snow poem

So a prose poem is a poem without line breaks. Many people can't tell the difference between a prose poem and a short fiction story. SO lemme tell ya the diff: Prose poem is emotion driven, rather than character or plot driven as in fiction. so here is me prose poem to be workshopped wednesday:

There’s something in California’s snow.
by me

It makes people greedy, makes them happy (a full-blown child-happy, like when uncle Mac visited that one time with several handfuls of candy when you were five—those chocolate ones with liquor in the middle), makes them generous, makes them irrational, makes strangers into friends.

People gather it, horde it, place it on their hoods, roofs and trunks. They fill up shopping bags, ice chests, and truck beds at the summit and bring it down the mountain (Quick, before it melts!) back into town, to friends and family that never expected to see snow today, this year, ever. It brings smiles, brings people together (they were going to a movie just now, but a snowball to the face changes that). Even immigrants fresh from the desert who only know snow from Hollywood soap-flakes cast into giant fans know how to wage a snowball war, and if they don’t they learn as its first casualty.

They want to touch it, want to stick their hands in it (just to do it), want to lick it, kick it, eat it, fall in it, write their name in it (kids too). People buy snow gear for this trip, plan the drive, make the trek, wait in traffic (it takes all day, trust me), only to reach the CHP barricade that mandates chains to proceed. Those without chains must turn back. They don’t though. They park in a large turnout with their chainless kindred, and go on a pilgrimage the short two miles to town, unaware the snow there has melted from traffic.

A guy drives passed the chainless in his 4x4 long-bed monster truck (a native) and returns much later to the turnout with his bed overflowing with snow. He steps out wearing his galoshes and drops the lid, hops back inside, drives away, stops, reverses quickly before stopping hard—dislodging the block of snow from the bed, which smashes on the ground with a deep fwump—a miniature mountain conquerable by toddlers. With mitten-muffled claps they scream and cheer, and gather their snow gear: saucers, sleds, toboggans, skis and boards to take turns going down this slope. The fathers come to the native and thank him, one man with watery eyes shakes his hand and says: Anytime you are in Cuernavaca stop by, and hands a slip of paper to him.

***

the end. This is actually getting workshopped next next wednesday...