I found Patrick Coleman's bewitching prose poem, "That Saying" in lit journal Hobart's "bonus materials" page.
À la Baudelaire, Coleman repeats sounds and symbols so the poem wraps and folds back onto itself.
The most prominent symbol is warm, brown whiskey that breathes 1) from the poem's speaker momentarily escaping the holiday party, 2) from the spirit of the grandmother hiding in the wet soil, 3) from the ancestors (glass in-hand) exclaiming slainte ("health!"), 4) again from the speaker listening to the family clink warmly in the next room as he remembers 5) "those who made him and their mothers, and some inkling of their lives" -- those who may have a "lineage and personal history of alcohol abuse," but nevertheless embody the slán ("health") of the speaker, his family, his grandmother's spirit in the peat bog, and of his Irish generations.
Read this and Coleman's other prose poem, "Sod, Stars" here.
