Breadcrumb #484
JORDAN E. FRANKLIN
After Peter Gabriel
I want contact
and his songs are like praying
and the answer afterwards. For
me, Gabriel is Brooklyn airbrushed with stars, a car’s ignition
running over miles of Flatbush streets quieting and I’m
in the backseat, safe, the radio low, looking
out the window as the moon strikes the trees’ crowned fore-
heads like matches the wind can’t put out. There is a
lyric molting in my mouth—the sweetest spark.
Wanting contact
As my tongue is wrestled to the chorus,
his blue-eyed soul is loose like my hands. Any-
thing can slip here. There’s always a chance
to escape my body when he sings. I mimic the collision
of meaning. I tap the beat into my skin like tattoos and
watch the cricket legs of my fingers shed. I
want to lose my hands. I want my head to light
up
the streetlamp of my spine, my mouth in
perfect lockstep with the verses. Gabriel, the
magician, his chanting like heavy machines in the dark.
Nothing else seems to please
until the song ends.