Post #666: Some Prose-Poems From Jason Irwin

OMAR'S DESIRE

Not satisfied gawking at department store display windows
or admiring from afar as women walked past him in the park
where he sat every day for lunch, Omar's desire for women's
shoes soon turned to obsession. He began following these
women home and then robbing them. When the police
knocked on his door, Omar sat encircled by his stolen menagerie
of footware, breathing deep the scent of a pair of Carmen Ho
Penny sandals, as if trying to breathe meaning into his life. "I
couldn't help myself! I was intoxicated! I was in denial!" he
cried from the witness box, the women he robbed staring back
at him in the sun-filled courtroom.

RECESS
In the school yard a group of children are eating insects.
One girl exclaims 'they taste like grandma!" "No! they
taste like bananas!" a boy with dimples counters. Against
the wall the janitor shares a cigarette with a nun. 'Soon it
will be night", he smiles, twirling his mustache, "and then
we can dance."

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

I was sitting at the bar at the Lennox Lounge, drinking a Budweiser,
watching a skinny lady with buckteeth talk to a guy with a dice earing
and a red fedora. That's when a drunk stumbled over and asked me
if I was a Zapata revolutionary. Said he'd shoot me dead. I explained
I was there to see the jazz combo, that despite appearances, I was
not Mexican. After buying him a beer we talked for hours like two
long lost friends. he told me how he hated Oprah. I smiled and
thought how much Proust missed out on, sitting in his room.