Prose-poems—as the dual name implies—defy a standard genre classification. I initially embraced prose/poems in graduate school as a collage approach to presenting my work. The form reminded me of how the sound of a rattle shifts the beat, changes the focus, and shakes things (and people) up. By using contrasting language and braiding story threads together, the work can expand beyond any single poem or even the entire collection as each sentence or fragment may reflect an event or even a chapter in the context of a life.
by Jesse Devyn Crowe, first published by Two Sisters Writing and Publishing (www.twosisterswriting.com) as a 2021 Diverse Voices Contest Winner
A wise Charioteer learns to hold the reins loosely, lest the horses fight against the harness. Red, white, or blue, in moonlight we see only shades of gray. Clean your plate so you can have dessert. I never could resist asking why (still can’t). Jung proposed the unconscious and the conscious exist side-by-side interdependently, the health of one impossible without the other, neuroses attributed to an impaired connection between the two. Because children should be seen and not heard. At fifteen, I unwillingly lost my virginity to a football player named Bobby Higgins at Bible Camp, a secret I shamefully hid for days, even from my best friend. Metamorphosis means the caterpillar is no more. Aspen leaves rustling above my head casting dappled shadows on the ground as I ran. Big girls don’t cry. Everything in nature is curved; only man imposes straight lines. My mother said things that seemed too good to be true, typically were, but I left home anyway. I emulated Dylan’s rolling stone, “nothing to lose…” Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows. Handing over the reins to someone else nearly destroyed me. Identity, nothing more than camouflage—bland or spicy, dark or light—my choice, my mask. Changing horses mid-stream was my only escape. We can, you are, I am—one moment rippling to the next, connections I could never have predicted.
Winter in the Cascades: a snowy night, a warm fire, and my new lover’s embrace. Vulnerability is the measure of nakedness, both in thought and emotion, and I discovered without it we are mere cardboard cutouts of who we might otherwise become. Like wearing your hide inside out.... The day you harnessed your fate with mine and said, I don't have much, but everything that’s mine is yours. Eventually my focus became less about figuring out why all that horseshit happened in the first place and more about where the hell I was going. Mystics assert labels shape our reality, therefore we should choose our own thoughtfully. Driving to San Francisco one August night, singing “Born to Run.” There are days I don’t recognize my own writing, as if someone had wrestled the pen from my grasp and had their way, creating work for which I could neither claim credit nor blame. The road shaped my story, as it does many, but I don't hitchhike anymore. When I married again, I made a different vow—for as long as we both shall love—because that made much more sense than forever.
