Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

by Percival Everett

  Cold Are the Cucumbers That Crawl Beneath

  Cucumber, I. Twitch a finger here. Twitch a finger there. Fuck with them any way you can. I’m dead, but they don’t know it. Forget the adage let sleeping dogs lie. How about we let dead men die?

  You hold my hand.

  I hold your hand.

  I write this for you.

  If I wrote, this would be it.

  If you wrote.

  Yes.

  I will always be here.

  And I.

  I’m dead, son.

  I know that, Dad. But I didn’t know you knew it.

  PERCIVAL EVERETT is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of more than twenty books, including Assumption, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, The Water Cure, Wounded, Erasure, and Glyph.