Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present

by Unknown

  A bear-boy likes to stretch out on the floor and be roughly brushed with a broom. Never tease him about his small tail, which is much like a chipmunk’s. If you do, he’ll withdraw to the hollow of some tree, as my husband has done whenever offended since he first left the broad-leafed woodlands to live in this city, which is so difficult for him. Let him be happy in his own way: filling the bathtub with huckleberries, or packing dark, earthwormy dirt under the sofa. Don’t mention the clawmarks on the refrigerator. (You know he can’t retract them.) Nothing pleases him more than a violent change in climate, especially if it snows while he’s asleep and he wakes to find the landscape blanketed. Then his teeth chatter with delight. He stamps and paws the air for joy. Exuberance is a bear’s inheritance. He likes northern light. Excuse me, please. His bellow summons me. Let me start again. True, his speech is shaggy music. But by such gruff instruction, I come to know love. It’s difficult to hear the story of his forest years with dry eyes. He always snuffs damply at my hand before kissing it. My fingers tingle at the thought of that sensitive, mobile nose. You’ve no idea how long his tongue is. At night, I get into bed, pajama pockets full of walnuts. He rides me around the garden in the wheelbarrow now that I’m getting heavy with his cubs. I hope our sons will be much like their father, but not suffer so much discomfort wearing shoes.

  (2000)

  DIONISIO D. MARTÍNEZ (1956–)

  Avant-Dernières Pensées

  IDYLLE

  In today’s mail I found the chain letter you’ve been sending for years. I know your handwriting, your desperation, the peculiar way in which you fold the paper. This plea, you tell me, has been around the world three, maybe four times. This plea is sacred. This plea is our last hope for anything. In theory, intimidation can penetrate anything. We all break sooner or later. The letters are carefully packed with case histories that go off like timed explosives. I can see you waiting for each one to go off, wondering if the one you designed for me will do the trick. One summer, you say, a Portuguese fisherman received this letter and burned it. He spent the rest of his life trying to read the ashes.

  AUBADE

  I thought it over. This letter is not sacred. It promises nothing. It is a plea for anything, which is like saying a plea for nothing. There was a faint barking as I walked toward the window. It was the sound dogs make when a stranger approaches. I began to doubt my own presence in the house, my hands opening the window to more barking. You must copy the entire letter, you said. The copies you make, the warning continued, must be indistinguishable from the source. I made the copies. I slept with the words beside me. This morning I thought it over. I tore the letter, replaced it with a blank sheet, folded the sheet in that peculiar way I learned from you.

  MÉDITATION

  On the coast of Portugal they began a tradition, you say. With the letters still inside the sealed envelopes, the wives of fishermen burn the mail they receive. This way, you tell me, superstition is impossible. But isn’t this a superstition of sorts? It’s really a mockery of belief, you say. I sometimes wonder how we’ve managed to correspond this long through chain letters. I wonder how we’ve been able to sustain this dialogue between two anonymous voices. I think of the widows along the Portuguese coast, their chain mail used as fuel for their stoves. I think of them selling rotten cod fish wrapped in anonymous letters that have circled the world three, maybe four times. I am spending the night in Viana do Castelo. I will send this postcard unsigned.

  (1994)

  CATHERINE BOWMAN (1957–)

  No Sorry

  Do you have any scissors I could borrow? No, I’m sorry I don’t. What about a knife? You got any knives? A good paring knife would do or a simple butcher knife or maybe a cleaver? No, sorry all I have is this old bread knife my grandfather used to butter his bread with every morning. Well then, how about a hand drill or hammer, a bike chain, or some barbed wire? You got any rusty razor-edged barbed wire? You got a chain saw? No, sorry I don’t. Well then maybe you might have some sticks? I’m sorry, I don’t have any sticks. How about some stones? No, I don’t have any sticks or stones. Well how about a stone tied to a stick? You mean a club? Yeah, a club. You got a club? No, sorry, I don’t have any clubs. What about some fighting picks, war axes, military forks, or tomahawks? No, sorry, I don’t have any kind of war fork, axe, or tomahawk. What about a morning star? A morning star? Yeah, you know, those spiked ball and chains they sell for riot control. No, nothing like that. Sorry. Now, I know you said you don’t have a knife except for that dull old thing your grandfather used to butter his bread with every morning and he passed down to you but I thought maybe you just might have an Australian dagger with a quartz blade and a wood handle, or a bone dagger, or a Bowie, you know it doesn’t hurt to ask? Or perhaps one of those lethal multi-purpose stilettos? No, sorry. Or maybe you have a simple blow pipe? Or a complex airgun? No, I don’t have a simple blow pipe or a complex airgun. Well then maybe you have a jungle carbine, a Colt, a revolver, a Ruger, an axis bolt-action repeating rifle with telescopic sight for sniping, a sawed-off shotgun? Or better yet, a gas-operated self-loading fully automatic assault weapon? No, sorry I don’t. How about a hand grenade? No. How about a tank? No. Shrapnel? No. Napalm? No. Napalm 2. No, sorry I don’t. Let me ask you this. Do you have any intercontinental ballistic missiles? Or submarine-launched cruise missiles? Or multiple independently targeted reentry missiles? Or terminally guided anti-tank shells or projectiles? Let me ask you this. Do you have any fission bombs or hydrogen bombs? Do you have any thermonuclear warheads? Got any electronic measures or electronic counter-measures or electronic counter-counter-measures? Got any biological weapons or germ warfare, preferably in aerosol form? Got any enhanced tactical neutron lasers emitting massive doses of whole-body gamma radiation? Wait a minute. Got any plutonium? Got any chemical agents, nerve agents, blister agents, you know, like mustard gas, any choking agents or incapacitating agents or toxin agents? Well I’m not sure. What do they look like? Liquid vapor powder colorless gas. Invisible. I’m not sure. What do they smell like? They smell like fruit, garlic, fish or soap, new-mown hay, apple blossoms, or like those little green peppers that your grandfather probably would tend to in his garden every morning after he buttered his bread with that old bread knife that he passed down to you.

  (1997)

  WANG PING (1957–)

  Of Flesh and Spirit

  I was a virgin till I was 23. Then I always had more than one lover at the same time all secret.

  In China, people are given the death sentence for watching a porno video while they can get free condoms and pills at any department store provided and mandated by law.

  When my mother handed me my first bra which she made for me, I screamed and ran out the door in shame. She cut the bra into pieces because it was too small for her own use.

  For 800 years, women’s bound feet were the most beautiful and erotic objects for Chinese men. Tits and buns were nothing compared to a pair of three-inch “golden lotuses.” They must be crazy or their noses must have had problems. My grandma’s feet, wrapped day and night with layers of bandages, smelled like rotten fish.

  The asshole in Chinese: the eye of the fart.

  A 25-year-old single woman in China worries her parents. A 28-year-old single woman worries her friends and colleagues. A 30-year-old single woman worries her bosses. A 35-year-old single woman is pitied and treated as a sexual pervert.

  The most powerful curse: fuck your mother, fuck your grandmother, fuck your great grandmother of eighteen generations.

  One day, my father asked my mother if our young rooster was mature enough to jump, meaning to “mate.” I cut in before my mother answered: “Yes, I saw him jump onto the roof of the chicken shed.” I was ten years old.

  Women call menstruation “the old ghost,” the science book calls it “the moon period,” and the refined people say “the moonlight is flooding the ditch.”

  My first lover vowed to marry me in America after he had my virginity
. He had two kids, and an uneducated wife, and dared not ask for a divorce from the police. He took me to see his American Chinese cousin who was staying in the Beijing Hotel and tried to persuade his cousin to sponsor him to come to America. But his cousin sponsored me instead. That’s how I am here and why he went back to his wife and is probably still cursing me.

  Chinese peasants call their wives: that one in my house; Chinese intellectuals call their wives and concubines: the doll in a golden house; in the socialist system, husbands and wives call each other “my lover.”

  The story my grandma never tired of telling was about a man who was punished for his greed and had to walk around with a penis hanging on his forehead.

  We don’t say “fall in love,” but “talk love.”

  When I left home, my father told me: never talk love before you are 25 years old. I didn’t listen. Well, my first lover was a married coward. My first marriage lasted a week. My husband slept with me once, and I never saw him again.

  (1993)

  NIN ANDREWS (1958–)

  Notes on the Orgasm

  The orgasm is your invisible counterpart. She goes out in the world, wreaking havoc.

  The orgasm knows all things are animate. The houses groan with grief and passion. Sometimes a mirror bursts from a wall and shatters, no longer content with mere images.

  The orgasm tells you to be careful or, in the language of orgasms, to have fears. Orgasms thrive on danger.

  The orgasm says we are all parts of herself. We are but launching pads for her spiritual development. After she is done with us, she will be ready for fucking angels.

  The orgasm encourages us to let our minds wander. Usually this is good advice, but sometimes she gets lost in thought.

  When the orgasm tells you that you are a mere object of her scientific research and the only real man on earth, the orgasm is slowly dissecting your body.

  The orgasm will peel you like an orange. You may feel exposed, raw, even wounded. The orgasm wants you to live life without the rind.

  The orgasm thinks people are like dresses. You don’t just buy the first one off the rack. You try them on for size.

  The orgasm tells you many stories. Some she will never finish. She cannot help herself. She always lies. Such beautiful lies. You want them all. Why would you need truth when you can have an orgasm?

  Every now and then a casualty occurs. An orgasm accidentally injures or murders a man. She is startled by the moans escaping from his lips at this moment, so much like those of pleasure. She wonders if human pain is a kind of celebration.

  Sometimes the orgasm falls in love with you. She cannot tear herself from your pungent flesh. For days you walk around, gasping for air. You are in a state of constant excitement. One day the orgasm abandons you. The entire world is reduced to a memory, a mere elegy to an orgasm.

  In a single sitting a hungry orgasm can consume a man, socks and all. Women take more time.

  Many dislike the speed of orgasm, the way she comes and goes and takes all she can get. The orgasm cannot help herself. She has no tomorrow.

  According to the orgasm, there is no difference between real and imaginary events. Everything is a secret message only she can decipher.

  Often the orgasm tells you a story about you. About you and about the secret powers lying dormant within you. She waits for you on street corners and follows you down dark alleys, whispering your name, softly, her hands passing continually over your hair, caressing your bare shoulders. At night you sleep fitfully and dream of her. You are unable to tell whether you are a dream of the orgasm, or if the orgasm is a dream of you.

  The orgasm is very happy to be an orgasm. Sometimes she wonders what it would be like to be a man, sort of like the small boy who fills a Mason jar with spiders, wondering what it’s like to be a fly.

  (1993)

  Always Have a Joyful Mind

  How did I ever stand it? Those little sayings. Platitudes. The kind you always delivered, as if they were vitamins or the elixir of life. Take: Beautiful thoughts make a beautiful day. Or: Always have a joyful mind. As if I could live like an ant in honey. As if my mind could stay in one place forever, a tiny lit room, a strip of beach—sun-drenched skies. As if there were no one else, no strangers sleeping in your room. As if my lips were made of rose petals, and the sound of my thoughts were Pachelbel’s canon, playing on repeat. As if sadness did not cling to my skin like a fine yellow dust. As if, just once, if only for a moment, that tiny thread connecting me to this earth, to the wine in my teacup, to the phone that stops answering me, to the street below where I see you walking though the winter snow, the rainy sidewalks, the sunlit cabs—could be cut as easily as snip, snip

  and I would ascend like Mohammed’s horse, like the rider of Mohammed’s horse, or the angel of the rider of Mohammed’s horse, or the halo of the angel of Mohammed’s horse, a bright ring of light glimpsed for a moment by you, my dearest—

  yes, you. But I wouldn’t notice. I’d be too far above you. I and my ever-joyful mind.

  (2001)

  MICHAEL FRIEDMAN (1960–)

  Lecture

  The telltale tapping one hears deep in the forest is the woodpecker at work. Timber. Thus, the instability of the text is the necessary underpinning of one’s approach to the tree, leaves always in flux or falling, just as, for example, you are not the person you were when you first got here and fell into the abyss of my obsession. I called and you weren’t home, so I called someone else instead. She was home. I would propose, then, a discourse that foregrounds and valorizes this instability.

  (2000)

  Death

  Rupert Brooke and his ladyfriend stroll along the Cam. Before long he has gone up in a puff of smoke with “the flower of England’s youth”—not a loser, surely, but beautiful, certainly, when I see him beneath the light blue rotunda of Pierson College library at midnight, fall, 1982, on the frontispiece of a first edition of his poems. High cheekbones, blonde hair, a side-part. Rimbaud was a beautiful loser. As we drove up Old Snakey, I realized you were my true love, like the Mysterious Island one has always imagined but never believed in, until waking on its shores. Later I stood alone on the turnpike, programming the possible routes to Beale Street via the Peabody Hotel. As darkness fell the band began to play, couples made their way to the roof.

  (2000)

  State

  Several Frenchmen meet in the city square. Their conversation is lively and wide-ranging. At dusk, Diderot, Rousseau and Condorcet go their separate ways. A couple of days later I dropped by The Gauntlet in West Hollywood, where Bob worked. As I looked around, photos of something Bob called a “Prince Albert” caught my attention. He spent a few minutes explaining how it works and how much he had been enjoying his own Prince Albert, etc. He was delighted when I said I planned to give serious consideration to getting one for myself.

  (2000)

  STEPHANIE BROWN (1961–)

  Commencement Address

  I have no more to say about throwing up or causing myself to get diarrhea there’s nothing heroic about it though the movies on TV want us to endure quietly and cry appropriately. It’s a wonderful role for any young actress to place herself in some dead household where the dialogue is sexual between all of them including dead grandparents who are still alive in theory and very much inside everyone’s bodies, clucking away like old geezers with huge inflated egos bruised by the failure of their children to spend each moment worshipping their self-created sun. So the girl you see who opens her legs to the idea of fucking everyone who says hello but also wants to feel like a nun with vaginal orgasms rather than the ones his kisses and teeth cause which seemed to come to e.g., Saint Thérèse the Little Flower just from prayer in her cloister for hours which made the girl, the subject of this poem, cry for its truth and its nakedness. Because how could it be good to have that curly-haired boy put his face between your legs nearly every afternoon who will not even say he loves you and this is what your parents don’t like about it: h
e will not spend his money on you or take you places in his car. But of course we have to learn to live inside fences and to sweep and clean lower our heads until in the end it is this which gives me flutters I do not need his teeth and lips at my sacred entrance I find release in order and demure discipline the needle and thread tongue-tied when you accept that you do not have this choice if you become a slut, after you see the error of your ways, you renounce them, you become someone who will live easily within his four walls where he keeps you like the flame of love inside his body there’s no need to find the way out this is the way it will be and always was: all the mirrors around you say sacrifice order and love.

  (1998)

  DENISE DUHAMEL (1961–)

  A Nap on the Afternoon of My 39th Birthday

  (June 13, 2000)

  A man sits between my husband and me in the movies, then puts his hand on my breast and says, “Let’s go.” I say, “Excuse me, I’m with my husband . . .” But my husband hushes me and points to the screen. The man says, “Your wife and I will meet you in the lobby,” and without looking up, my husband says, “OK.” The man pushes me against a wall—he has some kind of coarse beard and his pubic hair is all prickly like a scouring pad. I’m screaming for my husband, but he never comes. I don’t do anything to save myself—no karate chop, no biting, no clawing. I want to be saved by my husband, but I’m not.