Prose Poems to Feel Sick About


1.

My fans don’t understand my poetry. I enjoy that. When a college student asked me if I would explain to him what a particular recurring image meant, I said that he should blindfold himself and repeat the words of the image aloud then remove the blindfold then he would understand the meaning of the image. One week later he reappeared. He must have stepped in some oil because he left a series of oily footprints on the brown tile of the Starbucks. I just did what you said, he said, and I think I know what the image means. What image, I asked him. He told me the image of the angel on the windowsill. The one that’s recurring.

2.

I hate the city. I go there when my poetry feels elusive to me. A wealthy woman with albino teeth asked me where the nearest subway was. I hallucinated a string of automobiles, all breasted with terrific yellow lights. Somewhere under the sidewalk, I said. Then I stumbled into a vacant gym locker room where there used to be a bookstore. The whole city, Le Jennifer, is built on the bones of liars.

3.

My favorite Baudelaire poem is the one that’s similar to the Billy Collins poem about the bear that bathes in a greasy lake. Which one of the two aforementioned poets committed suicide? I can’t remember.

4.

I have kept my first period a secret from my mother for over twenty years.

5.

A girl I barely knew in college whom I reconnected with at the Sunday vegetable market confessed to me that she was once raped after a poetry reading by the poet she had gone to see read. When she told me the name of the poet, who was widely published and who was generally perceived as humanist, I burst out laughing and knocked over a candle on the table in the restaurant where we were having drinks and deep fried turnips with an overpriced dill ranch dip. A napkin caught fire. You don’t believe me, she said when we were smoking our cigarettes outside. No, I said. No one believes me, she said; but you’re the only person I’ve told who laughed; the others, they were scared for me. Liars are stronger than those of us who can’t lie, I said; I think you’ll be just fine.

After Not Writing Poems For Three Months, Le Jennifer Remembers She Once Made a Palace From Blankets

Le Jennifer once walked into a palace
Made of blankets – she was a child –
And there was a stone on the floor.

She was a child, and there was a stone on the floor.

She prayed to a stone.
She made a stone in memoriam.
She crawled into a ball and scratched
Her pink mosquito-nibbled skin
And wondered to the god who was a stone

Can I go home once I’ve spoken
To Prince Tandem? Prince Tandem, whose name
I’ve only just invented, does blank verse
Mean a thing to you?

Or do you swim in these here blankets?
What’s a girl but a thing to you?
When you vanish does your seat get cold?

When you fall out of love, does a crow
Shit on the fence, or more majestic than that?

Le Jennifer grows up. She spots an angel
On her window sill. She makes pretend
She has never masturbated before. I think
There is a growth on my arm, she thinks.

It’s black! There’s a hair! What a mirror
Won’t do for you, a bible will. If Le Jennifer
Were a religious poet, she would embrace silence.
I used to adore Mallarme, she thinks in middle-age,

But he’s so French, and I never understood
A word he said. Perhaps I’ll go back to writing poetry.
The kind where I once murdered a girl in my sleep.

That girl was me! That girl was me!
She was a child, and there was a stone on the floor!

The Poet Re-imagines Genesis After The World Begins

Below me is a sea of infinite desolation,
And I feel fine. I want to punish myself.

Don’t think me naughty. My mother
Is somewhere else. She stinks like lavender

To me. To me, the earth is only the sea,
As to any woman who has traveled so high

Into heaven. The ground collapses like everything
Real. Everything that is real is not profane;

I will say naughty and picture a woman
Who is me, crawling across green dirt

Into a sea so unnatural that all living creatures
Who flourish in its depths are deprived

Of the divine chemical who makes them rush
With a lash of the tailfin: the nothingness of going

From this to that. And the sea, I’m afraid, being
Unreal, will rush through my open window this evening

And soak the furniture. My mother says I’m naughty
For allowing such genesis to occur in the imagination

And if only she were still alive I would touch her hand
And assure her that her soul will escape from her sockets

Like an ancient dust, under pressure for so long,
Finally released by the efforts of these modern people

Whose only curiosity, Le Jennifer, is to destroy.

Poem about the Effect of Dreams

A dream of murder came to me.
I don’t feel able to recall the details.
Not that I can’t, only my brain is a bone shard.
Beautiful nightmare, why have you dressed me
In the warm silk of your night and laid me to sleep
In the red bed, while my hands are still as milky

As the innocence of my girlhood? The fresh morning
Milk on my cheeks seems to me another aspect
Of the same nightmare in which I murdered the girl --
I don’t want to say – by opening a womb in the sky
Above her head and pushing her, pushing her back inside.

The traffic on Mulberry is rifling backwards this morning.
The soul of the world has left its egg casing to decompress.
Not that this is reality. Not that my bad dreams have so heavy
An effect on the misshaped world, because they don’t. A sharpness
In the water cushion around the interior of my head, a flashing
Blackness that occurs the moment before waking.

The Le Jennifer Interview

The following interview was conducted via telephone.

David Pollock: So, I’ve allowed you to take over my blog. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?
Le Jennifer: I do. Yes. But it’s your blog I’ve taken over. Maybe what’s more interesting are your thoughts.
DP: I’ve allowed you to take it over. I gave you that right, my password, etc. Yes, I have thoughts, but I’m the one conducting the interview. How about this: Why were you so open to taking over my blog? You have a blog of your own.
LJ: I had a blog of my own. Now I have yours.
DP: Right. What was wrong with your blog?
LJ: There is nothing wrong with my blog. Only no one read it.
DP: I read it.
LJ: Well, you apparently have nothing better to do. But I don’t have many friends. Two, to be exact. Your blog is linked on a literary journal page.
DP: Essays & Fictions.
LJ: I’ve read it. I like it. I read one of your stories. It’s interesting, but I don’t know…
DP: You don’t know?
LJ: I didn’t think this interview was about you.
DP: Fair enough. So, you’re pleased with the exposure you’ve been getting.
LJ: Pleased. (Makes noise with mouth.) Sure. I’m elated.
DP: Let’s talk about the blog as a form. A colleague of mine – someone whose opinion I really respect – questioned the blog as a format for poetry. She wondered if maybe the blog – the look of it, entry after entry – didn’t make it difficult to digest. When you have a book, you move from page to page; the pieces aren’t piled on top of one another. Even worse, she wondered if the blog format didn’t make the poems look like internet junk, like most web content.
LJ: Presentation. Is that right? We’re talking about presentation?
DP: Yes.
LJ: Presentation is the least of my worries. You forget, David, I used to work in real estate. One reason I got out of it was so I wouldn’t have to think about presentation. Not only is it boring, it can become offensive.
DP: But artful presentation is different.
LJ: Is it? I don’t think it matters. An idea I’ve pushed on some of my ‘friends’ is this idea of production over presentation.
DP: Could you elaborate?
LJ: Yes. I could.
DP: Could you do it now?
LJ: (Makes a noise with her mouth.) I’m not so much against presentation. It’s publication I don’t like. I don’t like showmanship. I like to write poems. I say ‘like’ as an understatement.
DP: So, you love to write poems?
LJ: I write poems because I am a poet. Sometimes I look in the mirror … Nevermind.
DP: Is it this feeling that you just have to get the poems out there?
LJ: No, it’s this feeling that I write poems. I don’t care if you like them or not. As a matter of fact, I’d rather you not. I’d rather the poems existed. It seems very presumptuous to me that a person, like you with your journal, might read someone’s work and decide if it is worthy or not. When I see something that exists – a lilac, a dog, a cactus, a stone, an automobile – I don’t wonder where it belongs, what worth it has. I know it exists, I consider it part of my world.
DP: Let’s go back a little. You talked about your ‘friends.’ You mean Elliot Le Ginn and Lepor. Is that right?
LJ: Yes. Unfortunately, these are my friends.
DP: I’m a big fan of both those poets. You all knew each other before I was familiar with any of you. I hate to use the word ‘scene,’ but you do, all three of you, seem to share a similar aesthetic.
LJ: How do you mean?
DP: What strikes me most is how you all seem to be playing with confessional tropes. You take the voice of the traditional confessional poet – the experience and the metaphor – and you carry it to the point of the absurd.
LJ: That sounds very learned.
DP: Thank you. Are you consciously confessional? That’s a bad question. What I mean is, who do you read?
LJ: Who I read. I don’t know. Can I tell you about a moment of enlightenment?
DP: Please.
LJ: Okay. Two. The first was when I was an undergraduate in college – I had been an English major before I went into business – and I read a John Berryman poem about boredom. The second was about three and a half years ago when I showed up to the office, and one of my co-workers – her name is Julia – Julia was wearing an obscene amount of makeup that day, and I thought her face was going to fall apart. I swear it was.
DP: That makes sense. Let’s talk about your work.
LJ: If you must.
DP: I would like to talk about your work because I think it’s very good. The poem “Le Jennifer is Not a Religious Woman; However” is one of my favorites. It’s very strange. The image of the angel, it occurs often in your poems. Is there any reason for this that you can state?
LJ: This is why I was hesitant to perform this interview. I don’t think I’m capable of answering a question like that.
DP: Can we instead talk about why you can’t answer that question?
LJ: The same reason I can’t talk about why I use articles the way I do: because it’s proper. Because, in the same way there are rules in grammar, there are also rules in poetry.
DP: I’m not sure I understand you.
LJ: There are angels. I see them. They are a part of my life. I find them poetic. Next.
DP: Let’s talk about your friendship with Elliot Le Ginn and Lepor. How do you know these guys? Were you friends before?
LJ: I have known Elliot since I was in college. We used to party together. I believe he attempted to rape me once. We’ve talked about it since, and it seems that he was drunk on beer and asked if I wanted to ‘try one.’ Elliot has always been an unattractive man, and while I’ve always enjoyed his company because he’s entertaining, I turned him down. He was out of his mind and threw himself on top of me. He woke up the next morning with a broken nose and a profound respect for yours truly.
DP: And Lepor?
LJ: Lepor used to be sexually fascinated with Elliot. They worked that out somehow. I think they try to better one another with their poems. Is it okay if I go now? I have to urinate.
DP: It’s been a pleasure talking to you. I would like to have another interview in the future, so we can talk a bit more about your work.
LJ: David, you need to stop. I have to pee.

Le Jennifer/Miscommunication

In the mind’s chamber, Le Jennifer
Sees a shape that is not unlike her hand.
Or is that really her hand? This berry is poison,
She assumes, for it is red and as large as a grotesque
Teardrop and hangs from a branch (an agitated gnome
Testicle, she thinks, laughing) and because she does not know
What kind of berry it is, the taste must be bitter.
It might even be deadly.

Le Jennifer uses her hand to feed herself. This is a human
Activity. This is how humans feed themselves. Be careful,
Le Jennifer, for your breath may stop as quickly
As a car starts. A roar burrows horizontally through the skinny
Trees. Birds scatter like birds. What’s the use of metaphor?

What is the use of making life seem real?
My hand may pick the poison, a berry from a tree.
Her last thought is of a dashing bitterness
Across the tongue. To describe the bitterness,
Le Jennifer must incorporate a sense other than taste.
How does the bitterness smell, for example: like a crustaceous silence.

In the mind’s chamber, Le Jennifer sees a vapor
That is not unlike the poet’s hand, reaching for a berry from the tree.
She has made a terrible mistake.

Blue Shadows

My face has turned blue. I must be under
Stress. The clock is singing slowly, without
Any pleasure at all. My rings are laid out
On some red velvet. I should wash my hands.
The evening is a dumpster of niceties.

This is the best evening ever. My date is
The coat rack. We dance to blues music. You
Could have seen our silhouettes as you passed
Our house, Oliver. Oliver, don’t you pass our house
Anymore?

The man is irrelevant. It’s the clock I like. I like
The coat rack. Our silhouettes, blue with pleasure.
Pleasure. I don’t understand. Oliver once said: Pleasure
Is the space between two of your fingers or toes. Oliver
Is a silhouette too and I am the coat rack.

Dress-up

My wardrobe is a rack of symbols.
They say that I am a naked person.
A sensitive young man with water-
Wings for shoulder blades and shaky wrists
Wanted to map my defects, there were so many.

They’re not real. Le Jennifer is not real. My skin
Is splotched with brown dried out puddles. Excuse
Me. They’re not real. I dress into my symbols.
The red ones are lusty; the yellow are genuine.

At the teenage dance I fell into the drink
Table. A sensitive young man with rodent
Teeth and pinky rings said there is something
Wrong with my skin. Don’t worry. It’s not real.

Nakedness is embarrassment. The angel is pale
Because it is mine. It’s not real. Le Jennifer walks
With the lepers on the island of eternal clothing.
We are lusty and slick in our symbols, under the pale
Watchful sun. Le Jennifer is honest in the bath.

She’s naked. A sensitive young man with greasy curls
And a penis like a flimsy harmonica asked if I was
Uninterested. Yes, I said. Yes and no. What’s the matter?
You’re not real.

An Important Lesson I Taught My Brother

There is a quiet earth in my bed sheets.
Yet I am awake in pain. My morning
Is my afternoon. My blood has dried
On the nightgown in the shape of an apple.
What is woman?

My brother asked me. We were young, swimming.
I almost drowned once and felt I was breathing in
Terrific blue poison. Woman is an absence. No.
The place of origin. Why do you ask me? I’m angry.

Changing in the locker room. Our bodies are not the same.
His is stiff, cold, shapeless: a stick of potential.
Mine is at once alone and dangerous. What does
Le Jennifer mean by quiet earth? That which is
Everything -- so powerful that it need not speak.

Virginity

The first time there was an explosion
Inside of my skirt, my mother
Asked me if I would like a glass of water.

The first time there was a flood in my head,
Destroying the carpet and drapes, my mother
Made my lip bleed, she hit me so hard.

The first time a man made me happy,
There was an explosion in my skirt
And my lip bled. My mother

Knew only that I was somehow different.
She poured cool water on my pussy
To cool me off and asked if I was thirsty
Anywhere else. No mother, I said,

For the first time I am looking through
The water, and the water looks like glass.

Le Jennifer is Not a Religious Woman; However

In the white morning
I stare at the windowsill
An angel the size of my thumb
Has there been damage to my brain
I do not remember?

Is it okay, mom, that my altar
Is my windowsill? I am still
Fresh. I was a girl
We took an airplane
(we took an airplane)
from the living room
to the kitchen

(our toenails were red
the house stunk of alcohol)
And back again
To the living room.

My windowsill, my windowsill
I feel airborne. Life is dizzy.
My angel, my angel
You are the figurine of my poison
My poison, my airplane, my morning of purity
Surely there has been some damage to my brain.

Question of the Day:

Why must there be fantasy?
Because we must escape
The relentless traffic of fate
And indecision rather lags, no mopes, no chases
And we are as uncertain
As uncertain as the silverware

There must be fantasy. There is no other way.
All our lives, the gospel of family, no caves
Of caves of satin darkness (two many prep-
ositions) hiding in one figurative closet
Is favorite character-clothing
Why don’t you try it on in the rain?

Now we are dripping thoughtfully into death’s sink

Frustrated, Le Jennifer Imagines a Fantasy Land

Of all the places I don’t remember
Demonhorse is the cloudiest
Yellow lungs that dangle
From crisp March branches
Excellent horses with whisps of yellow mane
Yellow frogs on the knuckles
Of a slippery river stone

The horseshit keeps coming.
Places have no images, not
In the least. A memory is a folded princess
Gown in the yellow oakwood chest
Place is a death for the poet to think
When ideas are stripped
To their bare motions. Jesus.

The horseshit keeps coming.
Mother told me I should go back
To selling real estate. I wish

One Word Means Nothing; Two Words are a Work-Out

I used to be afraid to exercise
Because the floor-length mirrors
And the women in purple sweats
And the radio playing Koo-bee-La-la
Made me feel like scissors on the radiator

You probably want to know why scissors
Could be a point of self-reference for me
I can say that my mother used them to clip
My dresses because she wanted me to have
Better legs, but that would be a lie.

I only wanted to say scissors; now I’ve said it:
Scissors. In conclusion, I am still afraid to exercise.

JJJJJJJJhhh>>

JAMES WOOD & I WENT WALKING THROUGH
THE TRAILOR PARK WEHN UH CUPPLE PF
POTHEADS WCAME LOOUKING UP THRU THE SUNLA-
MP & AND MADE USS WISH WE HADD A CAMERA

LE JENNiFER, MAH LOVE, WHERE'S YOUR BRONZED
UNGEL TEENIGHT? kLEEOPAERTRA, OR llIL cEASER?

Le Jennifer is the Only Poet who Matters Pt. 2

Before I knew poetry was a baby
Boiling in my womb that boiled
The baby God didn’t let me bear

Poetry was a mere curiosity

An angel in the guise of a motion
Of floors, all by themselves, impregnated
Me with words, now I am the only poet

Le Jennifer is the Only Poet who Matters Pt. 2

I used to think who would read
All of these awful poems
About holding the wind
And considering death on the N

I am the only poet now, and I’ve learned
Those poets had no baby boiling to offer
The world. For the three weeks straight
(since begun giving birth to delicious demon poems)
My panties have been caked in blood.
For three weeks now.
I am the only poet
Who can say this.

The Consumer Pleases Herself

A stale bagel with soy butter
This was my breakfast.
Funny, how sickening, the words
The food is so bland
I can actually think about 40%
Sales when I chew.

Egg salad and juniper jelly
This was my lunch.
Funny, how like electric fruit
The words tickle my nerve ends.
I bought a poster of a shirtless man
Scrubbing a Clydesdale with yellow
Sponge and the precious moon
In the background because it was almost half-off.

For dinner I will wonder if my toes
Look funny crooked and if I should have
Spent the money on slippers instead.

Drunk on Sense

When I was girl my mother screamed
Because the floors moved all by themselves
My brother played music on my teeth
The dead moved like thin disinfectant
In my momma’s big belly. The cool nights
Of girlhood are vaporous and repugnant
Like any drug feeling that lasts too long
And becomes another arena for the brain
To titter-tat and dance the spat.

help me to snjdfksdfnsndsndyop

DUDE, IT'S

NOT A MI***CRO***PHON&E

A Plea to Romantic Man Poets

I was woken from life
At the age of thirty-two,
Calling forth mysterious sailors
Whose waves belong to the purple
Imagination of Keats and those romantics
Whose women of labyrinthine hair be
Lonely because their husbands disappear
They have visions, they say, they have poetry
These women reap loss in no meter
on the field of only shadows, no growth

I am no other kind of woman
Observe, for example, my blazer pocket
In which I carry my identity card
Imagine my hair, it’s like some vegetative
Growth from the purple ocean.
Your poetry makes me angry.
The voice of God belongs to me.
Whatever you write, it’s of no consequence.

Policy

Taxes, please. Taxes
And more taxes. I don’t deserve
To have. I only only deserve this
Cockananny teaspoon. Sweet French
Singer. Doomed Samaritan.
Clouds. Clouds. Everywhere are clouds.
I won’t feel connected to the world
Unless there are taxes. Taxes. Clouds and taxes.

Se/mhbbbhjbrioulnm sly mhy bklog hhhas beeen heeji00cked

DAVID
POLLOCK WANTS
KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

You're kidding me, dude. That bowl was kajjed liked a 1*2 hower aegough

Unfinished Poem About My Sister, Who Happens to Collect Spoons

Seems to me you dressed
Up as a woman and spent
All of your money on spoons.
Silly whore. Let’s take you
To the mercenary lounge
Where we’ll wind you up in string
And unwind you. Then you’ll fall
Into some table and knock over
Some glass ashtrays unless
We’re at the Helen Newman bowling
Alley, where the fat pink man will laugh.
Silly whore. You’re a

Wage Labor

You don’t even know where you are
You pretend to be a woman
But you’re really the grouch
Solemn, you live in a trashcan
Four miles later you’re drinking from the sponge

Is this what poverty feels like?
Why can’t I touch your pussy?
I mean, why doesn’t the earth treat us
To money
Now here’s the lamb
She works in the fields.

This Poem is Too Personal to be Published

Taste this and tell me it doesn’t
I’m as blind as the clue
Treating me horrible doesn’t
Get you any place
Unless it’s treating me horribly you want
In which case, go ahead
I think you’re onto something,
Jason

My Blog has ben jhkzhsdijackled

i'''''s t'r'u'''e

hkasnkli'j'''''''ack'''e'd

JAMES WOOD

There’s No Mystery Dark Enough for Me

Trespassing is not easy when you swim
But it’s easy when the moon breaks
Concrete looks two ways not unlike
A window with serpents. I reference
The great monument. Perhaps you’ve
Heard of it. Damascus. Seal. Blindness
Let’s trespass through the mystery.
They pretend like they don’t know
Only because it seems more important.

My Brother Bought a Guitar

The clueless folksinger looks not
Unlike a dove whose wings are fine
Divine cutlery, soft and feathered.
I have never seen a folk singer
As ugly as this, who does not exist
Whose song is the constant fluttering
Of his impossible, stainless steel wings

Le Jennifer is the Only Poet Who Matters

All poetry must come
To its end, it deserves an end
The tyrants of the contemporary scene
There is no scene, there is no contemporary
I have come bearing a very sharp
Olive branch. There are no poets
Not anymore, not now that I’ve begun
There is only room for one poet
And that is me. There is only one God
And there is no god but God
And I have followed that voice, my poems
Are even more didactic than instructions
Stop writing poetry, poet.
I am the only poet who matters.
It’s clear to you now, you were only
Playing games.

I will not be blogging anymore

I will not be blogging anymore.
I think I've made this clear by not blogging.
It is a waste of my time.
This blog is now being taken over by a poet named Le Jennifer.
She is the only poet who matters.
We both have a great distaste for young people because they are godless.
Goodnight.