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.

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