A Few Stories for the Honey Thieves
It’s finals week, so I’m doing something a bit different than usual. Below are a few of the published pieces from what a hope will be a future collection of prose poems: Stories for the Honey Thieves. Each prose poem will be inspired by or in conversation with or dedicated to a writer or filmmaker or artist of some kind that has inspired/influenced my writing/life.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus with Cupid the Honey Thief
Basquiat
Basquiat paints a crown on cardboard. He paints another. He paints one for Louis Armstrong. He paints one for everyone in New York. Basquiat paints a grid. It’s a guide to the metro. And the central nervous system. Here are the arteries, here the veins. He paints a belt to start tying some of them off. Basquiat paints a red doorway. The red doorway is death. He paints an angry alphabet beside it. He paints semen and cartoons. He paints a pastiche of nude nights. The painting is almost done. He just has to paint the wall behind the painting. And the people partying around him. And the history of black bodies in America. And all of Manhattan. It will take no time at all. He’s very fast.
Nadezhda
Osip Mandelstam is writing his poem with a piece of glass on a black fir tree. His wife Nadezhda is watching so she will remember what he has written. The poem is about Osip’s childhood, and the long river to Siberia, and the sound of bells ringing, and a fire in the Red Square. Osip writes by the light of a fish-oil lamp. When he is finished he hides the piece of glass in Nadezhda’s sleeve. They bury the lamp. They gather cobwebs from the tree branches to wrap around them as they sleep. Nadezhda nestles into Osip’s beard and puts her hand on his chest. They both know he will not wake in the morning.
Bruno
Bruno Schultz is writing down everything the Messiah says. The Messiah is small. You could hide him in your cupboard, he could sit inside your tea cup. His hands move as he speaks of a second childhood, and the nature of shame, and an unlimited autumn. In the next room someone is playing a piano, but with their blood instead of their fingers. If he looked up, Bruno would see through his window people burying letters in their gardens. But he does not look up. He continues writing his manuscript.
Pablo Neruda’s Ode
As Pablo Neruda waits for the morning, he sings to the night. He sings the night a blue song, with his blue throat. He sings that the night is a magnolia tree. He sings that it is a cat, an old train, a secret love. He sings that he loves it, even as it is ending.
Kafka’s Pages
Kafka jumps rope while we are sleeping. Kafka has lit the black candles. Kafka sets his typewriter towards the world. Kafka has stolen Cupid’s arrows! He practices shooting them against the dawn. His apartment swarms with empty pages. The pages make their horrible clicking sounds. They are ready.
“Basquiat” and “Bruno” were first published in HAD. “Pablo Neruda’s Ode” and “Kafka’s Pages” were first published in TXTOBJX. “Nadezdha” was first published in Pithead Chapel.
These are exquisite!