THE LAST PRINCE CONCERT
(Fox Theatre, Atlanta, 2016)
April 14: same night Lincoln got shot
and the Titanic hit the iceberg
Four planets in retrograde
show delayed a week already
cycles of the moon emblazoned
across his purple silk pyjamas
The scepter he walked with
not an affectation
but an affirmation
of his majesty
A talisman against the agony
in his knees and hips
for which he was taking
black-market fentanyl
likely during the same
astonishing ninety minutes
I spent under a faux sky
of twinkling yellow stars
listening to him force
himself to be vulnerable
in front of strangers
who were affected
by his final strangeness
& singularity
in ways they could
never quite articulate
in ways they would
wake up to years later
feeling both an absence
and expansion
of the world they
felt and believed in
rain that breathes
snow that falls upwards
a new spectrum of color
equal parts
light
sound
electric intercourse
and water
JEFF FALLIS is a poet and critic who lives in Athens, Georgia, and teaches at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. His poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Oxford American, James Baldwin Review, and elsewhere.
Read more by Jeff Fallis in B O D Y:
Essay in the June 2020 issue
What are you reading? Here at B O D Y we’ve always got a tome or two open, and we're happy to recommend these recent books.
Me, I’m the opposite, of course – my soul is in full view, as if it weren’t just my shirt that was ripped but my flesh too, and it’s right here, my clownish soul, winking at you with a tear in its eye, because like a steam engine it’s powerful and full of emotion at the same time.
say it /
briefly //
like /
a finch’s whistle
The wildflowers wilt over their own feet as I stagger through the dusty, jaded soil. One of my legs is broken. My mouth is parched.
My sisters, deep in our cells, are still feeding me. /
But I know I will be their last queen.
These captivating poems dedicated to Keats and Lucie Brock-Boido pay equal attention to the visible and the invisible worlds—and seem hauntingly comfortable in both.
A different me is silhouetted in the lit windows of every house I drive //
past – me: reading a book, me: making dinner, me: alone staring back.
It was growing dark in the garden. I felt, suddenly, enormous, as vast as the night. I could see all the way to California, where two little girls dragged their unwheeled suitcases through a cavernous airport
I am waiting for you. Part of my wall /
will need to go to get you in. It will /
never heal. This is how they’ll find me, /
small, perfunctory, unfit for a king, but /
I’ll hold it all
We moved along, discussing this injustice. It was small in the larger scope of the war, and all-consuming for one woman
