POEM OF THE MONTH
May
Prose Poem
Memory Foams by Derek Mueller
PLEASURE/PRESSURE
Couldn't count on five hands the old houses
so neglected that two pipes totally fuse together
I've seen. I would work those joints damn near
forever, as a younger plumber, grunt'n'a monkey
wrench over bad couplings until they give
too much. My parents never bothered with shit
in marriage, just stuck it out. Point is, I always
felt bondingas possible breaking. Pleasure/
pressure, you know? After separating, I skewed
absurd, like cursing a bag of frozen peas for being
cold. I'd lay in the bed she and I had shared,
staring at the cap-less mascara tube she left
beside the dresser, trying not to pass out,
lightweight as I am, back to drinking after Paul
shoved a picture of his stripped finger in my face
when he saw me checking out at the Gerbs.
He'd slipped, climbing one of them ceiling-high
backstock shelves to grab a box of Pampers on
a nightshift, and his ring caught. I'd lay in bed,
saying drunkly, ain't that just like degloving, Paul,
that solid vow you carried around shaving you
sharp like some makeshift tent stick, dammit—
except worse 'cause now there's nothing left
to stake down, the mascara's long bled and gone
from the stem, no eyelashes remain to speak of,
and Paul, I said, ain't it unbearable to be love's
roughly squared bone.
Josiah Cox is from Kansas City, MO. He’s a graduate of Yale Divinity School and The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. His poems are forthcoming or recently published in Smartish Pace, Literary Matters, Bad Lilies, and Commonweal.
Charles Simic’s description of the prose poem as “a monster-child of two incompatible impulses, one which wants to tell a story and another, equally powerful, which wants to freeze an image, or a bit of language, for our scrutiny” seems close to my own experiences with it. The poem above began with a few images that accumulated in force until the voice that I have come to identify as Melvin Bellwether’s began to speak of them. The narrow prose was an instinctive choice early on. Somehow it felt appropriate to Mel’s consciousness and character. I am less interested in narrative per se than moments of self-disclosure (hence dramatic monologue, I guess) and focused disclosures of reality to the self. Prose might be à la mode in poetry, but often it is either limpid or nebulous, aloof in its own strangeness, easily mediocre. I very much am still figuring it out.
Prose Poem is my most favorite form of poetry. The wall-like prose blocks excite me for many reasons, that they’re so accessible tops that list. In Josiah Cox's “Pleasure/Pressure,” the intricacies of human connections are mirrored masterfully through the lens of working class experiences. Cox intertwines the physicality of the plumbing trade with the emotional labor of a divorce, using the metaphor of fused pipes and stubborn joints to explore themes of resilience and breakdown in both materials and marriages. “I always felt bonding as possible breaking. Pleasure/pressure, you know?” His reflections extend beyond the personal, touching on moments of absurdity and pain that punctuate the aftermath of separation. “After separating, I skewed absurd, like cursing a bag of frozen peas for being cold.” I love how the poem is mysterious and ambiguous throughout but never vague, never abstract to the point of abandon. With a smooth blend of narrative and lyric, the poem is both clever and tender without ever being contrived. The use of objective correlatives in this poem would impress TS Eliot. As Cox navigates the remnants of the speaker’s past—whether it's a cap-less mascara tube or a tent stick—he invites us to consider how the pressures of love can both form and fracture our sense of self.
