Poem: Dream-Clung, Gone

By Lauren Russell

Oct. 13, 2017

Selected by Terrance Hayes

Having included a few prose poems among my selections thus far, I won’t offer a definition of the form, except maybe to say that since “poem” is the noun and “prose” the adjective, the prose poem must essentially be a poem. This example stitches poem (identified by the frame of quatrains) to prose (identified by the four lines inhabited by Absence). Here, in the ear as well as the eye, a song drifts around a story.

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Terrance Hayes is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently “How to Be Drawn,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2015. His fourth collection, “Lighthead,” won the 2010 National Book Award. Lauren Russell is the assistant director of the Center for African-American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh. Her debut collection, “What’s Hanging on the Hush,” is being published this month by Ahsahta Press.

Illustration by R.O. Blechman

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A version of this article appears in print on , Page 17 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Dream-Clung, Gone. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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