STATE LINES
California Poetry
A prose poem is a poem written in prose instead of verse. Excepting line breaks, it uses all the mechanisms of poetry. Maw Shein Win’s “Score” is a good example of the form’s intriguing contradictions. The title refers to a film score, but rather than executing a poem with lyrical designs, Win describes the music by cataloging a whimsical list of images. Some are less detailed, even faceless, like the “heroin addict” and “forest ranger,” while others are extremely precise, such as the surreal “lemon rolling down the hill.” I suspect these images flashing past our vision have been drawn from a specific movie, one that features the heroine appearing in the poem’s last sentence.
“Score”
The film score is a Turkish bathhouse, a thankless accountant, a back country road in Montana, a shy teenager, a wine glass with a painting of a cow on it, the underbelly of a cat, the stream running along the outside of a prison, the shadow of an orchid, a heroin addict, a blanket statement, a lemon rolling down the hill, a blister on the tip of a finger, a forest ranger, a chunk of ice melting, a bully, a bowl of fresh honey, an abandoned baby, two bank robbers drinking coffee, the edge of the volcano, a loose belt, a sorrowful laugh, a broad brushstroke, three dice, the right side of his face and an orange coat left on a park bench. The blue light hitting the Venetian glass in a way that the heroine could only imagine.
“Score” is from Score and Bone (c) 2016 by Maw Shein Win. The poem appears with the permission of Nomadic Press. All rights reserved.
Maw Shein Win’s most recent chapbook is “Score and Bone,” from Nomadic Press, and her full-length poetry collection, “Invisible Gifts, New and Selected Poems,” will be published by Manic D Press. She is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito.