Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life

Structural Discrepancies

When we aren't looking, potatoes are
          moving.     Why

they have eyes, I'll never
under

stand.

Recall

A popper that resembles half of CHICAGO
A toy inside a hollow rubber ball. When
the some boxes of Quaker Oats Co. ce-
rounded side is pushed and the reals
has injured 36 children'stoy is set on
a flat surface, it eyes, prompting the
Chicago com-soon flexes back to its
original pany to recall the cereal.
Shape and pops into the air. Quaker
said 15- and 16-ounce Children have
suffered packages of Captain
Crunch, bruised or bloodshot eyes after
Crunchberries and Peanut Butterpushing
the toy into their faces Crunch contain
a rubber toy calledor eyes.

An [Sacrificial] Altar

     "How many beautiful accidents might naturally
     happen in two or three days?"
          -Dryden

My Dad hollers don't jump on the bed, but being that I am in
an experimental mood, I determine to unwind with an optical
flourish, inscribing with a physical gesture upon the eye of one
staid witness, prior to submission to patriarchal dictate; there
fore, striving for maximum loft, and because I visualize myself
as an acrobat, I go for the flip, inaugural y ultimo, and instead
land squarely upon my crown thereby dissevered, neck cracked under
caput, or so it seems, and I screech and bewail in immutable tumult.
wham whamit whammd and
whamming whammy whammy
whang whang whangee
whangee whangee whap
hwap wap hwapitty whap
whine whinny whinity whip
whip whipped whipper
whipping whipping whips
whipity whop whoopity whop
whoopee whoopee whoopity whoops
Poking a pyromaniac, a risky interaction which thus implies elective affinity, (although my father would mutter in disapproval at the necessity of, initially, setting the bed afire), comes, in addition, to stimulate the process of rubbing two sticks together. With enthusiasm then, I slather my hide with paste, a blue mud, even as my partner speaks of cruel urgency,
a catalog of extravagant flagellant devices which, indeed, augment our mischievous hunger, while fostering a mood of an heightened aesthetic.

Cabover Stud

Pud can't play cards.   Trees
fall in his sleep.   Noise.
What noise?   Pud hears
nothing.   An American Man,
Pud feels that his generation
is always compared amiss
to a previous spawn.   But
look--Pud's familiar with dirt,
the jaunt of a rumor, the
innuendo and short
comings of God.   The only
remedy is to purchase something,
the inner life and tidings akin
to a skin window stretched pellucid,
scant: thus, Pud has an affair
with the highway, and a coyote
gets crushed north
of Fresno.   The impact of
ribcage and tread bestows
a shuddering crunch through
the frame.   The bodies
in unholy trinity merge
mananimachine.   Pud feels
the ribs crack concurrent,
hands on the wheel and up
through his haunch.   Said
jolt initiates an optical
twitch--Pud parks truck
and swoons, awakening under
the drone of a cropduster
at dawn and spits bloodmetal
from the back of his throat.
Shreds of red meat and fur hang
parched from the rough foot
step under his door, while Pud
knuckles his eyes and shuffles
into the truckstop for eggs.


Digger be nimble

     "Out of the tomb, we bring Badroulbadour."
                            -Stevens

Would that a spade had thorns, I
would find one with blossoms
and count each its scooping.

To me comes a calling by
which Persephone measures
her cumulative dead. To me

comes a calling by which one
digger be quick and undergo
witness cadaver, a calling by

which one delver hum a requiem
to the impotence of God's
little toys. And so stink

the rabble in a roadwork
of holes to ratify me,
nonetheless, with one eye

aglitter and one eye stained red
while locked on the grave. And none
too soon sings the maggot, for such

a guest is mete, hauled everyday thrashing
through an impartial gut toward an
emblematic vacuity sometimes known

as "heaven." By such thoughts
so I shuffle. By such thoughts
so I grin into a cage constructed of

knuckles, that such might I jam
the blade, argal, as mine epithet,
Dexter, handle sweat epithet, Digger,

that the dance of the deed might
mine thrust then unyoke, the
mazzard-headed so and so, that

another mother's son may gather keen
unto tomorrow's fruitful glimmer, one
handful of roses and another of loam.

thirst

Eala leof, here comes
the hatchet-faced man, his
thin forehead a silver
crescent which gleams
in the moonlight.   He too
bows to the inevitable, bending
at the waist with a snap,
made to split kindling, even
as others (who are merely
cardboard) cannot be caught
in the rain without great
risk of shredding.   Lucky
thing there's a drought,
eh ierþling?