The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem

by Jeremy Noel-Tod

  David Kinloch (1992)

  dropped on the ground • the small coin

  People were gathered on the square watching a man make popcorn. At that time I was about three or four years old. The crowd was large and it was dusk. I slyly wound my way among the heels and dirty leather shoes of the adults. I was wearing split-pants, my round chubby bottom must have stuck outside the surface of the earth – like today’s hostage, for this reason the ferocious people did not have the heart to knock me over. I crawled here and there. My uncle and the monk preferred to stand at a lower place. The popcorn maker’s face and chest were smeared dark with soot, except for the whites of his eyes, making him look like the chief witness at a wedding. The whites of his eyes proved his honesty and fair dealing. Evidently there was no deception in the popcorn. Uncle tested it with his fingers, then with his nose, finally with his soft lips and then everything was clear. He returned home. Then appeared some grave omens. While I was crawling among the crowd, I had already learned to detest the monk’s cloth shoes. I attempted to climb to a higher place, after I grew up this became clearer. I moved slowly toward the popcorn maker. Showed him a small coin. On one side there were all odd numbers, on the other side all even numbers. The popcorn man grinned with puzzlement, I saw that besides the whites of his eyes, the inner edge of his lips near the gums was also white. I tossed the small coin into the air, it fell, and I pressed it in my hand. If the odd-numbered side was up, I would throw the coin into the popcorn machine, and pop it with the corn. The popcorn man knew my intention, he really was like the chief witness at a wedding, he showed me his kindest and most clever smile. When I grew up, I was taught that poetry should be written in lines. But at that time I did not know.

  Zhou Yaping (1992), translated from the Chinese by Jeff Twitchell

  from Short Talks

  Short Talk on Homo Sapiens

  With small cuts Cro-Magnon man recorded the moon’s phases on the handles of his tools, thinking about her as he worked. Animals. Horizon. Face in a pan of water. In every story I tell comes a point where I can see no further. I hate that point. It is why they call storytellers blind – a taunt.

  Short Talk on the Total Collection

  From childhood he dreamed of being able to keep with him all the objects in the world lined up on his shelves and bookcases. He denied lack, oblivion or even the likelihood of a missing piece. Order streamed from Noah in blue triangles and as the pure fury of his classifications rose around him, engulfing his life they came to be called waves by others, who drowned, a world of them.

  Short Talk on the Truth to Be Had from Dreams

  Seized by a sudden truth I started up at 4 a.m. The word grip pronounced ‘gripe’ is applied only to towns, cities and inhabitations; the word gripe pronounced ‘grip’ can be used of human beings. In my dream I saw the two parts of this truth connected by a three-mile long rope of women’s hair. And just at the moment all the questions of male and female soul murder, which were to be answered as soon as I pulled on the rope, broke away and fell in a chunk back down the rocky chasm where I had been asleep. We are the half and half again, we are the language stump.

  Short Talk on the Sensation of Aeroplane Takeoff

  Well you know I wonder, it could be love running towards my life with its arms up yelling let’s buy it what a bargain!

  Anne Carson (1992)

  In Love with Raymond Chandler

  An affair with Raymond Chandler, what a joy! Not because of the mangled bodies and the marinated cops and hints of eccentric sex, but because of his interest in furniture. He knew that furniture could breathe, could feel, not as we do but in a way more muffled, like the word upholstery, with its overtones of mustiness and dust, its bouquet of sunlight on aging cloth or of scuffed leather on the backs and seats of sleazy office chairs. I think of his sofas, stuffed to roundness, satin-covered, pale blue like the eyes of his cold blond unbodied murderous women, beating very slowly, like the hearts of hibernating crocodiles; of his chaises longues, with their malicious pillows. He knew about front lawns too, and greenhouses, and the interiors of cars.

  This is how our love affair would go. We would meet at a hotel, or a motel, whether expensive or cheap it wouldn’t matter. We would enter the room, lock the door, and begin to explore the furniture, fingering the curtains, running our hands along the spurious gilt frames of the pictures, over the real marble or the chipped enamel of the luxurious or tacky washroom sink, inhaling the odor of the carpets, old cigarette smoke and spilled gin and fast meaningless sex or else the rich abstract scent of the oval transparent soaps imported from England, it wouldn’t matter to us; what would matter would be our response to the furniture, and the furniture’s response to us. Only after we had sniffed, fingered, rubbed, rolled on, and absorbed the furniture of the room would we fall into each other’s arms, and onto the bed (king-size? peach-colored? creaky? narrow? four-posted? pioneer-quilted? lime-green chenille-covered?), ready at last to do the same things to each other.

  Margaret Atwood (1992)

  Letters

  Her mouth is but oil and she makes me see the little girl of it. How I wish it would hold, in the way of love an invention. This is the rosy iridescent silk suspended an inch off your breasts, how the waters do run in comparison. I wish in the way I clasped you I might see those groans the very walls come up with. Why must we even be restrained in madness.

  I fear lest you see merely into this passage out of politeness. There is a judge of outrage but he does not open his mouth and so we do not know him. But I admit that I am made of granite and still waver. If I promise I can do nothing. Tighten yourself and stop seeing only what I present to you. You will coil that lace off your breast above your head as a greeting to me. You do have the liking for thick cloth as well?

  My flesh will not come back to me without the placing of yours before me. And I would see your proof, as with a spoon. As spoons clasped we rise over the frightening texts of flesh habit scribed badly. I refer here to the white marble cask, as you know. Oh, hold me on my back and eat me like Shakespeare with vinegar. My writing must be as beautifully cast away as your strap that day on the grass. One must do it as in one flame well, from chocolate to amethyst, a thousand liquid breaks to the breasts. Do you fear so much the loudness of my room? I will be intoxicated before your slightest cry becomes melodic. May you bring yourself to pose in all the windows that I love.

  Whatever the source of your name, I kiss you in that place. Adieu, my hand in bed, my dream of this world that hangs from the light of a dream, my sweet staring thickness, my hock.

  Clark Coolidge (1991)

  What No One Could Have Told Them

  Once he comes to live on the outside of her, he will not sleep through the night or the next 400. He sleeps not, they sleep not. Ergo they steer gradually mad. The dog’s head shifts another paw under the desk. Over a period of 400 nights.

  You will see, she warns him. Life is full of television sets, invoices, organs of other animals thawing on counters.

  In her first dream of him, she leaves him sleeping on Mamo’s salt-bag quilt behind her alma mater. Leaves him to the Golden Goblins. Sleep, pretty one, sleep.

  … the quilt that comforted her brother’s youthful bed, the quilt he took to band camp.

  Huh oh, he says, Huh oh. His word for many months. Merrily pouring a bottle of Pledge over the dog’s dull coat. And with a round little belly that shakes like jelly.

  Waiting out a shower in the Border Café; the bartender spoons a frozen strawberry into his palm-leaf basket while they lift their frosted mugs in a grateful click.

  He sits up tall in his grandfather’s lap, waving and waving to the Blue Bonnet truck. Bye, blue, bye.

  In the next dream he stands on his toes, executes a flawless flip onto the braided rug. Resprings to crib.

  The salt-bag quilt goes everywhere, the one the bitch Rosemary bore her litters on. The one they wrap around the mower, and bundle with black oak leaves.

  Ho
w the bowl of Quick Quaker Oats fits his head.

  He will have her milk at 1:42, 3:26, 4 a.m. Again at 6. Bent over the rail to settle his battling limbs down for an afternoon nap. Eyes shut, trying to picture what in the world she has on.

  His nightlight – a snow-white pair of porcelain owls.

  They remember him toothless, with one tooth, two tooths, five or seven scattered around in his head. They can see the day when he throws open his jaw to display several vicious rows.

  Naked in a splash of sun, he pees into a paper plate the guest set down in the grass as she reached for potato chips.

  Suppertime, the dog takes leave of the desk’s cool cavity to patrol his highchair.

  How patiently he pulls Kleenex from a box. Tissue by tissue. How quietly he stands at the door trailing the White Cloud; swabs his young hair with the toilet brush.

  The dog inherits the salt-bag quilt. The one her Mamo made when she was seventeen – girlfriends stationed around a frame in black stockings sewing, talking about things their children would do;

  He says: cereal, byebye, shoe, raisin, nobody. He hums.

  She stands before the medicine chest, drawn. Swiftly he tumps discarded Tampax and hair from an old comb into her tub.

  Wearily the man enters the house through the back. She isn’t dressed. At the table there is weeping. Curses. Forking dried breasts of chicken.

  while Little Sneed sat on the floor beneath the frame, pushing the needles back through.

  One yawn followed by another yawn. Then little fists screwing little eyes. The wooden crib stuffed with bears and windup pillows wheeled in to receive him. Out in a twinkle. The powdered bottom airing the dark. The 400th night. When they give up their last honeyed morsel of love; the dog nestles in the batting of the salt-bag quilt commencing its long mope unto death.

  C. D. Wright (1991)

  An Anointing

  Boys have to slash their fingers to become brothers. Girls trade their Kotex, me and Molly do it in the mall’s public facility.

  Me and Molly never remember each other’s birthdays. On purpose. We don’t like scores of any kind. We don’t wear watches or weigh ourselves.

  Me and Molly have tasted beer. We drank our shampoo. We went to the doctor together and lifted our specimen cups in a toast. We didn’t drink that stuff. We just gargled.

  When me and Molly get the urge, we are careful to put it back exactly as we found it. It looks untouched.

  Between the two of us, me and Molly have 20/20 vision.

  Me and Molly are in eighth grade for good. We like it there. We adore the view. We looked both ways and decided not to cross the street. Others who’d been to the other side didn’t return. It was a trap.

  Me and Molly don’t double date. We don’t multiply anything. We don’t know our multiplication tables from a coffee table. We’ll never be decent waitresses, indecent ones maybe.

  Me and Molly do not believe in going ape or going bananas or going Dutch. We go as who we are. We go as what we are.

  Me and Molly have wiped each other’s asses with ferns. Made emergency tampons of our fingers. Me and Molly made do with what we have.

  Me and Molly are in love with wiping the blackboard with each other’s hair. The chalk gives me and Molly an idea of what old age is like; it is dusty and makes us sneeze. We are allergic to it.

  Me and Molly, that’s M and M, melt in your mouth.

  What are we doing in your mouth? Me and Molly bet you’ll never guess. Not in a million years. We plan to be around that long. Together that long. Even if we must freeze the moment and treat the photograph like the real thing.

  Me and Molly don’t care what people think. We’re just glad that they do.

  Me and Molly lick the dew off the morning grasses but taste no honey till we lick each other’s tongues.

  We wear full maternity sails. We boat upon my broken water. The katabatic action begins, Molly down my canal binnacle first, her water breaking in me like an anointing.

  Thylias Moss (1991)

  Man with a Mower

  There is a man sitting on a tractor mowing circles in the park.

  In the middle of the area he is mowing there is a group of people wandering about. Five of them. They move in a bunch. One of them holds a piece of paper which they all consult every so often. They stand for a while and look at the paper then they look up and around them and sometimes someone draws a line in the air with their finger and they all look at it, then look back at the paper again. Then one starts moving and the others follow. The grass is quite long and rather wet so they lift their legs high as they walk.

  The men wear grey suits, the hems of which are getting damp from standing in the grass. They walk as though crossing a river, going from stone to stone. One of the men wears a lemon tie. One of the women has on a lemon outfit and red shoes. She and the man may be involved or it may merely be a coincidence. The women’s legs are also getting wet as they move around in the grass in the park. They stand and look and study and point and look and move on. And all this time the man on the tractor is mowing his circles around them, getting closer and closer so the grass on the outside where he has been is short and the people stand in the long grass in the middle like an exhibit.

  The tractor is noisy. The people in the grass must have to talk loudly when the mower passes on its way around them.

  The man on the tractor wears ear muffs. He is thinking about a mince pie. He is thinking about Dolly Parton. He is thinking about the snake tattooed on his buttocks and the way it wriggles as he walks.

  Jenny Bornholdt (1991)

  Deer Dancer

  Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the hardcore. It was the coldest night of the year, every place shut down, but not us. Of course we noticed when she came in. We were Indian ruins. She was the end of beauty. No one knew her, the stranger whose tribe we recognized, her family related to deer, if that’s who she was, a people accustomed to hearing songs in pine trees, and making them hearts.

  The woman inside the woman who was to dance naked in the bar of misfits blew deer magic. Henry Jack, who could not survive a sober day, thought she was Buffalo Calf Woman come back, passed out, his head by the toilet. All night he dreamed a dream he could not say. The next day he borrowed money, went home, and sent back the money I lent. Now that’s a miracle. Some people see vision in a burned tortilla, some in the face of a woman.

  This is the bar of broken survivors, the club of the shotgun, knife wound, of poison by culture. We who were taught not to stare drank our beer. The players gossiped down their cues. Someone put a quarter in the jukebox to relive despair. Richard’s wife dove to kill her. We had to keep her still, while Richard secretly bought the beauty a drink.

  How do I say it? In this language there are no words for how the real world collapses. I could say it in my own and the sacred mounds would come into focus, but I couldn’t take it in this dingy envelope. So I look at the stars in this strange city, frozen to the back of the sky, the only promises that ever make sense.

  My brother-in-law hung out with white people, went to law school with a perfect record, quit. Says you can keep your laws, your words. And practiced law on the street with his hands. He jimmied to the proverbial dream girl, the face of the moon, while the players racked a new game. He bragged to us, he told her magic words and that when she broke, became human.

  But we all heard his bar voice crack:

  What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?

  That’s what I’d like to know, what are we all doing in a place like this?

  You would know she could hear only what she wanted to; don’t we all? Left the drink of betrayal Richard bought her, at the bar. What was she on? We all wanted some. Put a quarter in the juke. We all take risks stepping into thin air. Our ceremonies didn’t predict this. Or we expected more.

  I had to tell you this, for the baby inside the girl sealed up with a lick of hope and swimming into the praise of nations. This
is not a rooming house, but a dream of winter falls and the deer who portrayed the relatives of strangers. The way back is deer breath on icy windows.

  The next dance none of us predicted. She borrowed a chair for the stairway to heaven and stood on a table of names. And danced in the room of children without shoes.

  You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.

  With four hungry children and a crop in the field.

  And then she took off her clothes. She shook loose memory, waltzed with the empty lover we’d all become.

  She was the myth slipped down through dreamtime. The promise of feast we all knew was coming. The deer who crossed through knots of a curse to find us. She was no slouch, and neither were we, watching.

  The music ended. And so does the story. I wasn’t there. But I imagined her like this, not a stained red dress with tape on her heels but the deer who entered our dream in white dawn, breathed mist into pine trees, her fawn a blessing of meat, the ancestors who never left.

  Joy Harjo (1990)

  from The Stumbling Block Its Index

  The Stumbling Block is a graphite font. This black plinth was once a brush or similar terminal that was the lips of an intense electrical arc. Industries proud and violent need spoke through it to turn the wheel or smelt and cast the constructed challenge. Now abandoned it finds benediction in seclusion. It has softened its mouth to hold water, so that small animals and disjointed humans may drink or sign themselves in their passage.

  The Stumbling Block has been used like an entrance step to sharpen knives on. Its fossil bristle of tight stone forcing the heavy blades down to a hiss along one edge. These are knives of gleaming hubris, long intentions honed for malice. They are magnetized and have been placed to construct a lectern. Each blade holding the next to form the platform. It may hold this index at its centre, hovering, placed outside in the aorta of streets. The removal of any of the blades from the assembled cluster will spill their fish bodies to the ground. The paper will drink any of the stains of their usage.