BRAD Trumpfheller
Fox Mulder turns into birds
While looking into a news story about a Midwestern family
who had inexplicably fallen asleep in their grain silo one day
& had yet to wake up, Mulder turns to Scully & says
“I think I’m turning into a flock of birds”
& then he does.
His arms seem to grow feathers & blow apart in the wind.
His chest explodes into a symphony of sparrowcalls,
all taking flight over the acred cornfields.
His emptied suit crumples at where his feet probably were, & the world
is filled with the sound of wings carrying only the afternoon sky.
& because this is the X Files, an investigation ensues.
Scully grows as a character & embraces the paranormal,
thinks maybe the birds were alien life-forms or that the Syndicate
orchestrated a unique assassination involving mechanical birds
in order to stop Mulder’s discoveries. Then, at the end
of the episode, Scully stops the investigation.
& this time it’s not because the script demands it,
but because she remembers that once Mulder told her
that everyone’s body is an aviary. Housing some buckshot
bird, ghostly wings aflutter just under the rib cage. & how every body
one day looks down & wants to be able
to call itself birth, again. To fall back to sleep,
& will themselves back into dreaming.
batman is fighting superman
& the whole city is a rainstorm.
Lightning illuminating the dark
landscape at just the right moments
for Jim Lee to draw Batman
posed up against the side of a building,
looking all badass like he always does,
& Superman flying circles around
the gargoyled skyscraper. Some alien vulture
marking its prey for death. He whistles
& the whole city shakes. The moon,
white & perfect behind his sun-dread
visage – if this isn’t what comic books
are for, then I don’t know what is.
Another clap of thunder announces
another snap of lightning, & Superman
just got knocked from the sky & Batman
is holding a flaming cross
& it’s made of kryptonite & glowing green
like nothing terrestrial ever does
& its also on fire & Geoff Johns
knows this is a religious image
& he’s using it anyways because isn’t everything
in comics books a new sort of religion,
a new way of praying to an image
of a god with a sun shining in their hair
& a man in the midst of a storm,
wielding the only way he knows how to
kill a god. Batman is fighting Superman
& its the oldest story we know:
man trying to will himself into godhood --
While looking into a news story about a Midwestern family
who had inexplicably fallen asleep in their grain silo one day
& had yet to wake up, Mulder turns to Scully & says
“I think I’m turning into a flock of birds”
& then he does.
His arms seem to grow feathers & blow apart in the wind.
His chest explodes into a symphony of sparrowcalls,
all taking flight over the acred cornfields.
His emptied suit crumples at where his feet probably were, & the world
is filled with the sound of wings carrying only the afternoon sky.
& because this is the X Files, an investigation ensues.
Scully grows as a character & embraces the paranormal,
thinks maybe the birds were alien life-forms or that the Syndicate
orchestrated a unique assassination involving mechanical birds
in order to stop Mulder’s discoveries. Then, at the end
of the episode, Scully stops the investigation.
& this time it’s not because the script demands it,
but because she remembers that once Mulder told her
that everyone’s body is an aviary. Housing some buckshot
bird, ghostly wings aflutter just under the rib cage. & how every body
one day looks down & wants to be able
to call itself birth, again. To fall back to sleep,
& will themselves back into dreaming.
batman is fighting superman
& the whole city is a rainstorm.
Lightning illuminating the dark
landscape at just the right moments
for Jim Lee to draw Batman
posed up against the side of a building,
looking all badass like he always does,
& Superman flying circles around
the gargoyled skyscraper. Some alien vulture
marking its prey for death. He whistles
& the whole city shakes. The moon,
white & perfect behind his sun-dread
visage – if this isn’t what comic books
are for, then I don’t know what is.
Another clap of thunder announces
another snap of lightning, & Superman
just got knocked from the sky & Batman
is holding a flaming cross
& it’s made of kryptonite & glowing green
like nothing terrestrial ever does
& its also on fire & Geoff Johns
knows this is a religious image
& he’s using it anyways because isn’t everything
in comics books a new sort of religion,
a new way of praying to an image
of a god with a sun shining in their hair
& a man in the midst of a storm,
wielding the only way he knows how to
kill a god. Batman is fighting Superman
& its the oldest story we know:
man trying to will himself into godhood --
Brad Trumpfheller is an undergraduate student at Emerson College, studying literature & music. Their work has appeared // is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine, Word Riot, decomP, and Assaracus. They are the managing editor of the magazine Corridors, and work with the marketing staff of The Adroit Journal. They want to talk to you about jazz.