PROSE POETRY
JEREMY MARKS
My daughter reads
My daughter reads the glory of four o’clock flowers. She hears the ur in purple. We install a window to make words on paper match chlorophyl and paint syllables. A blue bunting on a stick with a raindrop dangling from its tip. Water leaves crow’s feet like eat, a dark competitor. My youngest sees a black beetle’s shell but she prefers the one in green armor: een like screen. She doesn’t know those emerald wings consume all our ash trees. The letter c was her mystery at first until we said it slithers when followed by an e. But a c with an a or an o has a catlike prowl. Birds should eschew such curiosities, but what is ir if not another ur. And e followed by w is an unpleasant sensation save when it suckles a lamb. I don’t know why the word “wonder” is spelled with an o but pronounced with a u. Something about the latter letter is underhanded which is also a lesson.
Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears in New Verse News, Everyday Fiction, Ginosko Review, The Journal of Expressive Writing, and more. His full-length collection, of Fat Dogs and Amorous Insects (2021), is published by Alien Buddha Press.
