efforts deserving of this curtain-call.
The man, being a pendulum of flesh,
did not stir; for his death was written,
though not for show. His sorrows had
become his sole currency,
so when the house-lights gorged on
the darkness, they revealed his suicide pact:
a vow to fountain every ribbon in his veins,
for a stage to hang closure on.
Still, the ovation marches into the maw of night—
his family weeping in their luxury box seats.

(BLACK OUT)

Raphael Jenkins prefers to go by Ralph, as he feels it suits him better and he’s heard every Ninja Turtle joke ever uttered. He is a native of Detroit, Michigan currently residing in Kentucky with his Boo-thang and their four-year-old boy. He is a chef by day and an essayist, poet, screenwriter in his dreams. He, like Issa Rae, is rooting for everybody Black. His work has been featured (or is forthcoming) on his mama’s fridge, his close friends’ inboxes, HAD, 3 Elements Review, HASH Journal, Frontier Poetry, Flypaper Lit, All Guts No Glory, Passengers Journal, and Alien Literary Magazine. Currently available works: https://linktr.ee/RALPHEEBOI. Follow him on TWITTER & IG: @RALPHEEBOI