wildscape. literary journal

ALAS POOR YORICK
by Ian Parker

I. 

Last night I found a VHS in a waterlogged packing box
dusted with spiderwebs and Sharpie markings. I plugged

it into my brain and pressed play. Spokane looks
a different hue — sepia tones and when will you

be Angelic? When will you take off your clothes?
This is where I learned to play four square, flag

football, and air guitar. I couldn’t go on like that,
wearing a million different people. Look at me

in a jester’s hat, in the rags of movie quotes
and harlequin glasses. 


II.

I got sick of setting mousetraps for Chuck E Cheese.
My face looks animatronic, not matching the words

I’m saying aloud, overdubbed. Climbing on rime
singing a song in a new modality, a rhythm

unspooled from the ribbons of memory of contorting
myself into The Old Guitarist. I am not a man

but a disembodied voice echoing in a vacuum.


III.

If laughter is the best medicine, then I’m a patient 
in the ICU ward (on the VHS tape). That’s what

you’ll think — rewind to the beginning, be kind,
I don’t want to destroy you. My bygone ambivalence

is only as strong as your dianthus, bent at the root.
I want to burrow my soul into a churro, see if I can

eat my way out of the saccharine retention. Nothing
is more real than nothing, said Beckett, and I wrote

it on my heart. You can see it blazing through my t-shirt.
I could break the world apart with sadness, with despair

and ye mighty, I have measured my life in coffee spoons
and the ability to look on my works and pause. Look again.

about the author // Ian Parker