On Edge
14 July 2021 Wednesday Prose Poem: the Other perspective
now there are more killers than ever
and I write poems for them — Bukowski
Yes, you can get fixed — and unfixed and affixed and they will attach a bumper to your belly because you’re just not safe
out there — you’ve been sitting on the edge for too fucking long — it stopped looking like an edge a long, long time ago — like you could just step off and there would be
a world to catch your foot — maybe flip you — hard, onto your back while you reflexively reach for genital protection — that’s just lucky and you know it —
but you’re actually on edge — you know you’re strung out and coming down — it’s such a long way down — and the crows have decorated your tombstone in advance
have determined what flecks are stone and shit — and somehow, heaving up on the belt — two hands or one — just isn’t quite the motion to begin to re-rise to your top —
and you know, at some point — you gotta come down.
J.D. Harms 2021
Prompt:
What I’d like to see, for today’s prompt, is to write a prose poem in the second person. Personally, I always find this challenging; not because it’s hard to write “you” instead of “I”, but I worry…
