My condolences

to the annoyances

left by transparent bodies

lit up with the fire

of past hobbies

nothing in particular

but the sounds of yesterday

still whisper

leaving remnants

of a time I forgot

rewind the hands

on life's clock

please let the violence stop

this is the way things could be done

and i want you to know

that this silvery birch

and frozen thrush

are in cahoots

working together

to shelter

and feed scraggly babies

from the gnats and grubs

who live nearby

this counts as salvation

we linger in polar despair

even when we’re up to our

knees satisfied

bottomless subterranean wanting

struggling to imagine

that someone will

some tiny kindness will

feed us from the fetid

morsels that surround us

a sullen dwelling exchange

of our never there

for our ghostly here

the newborn cries a furtive

fortunate version of us

beaks and jaws wide as sunlight

not minding if rain gets in

or washes away the left over

sludge that we splattered

in our indecision

not awake enough to stroke

a line a curve a color

to mean or stand for

some hanging thread

that fragrances unwavering

we stilted without scent

a fragment yielding shape

the dinner bell alarms

our stomachs and annoyances

forcing us to flee the canvas

demanding payment

a reckless withdrawal

of trees stripped to their roots

still hungry still sating

As mentioned last Monday, we are launching a blog series in which our Prose. Partners will take on the question, "Why Prose.?"

To kick off the series, this week we welcome author, blogger, and editor, Jaime Mathis (@jaimemathis).

Why Prose.?

Because I want to be better. To strive for excellence in every comma, plot and spelling. To raise my bar by associating with writers more talented, diligent, and inspired than I am. Yes, I want a community that keeps me honest and challenges me to improve because I am a WRITER. Not a dilettante, not someone looking for free therapy and not someone trying to get laid or pick a fight.

Facebook is for people who don’t give a shit about the art of the written word and try to turn everything into a virtual popularity contest that has no reflection on the content, skill or merit of an idea or illustration. There is no place for pettiness or semantics or emotional neediness in Prose. as I imagine it. There are trenches that reach to glory, strung with sentences that are tight to bursting with pulchritude and punch. Prose. because you’re committed to building an empire of narrative and poem that has a fine foundation and something to screw light bulbs into.

I’m here because I want to be stretched within an inch of my skills, called to task on words that don’t quite sing and chided when semi-colons are merely decorative. I’m here because I believe in the power of craftsmanship and that it takes a community to hone a diamond from coal.

...

Stay tuned for this narrative in its entirety later today on The Official Prose. Blog at: blog.theprose.com/blog.

The room reeked of sweat. Old anxieties leaked through the skin and into the 1950s upholstery. A ceiling fan spun lazily overhead. It did little to clear the air. When the switch was flipped, it'd rained down cobwebs and a disgruntled brown recluse.

Augustine smashed it with a newspaper and frowned at the guts. He flicked them with an article about a terrorist attack and watched them sprawl on the rug in two pieces. They blended in with the burn scars from dozens of old cigars. Someone had put a vase of lilies in the middle of the table, old mourning flowers. They looked distinctly out of place, and their odor made his headache worse.

The room was silent. That bothered him. Silence was good for thought, but not just his. The others were using that silence too, thinking, deliberating. He wanted them doing neither. He wanted them making bad decisions on the edge of a second, on a time scale thinner than the hundred dollar pill perched between the chips. Instead he could see their eyes riveted on their cards. Bad poker faces. Too much tension, not enough twitch. They couldn't play casual the way he could.

He needed the dough. Dough meant bread, bread meant a little more time to find a job. It wasn't his fault he'd been laid off. The immigrants were always working for less. He took pay cut after pay cut until it broke him and he snapped. They released him for his cheek and for asking to be treated like a real man, not like them illegals posing as American. He hated the guy that'd taken his job. He dreamed so hard of killing him he could see it in his head clear as day.

Augustine dealt the last of the cards with a sneer. Even his name sounded pretentious. Like his mother and father were trying to deny their own slumming by forcing their kid to be a snot. All it ever got him was a black eye. He always knew they could have done better, but they were too busy throwing out their cash on whimsy to care about anything but the here and now. He was sick of the here and done with the now. He wanted a then with less pain and a future with more freedom.

He'd get it with the damned cards if he had to.

Ronaldo drummed his fingers against the table. It was the only part of him that moved, because his eyes didn't have to. His hand wasn't the best and wasn't the worst. It was the middle-ground, and he was used to that. His work broke his back but it was better than resorting to peddling drugs or people. He wanted to be better than that. Bigger than that. He didn't want the sins of his father to bleed down into his own skin.

Augustine didn't like him; he could smell that in a man. He could see it in his beady eyes and in the sweat gleaming off his brow. Every time he looked up he got a sneer. Men like him were the reason he always kept a baseball bat in his truck.

He shuffled his cards. Shuffled them again, playing them back and forth between his fingers. He gave the others a smirk that was meant to be cocky. Both glared. They looked ready to strangle him, and he wondered what they had on the table besides the chips. What they were gambling against. He wondered if they had a kid out there too, who wanted a present for his third birthday. Wondered if they wanted to get him a big gift this time since they couldn't be there in person.

He knew his son would rather have him there, but he couldn't grant that yet. Not if he wanted dough to put the bread on his belly.

Ronaldo flicked his eyes to a spider skittering across the table. Brown recluse, it was. Nasty things whose bites left rotting bruises. He crushed it, scattered it, and turned back to the others again. There was a faint pain in his chest, sharp like heartburn, and he thumped it with a fist distractedly.

Azrael watched his opponents quietly. The spider clambered to life again and wandered towards the table's leg, and his eyes traced it as the others sweated over their dead man's hands. It rose up and bit Augustine in the leg but he didn't feel it. Of course he wouldn't. Dead men didn't tend to be aware of much besides what'd killed them. Even then, Ronaldo was still oblivious to the blood flooding his shirt, and Augustine clueless that half of his skull was caved in.

The angel of death looked up at the clock and sighed. It would be a long sit, this poker game in purgatory.

He tossed in his chips with a click.

"I'll raise you."

Maybe.

Up in the sitting room

carved with a chisel

and a little soul

cheeky girl too full

of ideas and dreams

caught up in a corset

too tight for breath

for thought

for damning breasts

'Hey now girl,

mind your place'

simpler times.

Up in the stable

tied to an old post

rough hemp

rough hands and a

lash to dash away

the rebellious I wont’s

I cant’s

wipe away the ‘I’

'Hey now, slave,

mind your place'

simpler times.

Up in the office

mouthful of vinegar

hide hot from belt

and belittling

father dear had to

beat out the queer

kill off the tears

learn him to be

a real man

'Hey now, boy,

mind your place'

simpler times.

In went the trowel of thought

contemplations at midnight

evading sleep

drawing out night

till light reached out

smeared the planting grounds

with fresh concerns

earned by bills in boxes

seeding a new crop

of uncertainty

from tired soil still young

at twenty-four neither abused

or belabored to excess but just

enough to leave a rough

impression

in unmarked flesh

compressed

by nightmarish what-ifs and

beautiful dreams of the same

name

there's no shame

burying the worrying in hopes

that may not come to fruition

or hushing intuition

with a little ambition

fertilizer in dirt

leeched of value by too much

time beneath the glare of their

eyes

the demise of weeds

sprouting and self-doubting at

the finger-wagging

all uprooted

by those stalwart flowers

blossomed by their own

meager power

waiting for the shower

or just a smatter of praise

to rain and unfurl the petals

of something more

I woke on the wind

spiraled down

from the crown

of my mother

my brothers drifted

far apart and

my heart plunged

into the soil

and I toiled

smothered by the

arms of others

bowed by the boughs

that hovered to

block my sun

gales ripped roots

from the ground

and I found purchase

in the corpses

of dead contenders

I surrendered

to no element

fought the sky

for my relevance

I run deep and high

a tower in the

canopy

my place earned by

calamity

I am weathered

and tethered

and bountiful

and beautiful.