DPF / Palmer

For memory and May, from Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman.

from A world is coming up on the screen / by Michael Palmer

My cat has twelve toes, like poets in Boston.

DPF / Brainard

For brevity, from Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman.

from History / by Joe Brainard  (1942-1994)

almost every day is the anniversary of

DPF / Hass

For stranger than fiction, from Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman.

from Tall Windows / by Robert Hass, b. 1941

In Leiden, on the street outside the university, the house where Descartes lived was mirrored in the canal.

DPF / Bidart

For desolating landscapes, from Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman.

from Borges and I / by Frank Bidart, b.1939

We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed.

DPF / Atwood

For screech owls, from Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman.

from Women’s Novels / by Margaret Atwood, b. 1939

She had the startled eyes of a wild bird. This is the kind of sentence I go mad for.

DPF / Edson

For steering the right direction, from Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman.

from The Pilot / by Russell Edson, b.1935

He thinks he can use the back of a chair as a ship’s wheel to pilot this room through the night.