two prose poems

[Selected and discussed by Carl Phillips in "A Brief Stop on the Trail of the Prose Poem" from Coin of the Realm]

Part of Eve's Discussion by Marie Howe

It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand, and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop, very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.

On the Writing of a Prose Poem by Russell Edson

When thinking of writing a prose poem it seems more than natural to think of suicide; to think of someone at last exposed to the God of things who might thunder, as I imagine it, from the sky, you have ruined my thing, now I shall ruin your thing.