prose poetry: making a scene (erin belieu)

Part of the Effect of the Public
Scene Is to Importune the
Passing Viewer
FOR EXAMPLE:
walking past the Ritz a girl may be sitting on the last step crying
as if alone and you notice, even in this cocktail-hour light, the
little rips and shreds of her chapped lips and that she has no
Kleenex and no one stops to offer one and you feel damned if you
do or don't, not wanting to intrude, as a man is standing maybe
only three feet away, his profile approximating a little shame,
some discomfort, but mostly a sphinx-like composure, or
boredom, perhaps, indicating they are together, together in that
way you're not completely sure you'll ever want to know about
again and you're ashamed, too, with nothing to offer but to gaze
intently at the fascinating street lamp as you walk by.

PROBABLY YOU'VE CAUSED A SCENE YOURSELF:
public or private, at a bar or in a strange apartment, when
suddenly you became conscious of the drama, of the real pleasure
in your tears, the catharsis of the wail and rage, the screams, the
"trashing of the joint," because that's what's next, snipping up
his Liberty of London ties, ripping off her nightgown, pushing
her out naked on the patio for the neighbors' judgment who are
there, to be sure, either by accident or rubbernecked design,
keeping score or scared for their own property. Or instead you've
been the impetus, unfaithful, deceitful, maybe only the hapless
object of some other person's desire thinking that, for all their
protestations of love, you might as well be a bathroom fixture or
bookend. in either case.

IT'S HARD TO MAKE A GRACEFUL EXIT:
as all scenes peter out in awkward ways. Someone's left thinking
of the perfect remark, a remark that'll sink like an ax blade, the
kind that are never on hand when needed, so that you end up
shouting, spluttering Oh yeah?! Oh yeah?! Oh Yeah?! like a moron,
like a damn fool, crying on the last step, in front of strangers,
without a Kleenex.

- "Part of the Effect of the Public Scene Is to Importune the Passing Viewer" by Erin Belieu

poetry: wooden potential, wake up! (randall jarrell)

At the back of the houses there is the wood.
While there is a leaf of summer left, the wood

Makes sounds I can put somewhere in my song,
Has paths I can walk, when I wake, to good

Or evil: to the cage, to the oven, to the House
In the Wood. It is a part of life, or of the story

We make of life. But after the last leaf,
The last light--for each year is leafless,

Each day lightless, at the last--the wood begins
Its serious existence: it has no path,

No house, no story; it resists comparison...
One clear, repeated, lapping gurgle, like a spoon

Or a glass breathing, is the brook,
The wood's fouled midnight water. If I walk into the wood

As far as I can walk, I come to my own door,
The door of the House in the Wood. It opens silently:

On the bed is something covered, something humped
Asleep there, awake there--but what? I do not know.

I look, I lie there, and yet I do not know.
How far out my great echoing clumsy limbs

Stretch, surrounded only by space! For time has struck,
All the clocks are stuck now, for how many lives,

On the same second. Numbed, wooden, motionless,
We are far under the surface of the night.

Nothing comes down so deep but sound: a car, freight cars,
A high soft droning, drawn out like a wire

Forever and ever--is this the sound that Bunyan heard
So that he thought his bowels would burst within him?--

Drift on, on, into nothing. Then someone screams
A scream like an old knife sharpened into nothing.

It is only a nightmare. No one wakes up, nothing happens,
Except there is gooseflesh over my whole body--

And that too, after a little while, is gone.
I lie here like a cut-off limb, the stump the limb has left...

Here at the bottom of the world, what was before the world
And will be after, holds me to its back

Breasts and rocks me: the oven is cold, the cage is empty,
In the House in the Wood, the witch and her child sleep.

- "The House in the Woods" by Randall Jarrell

prose poetry: failed jokes, leaving the folks (russell edson)

There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree.

To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living-room as your roots may ruin the carpet.

He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped his leaves.

But his parents said look it is fall.

- "The Fall" by Russell Edson

poetry: his sensible daddy and the glorious death (anne sexton)

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that feel back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.
- "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph" by Anne Sexton

Wherever you go, there you are: affirmation poetry (Mark Strand)

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
- “Keeping Things Whole” by Mark Strand

zippy zappy love (poetry): William Carlos Williams

I
Well God is
love
so love me

God
is love so
love me God

is
love so love
me well

II
Love the sun
comes
up in

the morning
and
in

the evening
zippy zappy
it goes

III
We watched
a red rooster
with

two hens
back
of the museum

at
St. Croix
flap his

wings
zippy zappy
and crow
- "Calypsos" by William Carlos Williams

Poetry, Exclamations!: William Carlos Williams

Waking
I was eating pears!
she said

I sat beside her on the bed
thinking
of Picasso

a portrait of
a sensitive young boy
gathered

into himself
Waking
I was eating pears!

she said
when separate jointly
we embraced
- "The Fruit"

You slapped my face
oh but so gently
I smiled
at the caress
- "Short Poem"

VIII: THE COCKTAIL PARTY
A young woman
on whose belly I have never
slept though others

have
met today
at a cocktail party

not drunk
but by love
ignoring the others

we looked in
each other's eyes
eyes alert to

what we were saying
eyes blinded
breathless by that alone
- "Some Simple Measures in the American Idiom and the Variable Foot"

by William Carlos Williams