death dream of poe’s ape II

by David Luntz

…insane, sure, but don’t forget the moment you bumped into Poe’s ape in a gas-lit Parisian alleyway, wearing a negligée of weeping butterflies and a stovepipe hat, wielding a razor blade with which he’s just decapitated an old lady and stuffed up a chimney, and you put your arms around his shoulders and say, “Brother, can you spare a dime,” and the creature chortles “Ho-ho-ho,” and stuffs an unpinned hand grenade masquerading as a mini-pineapple between his rouge lips that you suck on like an engorged nipple which turns into a stuffed bird that flakes in your mouth, that same bird you once as a child tried to rescue, its broken wings thumping a fatal dirge in your palms, soundtracking your later dreams, all while the ape is reeling around you, doubled-over, chortling, “Gotcha, gotcha,” as your dad did when he locked you in a closet, his face frozen in memory, a death mask of joy, coconut tufts of hair sprouting from his ears, weaving an impossible maze you can never find your way out of, returning to that same point over and over again, a child holding his father’s hand on a street corner watching a man in rags trying to light up a trash can, howling like a newly-caged baboon, and you’re wondering why no one is helping him, wondering why your father is chortling, when he looks at you like you’re beyond all help and says, “You don’t understand what he’s saying, do you, boy, well, listen hard and listen real good, he’s speaking the true and perfect language of the world…”

Photo of David Luntz

BIO: Work is forthcoming in or has appeared in Post Road, Hobart Pulp, Bruiser, ergot.press, X-R-A-Y Lit, Maudlin House, HAD and other print and online journals. More at davidluntz.com Twitter: @luntz_david