Jennifer Siegal
Response
Sonata
By Ben Barker
Inspiration piece
On stage
The blind musician is sitting in a wooden chair
The theater is empty except for he and I
He is no longer Jonathan
He has traded names with Agony and now calls himself Jupiter
He is a gas giant made up of hydrogen and woe
In his left hand he is holding his dead child
4 years of solitude has begun to rust the boy’s skin
And I can see Jupiter shivering in the cold wind of remembrance
Adagio:
The vanilla clouds in his eyes begin storming and rains of lament pour down his thirsty cheeks
He places the boy’s feet between his knees and bends his memory
I hear the child’s bones groan and contort
Placing a bow to his son’s splintered rib cage
Jupiter plays me a symphony called
“The Night I Grew My Great Red Spot”
Minuet:
I can see that he is haunted by the ghost of Christmas past
She is seventeen years old and is driving drunk
Jupiter and his boy are waiting for the light to change on Happiness boulevard
Not knowing they are about to turn left onto Anguish street
As she crashes her DUI into his constellation of family, the boy is sent skyward
His soul flying just a little bit farther than his body
They watch as the child’s limbs pirouette to the sound of a rigor mortis orchestra
Allegro:
Jupiter is falling out of orbit
His son mistaken for a pinata
Her lapse in sobriety the baseball bat
The only candy inside the boy’s skin is a crimson liquid
It explodes pretty all over the asphalt sky.
In the coming months he will see his sun go nova
Every day
Again
Everywhere
Again
In every car window, every empty bottle, every child’s face
Again and again and again and again
Until can stand to see no more
He stares open eyed into the bottleneck of a chemical baptism
Hoping to cleanse the ghosts from his sight
He pours bleach into his aching corneas
And I can hear his cataracts remembering what it felt like
To forget how to see
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