WEBVTT

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There does seem to be, in
recent years, a re-emergence

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of interest in prose poem.

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There are several new prose
poem magazines out there,

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and I see prose poems now
in all kinds of magazines

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where I didn't see
them for a while, sort

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of the second moment for
the prose poem in my life.

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In the '70s, Russell
Edson and WS Merwin,

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and lots of the
poets that we know

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from the period we're writing
whole books of prose poems

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and bringing different
influences in,

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surrealist influences,
to the poetry.

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I think what's happening now
is a little different, a little

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more meditative, and
I think the essay

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is beginning to impinge on the
prose poem more than a fable.

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But something else is
happening right now,

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or has been happening
for a while,

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there are writers and editors
talking about the lyric essay

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and exactly where the
prose poem leaves off

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and the lyrics essay
begins, I don't know.

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When I think I've written
some lyric essays that I think

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are not prose poems,
I think in the end

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it's the writer and
the reader who make

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those decisions separately.

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Doesn't matter.

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But I'm going to read what I
think of as a literary essay

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from Taboo.

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One section of the
book is a series

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of these small,
dissociative essays.

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You won't find
a thesis at the end

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of the first paragraph.

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It's called "Chaos".

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"They were once
the flesh and bone

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of him, our beloved friend.

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Of course, the flesh and bones
were not good, even when alive.

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I rubbed the ashes, gritty
white and gray granules

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firmly between my fingers.

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Their edges could draw blood.

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I leaned to say
goodbye, said goodbye,

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kissed the lips I
kissed so many times,

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especially the last six days
when friends and family sat

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around the clock talking
and holding his hands,

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massaging his limbs.

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His eyes grew larger
as he diminished,

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the skin retracting, his
gray hair and beard taking

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on prominence.

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I thought his face, with
features model simplified,

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the perfect form like the face
of Peter in frescoes by Giotto.

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I felt that inner distancing
with such a thought.

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I told no one.

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But once he was dead, Gary and
I got the call just before 11:00

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in the morning and reached
his bed in 20 minutes.

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There was no presence in that
flesh, just some powerful sense

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he was nearby, and so I spoke my
final words to the flesh, held

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his hand, kissed his
lips, his forehead,

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but felt my sentences
taking up elsewhere

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around the body in the air.

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So all the fuss of how to
dispose of the ashes, all

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the ceremony we created.

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Brilliant, flowered wrapping
paper cut into squares

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and folded into palm
sized envelopes, the ashes

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in an aluminum bowl laid on the
ground on a bright red kitchen

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cloth just off the aspen trail
up in the grove he loved.

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August, the leaves dull gold.

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Now the clouds closed
in over our heads

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above the towering treetops.

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The mountaintop, a mile in
the air at the Northeast

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edge of Tucson up a winding
25 mile road in five cars

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with all our dogs.

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His partner and a dozen
of his closest friends

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holding hands in a circle
taking turns telling stories.

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A passing of the bowl
and silver serving spoon,

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each scooping some of the
coarse, tiny, human shards.

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The hollow scudding
sound as the ashes

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slid into the flowery envelopes.

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The human circle
breaking finally,

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like slow atoms of
a single molecule

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spreading randomly
into the woods,

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finding places to
scatter the ashes,

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and then one-by-one returning
to the circle, the molecules,

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atoms rejoining in
a new configuration.

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One friend tucked her envelope
of ashes into her purse,

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a portion was set aside for his
partner to bury in their garden

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before she held out
for family in New York

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where he was born, a
minor fragmentation,

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a temporary holding
of slow concentrations

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to be dispersed elsewhere,
which left me oddly unsettled.

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I know no concentration
endures, human or otherwise.

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Things do fall apart,
scattered like discarded

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domestic objects.

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A one port stainless steel
pot from a wedding set

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in which a wife cooked a portion
of her first household meals

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becomes one of many gifts
when her son sets up

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his first apartment
then college,

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becomes a gift again
years later when

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the son-- no longer single--
buys with his partner

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their first matched
cookware, the odds and ends

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from their families and thrift
store student pasts set off

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to a charity's secondhand outlet
except the one, the pot that

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was his mother's, which he
held back save for the day

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he could give it to someone
else, a new young friend,

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a poet who lives
on air and spring.

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I see the pot when I
visit him in the kitchen

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of his new apartment.

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We're discussing a villanelle
by Elizabeth Bishop,

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which opens "the art of
losing is not hard to master".

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He lifts the pot from the flame.

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He's made a vegetable sauce that
needs to cool for dinner later,

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and much to my horror plonks
it directly into the freezer.

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Last week on our
back porch at dusk,

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this young man blurted a
little in his cups from whiskey

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and sevens and apropos
of what I don't recall.

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I read about chaos theory.

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It only takes 10 years for
the piss you flushed yesterday

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to come full circle.

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The molecules disperse they
spread out all over the world,

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then one morning
you turn the faucet

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and some of those
molecules fall right out

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in your drinking water.

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No.

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How is that chaos?

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I wanted to protest,
also a little in my cups.

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He had startled by
my sudden motion.

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How's that chaos
when they return

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to us as something else?"

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