First Thanksgiving (A Prose Poem)

The fire still licked at the stone; the rock hard stone that was covered in flammable juices. On it, her skin sat before them: browned, steamed, smoked. She smelled of fat that dripped off her sides. The skin felt crisp, a drying leaf bending just a little before breaking. Below the smoking blanket rests a deep, white mattress of flesh. Chunks of parallel running fibers tear from each other by little fingers. Little fingers attached to little hands attached to little arms controlled by a little brain of a little human: eyes wide and savage, mouths wide and dripping saliva. As flesh led to flesh led to flesh, the hungry fingers tore and tore and tore, ripping chunks of moist, fibrous joy; joy that was still hot enough to scald the little fingers; joy that was placed onto the cold, dirty floor. The big human with the big beard and the big hair, flowing from head to back to foot, called out a note from the horn in his neck. He spoke no coherent sentence, but the little humans understood—they stood back. Big human picked up a rock: gray, cold, sharp, rough. Hacking away, one bone came off, covered in dark, moist flesh and black skin. Then another, and another, and another, and then there were four piled on the ground. Limbs made a fire pit over the tinder of flesh. Big human picked up a limb, smelled the bone, and slammed it into his beard. They all jumped onto the platter and devoured the fire. So went the First Thanksgiving.

Post-writing analysis:

I thought that writing a prose poem was a unique experience, one that is quite different from either traditional poetry or traditional prose. I’m glad that I tried it after having gone through both units, because it gives me an appreciation for the hybrid nature of the form. I feel that it is less structured than either traditional form, which frankly I don’t like. I like the structure because it gives me a tangible framework within which I can focus my efforts.

Also, I find that poetry lets me express emotional states and sensual states, while traditional fiction allows me to create a sense of character and empathy. With the prose poem, the only thing I felt I was able to develop was an awkward sense of trying too hard to be both poetic and syntactically logical. I don’t think I plan on writing more prose poems any time soon, although I like the concept of writing traditional short stories with some amount of rhythm, and potentially with rhyme… What a cool idea! (The Greeks were smart J…)