High Water Mark: Prose Poems

By David Shumate

Everyday mindreading, a house full of Buddhas, and the papaya scent of the soul. An interview with Custer at a place of his choosing, "probably a steakhouse." The ability of dogs to smell the uncool. Hitler's barber imagines what might have been if only he'd leaned his weight into the razor. An oblivious Coronado narrowly avoids an ambush on the American plains. Freud lecherously lifts the skirt of a Mexican housekeeper who has far too much work to be bothered by "a pillar of modern thought. Or just some dirty old man."In lesser hands such disparate elements might fly wildly out of control. But in David Shumate's understated, brilliant prose poems, they come together in miraculously vivid riffs. The narrator of the title poem rhapsodizes, "I wouldn't mind seeing another good flood before I die. It's been dry for decades. Next time I think I'll just let go and drift downstream and see where I end up." Shumate's deft and refreshing collection takes us to amazing places with its plainspoken meditations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Release date: Oct 3, 2004
• ISBN: 9780822980148

David Shumate

Shih-Ming Li Chang is an associate professor of theatre and dance at Wittenberg University. She teaches dance ethnology, dance history, and dance composition in addition to Chinese opera dance, Western technique classes, and tai chi. She has participated in dance festivals across the United States, including the Academy of Dance & Fine Arts and Jacob's Pillow.

Book preview

I

The Rain

I suppose after the heavens and the earth I too would have created Adam and Eve. Or some pair of innocents like them. The first food would have been grapes, and of those they could have partaken freely. I would have bestowed on them a sense of humor and encouraged practical jokes. I would have let them learn about procreation on their own and practice it without shame. When they had a dozen children or so, when their hair had turned to gray, I would have shown them the way out to the sea. They could have traveled there often and written about it to their children's children. Some of their letters might have survived and these would be holy texts. Who knows? With a few small changes, things might be different today. But the rain…The rain…Now that was truly inspired. I would never have thought of that. Not in a million years.

The Polka-Dot Shirt

The soldier returns to the city, dusty and alone. Nothing is as he remembers it. Buildings have vanished. Streets have been rolled up and carted away. Even his favorite whores are pregnant and married in the suburbs. He rents a room in a fancy hotel. He takes a long shower and while his scalp is still warm he shaves his head. He opens his suitcase and is surprised to find he has picked up someone else's luggage at the station by mistake. He unfolds a Hawaiian shirt and tries it on. Some khaki pants. A pair of loafers. He studies his reflection in the mirror and thinks he has seen this man before. Perhaps in a news report. Someone accused of swindling the elderly. Or an artist obsessed with flamingos. He takes the elevator to the hotel lobby and orders a drink at the bar. A woman regards him from a nearby table and smiles. Soon he is sitting with her, inventing a life as he goes along. After a few drinks she leans over and whispers something in his ear. He follows her up to her room and there they make love in the way she prefers. But the whole time he is distracted, wondering what will happen when he returns to his room and tries on the pants with the orange and yellow stripes. And the polka-dot shirt.

The Japanese Rooms

Before I enter the Japanese rooms of her mind I bow to the servant and remove my shoes. I speak in whispers and slide one parchment door after another back until I cannot remember the way I came. I am offered a cushion to sit on and I wait in this room where she displays her most delicate things. Soon she approaches wearing a blue and white kimono and her hair pinned back. She is bearing something in her arms and as she nears I see it is the child she never had. She places a shy girl of two on a cushion across from me and offers us both some tea in the style of the old days. We listen to the distant lute. The waterfall. Perhaps we sit there for

Reviews for High Water Mark

[kropferama · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Prose poems that move you to think in unexpected ways. Shumate observes simple pleasures in life like How to Sit in a Cafe or the full live lived of passing through a small town. Every poem will send you thinking and looking to the next one.