Ricochet: Prose Poem
Saturday Poetry Prompt: bouncing back/around
Once a carelessly tossed out tobacco cherry bounced off the brick wall of wind at highway speed — returned through the crack in the window to burn your thirty dollar purse —
While you were still screaming about it, I said, I dismissed the error:
I’ll get you a new one…
That ricochet of weeping, the dollars lost in the fabric of nightmare driving — the walls you keep plunging into — divorced from sex and stillness —
I began by reading Shakespeare because I thought that was what we all did, because I thought that was where language started and ignorance ended, because I couldn’t bear the sight of my too too unsullied flesh…driving nightmares through their literary paces – not homing in on the syllable stress count like a clever person – like a cholesterol test – enough to know there’s always ten of them – then – and when there isn’t it means something –
I hate deep ditches, the ditches deep enough to hide the 300 pound beast before he leaps and it’s
too fucking late not to hit him — bounces off cracked demolished headlight — spins into the other side of the road but snow kicked up so burly winter brown coat must have helped
