Alan Sincic

  You could call it a fuse if you want to, the old-fashioned kind, like in the cartoons, where Bugs Bunny snicks the head of the match upside the sandpaper brow of Bobo the ape and it catches, and a thumblet of fire does a Tango up onto the derby the gorilla wears, and somersaults over the brim, and Watusi's into the hole in the ear, hole in the hollow of the head to appear behind the whites of the apey eyes in a high-kicking promenade of a kind you’d applaud at the Radio City Music Hall or fixed in the frame of a 1936 Busby Berkley Can-Can ajam in the reel of a rusty projector heavens, heavens to Betsy, Busby, to see the beauty of the day dissolve in a bubble of acetate blank as the Bobo here, the hollow-as-a-bongo Hominoid abuzz at the niblet of flame that kick-shuffles, kick-shuffles behind the vacant eyes and out the other ear in a leap to light the fuse, the ridge of pepper, the gunpowder crumble round the tree where Elmer Fudd rankles at the monkey’s knuckle of the knot that binds him to the tinder and the trunk and the keg of dyno beneath that rubbery butt of his wow, how the sentence in a scurry here sings, the breath in a journey burns, the words in the wake evaporate as Bugsy chompers off another bit of carrot and Elmer blubbers away at the ropes and Bobo rubs the white of his eyes with the nub of them hairy knuckles of his hearken, hearken at the hope they harbor here, how nobody dies in the funnies, how from out the splat on the floor of the canyon and the schmear on the belly of the steamroller and the accordion crunch of the hydraulic press Wile E. Coyote always crunkle-pop-crunkles back up into shape mercy, mercy I say to the sun as it runs and the powder that flares and the sizzle that sprints to the city of bang brother oh brother, beware the air that bodies the world away as you brace yourself and blink, and pray for the comma, here, and this other one, here, the pause that holds the heart at bay, that whispers a way to a place where a breath perpetual sings, where the kite highs in a wind that never falters, where the fat thumb of the maker staples to the face of the sky an unbudgeable sun huzzah we say to the toon as it travels to where never shall ever the credits roll, or the reel flicker, or Porky the Pig come busting out the belly of the drum with a bee-da, bee-da, bee — that’s all, folks or amen or aloha no, no, and surely you see, of a surety – you crazy rabbit you with the basket of boom – that we who live in a body of flesh who fear the unmendable end who the red blaze of the blood here render in a single phrase do we not deserve us in the service of the word a perk or a stutter or a stay as a way to a maybe we maybe, just maybe we ride the fuse forever?