“Prose is Long,” I’m Afraid to Say . . .

     by Nadine Lockhart 


    so I write it on a napkin at the writers’ conference and pass it to my neighbor, 
another poet, who nods in agreement. Tonight’s reader, monotone, repetitive, says 
something about water, and oars, and disconcerting lumps—a jellyfish—massive, in the 
water, a boat, more water, the oars dipping into the pitching sea, how the man in the 
story, a professor, takes the oar, pushes it against the mass, measuring and poking. 
The boat, the oars, and the sea—go nowhere; the story goes nowhere, and takes a long 
time to do it. I row far from the repetition, far from phrases like “the really 
real world,” and “‘Fine,’ she said, unsteadily.” I row from the protagonist named 
Henrietta, who gets stung by the poisonous tentacles as the professor clinically 
observes her, jotting notes in pencil as ink would bleed if wetted. And I might have 
heard the first part, dreamed the second, mixing it all with the time I studied at CEDO, 
tidewater invertebrates, eviscerating starfish pulling their mates inside out. I row far 
from the swelling Henrietta, “Goodbye, Henrietta,” I say, waving my briny oar dripping 
with sea. “Goodbye, Professor Jellyfish. . . . Goodbye,” I say, to the really real 
world, unsteadily, “Goodbye.”