folio : short takes on the prose poem
Some of my prose poems are more akin to translation, rather than a chiseled, sculpted art object – related to Paul Valery's notion of writing as an act of translation that so different from translating texts between languages. Like this poem – "That Time When Girl F Walked Into A Bubble Bath With All Her Clothes On" – is very much a "translation" of a specific moment, an incident in time and place.
In other instances, they feel more like an documentation of an improvised moment – they build up and through their own internal rhythm – an example of this is "Ten Girls Stepping Into And Out Of The Light." It starts with a kernel of sensation, then moves with it and through it – these poems tend to explore various modes of repetition. They also move through the unit of the breath – as if I'm saying it out loud as I'm writing the poem – I'm not literally doing this, but there is some conceptual feeling of breath within the writing mind, and that influences the rhythms and movements of the piece.
One more example might be a kind of transposition. The poem called "Girl Fight" is based on the stories of my grandfather, who, in his very rural Japanese countryside neighborhood, used to get into rock fights with boys from neighboring villages. I was a child as he was going senile, and he always loved to show me that scar on his head from rock fighting, over and over again, almost every time I saw him.
Three poems from
Some Girls Walk Into The Country They Are From
GIRL FIGHT
Grandmother is parting her hair again. These days the ground absorbs not a single thing. Look.
Girl J is balling up Girl A’s vomit into perfect little balls, rows and rows of vomit balls. The strong sunlight will dry and harden them in no time. The best, roundest, densest, hardest little vomit balls in the world. When the time comes, we will show those piss cube girls what we’re made of. Don’t ever forget what those girls’ people have done to our girls’ people. Make sure that our vomit balls are hard enough and smooth enough. (Remind me to tell you later about the jagged vomit balls.)
Are you ready. The wind is at our backs. Though if we beat the piss cube girls, next up are the diarrhea bomb girls. Grandmother is waving at us. She has finally found it—the scar on her head from back in the day, from her rock fights, it used to be so much simpler back then, people treated each other decently, it was much less complicated, they threw rocks at each other, and those very rocks, after the fighting, would just go back into the earth as if nothing had ever happened.
How times have changed. Just look at the ground when we are done fighting, just look.
THAT TIME WHEN GIRL F WALKED INTO A BUBBLE BATH WITH ALL HER CLOTHES ON
It was very beautiful.
Sometimes when we are sitting on the back porch drinking tequila mockingbirds, we remember it—and a soft smiling expression washes gently over our faces. Except for this last time it happened, everybody but me got that soft smiling expression and I alone got stuck with the resting scowl expression. One of the features of the soft smiling expression is that for the duration of one’s soft smiling expression, one is unable to register any expressions on others that are not also a version of the soft smiling expression, meaning my resting scowl expression would remain invisible to everyone for as long as they kept up their soft smiling expressions. Thank goodness, because what is there to scowl at, when faced with the memory of Girl F walking into a gorgeous, vertical, geranium champagne lavender sage yarrow bubble bath with all her clothes on, just the thought of it makes me swoon, yes swoon.
TEN GIRLS STEPPING INTO AND OUT OF THE LIGHT
Girl A, always Girl A, dives headlong into her own skin as she steps into a vehicle of light, her skin rushing to catch up, enclosing her, closing her in within the steps the box she carves out the vertical column of space that is hers, the shadow closing into the vertical column that is hers, she closes it all in and holds it, holds her light vertical as if those next to her would steal it, as if Girl B in the harsh sunlight is deflecting it all away, their light, a path of shimmer in their wake, the residuals climbing near them as if the desire to remain connected a desire to be part of something, something bigger, greater than all the light a pile of girls could possibly emit. Girl C makes a go of it, moves it travels down with it, gathers it spilling over and out of her arms and Girl C uses her right elbow to turn off the light. Girl C lets in the natural. Girl C is the last one who can prevent the light from going out on that unnamed girl out there, floating, weightless, desperate, that girl who has let go, sometimes it is only Girl C that can cast a different light on the story. Sometimes when it is Girl D bringing the light, those in her charge step in or out and they remain transfixed, subjects, helpless and at the mercy of institutional sources of light, resources in and out the window, light emanating out of that window and falling right into the lap of someone seated in the same train car as Girl A, always Girl A, scooting over to make room for the delicate frame of Girl E, who never takes her shoes off, who does not yet know about the light beams that will spring forth out of her toes when finally that moment is upon us, finally that moment is here upon us finally Girl F comes in and takes charge, Girl F and Girl I they have their fingers on the light switch, we can trust their fingers on the light switch they are going to bring some light to Girl G who needs it and Girl H who doesn’t need flowers but could use some money and then there is Girl J, having spent a portion of her life with her head in the sand, when she emerges, she has a ball of light in her mouth, she’s never seen it before but there in her open mouth it is there.
