notes to an american

In honor of Joan, I offer these prose poems for public consumption. They were a part of a short project I completed recently:

One:

You see yourself as a comma in the sentence. Everyone has been writing, and there you are to provide space to break, lying underneath the line of the text like a hand from the grave. In this moment given the breathing, you’d like to think that you and I have come, to be, one.

Two:

Someone’s always stealing your inventions, always filing the patent before you. The television plays their infomercials into your sleep. In your dreams, the thief is a small, scrupulous Asian man who sneaks around the bushes outside your house. You rarely ever see him, but you always see the flash of his glasses reflecting the sober yellow light coming from your work lamp. The dog, meanwhile, shits in the bathtub upstairs.

Oh no! I've denatured the poem. I've prosed poetry. My resignation is forthcoming, and I will soon fall upon my pen.