National Prose Month

In National Prose Month
we will sit in even rows
and dedicate ourselves
to lucid exposition.

We will offer an unambiguous thesis
and refer back to it frequently
in a defense filled with
concrete examples.

Assonance and consonance
will be discouraged.
The chromatic and the lyrical
will be disallowed.

Purple may be applied sparingly
during National Prose Month,
but there will be none of
that Aeolian business, please.

I personally will hang my hat
upon this bust of Cicero
that keeps my desk anchored
firmly to the ground.

Zen and the Music of Earth Wind and Fire

When things weren’t going well
in the studio,
and the fellas
were getting discouraged,
Maurice would say:
Before enlightenment,
cut wood and carry water;
after enlightenment,
cut wood and carry water.

Philip might begin a session
with remarks about
how all music is supported by silence,
carries silence at its core,
and how we as musicians
must remember
that the music
is as empty
as the silence.

Verdine, more advanced
than any of them,
would gaze upon
the glass of the booth
as if the moon’s face
had come to rest there.

Benjamin Goluboff teaches at Lake Forest College. He is the author of Ho Chi Minh: A Speculative Life in Verse and Biking Englewood: An Essay on the White Gaze, both from Urban Farmhouse Press. Some of his work can be read at https://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/faculty/goluboff/