This poem.
I would like to end with this poem,
and it's actually in memoriam to a former student of mine
who I know was no stranger to poetry lovers here in Tucson.
Morgan Schuldt was actually a student
of mine as an undergraduate when I was teaching in Arizona,
and then he came down here to Tucson
and co-founded that wonderful magazine CUE.
And wrote me one day, and said, do
you have a prose poem for CUE?
And I said to him, well, you know,
I haven't written that many prose poems.
You know that, because I see from my books.
And he said, well, it's time you wrote one.
And so this is for Morgan, who inspired this poem.
With apologies to every prose writer in the world.
OK?
"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 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 blowsy 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, shaped 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 can let them in, but where would we go with our orders?
Our stuttering pride?
Thank you very much.