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ANDREW HUGHES My
work has appeared in Can We Have Our Ball Back, Good Foot, and The
Heat City Review.
THIS
KIND OF HUMANITY DISTINGUISHES 1.
the
countertenor dressed
in a constricting pin-striped suit never
achieved the poetic heights of
Chaplin who
sketched and labeled ninety-three facial expressions
2.
in
his closing aria, he is filled with anguish and loneliness in
silhouette behind the curtain he
swayed side to side, glassy-eyed a
terrifyingly bright-pink spider ran across the floor he wanted to be a cabinet-maker, but the family needed money
IN
LIEU OF FLOWERS, BEN VEREEN SANG “LIFE IS JUST A BOWL OF CHERRIES” A
festive incongruity, and a busy schedule of “destination evenings.” Occasional
time out for sweaty, sexual interludes; a disinterested witness
to a welter of narrative complications;
summer’s crickets are silent. A
ballerina in ragged tutu she was June Cleaver, in blackface. Thrown
into the tonality to reveal its modern provenance— but
what about the underlying message of sobriety, even confusion. Ask
a Parisian chauffeur who has become a spellbinding encyclopedia of
natural facts,
like cherry blossoms in the spring and
loyalty to the Redskins; sailors and their sweethearts and
bleary-eyed barflies
autumn’s unsung heroes… from
the pile of scrap metal
they raise a creaking, shaking skeleton of a ship some sang, some tried not to speak, some danced.
copyright
© Andrew Hughes |