Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. Over 15,000 daily subscribers. Over 7,000 archived posts.
David Kirby: My Girlfriend Killed James Brown
Guy walks up to me in the park and says, “My girlfriend killed James Brown,” and I start to say, “Do I know you?” but I don’t want to miss out on the story, so I say, “No lie!” and he says, “Yeah, I got bumped up to first class, and when I saw who my seatmate was, I went back to economy and told my girlfriend, and even though she had the flu, we switch places, and three weeks later, James Brown is dead.” How’d you like that on your résumé? Or anyone’s death, though that didn’t bother the local woman who got life recently for murdering her husband because, according to the trial transcript, she didn’t want to “suffer the shame of a divorce.” Nothing good comes from murder. Well, if you murder Hitler, yeah, but suppose you murder Hitler and somebody worse takes his place? The girlfriend didn’t mean to kill James Brown, though. Accidental death’s a whole other kettle of fish. Imagine the girlfriend sometime later on another flight, and she dozes off in the middle of a movie, and when she wakes, she notices everyone else is sleeping, including the flight attendants, and she rings the call button, but nobody comes, and she shakes her seatmate’s arm, but he doesn’t respond, either, and that’s when she thinks, These people aren’t sleeping, but the plane keeps flying, and it lands somehow, and she finds herself at an arrival gate and then a cab stand, and she doesn’t know where she wants to go, though the cabbie seems to, and everyone is happy and friendly, if a little distant, she says to herself, as though they’re in this place but not really of it, and here she is finally in a room with white walls and statues in niches and portraits of people she doesn’t recognize and a floor that’s lit from beneath, and people have cups of tea and finger sandwiches, and they’re ordinary people, for the most part, but Otis is there, and Sam Cooke, and Aretha, and someone taps her on the shoulder and says, “Try these,” and she turns and puts her hand to her mouth and begins to cry and says, “Oh, Mr. Brown, I’m so sorry I killed you,” and he says, “That’s okay, baby. I’m better now. I’m glad I’m here. I feel good. Take a cookie. Take a macaroon,”and she says, “What about the jam thumbprints? Are they good, too?” and he’s saying “It’s all good here, baby,” and she says, “I’ll just have one—I don’t want to spoil my appetite. What time’s dinner?” and he says, “Baby, we don’t believe in that,” and she says, “You don’t believe in dinner?” and he says, “No, time. We stopped that long ago,” and she says, “Who did? How?” and he says, “Fats did when he sang ‘Walking to New Orleans.’ Tina stopped time when she sang ‘Fool in Love.’ Buddy Holly did it with ‘Not Fade Away,’ same way Mozart did with that night music thing,” and she says, “Mr. Brown, you know a lot more about classical music than I would have thought” and then “You wouldn’t happen to be familiar with a 1956 French opera called Dialogues of the Carmelites, would you?” and he says, “Know it? I wrote that shit,” and she says, “You did not—that was Francis Poulenc!” and he says, “Time don’t stop for one person. One person stops time. Somebody comes in contact with what you’ve done, they catch some of that. That’s the way it works. One by one, them sixteen nuns stepped up to the guillotine, and one by one them revolutionaries cut their heads off, so there were fifteen singing, then fourteen, then none. Silence can be louder than anything, you know. The sound of silence,” says James Brown. “And what is ‘It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World’ if not classical? Full orchestra score, dark tones, nuanced lyrics: that fat Italian motherfucker knocked it over the centerfield wall every time,” and just then a voice says, “Who you calling ‘fat’?” and James Brown says, “Oh, sorry, Luciano. Have a cookie. Okay, have all the cookies” as a man steps into the room and says, “Brown, party of two,” and James Brown gives her his arm, and they go in, but the dining room is the kitchen she grew up in, and her parents are sitting at the table, her father in a jacket and tie and her mother in a pretty dress and that bright red lipstick she adored, and they smile and wave, but they don’t really seem to know her, either, and she says, “Holy cow! This looks like the house I grew up in! Is this the house I grew up in?” as Janis Joplin scurries through with a tray on her shoulder and says, “Get up off of that thing, James” and James Brown says, “Take another little piece of my heart, sis,” as Janis disappears into the kitchen, and her parents look up again, and this time her mother says, “Darling, is that you?” and her dad says, “That’s her, Miriam. Here, honey, have a seat,” and she sits and says, “Mom, Dad—how’d I get here?” and James Brown turns back to the woman who killed him and says, “You never left.”
Copyright 2021 David Kirby. From Help Me, Information (Louisiana State University, 2021). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author and LSU Press.
David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English, Florida State University.
James Brown (click here to listen to his music)
Vox Populi 
This is wonderful, David. I hope it’s like that for us all. Only thing missing from the vision is pets. I want my beloved pets there to greet me too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reminds me of a dream I had a year of so after my dad died in 2007. My dad and I are sitting in one of those old court motels. He’s on a cot against the wall below a window. I am on a raggedy armchair. A train goes by and the whole place, pictures, cracked mirror, window, rattles and groans . Dad looks at me and says, “there really is a hell.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great prose poem, Barbara. Thank you!
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
Mind blown early morning. Hmmmm
LikeLiked by 1 person
I know what you mean, Barbara.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is a staggeringly wonderful poem – thank you so much, David Kirby and Vox Populi. I feel as if I’m holding something I just cannot put down.
LikeLiked by 2 people
David is a wonderful poet, isn’t he?
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes! There’s a whole philosophy of life in this.
LikeLiked by 1 person