prose poems
Steph Gray
$6
How they rotate their vowels,
is how they drew it out, is how they sounded it out, it’s what was left unsaid, it’s what was left unread, it was without silent e, it was a faux that became undone (and showed what, for what it’s worth), it was the undone that outdid itself (to where?), the long and short became compressed, it was how they broke the vowels, it was how they re-upped the diphthongs, it was how the hymn distorted itself, it was how the gravel roaded, it was how the sheet rocked, it was how the way was high, it was how the frontage roaded, it was how your misplaced em-pa-thied, there’s nothing anywhere close to prime time, who designated time as prime, how did the prime become timed, when you grabbed your stopped watch, when you neglected to fix it for years, when the time stopped in your desk drawer, when your desk drawer forgot the time, when told to keep track of time that did not want tracking, to be told you were running on LA time, to be told you were running out of NY time, to be told no one knew what Chicago time was, to be asked why you do that all the time, who’s time was all?, it was, wasn’t it, open all the time, they own their own niche, they own their own nocturnal, oh sure, dude, for real, what was the reason, bruh—no matter what, being slightly off beat ‘cause you’re listening for the beat, not feeling it to anticipate it, we think the answer is…there’s no answer, i wasn’t really sure what was going on, to render yourself blank, editing every syllable, that’s so real, i sure don’t have the answer, it’s something you’ve seen before, haunted by that you know, there’s nothing you can do, it’s just that…it’s just the way it is, one day of normal, missing peripheral vision, a slow moving train wreck, carving out your own meaning, pretending that you’re here
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copyCover disposable camera celluloid photograph by author.
Poet-filmmaker
Steph Gray is the author of eight poetry collections, including the above/ground press titles below, the book
Shorthand and Electric Language Stars (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2015), and chapbook
A Country Road Going Back in Your Direction (Argos Books, 2015). Work has appeared in
Brooklyn Rail,
A Perfect Vacuum,
The Recluse,
Boog City, among others. Gray's experimental super 8 films and videos have screened internationally, including retrospectives at Anthology Film Archives (NYC), San Francisco Cinematheque and Mono No Aware (NYC). In Canada, Gray's work has shown in a retrospective with the 8 Fest (2022, Toronto) and film festivals including Antimatter (Vancouver) and the Inside Out LGBTQ+ Film Fest, among others.
This is Gray's third above/ground press title, after
Go Under The Surface (2018) and
Words Are What You Get / You Do It For Real: poems and prose poems (2019).
To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at
www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
