Prose
There’s a Dead Body on the Sidewalk
Nsikan Akpan
I know this because I tripped over it on my way here. Vignes Street. Not only did I fall to the ground to join it, but my body rolled over, leaving my face flat on the concrete. Speaking of faces, this body had none, just eyes. They were looking right at me, dark brown. Maybe they were some other color, but everything looks dark in the dark. Though California is the "Sunshine State," right?
There are dead bodies everywhere and they use tents as coffins around here. No headstones for the headless. In the daytime they have a lot of nerve roaming the streets like zombies, seeming to be okay with this life that technically isn't living when you're living in a tent. Or a dam. Or on a rooftop trying to get some shut-eye despite the thunderous applause below, clapping for the actor who's winning an award for pretending to be like them.
So obviously you get what I'm saying: that these bodies aren't dead, but the people inside them are disregarded and discarded as though they've already gone. Boy, are they a bunch of troopers. At night it looks like a battlefield of a losing side. Dead bodies everywhere. And all I can think is, "who's going to clean up this mess?"
There are dead bodies everywhere and they use tents as coffins around here. No headstones for the headless. In the daytime they have a lot of nerve roaming the streets like zombies, seeming to be okay with this life that technically isn't living when you're living in a tent. Or a dam. Or on a rooftop trying to get some shut-eye despite the thunderous applause below, clapping for the actor who's winning an award for pretending to be like them.
So obviously you get what I'm saying: that these bodies aren't dead, but the people inside them are disregarded and discarded as though they've already gone. Boy, are they a bunch of troopers. At night it looks like a battlefield of a losing side. Dead bodies everywhere. And all I can think is, "who's going to clean up this mess?"
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Nsikan Akpan is a poet and author, living in Los Angeles. She grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, which she will always call home. She has written plays, screenplays, along with fiction and nonfiction stories. A few of her successes include being published in The Muse (Howard Community College literary magazine) a number of times as well as Z Publishing’s Maryland’s Best Emerging Poets and America’s Best Emerging Poets.
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