Saturday, October 31, 2009

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.