Six Prose Poems by John Amen

Thirteen Months

          for CF

Saint Everywhere knew my name. She poised on the top rung of a ladder, reaching for the moon or a noose or a blackbird. Night after night, I woke trying to catch my breath. My afternoons unraveled like a forgotten prayer. I spent hours wrestling the angel of addiction, my story in cuts & bruises, tunnels in the skin. I've always wanted more, more of what never happened. I want my clinging & to forget it too.

Anniversary

          for Richard

Your red pistol, dried sunflowers, that unfinished canvas – visions of you wrapped in a gunpowder glare. The living fled, scattering their complaints like blood meal. You stayed behind, howling in the shelves. You couldn't have left if you'd wanted to.

Bardo

          for Richard

I could see my son talking to himself, shadow-boxing his diagnosis. I remember wearing a hat made of smoke. What hurts is I left the ones I love wandering in the leaves, it wasn't entirely by choice, I barely remember that carefree bullet.

At Some Point

          for Richard

You flapped for the sun, the sky held its ground. Rubber light & Oxy dawns. Flash of the barrel, your name powder in the dark, how my own life is divided – the silence before, the silence after.

Vigil

          for Richard

A visit from our mother of blades, dressed in gauze, eyelids smeared with blue mascara. Why'd he pull the trigger? she asked. Remnants of you tethered to a sulfuric cloud, our mother's shrill voice bouncing in the tunnel. I pulled the space blanket tight & prayed over your corpse. New voices instructed me, rising from the glow of September.

Waiting for the Sibyl

         after Abbas Kiarostami

Each morning, I sat in a purple courtyard. Tomorrow, I was told, maybe tomorrow. I never saw the sibyl, crashing my assignment, had no byline to peddle, no proof for the doubters, another Abel wandering a red world with a mark against him. For years I've studied the shadows that lurk behind a curtain, listening for a voice in the rafters. Visions flood my limbs before sleep churns like a pound lock, the sibyl ever silent, eyes unflinching in the dark. I've made it my life's work to put words in her mouth.