PROSE POETRY
CHRISTY PRAHL
ALENTEJO
I’ve gone just down the street and all the way to Portugal to run away from my life. Found asylum on a sprawling farm where skirts of cork get peeled from trees to stop up the grenache. I can pick a lemon from a branch outside my door. I can forgive our very last argument for nearly doing us in. I borrow this life and its pillowcases swaying gently on the line and contemplate thread counts and other mathematics. Chickens wake me in the morning before their throats are slit for dinner. The hours consume me slowly, with intention. Later, the sun will set over the vineyards. Broad beans will snake around fencing, disguised as ardor. We are together in history but held apart by this map, red lines crossing over blue, each turn a steady reminder of how far we’ve come and gone.
Christy Prahl is an Illinois Arts Council grant recipient and the author of We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press, 2023) and two forthcoming chapbooks, With Her Hair on Fire (Roadside Press, fall 2025) and Catalog of Labors (Unsolicited Press, fall 2026). A Best of the Net and multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been featured in Poetry Daily, Asheville Poetry Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tar River Poetry, and others. She splits her time between a small workers’ cottage in Chicago and refurbished Quonset hut in rural southwest Michigan. More at https://christyprahl.wixsite.com/christy-prahl.
