Volume 14:4, Fall 2013
Prose Poem Issue
Sleep and go tidal
today was supposed to be the last of it, the days lasting. a miscounted ending, half believed by halved courts and im busy still doing things at this desk, pretend caring for the lessons on hand and the forward looking notions. because ive been getting worse and alternately better at filtering out the noise that corrugates a room. the joke – youve read marx? no thats just from the courduroy pillow. after another untilled ground of upswelling laughter. i have told the crows here that i am one who gets paid. to lose at fantasy games. to resist the formulaic notion of traditional joke formats. and when weve got down to it, observing people is more productive than sitting with a fork and nothing to eat. and i am one of them, the observed, observing. the birds dumb on the wires ca-cawing. the capacity to record observations effectively, such that reality becomes a series of words that can convey the parts and particles of another type of being – or at least the sheen and stuff of surface and below. all of these things alive and sharing and enough, or soon, to be telling lies to the other dead folks that are swimming with breath around them. and i can say things purple and diminished from there – how when at attention, a dog lifts its head and steadies, or the salt haired man who waited for the shuttle this morning leaned against the entryway, or the vestibules column, him and this post melding when he crossed his leg and glanced down the hill at the rest of us, waiting. his body a solid thing. the crass and sacrificial. looking forward, a strong light presents itself to the highway, the seeded pressure of making long distance travel. once the scientific discussion quiets we vet our stories and dont pretend to question how we know what it is were supposed to. its just believing that comes and goes tidal.
Tony Mancus is the author of three chapbooks: Diplomancy (Horseless Press, 2013), Bye Land (Greying Ghost, 2012), and Bye Sea (Tree Light Books, 2012). He is co-founder of Flying Guillotine Press. He and his wife Shannon live in Rosslyn, VA.