J. R. Pritchard

MENINGITIS HALLUCINATIONS

Listen to Audio Version read by Sean Mahoney.

Stripped of conscious faculty—
Save clarity, painful, bright vivid clearness.
            It draws morning curtains wide,
                                         Reveals phantom bodies
                                         Of light through clouded sky.

Father and I share a grave, we swim upstream
The River Styx. He, an unwelcomed undead,
            I, the drowned stranger.
                           I escaped the apparition, and found
                                        My coffin bed once more—
                                        Sheets of tangled snakes.

Fiery fever, swirled perception, furloughed intuition.
My thoughts are burnt logs, rectangular charcoal patterns, indecipherable.
            Is this Hell? I cry for my brother,
                                        He's there already,
                                        Holding my hand.

Lucifer would love for this to last; he told me in passing.
My memories are scattered,
                                       As if
Tiny fleas
                                       Of bright cinders
            Escaping a fire—spent wood
            Losing identity.

Joseph Pritchard is a twenty-four year old, quadriplegic, Ohioan, who attends Kent, Salem and is working on a major in English, while working as a writing tutor on campus. Pritchard won the 2015 Ulen Anna Engleman Creative Writing award. He states, "I've been passionate about poetry ever since my first workshop. I enjoy writing about place--specifically, the profound meaning, truth, situations and beauty found in the Rust Belt and the small towns struggling with identity."