|
A cloud attaches itself to the roof of my neighbor's car. He waves
me over and asks if I'd mind lending him hand and back and muscle.
We tug on a crowbar inserted between car and cloud, but the cloud won't
budge. All we manage to do is dent the car roof. Then we devise
a new strategy, a variation on a chess move called the Ant Slab.
We place doughnuts in a trail from the car over to an open suitcase containing
a doughnut pyramid. Nibbling on doughnuts, we watch. The cloud
rumbles, the cloud grumbles, the cloud comes unglued. It follows
the doughnut trail, hovers over the suitcase, and then attaches itself
to my right side. I'm wearing half of a suit made from jellyfish.
My neighbor, waving in neighborly fashion from his car, drives off.
Copyright 2001, John Bradley
John Bradley's prose poems have appeared in a number of journals, including The Prose Poem: An International Journal. He has two prose poems in the current Best Of issue, which is available as an anthology through White Pine Press. An essay of his on the prose poem appeared in a recent issue of Quarter After Eight. He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship and, this year, an Illinois Arts Council grant. He is the editor of Atomic Ghost and Learning to Glow, a collection of essays, published this year by the University of Arizona Press.
|