The Night John Prine Died
by Tito Titus
Mid-pandemic, we walk nearly vacant streets,
she and I. It’s April 7th and the sun prepares
to take our big city blue sky to China.
A few long-shadowed men and women,
near here, over there, across the evening street,
move purposefully, gracefully, safely—
polite nervous ghosts in face masks,
remembered now in slow-motion—
dream-walkers avoiding dream-walkers,
artists performing an apocalyptic dance
never seen before, never danced before.
Sometime after our return, after the news
on Channel 5, but before Jeopardy,
John Prine dies, ventilator intubated,
in Nashville, Tennessee. Novel coronavirus
“complications” killed him, they say.
Pneumonia purchased his lungs like soggy fog,
too much for his surgery-weakened body,
his hip ripped open to replace a bone.
In this great quarantine of 2020,
a new surreal world surrounds us,
an unfamiliar reality upends our days.
We wear facemasks colored like Joseph’s robe,
carry hand-sanitizer and alcohol wipes,
and abhor touching anything not our own.
John Prine falls like a shooting star
on a Supermoon night.
We hold hands, stare at the floor,
she and I.
Image: Stuart Buck is a visual artist and award-winning poet living in North Wales. His art has been featured in several journals, as well as gracing the covers of several books. His third poetry collection, Portrait of a Man on Fire, is forthcoming from Rhythm & Bones Press in November 2020. He is the art editor for Konstellation Magazine and available for commissions all year round. He can be contacted via Twitter or E-Mail
Tito Titus (he/him) authored I can still smile like Errol Flynn (Empty Bowl Press, 2015), as well as poetry and social satire that first appeared in various Pacific Northwest magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. “The night John Prine died” comes from his work-in-progress titled So Far So Good, a project inspired by his own impending death.
