WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: June 14, 2023

To continue with the prose poem theme (last week I wrote about Peter Johnson’s While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems ) I offer this stunningly wonderful poem by Joanna Fuhrman, author most recently of To a New Era (Hanging Loose Press, 2021).

The Future is a Bathtub Filled with Pure Rage

After the warnings are subtweeted as jokes// after the quizzes shrivel up // after the factory rips off its wings// after a multiverse is found in a barbie’s missing asshole// after I wake up to an ocean on fire// after I unplug the moment// after you soak up the sound// absorb the fear in the petunia// after we sweep up the squawking//rejigger the excess//after the wedding of misanthropes and mist//after the yelling rehearsal//after we fall out of bed //after the truth bomb is unbombed //after you right-click the call out//after you uninstall the update// after I left-click the catastrophe//unpack the paranormal//after the pause// before the yell//after the lavender-scented tremors and the sound of something not wind

only then can we be part-god/part-meme, only then can we navigate the soft spots we desire, can we unzip the narrative— 

Friend-enemy-follower-wizened pronouncer- dust influencer-baby ghost, just wait— one day we’ll float above the neighbor’s clackety-clack, smash language against tundra into smoke

Comments

[Denise Duhamel]

In my exuberance to post this poem, I failed to mention it was originally published in The Brooklyn Rail and will appear in Joanna's next book Data Mind (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press 2024).

[Gerald Fleming]

Completely love this poem, its energy, its intelligence.

[JOANNA]

I'm SO grateful that Denise picked this poem because I had taken it out of the book manuscript because I wasn't sure about it. I just put it back in. (Oh, also blogs can do odd things to spacing-- there's not a break after the em-dash.)

[Terence Winch]

Terrific poem.