folio : (further) short takes on the prose poem
i've been a photographer longer than i've been a poet. it started when i was 8 or 9, given a kit for some holiday or birthday, to build a pocket camera that used 110 cartridge film. the prints this film generated were usually 3x4 or 4x5 inches, i forget which. later, as an adult, i picked up instant photography in various film formats. these too yielded small rectangle or square images, where the field of view was a tiny world surrounded by white space, or by another, different world.
do you follow where i'm going with this?
if i ask myself, what is my relationship with prose poetry, i can only answer with those old photos & the instant ones i still take. those tiny, bounded spaces. those boxes of world.
but i could also inquire within the unintentional prose poem, those english prose glosses made at the bottom of the page in the selected rimbaud verse volume i has as a teen. i read english translations of surrealist prose poems as a teen too. in one case there was no attempt to retain poetic elements outside of the language; the form was not translated, only the words--but it made a form that, to me, was more compelling than the verse. in the other, the translation preserved the form. in my teens i was unaware of living poets writing in prose.
i started writing prose poems in my 20s--so since 1990. i do write enjambed stuff, but a lot of what has to come out of me emerges as blocks of text. where does it come from? why prose poetry? maybe it comes from that little camera i built, now lost. but that's too easy. & yet...
2. A. [Your tongue is as long as a Tuesday.] All of these dreams form a collective. We're thinking of joining it, though not at the same time. We're coodinating this between us. You have ulterior motives. I want welcome. If dreams happen inside, how are we also inside them? I want to be inside something. I want to function as an element. You want to interrupt machines as they tally & harvest. How do I join the dream without joining the machines?
2. B. [Your tongue is as long as a Tuesday.] You lick your thumb, hold it in the air. The air is still. I put your wet thumb in my mouth. We stand facing one another. Linked at hand & hip, your arm extended between us. A bridge of bone & muscle stretched. I get information. The taste of your skin is an almanac. The fenny past. I suck to the blood. We watch one another. My mouth fills with your blood.
2. C. [Your tongue is as long as a Tuesday.] On this world you are fragile. Slow to heal. I give you a coin, a coin not tender. One side is BLESS, the word engraved on its face. The other is CURSE in raised relief. I bandage your thumb with a mullein leaf tied with wild potato vine. Where are we? We are in a vacant lot gone to rough. I have a little camera stuck to me.
