David PrestidgeIXBut she didn't let him finish Already, she thought herself a monolith An odd-still-life caricature Of defunct standing And so high over my head Like a masked medicine man giving alms There was a steady vacillation in her Gait, a varied, intermittent resignation As if gravity, standing tip toe over her Head, handed out, with thoughtful jurisprudence "Your honor, we declare the accused not." And nature, taking her cue, pulled her in Like a firefly engorged by a mass of seasonal locusts Out early for the harvest So did this life. Like a manacle Moldering in shrink-wrap fashion Paneling for the bones, sinews, a visceral matrix A submarine hammering the ocean floor Oh Father break, but do not conceal my bones Like chalk dust or flint chips The lost zeal of a thin wind gone mad Shaping a sound like sand over stone Throws her bulk across bone And failing to move mountains Scatters chalk dust, flint chips My eyes bleed to think of Thin notes etched on stone An open faced monument of compressed time Weary with the weight of centuries Dressed in pinpricks, thin tracks A scratch that where I stand Will someday split this mountain Like a mouth between two mountains David Prestidge writes: I think Mauriac said, "If you want a man's autobiography, look at the books he has read." I would add: "If you want his biographical sketch, look at his coffee table." On mine: Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise opened to page 119 (underlined: "...and so from shock to shock you live/ A hollow, pale affirmative..."). Also The Errancy by Jorie Graham. Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing by Coser et al. A folded copy of The New York Times Sunday classifieds. Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations by Al Franken. Nabokov's Despair. A dog-eared first edition of Alison J. Smith: Collected Letters. Home | Editor's Desk | Poetry | Prose | Guidelines | Email | Links |