Thank you.
This last poem, I really owe to someone who unites,
I think, all of us.
His name was Morgan Schuldt.
He had been my student at the University of Virginia
as an undergraduate, and then he came out here to Arizona,
went to Tucson, got his MFA there.
And really years after that, he wrote me out of the blue
and said he was starting a magazine called CUE, which
was dedicated to the prose poem, and asked me
if I'd write a prose poem, and this is it.
It's for Morgan.
"Prose in a Small Space."
It's supposed to be prose if it runs on and on, isn't it?
All those words, too many to fall into rank and file,
stumbling, bare ass drunk onto the field, reporting
for duty, yes, sir, spilling out as shamelessly
as the glut from a mega billion dollar chemical facility.
Just the amount of glittering effluvium
it takes to transport a little girl
across a room, beige carpet thick under her oxfords,
curtains blousy with spring.
Is that the scent of daffodils drifting in?
Daffodils don't smell, but prose doesn't care.
Prose likes to hear itself talk.
Prose is development and denouement,
anticipation hovering near the canopies, lust rampant
in the antipasta, for example, a silver fork fingered sadly
as the heroine crumples a linen napkin in her lap
to keep from crying out at the sight of Lord Campion's
regal brow inclined tenderly toward the wealthy young widow.
Prose applauds such syntactical dalliances.
Then is it poetry if it's confined,
trembling along its axis, a flagpole
come alive in high wind, flapping its radiant sleeve
for attention.
Over here, it's me, while the white spaces, air, field,
early morning silence before the school bell,
shape themselves around that one bright seizure.
And if that's so, what do we have here, a dream or three
paragraphs?
We have white space too.
Is this music?
As for all the words left out, banging at the gates,
we could let them in, but where would we
go with our orders, our stuttering pride?
Thank you.