Candy Shue
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Why Prose Poems? I write short stories as well as poetry and the membrane between flash fiction and prose poetry is a permeable one for me. I enjoy adding a narrative element to poetry as much as I like including poetic imagery in fiction. In the case of "Seven Year Itch" and "I Could Google", I liked being able to retain the joy of rhyming at the same time that I was telling a kind of story. Both poems are "narrated" by a character who speaks in a very distinct voice. There has always been cross pollination between genres and forms and I'm very happy to be part of the current mix!
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I Could Google
you, ogle you, bugle you, boggle you, boogie down and baffle you, shuffle you, raffle you, youthful fool, beautifully lewd, shrewd, but just how truthful too? My only muse, my big strong Zeus, you’re A prime choice, but oh so loose. No papoose? Nude and juiced, cruise, cruise, cruise, sluice, sluice. Brewed and brood, chewed and bulled. I offer you sap (a tap? a map?) while you chaff and laugh your guts out. I noose while you snooze. Weed and seed my steed then freeze. Read! Alas, a breed built for speed, not creed. Brutal or frugal, I’m through with you. Boo hoo, says who? Don’t gaggle or snigger, giggle, or goggle, waffle or wiggle, snicker or toggle. I’m a loco yo-yo, a woeful mo’fo, a soulful Van Gogh, a bitchy So-and-So, a trash-talking taboo, a walking snafu seeking a pas de deux, (she says hopefully) you too?
Seven Year Itch
Shake well, exfoliate gently, diamond lacers lacerate and amputate merrily. Infinitesimal, shape-shifting spheres, supersede themselves every 49 dog years. Mitochondrial cell cities of angels taking wing, all the day (and night) long, iterating and reiterating. A whole new you, molecularly speaking. A new Spring hat for every cheeky ribosome, every organelle, piquing. Does Ponce de Leon still search for pure water? What slow torture. We belly up to the bar and order a fruit acid and Botox half caf frappucino shake. You’re about 11-1/2 people, give or take. Time after time, forever staking the same vine. This season’s berry ferments into next season’s wine. Does our matter, always madder, really matter? So much empty space, collapsing in on itself, in tatters. Vaster, please, don’t put me yet on a shelf. (Well into Number 6, but then I’m dating myself.)
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Candy Shue's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Washington Square, Pif Online Magazine, Paragraph, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, VerbSap.com, The Booksmith Reader and other publications. She lives just below the fog belt in San Francisco and can be reached at ceshue@earthlink.net for weather reports and other interesting factoids.