September 9, 2026September 9, 2026robertfredekenter

Two Prose Poems – Joshua Zeitler

Configurations: an abstract collage colour field glitch vispo by Robert Frede Kenter (2026). Colour scheme pastel blues, pink, red and white.

Convection

I needed to write an essay to bring down the temperature. Politicians always talk about bringing down the temperature, usually as a way of raising the temperature in the neighboring room. It spreads like that, the heat, one room to another to another, and then the President of Russia is taking off his shirt. He is, of course, quite comfortable shirtless in a hot room. Then the US Secretary of Health and Human Services is wearing skinny jeans into a hot tub. Is this what was intended? I desired some respite from the essay: a rest stop, a stranger, a glory hole. The essay as anonymous encounter, as discreet moan. My insistence on inserting myself was tiresome, I was sure. The essay as etching on stall door, where names fall around the ankles. Sometimes I catch the essay peeking sidelong at the urinals, but how do I call the essay out without exposing that I, too, was looking? How do I ensure the essay washes up when it’s finished? Do I have the patience to wait, dripping, while the hot, forceful air blows the essay dry?

Configurations 2. Royal and dark blue. by Robert Frede Kenter (c) 2026

Quarter

I wanted a solitude that could be spent like a coin, exchanged for a genius work of literature, a new car, a cashmere scarf, a great absence transformed into material abundance. If silence is the currency, how do I declare all I have been made heir to? Here is the form on which I claim the movement of my shadow as deduction. Here, the column of my assets towers unto toppling. I’m advised to scuttle my wealth into offshore accounts: some months on a Greek isle, a few more in the Arctic desert, as many years as I can part with in a Parisian garret. See now how wise my investment has been, how the riches insulate themselves from theft, how weeks of waiting for the merest word fattened my billfold. I trace the mortar of the bank’s face like a family tree. I wonder often if the nucleus of an atom yearns for true contact, whether the laws that govern its behavior are burden or relief. Rent in two, it can fuel or flatten a small nation. A gunshot, then thunder, heard for miles and miles. I wanted, in short, to name the lone voice not minimalism, but economy, to loose it in a chamber that would compound its keening.

Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They are the author of the chapbook Bliss Road (Seven Kitchens Press, 2025), and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Daily, Ploughshares, Foglifter, The Shore, Wildness, Frozen Sea, and elsewhere.Soc media: Instagram: @the_jayest_of_zees, Bluesky: @thejayestofzees.bsky.social

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