wunderkammer

Choir Practice

by Polly Conway

Author’s note: The poems in this series were created using found language from spam emails.

 

My brainchildren scrounge

for any little delegable task;

                                    they sing:

La-di-da, the circumference of Cleveland.

No place is axisymmetric.

            Who wants to cope with a non-dairy eater?

 

God, they’re bored.

 

It translates to this: me eating

casserole in the bedroom again—

Beside the bookend lies

a hardcopy of my stupefaction:  Exam question: What made Bonaparte berserk?

                                                            We are in the same bind.

 

 

God gave us agriculture, Gideons gave Bibles, Mom gave me a cheese grater.

Bolometers measure radiant energy:

 

 

I swear, I’ll sparkle like actinium.

 

 

I’m a chorine at heart, my bilabial pout in an angel-o.

Radiant energy pours from my mouth—how do I measure it?

Miss Self-Composedness

by Polly Conway

Author’s note: The poems in this series were created using found language from spam emails.

 

Paint lips with zinc

oxide, frosting

mouth for my lantern

jawed lover

to lick; his chin

cleft could

hold me easy.

Pop my cherry, finally.

 

Sleep-heavy I

but a serf. (Spoiler

alert: It’s not

what you think,

I’m a brave-spirited

sprat, root-hardy

 

Glacier Girl Circumnavigates Again

by Polly Conway

Author’s note: The poems in this series were created using found language from spam emails.

 

Me again: a poppy growing

in a bulkhead

of snow. Scullery

maids smile while they chop

asparagus and death-

cold timber. Look

closely into my

 

flower-sprinkled hub.

Hitch: I’m rapture

wrought by vague-worded nothings,

twice-drugged by an opiate

titration of stubble

and vanilla bean ice cream. I brake for buffet,

 

Little Women

by Polly Conway

Author’s note: The poems in this series were created using found language from spam emails.

 

Malleable: the architecture

of wrath. My posterior left

 

a dent in the divan. It’s gonna linger

when I die, take me

 

to Bhutan, drape me in madras,

spread auburn Aspen leaves

 

on my grave. That’s ambiance.

I’ll cooperate, babe, like a burlesque

 

Self-Election

by Polly Conway

Author’s note: The poems in this series were created using found language from spam emails.

 

                        He called me poppet, little honey tree

                        gripped my willie wagtail waist

                        guided gray-twigged torso into an

                        up-bow.

 

                        pre-evaporation, I stole the drink

                        money from the

                        tackle box, and tortoise-footed

                        let fish lead me to water—      cool     strengthening

 

                                    a valve in my chest opened and closed

 

                        once the doctor took a culture with a

                        straight-fibered swab

                        printed signs read biohazard zone

 

                                    a valve in my chest opened and closed

 

                        I’m large grained, algae stained and

                        turned-in to a non-Lutheran, at best

                        lake organisms, underwater shoe polishers

                        scritch-scratching my surface

                        with a toothbrush

 

                                    a valve in my chest opened and closed

yes is an improvisation

by Della Watson and Jessica Wickens (a.k.a. Crow and Benjamin)

Authors' Tweet: Rules of the #chainlinkpoem: @ reply the previous person; your tweet must use 1 word from their tweet & 1 word currently trending on Twitter

 

alma_crow alma elinora crow

@BnjmnR yes is an improvisation / how carefully i unfollowed / #13thingsilove / set them / set them / and if they return / #chainlinkpoem

2 Jun Favorite Reply Delete

 

BnjmnR Benjamin

@alma_crow the worlds of yes / against unrelenting / a new apple / big water #PrayForSeanKingston #chainlinkpoem

30 May Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

 

BnjmnR Benjamin

@alma_crow #nothinghurtsmorethan storms force improvisation pulse possibility better get yr boat #chainlinkpoem

30 May Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

 

alma_crow alma elinora crow

@BnjmnR we only speak in tunnel vision / in tiny words / lung storms / #Joplin sung every day / so we never heard it before / #chainlinkpoem

24 May Favorite Reply Delete

 

BnjmnR Benjamin

do we speak? #twitpoetics

18 May Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

 

four poems from I WANT TO BELIEVE THAT WE ARE ALL VIBRATING OR SOMETHING

by Amy Silbergeld

 

home, there are two bees fucking in the air*

and I am reading about Melissa Huckabee who

raped a girl child with an instrument and

stuffed her girl body in a suitcase dead she was

dead I read about this on my work computer

already yesterday but last time they didn’t know

it was any more than a murder – anymore

than they knew Melissa meant honey

bee any more

than a murder sometimes whatever

 

something different than fear like

rich white girls who end up

sorts of suitcase packings

brown bagged eyes

don’t grow past been every girl bending every waist

not yet sashed do they not grow back

end up silent not accepting visitors sometimes

help those pretty white girls capable enough

of locked wards I am embarrassed by earnesty

conviction I am embarrassed by

 

confessional poetry again two bees are fucking and

I am burning on purpose in a flesh-tone bra nervous

with my laptop and a lawn chair I check up on the dead like

whose life did you want to end?

 

who are these honey bees buzzing in my bed? (and to think

her father was a bee keeper)

            would you like to archive this

            conversation?

 

                                                                                                                                    send

 *Hugh later tells me that the bees I saw weren’t fucking, because only the queen gets fucked.  So the bees were “communicating” or something.

 

            @

You texted me:

by Aneesa Davenport

 

Boy beside me on MUNI
reminds me of Evan.

Bleached, for sure, and angular,
deep-set, wallowy, dark-eyed.

Acute. Easily hurt. Jerk.

I replied from wi-fied BART:
Maybe teenagers always will—
he was a kind of epitome

& his unchecked Facebook page
racking up homages,

& his number tacked up on the jumpers’ map
the Chron published of the Golden Gate
neither advocating nor opposing
a new guard rail,

& back when we met Laird,
dyed purple & endured,
I noted the resemblance:
In two years, our Evan will be him—

& we just making conversation
about construction, just
taking public transportation
through traffic—
every stranger & exchange
so graphic.

Advice in class last week
to make our reader love our character:
Describe him the way you would if he were dead:

Inter-crap

by Megan Martin

Inter-puke

Cram it all: want-back, blog-drivel-nothin doin-lacks rapture, know-better.  Anthony photos Paris biscuit desire ideas.  Heavy hair pulls out a flatness-scream.  Eat-a-book: true, good-textured confection.

Inter-blossom

Rotten pinkness underfoot.  Later on tonight plastic bamboo, imprinted weather.

Inter-gobble

Oh your filthy creampuff balsamic mooncave.  Oh unrequited peccorino leak.

Inter-boyfriend

Spidered fang-fur covets deep jewels turns em over assward moves out into the jovial pile of tricksweet glass.  Paves way for death of you.

Inter-outfit

Have to have to have to have fuck me bloody love $14.99 made of burlap, turns out.

Inter-scope

Slide without sandpit without living critter.  Pixel-microbe and tithair and Miley cellulite cupcakes.

Inter-novel

$9.99 zombie deathmask steals all my spit.  Mind overlaps loops without gumption.

Inter-love

Html lightwad color beyond nature eternal conversations re: Gaga.

Inter-friend

Cute worm mangles authentic politics now births transparent digital babyphoto: a meanness cage.  Like.

Inter-kitty

Spiritualized bump n jump wheeeeee! the only good thing.

Inter-house

In BR 1 a mistress dulls.  Cracked mold and easy-clean fruit. In the bathhouse a butcherknife unseen.

Inter-pit

Infinite foreign pores, hairs, whatnot-chunks lodged.  Wish for odor and raunch.

Inter-tart

Unsure ingredients and thigh-high frosting lickit famous: 3.25 stars.

Inter-poem

Here I am here I am here I am I am here click what matters and away what saves doesn’t, really.

Indra's Net

by Trevor Calvert

 

Indra’s net

 

syndetic structures

lattice as stars

 

in this case the map

is the terrain a

 

synecdochal significance :

“find me on…” writ infinite

 

we find ways

to see ourselves

 

until speed, meaning

coalesce here now to

 

index a backlit romance

overlap as light as sound

 

relevant as a falling leaf

caught coded with rain