Prose poems | Alex Stolis

 pc: Internet Archives

The man on the radio says, today we should ask our friends the open-ended question;

'So what was it like?'

It was like a sonic boom with the sound turned off. It was like a puffed

up robin shivering in a tree. It was like nothing we’d seen before. It was

everything we never expected it to be. It was not it but something else.

The something we were searching for. The something that felt like being

lost; lost in someone’s voice, lost in between the molecules that make up

the air we breathe. The something that became it; the something that got

our skin to tingle, our stomachs to churn and our mouths to go bone dry.

It makes us hard and wet; it makes us want need desire yearn. Go ahead.

Tell us what it feels like.  

The man on the radio says this next song is for you

as if he knows you. As if he saw you in the front yard

in a worn pair of jeans, dirt on your hands planting for

spring. As if you slept next to him in nothing but an old

t-shirt, one leg wrapped around the bedspread. Does he

know the scar on your back, does he remember the day

your mother died; how you love to make up backstories

for people you see on the street. I try to recall the last

time we met. I try to remember the sound of your voice,

the curve of your jaw; I’ll try to find you, left of the dial.

The man on the radio laughs because the man on the radio fucks a model too

If this were a screenplay there would be a slight break in the action;

time for a little narrative exposition. Time to make the scene some-

thing right out of a movie; complete with neo-noir dialogue, a verite’

look and killer soundtrack. If this were anything but what it really is

it might not be artificial; it would be colored inside the lines, names

redacted. This is the last leg we will stand on before the credits roll

us over: Me wondering where the hell I went; you, all blearing eyed

and wet, waiting for another chance to reshoot the final scene.

 The man on the radio says it is a beautiful night out there

It’s a square room. There’s always more to the picture than meets

the story; more to a smile than glossy lips, intentionally exposed

bra straps and ice-cold fresh wet martinis. We imagine there are

corners; rounded, sharp or hidden. We imagine blind intersections,

imagine the person next to us making small talk knows when to hit

the brakes. We hit the skids, we circle the square room. Find where

we’re made; who we’re made to make it with. Imagine a slow wind

crashes the party, imagine we don’t want to get lucky; that we mint

our own luck. Imagine there’s more to our story than this picture.