Recital at the Court of King Carrot III

Mortality is itself immortal Leo thought, reminded five

years later of the performance. Having come, despite his

Irish darkness, to resemble one of the Carrot clan

himself. Whatever he had read, and the feelings that went

along with those books, articles and poems, layered his

unconscious now like lava. What was the voice of that

moment, he questioned his uni-ball pen. The playing

fingers, the singer, the wind that came in and made King

Carrot pop his collar. As even the King’d say now, after

Usher. Usher’ll die like everyone else but not for a few

decades yet, touch head. Where Leo wandered as if

streets were wild with flowers rather than construction

Mortality was in memory: mortality was immortality

even. Quotidian checking, marking, jogging things along

(e.g. the economy) these are the columns and emojis of

obituary. The privileged sublime? The working artist

reading the world under a misprinted title, taking

pills to still contradiction, lines of sky gray, and

greenery (tracing the eyeline of buildings’ weed

mascara). The forcing of life through an earth crumbling

with fatigue and love gone wrong: or was that the

humans standing on it? Yes, we all needed some grace

to get from one side of town to the other. And how have

a career without going up some real stone steps? To see

things and write them up, whether on bench or phone

while stopping, or on a keyboard once home. To Leo

death was always shocking: whether blighted cornfield

defunct toaster or road possum. Anything might’ve had

poison tipped into its ear: think of Carrot III slumping as

the piano lid closed, and knocking a candle over. The

singer leaping from her stool, suffocating the flames

before giving the gift of life, making every line she’d

sang that night seem crucial. That’s what Leo—and

probably everyone else who was there—remembered, if

only because a new song about superficial human life

(“A river is thicker than royal blood”) soon ruled the air