It's Still Life

A Poem Not Beginning with a Line by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I’m just a slug on the wet inner-face of the discourse,
writes Jack Underwood.

I don’t know Jack Underwood, but I read what he wrote, and assume lots of people also read him, and I believed every word he wrote about dead rabbits, and singing, and dragging chairs, and I even believed he used to practise dying.

Yesterday, the newspaper reported an earthquake in the next county, and that several people had died. Fracking was hinted at.

I told my neighbour, who told her husband, and I told my husband, who told someone else, who then told the story to their partner, and all these people heard about an earthquake in the next county caused by fracking. And that people died.

The next day, the newspaper retracted the article.

I didn’t bother telling anyone the story was a load of bollocks, and I rather think Jack Underwood was tricky with the truth because really, I’ve never heard of a kid riding a bike straight into bushes, all summer long, day after day, just to practice dying … as if he were a dead rabbit that you’d poke with a stick to see if it’s really dead.

These poems/prose are draft versions, written in participation of Miz Quickly’s Day 23, and Jack Underwood’s Audio Poems, November poem-a-day challenge. ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting on Twitter. Images are ©Misky, and created using AI-Midjourney.