Recently, I had the pleasure of reading a delightful collection of micro-fictions/prose poems: The House of Grand Prado by Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman. I have to confess that I was hesitant to open the book because I rarely enjoy reading collaborations. In my opinion they often read as inside jokes or private dialogs between two writers in which one riffs on the style and quirks of the other. But The House of Grand Prado proved to be an exception. It reads as if Meg and Jeff are one writer. Somehow, they composed seamlessly together. I wondered as I read it: are their sensibilities, artistry, and voices that similar? I thought I’d ask them about the process that brought this book into being.
NA: How Did the Book Come About? 
JF: Meg and I came together initially at a YouTube reading for Lit Youngstown. We were both fans of each other’s writing but had never met in person. We had exchanged some emails before the reading, but then after the event, we began meeting every Tuesday on Zoom. The darkness and loneliness of the pandemic created a real need in both of us to reach out, and our Zoom sessions were so energetic and lively. The book idea emerged spontaneously from these sessions. Meg brought it up, but I jumped on it. We had already been doing prompts together, and then almost spontaneously and unconsciously, we stepped into a story and began riffing off each other as we had done in our conversations. From there, we came up with various methods and approaches for working on pieces. At some point, we realized we were on our way to a book with six or seven different thematic threads.
NA: What are the best and/or the hardest aspects of composing with another prose poet or writer of micro fiction?
MP: Our book emerged out of playfulness and the need for something joyful. Things seemed to come easily. It was as if Jeff, and I had known each other all our lives, and the more we talked, the more we had in common. We trusted each other almost immediately and while writing, we always said “yes” to whatever creative ideas or images emerged in the initial writing phase. We would just keep writing, building on what each of us wrote, trying to see where our poems or micros might go. Our two voices never merged, but instead created a dynamic tension in the pieces. We revised every piece together. The hardest part might have been cutting pieces we really loved from the book, because they just didn’t fit. There are still one or two pieces we wish we hadn’t had to cut. Working with each other has been inspiring for our individual work as well. We were two strangers at the beginning, and now we’re brother and sister.
NA: I’d love it if you each picked a prose poem and commented on its evolution.
JF:
The Salesman Gets a Suit
My father walks into a clothing store. “Sell me a suit,” he says to a thin bald-headed man. Without even looking, the bald-headed man pulls a blue silk suit off the rack. “This suit is made for you,” he says holding the hanger in his right hand and letting the pants legs drape over his arm. “Just feel it.” My father brushes it gently with his fingers as though smoothing out the curls of his own hair. “I’m a salesman too,” he says. “I knew it,” the bald-headed man says. “I could tell the minute you entered the store.” The suit is shiny like the lobby in a posh hotel, shiny like a brand new Cadillac parked in the car dealer’s window. My father takes it into the dressing room, and when he comes out, the suit swells with his plump belly. The sleeves of the jacket swallow his hands. The pants legs sweep the floor. He looks short and fat, lost in cloth. “This suit makes you look like a whole new man, like someone ready to make a killing,” the bald-headed man says and leads him to the mirror. In the mirror, the suit shapes itself to his body, fits him to a tee. In the mirror, he’s as graceful as a shadow, as light on his feet as a cool breeze rustling his pants legs. He leans forward as if telling the suit a secret. He smiles, and the suit smiles back.
From The House of Grana Padano
Initially published in On the Seawall
I wrote “The Salesman Gets a Suit” to accompany Meg’s “My Mother the Realtor.” We both had parents who were in sales. This piece, like so many in the book, weaves a line between prose poem and micro. In the “Salesman Gets a Suit,” the salesman and his son enter a store that sells men’s suits. The store salesman spots them and begins pitching the father on a very expensive suit, and the father, though the suit clearly doesn’t fit him, buys it because he’s charmed by the store salesman. I did witness something like this when I was fifteen. But my father was buying an overcoat, not a suit. He was a very good salesman, but an easy target for flattery. The experience is transformed through the lens of a tale. The store salesman is like a sorcerer weaving a spell over the father, and the mirror is a magic mirror in which the suit suddenly fits perfectly and in which the father looks years younger. He smiles into the mirror, “and the suit smiles back.” The piece is a lyricized narrative that derives its power from images, associations, and rhythmic intensity.
MP:
Fatherless Daughters
In Springtime, abandoned daughters burst like myopic butterflies with binoculars attached to their faces while they try to identify their absent fathers, who zip through the clouds like geese, but they’re not geese, and they have no sense of direction. “Can you see me down here, Dad?” one abandoned daughter trills, while one father zigzags ever closer to the sun. “It’s hurting my eyes,” he yells waving his pale wings like flags. Another abandoned daughter spots a cloud in the shape of her father. “He wasn’t much of a father,” she says. “He’s better as a cloud.” Another daughter shouts, “Heads up!” as her father falls from the sky headlong into the crowd of abandoned daughters. The other fathers cringe and avoid looking down. “They’re out to get us,” they say. “They want money or hugs or something.” The daughters, tired of treading air, fling themselves toward their fathers, eager to bring one home, even if he’s someone else’s father, even if he never earns another dime, even if he sheds all his feathers—but the fathers prove illusive, no longer really fathers.
From The House of Grana Padano
Initially published in Plume
I grew up without a father and write about it a lot. Working with Jeff got me very excited about writing poems and stories informed by tales and fables. I wrote “Fatherless Daughters” in response to one of his pieces. I saw it almost like a painting in my mind with fathers floating in the sky and abandoned daughters below hoping to catch one. The piece creates an emotional landscape, a metaphorical reality that is somehow true to my own experience. It is darkly funny and perversely sad. Jeff and I share that sensibility, so it was easy for him to contribute. “Fatherless Daughters” is driven by images. The daughters in the piece are bereft. They want to know why the fathers have abandoned them, and though the fathers prove to be illusive, each of them is still hoping that one will fall to earth so she can claim him. I was trying to get a different angle on a story that is actually quite commonplace. The daughters are alert to finding their fathers, while simultaneously aware that the fathers aren’t real.
JEFF FRIEDMAN is the author of ten books of poems and mini stories, including The House of Grana Padano cowritten with Meg Pokrass (Pelekinesis, 2022); The Marksman (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020); and Floating Tales (Plume Editions/Madhat Press, 2017); Friedman’s work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England Review, The Antioch Review, and The New Republic. He has also been published in Alcatraz: An International Anthology of the Short Form (fall 2022), Awake: New Prose Poetry From the US, UK, and Australia (fall 2022), Cast-Iron Aeroplanes That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 American Poets on their Prose Poetry, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Jewish Poets, Flash Fiction Funny, Best Microfiction 2021 and 2022 and many other anthologies. Friedman has received numerous awards and prizes including a National Endowment Literature Translation Fellowship in 2016 and two individual Artist Grants from New Hampshire Arts Council. https://poetjefffriedman.com
MEG POKRASS is the author of 10 flash fiction books, including The House of Grana Padano (co-written with Jeff Friedman, Pelekinesis 2022), Spinning to Mars (2021) and The Dog Looks Happy Upside Down (Etruscan Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in over 1,000 literary journals including Electric Literature, American Journal of Poetry, McSweeney’s, Smokelong, Five Points. She has been anthologized in 3 Norton flash fiction anthologies: Flash Fiction International (2015), New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (2018), and the forthcoming Flash Fiction America. Meg’s flash fiction has been widely anthologized, appearing in The Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019, and 2022, Wigleaf Top 50, and the forthcoming Alcatraz: An International Anthology of the Short Form (Gazebo Books). She is the Founding Editor of Best Microfiction and New Flash Fiction Review. She has won the Blue Light Book award in 2021 and 2016. She lives in Inverness Scotland and wears too many hats. http://www.megpokrass.com
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Author: Nin Andrews
