Two Prose Poems


I keep my fevers in a shoebox in the closet. Central Illinois' last blizzard. San Antonio, grifting, ninety-five or ninety-six. But this is not a diary. The box holds the colours of bedside walls, one a muted orange reminiscent of sherbet, and the taste of the air, in that room the vaguely sweet, slightly sickly flavour of erratic central heating and months without sunlight. From time to time I take them out, my fevers; I shake them into the sunlight to get a better look.

 

 

I misread museum as muse and bowed my head before the brick temple. Tourists scurried across the plaza with backpacks and maps; they had reached the end of a pilgrimage yet did not look suitably dehydrated or fatigued. I myself had pushed the same large yellow leaf eight blocks, switching between the inner and outer, right and left foot. Before long I needed to know the name of the foot's inside curve, and on arriving at the national muse, cringed with guilt over my unpreparedness. I was still standing, shifting my weight from side to side, when a toddler emerged from the building. His face was probably no more awake than when he entered, but he beamed with innocent sincerity. I brushed the dirt from a lower step and sat. It was going to be a long wait.

 

Copyright © Carrie Etter, 2005.

Carrie Etter teaches at Bath Spa University in the UK. She is a frequent contributor to Shearsman.