WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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This last poem, I really
owe to someone who unites,

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I think, all of us.

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His name was Morgan Schuldt.

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He had been my student at
the University of Virginia

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as an undergraduate, and then
he came out here to Arizona,

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went to Tucson,
got his MFA there.

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And really years after that,
he wrote me out of the blue

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and said he was starting a
magazine called CUE, which

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was dedicated to the
prose poem, and asked me

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if I'd write a prose
poem, and this is it.

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It's for Morgan.

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"Prose in a Small Space."

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It's supposed to be prose if
it runs on and on, isn't it?

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All those words, too many
to fall into rank and file,

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stumbling, bare ass drunk
onto the field, reporting

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for duty, yes, sir,
spilling out as shamelessly

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as the glut from a mega billion
dollar chemical facility.

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Just the amount of
glittering effluvium

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it takes to transport
a little girl

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across a room, beige carpet
thick under her oxfords,

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curtains blousy with spring.

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Is that the scent of
daffodils drifting in?

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Daffodils don't smell,
but prose doesn't care.

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Prose likes to hear itself talk.

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Prose is development
and denouement,

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anticipation hovering near
the canopies, lust rampant

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in the antipasta, for example,
a silver fork fingered sadly

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as the heroine crumples
a linen napkin in her lap

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to keep from crying out at
the sight of Lord Campion's

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regal brow inclined tenderly
toward the wealthy young widow.

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Prose applauds such
syntactical dalliances.

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Then is it poetry
if it's confined,

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trembling along its
axis, a flagpole

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come alive in high wind,
flapping its radiant sleeve

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for attention.

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Over here, it's me, while
the white spaces, air, field,

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early morning silence
before the school bell,

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shape themselves around
that one bright seizure.

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And if that's so, what do we
have here, a dream or three

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paragraphs?

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We have white space too.

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Is this music?

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As for all the words left
out, banging at the gates,

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we could let them in,
but where would we

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go with our orders,
our stuttering pride?

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Thank you.

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