Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present

by Unknown

  5. And like a pipe thrown at an eagle I will send you folding to the humpy.

  6. I heard you once enquiring how you were born and told you then that you were created because your mother subjected her privates to the attentions of a bull, which is why you insist a cow says Ma when it is clearly saying Moo.

  7. For: There was an Bee, who, flinging himself against his shadow in a Brooke, did drown, and so washed of his own Enmity, he did sail like a dark and brittle Bubble, to the general amphitheater of the Sea, where he was drowned a second time. Thus first he was sunk from life and second from the Known; and now lies twice dead. Like this captious Bee, you will drop from the world and sink to oblivion.

  (2000)

  JOE WENDEROTH (1966–)

  Twelve Epistles from Letters to Wendy’s

  AUGUST 19, 1996

  Today I was thinking that it might be nice to be able, in one’s last days, to move into a Wendy’s. Perhaps a Wendy’s life-support system could even be created and given a Wendy’s slant; liquid fries, for instance, and burgers and Frosties continually dripped into one’s vegetable dream locus. It would intensify the visits of the well, too, to see that such a care is being taken for their destiny.

  AUGUST 26, 1996

  Very high on marijuana brownies, I could not speak today at the register. I kept stepping aside for other customers and staring hard at the menu. I was overwhelmed by the chicken sandwich pictured there, but had no words for it. I kept saying, “there, that one . . . the man dressed like a woman.” It’s hard to get served when one understands the signifier as a process.

  AUGUST 27, 1996

  Still high on those brownies, but coming down. I’ve eaten, in the past twenty-four hours, so very many burgers and chicken sandwiches. The Sea of Coke is heavy today with meat—its cold swells with the meaty goodness that objects to language. Some kids drift by, talking. One of them says, “that sucks dead donkey dicks,” and the other agrees. Imagine.

  SEPTEMBER 5, 1996

  Naturally I think about smashing the skulls and the rib-cages of the other customers. They stand in line so smug—like they were safe, outside the desires of or for an other. It’s as if, for them, there is no other’s desire—as if desire was one thing, and was ours. Restraining myself is not dishonest. It’s a way of maintaining a keen sense of the unforeseeable injuries which shall certainly reunite us.

  OCTOBER 8, 1996

  It would bring me to despair to think that I could get a Frosty in my own kitchen. I need believe that a Frosty can only be gotten outside of where I ordinarily dwell. To be constantly in the place of real Frosties—this is unthinkable, somehow unbearable. The fact is: to be a subject of language is to desire an Event, and an Event needs a nothing to move out of, to seem to begin.

  NOVEMBER 17, 1996

  I eavesdrop on people at Wendy’s. I notice they never talk about their assholes. It’s not that I think an asshole, as an abstract (as Platonic form if you will), is so interesting. It’s specific assholes that are interesting—my asshole as compared with Nick’s, yours as compared with Ted’s or Mary’s. How one experiences another’s asshole speaks volumes—it seems selfish not to make these volumes readily available.

  NOVEMBER 25, 1996

  This idiotic notion that one should love the other customers. Love here really only means: agree, for the time being, not to attack. People pretend, though, that each customer is an irreplaceable piece of some priceless puzzle—like the death of each customer is significant for every other customer. It’s just not true; one cannot love what one does not know, and—fortunately—one knows very little.

  DECEMBER 27, 1996

  I can say without hesitation that if Wendy’s ever started to “deliver” I would end my life. And in a way, my suicide would mimic Wendy’s decision to “deliver.” That is, I would decide that my blood, which, in my body, made sense, should flow out in to the dust, where it makes just more dust. Our homes are dust? you ask. Yes, our homes are dust. Don’t pretend you are surprised.

  JANUARY 3, 1997

  I’ve been sort of hesitant to mention this, but I believe that one of your employees—you must know the one I speak of—is a beaver. It’s impossible to look into her face, to hear the sounds she makes, and to see the way she moves, the way she carries bits of wood, and to not feel that this is a beaver. I’ve not mentioned this before because, obviously, beavers are powerful creatures.

  JANUARY 19, 1997

  These fucking teeny-bopper cunts—they’ll steal your man as soon as look at you. Even if you don’t have a man, they’ll steal him. They’ll steal him and they’ll take him back to their fucking teeny-bopper bedroom. Then they’ll suck his dick real slow as though they’ve never sucked a dick before and they’ll say, “it’s so big!” even if it isn’t. And then afterwards they’ll act like they never said it was big at all.

  MARCH 14, 1997

  As I look around the restaurant at all the beautiful folks enjoying themselves, I wonder what catastrophe awaits each one. Young man, will your heart explode? Will your intestines fill with blood? Perhaps a seizure on a boat in the middle of a lake. The sun shining down. The stars concealed once and for all. I always feel less anxious when I recognize that the collision is already well under way.

  JUNE 28, 1997

  My previous statements were made in haste. I was hungry and confused, and I longed for purpose. I wanted to seem like I was in the process of focusing in on something important. I wanted to feel purpose rising like an ancient city from the excavator’s pick and shovel. I wanted this so much that I rushed—I swung my pick wildly, and I brought a great delicate city to the dust it had always verged on.

  (2000)

  LISA JARNOT (1967–)

  Still Life

  Where we finally move closer, but instead we don’t move closer at all, we just have an understanding that we want to move closer, which is a form of moving closer, or at least something to think about, that it was an idea, moving closer, though not ultimately satisfying, though something, on one or two or three occasions, during a single night, moving closer, and the sands accumulate into sand paintings, that are colorblind, and filled with raccoons, and the steps of the sand toward the pyramid of sand are altered, wearing pumpkins on their heads, wishing to be loved, in the steps of the sand, terrified, or not terrified, moving closer, identifying with raccoons, on certain evenings, that maybe to go from there, because obviously, the sand and raccoons accumulate, taking years, listening to the traffic, saying is it quiet where you live, near the sand and the raccoons, in a quiet room, near the sounds of all the traffic that moves closer, on the periphery, that the thing is this, accumulating, getting closer, to the raccoons and the traffic that moves closer, having moved, having said that moving closer is ideal, having said thank you, and so forth, that the so forth is moving closer, forward, toward what in most of the universe would have been a scene, where the sand is forgotten, and the raccoons, and the accumulation of pyramids, and clothing items, and various identifications, and so forth, but instead, one by one, or one, or two or three times awkwardly, there is news, and there are raccoons, and the raccoons are screeching in the yard, as if to say something about the grains of sand, at opposite sides of the universe, screeching, with their suits and ties, bringing news, like Tom Brokaw, colorblind, reliable, and standing in the sand, and the news, which should not be true, but is, that there are raccoons, screeching, outside, in the traffic, near the sand, and on the news, and the curious figure that is him, there, who is reliable, and like the sand, accumulating, rightly, while how wrong it is, the news, that there is a rightness about him, the news of the raccoons, so close enough, and safely in the sand.

  (2001)

  Ode

  For let me consider him who pretends to be the pizza delivery man and is instead the perfect part of day, for the fact he is a medium, for the eight to twelve inches of snow he tends to be, for he who covers the waterfront, for he that was handmade in a tiny village in japan, for tha
t he is more than just an envelope or inside-out balloon, for that he can always find the scotch tape, for that he resembles a river in mid-December muddied over, for that he has seen the taxi cabs on fire in the rain, for that he is like the heat beneath the desk lamp, for that he is not a tiny teal iguana, for that it is he who waits for me inside cafes, for that he has hands and legs, for that he exceeds the vegetable, for that he is the rest of the balance continuing huge.

  (2001)

  KAREN VOLKMAN (1967–)

  It Could Be a Bird

  It could be a bird that says summer, that says gather no late failing harvest in a wealth of arms. Lost weed, still you remember, in a storm-suit, the sky came down to walk among us, oh to talk. Such grey conviction, cracked calculus, chasm. Black earth repeating, I was never him, and so many green words of schism, that and this. If a tree could say, if a tree could say, what are you? to my dim attention, to my wayward random shape. Suit, suit, you’re a cold suit, your stitched rain shivers and splinters, what web is this? Unnumbered mesh of other, kill, kiss.

  (2001)

  When Kiss Spells Contradiction

  When kiss spells contradiction it spills an ocean of open clothes. I gave me to one who hung hearts so high it was a mast in mute blue weather, the clang and strop of it, the undercover wet. Said are they sails your impenetrables that only winds can jibe them, the arc and the rip and the rush of all that flood. But his were slow words, more a storm than a sending, what his hands knew of tack and tumble I will not tell.

  If kiss were conquest, were conclusion, I might be true. In the bluebit, heartquit leaping I might be binded. But tongue, lip, lap are brim beginning, a prank of yet. I waxed for a man all hum and hover and stuttered must, what he’d read of snowlight and sunder I’ll never pearl. I said, Are they moons, that they bleach in your fingers, and so much wrack at the socket, and rune and run. (Like a moon he was sharp when new and blunt when done.)

  If kiss were question, were caution. What he knew of. Trice and tender. I’ll never. None.

  (2001)

  MARK BIBBINS (1968–)

  Two Poems from “Blasted Fields of Clover Bring Harrowing and Regretful Sighs”

  gu7i

  Favored lambs mentioned in a personal ad bend forward onto their knees as a peon carries the wrong box away. His employer emerges from a hole with his tan seersucker muddied holding galleys and leading a greener trainee. The spectator’s disruption drew a reprimand. Distance to the beach in relation to time of departure conveyed in a series of double-jointed hand signals wasted on recruits. One shoved another flirtatiously. Water just off the porch did not suffice. Suspended above it the chef’s diorama betrayed him with silk flowers. The man who played wolf in the film version lived next door and perfect sand lay just over the crest where no one made excuses for skin upon skin or lip balm crushed into a cap. Again the lambs’ complaints drift on a pink foam from the hollow. A magazine a wrong night a chance meeting what is owed biting at elbows and ropes.

  anm-amn

  As a shopping cart careened the football team scattered. Next year they’ll find changes of clothes in the woods. When Donald the Dandy rode his horse-drawn carriage through the W. Village (1969) he was roundly egged. The feathers of his headdress destroyed. His little dogchild keening mommy&daddy over and over would mind no one but him. D. denied raiding Sarduy and Woolf as he nursed the whiny cur. Each headshot a different era the nipple still surprised. Those along the canal tried to keep windows clean. Friends on the phone in the same room hardly knew. Another back turned to a picture window. One man in Confederate garb fingered Julia’s necklace and grazed her breast. Thus was his gall not unlike that of an older queen who’d sprung out of a hedge nude from the waist down. Who was pushed in first. Teeter on a narrow strip of grass. Here little dogchild here.

  (2001)

  RICHARD BLANCO (1968–)

  Mango, Number 61

  Pescado grande was number 14, while pescado chico was number 12; dinero, money, was number 10. This was la charada, the sacred and obsessive numerology my abuela used to predict lottery numbers or winning trifectas at the dog track. The grocery stores and pawn shops on Flagler Street handed out complimentary wallet-size cards printed with the entire charada, numbers 1 through 100: number 70 was coco, number 89 was melón and number 61 was mango. Mango was Mrs. Pike, the last americana on the block with the best mango tree in the neighborhood. Mamá would coerce her in granting us picking rights—after all, los americanos don’t eat mango, she’d reason. Mango was fruit wrapped in brown paper bags, hidden like ripening secrets in the kitchen oven. Mango was the perfect house-warming gift and a marmalade dessert with thick slices of cream cheese at birthday dinners and Thanksgiving. Mangos, watching like amber cat’s eyes; mangos, perfectly still in their speckled maroon shells like giant unhatched eggs. Number 48 was cucaracha, number 36 was bodega and mango was my uncle’s bodega, where everyone spoke only loud Spanish, the precious gold fruit towering in tres-porun-peso pyramids. Mango was mango shakes made with milk, sugar and a pinch of salt—my grandfather’s treat at the 8th street market after baseball practice. Number 60 was sol, number 18 was palma, but mango was my father and I under the largest shade tree at the edges of Tamiami Park. Mango was abuela and I hunched over the counter covered with classifieds, devouring the dissected flesh of the fruit slithering like molten gold through our fingers, the pigmented juices cascading from our binging chins, abuela consumed in her rapture and convinced that I absolutely loved mangos. Those messy mangos. Number 79 was cubano—us, and number 93 was revolución, though I always thought it should be 58, the actual year of the revolution—the reason why, I’m told, we live so obsessively and nostalgically eating number 61s, mangos, here in number 87, América.

  (2000)

  JENNIFER L. KNOX (1968–)

  Hot Ass Poem

  Hey check out the ass on that guy he’s got a really hot ass I’d like to see his ass naked with his hot naked ass Hey check out her hot ass that chick’s got a hot ass she’s a red hot ass chick I want to touch it Hey check out the ass on that old man that’s one hot old man ass look at his ass his ass his old man ass Hey check out that dog’s ass wow that dog’s ass is hot that dog’s got a hot dog ass I want to squeeze that dog’s hot dog ass like a ball but a hot ball a hot ass ball Hey check out the ass on that bird how’s a bird get a hot ass like that that’s one hot ass bird ass I want to put that bird’s hot ass in my mouth and swish it around and around and around Hey check out the ass on that bike damn that bike’s ass is h-o-t you ever see a bike with an ass that hot I want to put my hot ass on that bike’s hot ass and make a double hot ass bike ass Hey check out that building it’s got a really really really hot ass and the doorman and the ladies in the information booth and the guy in the elevator got themselves a butt load of hot ass I want to wrap my arms around the whole damn hot ass building and squeeze myself right through its hot ass and out the other side I want to get me a hot ass piece of all 86 floors of hot hot hot hot ass!

  (2001)

  RICHARD DEMING (1970–)

  Requiem

  Rocky Marciano leans into a lucky one. Takes a fall. But it’s early in his career. He staggers back after the punch, shakes his head left, then right. This is years before million dollar purses and ESPN. But Marciano isn’t Jake LaMotta either: bloated, eyes dulled, Scorsese filmed-in-black-and-white. Let’s make this an allegory. LaMotta will be capitalism—slowing, slowed, unable to speak through a shattered mouthguard and broken teeth. No, that’s not right either.

  Let’s go to the videotape.

  There, Marciano leans into it—he wanted that punch, maybe to make himself angry enough to win: angrier than a million dollars, angrier than the nightly news.

  Cut to commercial.

  [Are your breath, armpits, eyebrows fetid? Febrile? Feral? Do you hanker after lo-cal, low sodium, low maintenance? Is your hunger the insatiable need to fill the unfillable? What defines you? Localize. Itemize. Narcotize. Intensify, intensify.]


  The universe expands, except for a black hole, which swallows—not even light escapes. I once knew someone who swallowed light. Could make each noontime as bleak and cold as a Russian bunker, where friends and loved ones would be trapped for years, etching out their names with hardened, uncut fingernails. For two years after the war ended, six

  soldiers were trapped in a Soviet bunker. No light, no way to move the corpses as the men died off one by one. Only two made it out, one falling dead as the light glinted off his ashen flesh when he stepped out into the sun after that long, long stay. Rocky Marciano hits the canvas, blinks as the ref makes the count. Rocky Marciano leans into a

  lucky one. Or is it lucky? Maybe Marciano staggers back a bit; maybe he sees stars, or hallucinates, sees himself as a thirteen year old boy watching police boats drag the Hudson River. It’s nighttime and Marciano flattens against the barroom wall. He isn’t drunk, but maybe he should be. Two decades as a prize fighter and anger gets boring—