A PRELUDE TO “THE DARK GARDEN”

At number eighty-nine, Little Red Riding Hood has taken off all his clothes. Selfies will shortly appear somewhere to prove this fact. Little Red Riding Hood is going on a date.

The screen I gaze into is vantablack. Something smells of a shadow. Something tells me she has black earth under her fingernails. Black earth from The Dark Garden. Something in me feels her black familiar arch its back invisible in its dusty tantalum night-time. I imagine it hisses at me out of somewhere. The hairs on my arms stand on end. Something tells me the cat yawns. 

The algorithms are not overworked. They are dressed to kill. They have a date. They are going to the carnival.

In the Congo, in Brazil, black men slave for coltan. 

 The photograph “The Writer at Langaller Lane 172988” © David F. Brandon 2017

GO FURTHER / ARRIESGA MÁS

En mi cabeza, un océano. Hay aceite esparcido en la tormenta. Las huellas de tus dedos se deslizan por las aguas. Un universo centellea en la contaminación.

 

Inside my head, an ocean. There is oil thrown into the storm. Your fingerprints skitter across the waters. A universe shimmers in the pollution.

 Image “Low Tide” © David F. Brandon 2017