Cyber Corpse 2
Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life
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The Prague Corpses

committed under various conditions (none of them strenuous, all of them pleasant) by Jenny Smith, Laura Rosenthal, Theodore Schwinke, Andrei Codrescu. Transcribed and annotated with some unexplained ambiguities by T. Schwinke

Contract

We the subsumated
swear here to never
sublimate the trumpet
sublet our follicles
borrow anything nasty
and/or eat zestless fruits
notwithstanding peonies or their dependent stigmata
heretofore to cover all wobble
all, smile at all that toss things at us. Forthwith
and henceforths, we the high & under-
masticated, of dogfood sound and the eastern Krajina, betwixt
hard rocks and incredibly moist terrapin bellies
swear to heretofore
quit. And start. And quit. And always eat our
breakfasts

30. July 1997


If not then it.
If it then what.
If when then or.
If is or if.
("Maybe.")

30. July 1997

 

Prose Corpses

Jenny Smith and Theodore Schwinke

I.

We are charting the progression of our fevers on the wall of the living room. I'm the dark horse, trailing streams of dust, leaving beheaded bunnies in the wake of my hooves. I never stop for water.

The only time I stops is when the coffee runs out. The caffeine acts like nitrous oxide; the fever burns cleaner. Particles vibrate at higher intensity. We should be able to pass through the walls before dawn. Horsey, horsey, you are the only reason I go on. You are my cell-wall, my semi-permeable membrane. We three kings of occident are. At 3:30, Drew's fever hits 102 degrees like the county line. You have to respect that. Searching for his coffee cup, Matt says, "Any man who can't walk across the desert without a drop of water, slaughter sixteen head of cattle, build an outhouse and then come into the kitchen and make a decent cup of coffee ain't worth his salt." Irvid agrees. Mildred comes in, carrying a roast chicken on a stick. She stops in the doorway abruptly at the sight of us. Resting the chicken across her shoulder like a rifle, she ratchets a cigarette into her pierced lips. She lights the cigarette with one of the dozen or so oil lamps blazing around the room.

Exhaling, she says, "When I was a girl, and I was a little thing when I was a girl, about as big as a cattail, I ate a side of beef a day. The taste of meat was like raw strawberries to me." "I ate so much meat that my colon went on strike," said Drew. "I can't touch the stuff anymore." He took the fresh cup of coffee I offered him and started spooning in sugar. Matt is reading a magazine that he's got behind a menu. When the menu slips, everyone at the table see the cover, which has at least three girls on one car along with something that might be a pony.

Seeing the strange magazine cover, his companions aspired to sainthood. We are riveted with strange arrows. There is a knock at the door, and we laugh.

II.

"Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you," said Ruth-Ann, as she backed out of the door holding her uncle's head on a plate. The silver platter holding her uncle's head slipped from her hands just short of the table. Her uncle's head bounced like a ripe melon, its juices, warm from the oven sprinkled her stockings like the sparkling icing on the cookies. The head itself bounced off her new shoes like light from a church window. It rolled across the floor collecting dust bunnies in its orifices.

Ruth-Ann, alarmed, shouted "Mary and Joseph! Get that in the sink with some salt and cold water! Cold water!" Ruth-Ann was always the village idiot until there was an emergency, which was pretty often, come to think of it.

Around the house, life was like a pail of milk that somebody had spat in. A gun was heard from the backyard, and its sound bounced from wall to wall so quickly that the paint chipped

The stairs, unhappy to be trod on, give us the silent treatment. "Roust out, you little rutabaga!" comes the inevitable morning shout from the older sister. Not even today. Not even on Christmas morning did the family touch a drop of butter, cream or milk. The kitchen was clean of any evidence of dairy products.

Nothing could be found except a darker stain at the high-water mark that covered the trunks of the trees and the unfinished concrete walls of the outbuildings' foundations. The flood lasted throughout January. "Longer and higher than I'd seen in a coon's age," said some who had the right. When the flood receded, half the town discovered that their fingers were missing. Some kind of bacteria in the water, I guess.

Anyway, the missing appendages would probably be eaten up by catfish. Just as well, I thought; I can't stand catfish anyway. Oh, the stories we would hear from the boys. Sometimes, late at night when the floorboards squeal, Barry, everybody's lonely uncle, can hear fingers. Thousands of them, gleaming white, swimming through the air.

 

Saxon Czech Poem 1

Sex in Czech is zamilovat se
cabbage, however, is forever while cosmos 2
wobbles under the weight of the multiple
cartons of malleable materials that
stank of polyester and dead 3 sex
love lines the carriages of the poetic
aristocracy of limbs at rest in the
melliflous 4 places between egg
sacs, not human, scientific by definition
the not 5 book in which 7 is insribing 6 my testi-
monial weeping men clutching their
midsection's spoonlike soporific

July 30, 1997

1. This corpse appears to be divided into three quatrains. While atypical of the corpses produced by the authors in Prague at this, it is possible that they were experimenting with traditional poetic techniques and other substances. The reader will also note the frequent occurrence of visual end rhyme.

2. The word here is somewhat illegible. While it appears to be cosmos, it lacks the definite article which would conventionally precede, i.e. "the cosmos wobbles." It is possible that the author (who I believe to have been Codrescu) was alluding to the 10th century chronicler of Bohemian history, Cosmas of Prague (c. 1045-1125).

3. Again, the original text is somewhat illegible. The author appears to have begun one word and then changed his or her mind in the course of writing it. While the final result bears more resemblence to dead than any other word, the vocable hear looks something akin to ahead, stead or deaf.

4. sic. Probably mellifluous.

5. sic. Probably note.

6. The original text is somewhat illegible. Inscribing appears to be the most logical choice, yet the word here could also be inscriby or justify.

 

The Protestan Century

The red ork 1
dork fish-like and
mean what it says mean 2
it smells like cat
spores find holes to suck them
in black silk
pants off shirt off nipples
hard like missionaries
noses jutting from faces
of Jan Hus, the antisemite
of geese-- he is a goose
his feathers plucked his head
aloft flying just now past
Tahiti

July 30, 1997

1. Possibly ark. If so, then the next word beginning the second line is likely dark.

2. Possibly meow.

 

The Question Games

The game as played here is intended as a series of questions and answers. Invariably, however, the rules are too complicated, resulting in frustration and fabulous disasters; but for the sake of art, it is quite compelling. These were created at the gumbo party.

I.

Who was the queen's bootlicker?
Mr. Bouncety-Bounce
What on earth makes them wrinkle that way?
it is very blue, kinda round-shaped, but--I just don't know
When did I die and make god me?
At the moment of the shoemaker's epiphany.
how much you clean
where are my reference books
at the Inn of the Boar where they keep the dogs
The Tailor. The one with all the bandages.
Fish?
The last fish. Did you know that you can hold a carp by its lower
lip?

II.

Who made the dress of the fisherman's wife?
The fucking bartender with the muffler
What dropped from the bath with the baby?
The collapse of Norwegian theatre.
One wonders what one must do, but when?
When did those soldiers pull up your pants finally?
Cabaza de Vaca Day
Where do they pickle sardines in vats?
in a blue crate.
Why? Why me? Because I'm the fucker with a necktie?
because my cuticles have been chewed
by the enemy
Czar Nicholas in the height of indecision

III.

Who put the mushroom in my bed?
mixed the seriology and urine samples?
What do Inuits call snow?
One wonders whether the snow is white or in the mind?
When did that blood get on your shoe?
When will I stop being a dour self-absorbed cantankerous
up-start with dark eyebrows and one pair of sneakers?
When I say so, fool.
Across the Ganges, upstream, by the water stand.
Why did you trade the ice for gumbow 1?
Mars.
Why (not) Oh, shit. I don't know why, just hand me the fish.

1. sic.

IV.

Who is that man without the earlobes?
Andrei "Skimble-Shanks" Codrescu, that's who!
What was in the farmhouse when Farmer Struthers heard the shot?
the deed 1
Where did the deer horns in my bed come from?
The heart of darkness.
How do you stand on your head?
How did those keys get up there?
By being so cross-eyed you can stand in the middle of
the week and see both Sundays.
Why have we faltered?
look sweety-- I don't know why. The silk is "nice and dry"
Answer a fish question.

1. Possibly dud.

V.

Who was the dolt whose hair caught in the drain?
The man in red, of course.
What is the difference between Barcelona and Madrid?
The seventh seal of the apocalypse.
When we are what we wear
When I first saw your tits and sensed the taste of you
How much goop dripped from Andalusia's eye?
In where would you find george's head again?
In Robert Frost's anus.
Ferocious hounds devoured who?
it oozes. Today--fresh, moist--salty. Tomorrow = festering,
mouldy, pussy.
(but I don't understand)

VI.

Who farted?
Fellini, with jinglebells on.
What happened to the cap on your pen?
Whatever, dude.
When, exactly, did the shit go down?
pigeons pay rent
how much did I have to suffer before having
an honest orgasm
In what orifice did the sacred object lay?
Franz Kafka.
What is the meaning of life?
The pillow
In whom might one find a copy of A.S. Matheson's "Post-
Modern Perspectives on the Plight of Underpriveledged
Neurethetic Peguins 1"?
!‘ Humpbacked Aphesic
Robert Everz

1. sic.

VII.

Who packed this Caruel 1 ice cream?
Santa Claus
What was the telephone number of Castro?
The Green Manalishy 2 with the Two Pronged Crown
When did the leave the womb?
The Blue Moon -- The Second Moon -- Thursday
Where is the Sojourner space probe?
Inside the game show host.
how did she ever keep that thing on her
head from falling off?
Franz-Joseph
Why did they do this?
Because we're all just pleasure-seeking druids

1. The original ms. is somewhat illegible.
2. The original ms. is somewhat illegible.

VIII.

Who the hell asked you, you arch-monolithic, troglodytic simp? Who?
The woman with all the fishooks 1.
What the fuck do the fire-ants eat at dawn?
four blocks
When did you sleep with that weird guy?
Many yars later, when Colonel Aureliano Buendia
was to face the firing squad, he would remember
that distant afternoon when his grandfather
took him to discover ice.
Where did Trevor go?
Where is the mother of that bug?
In the brown valley of hair between her breasts.
How did her knees bend like violin bows?
From the behind.
In whom does the worm worm worm?
in my girlfriend for a while but then
there were other possibilities
Did you know how many dancers assembled?
of course, isn't the number of lighters constant?

 

Untitled (A Pygmy with a Hardon) 1

A pygmy with a hardon sucks my
metaphysics are the free-floating eyeblinks of
gods," said Drusilla 2, flashing her legs at the
crowd pleasing whippersnappers who can't sit still when she tips her
hat of mary -- he's 3 with tri-cornered prepuces 4 in
the breach, baked in an iron oven, 24 blackbirds
accidentally tripping over an amoeba and furnishing the grape
jelly contraceptives that the Czechs followed the
French ignorance is a legitimate
defense department is the worst excuse for protection in the
world underworld big world bold world of worldly world
peppers not peepers, poppers not choppers he
exclaimed the morning sun above the heads of
swans a singing six geese a laying, five horny toading
fucking right I never get it fucking right what if the
fucking anywhere else would
be slow and malicious and belligerent and sweet.

1. The original ms. is unsigned and untitled. It appears to be created at the gumbo party.
2. The original ms. is somewhat illegible. This proper noun is possibly Priscilla or Drúsilla.
3. The original ms. is largely illegible. The word that is most likely, but by no means positively, mary is followed by hypen and then the word I have presented here as he's, although the original lacks an apostrophe. Further interpretations are welcomed, encouraged and well-nigh pleaded for.
4. The original ms. is somewhat illegible, but I feel that this is the correct word, prepuce being foreskin.

 

Untitled (Left-Handed Corpse) 1

Testing gruel in
Paris nor Prague where
all th 2 moments co
incide with
moons liquid crushed
by the way--she ate your
Breakfast!! Shut up, you dripping
genital-less morons! Shut up, you post-modern
sluts! They had wings
They said. Fortunately, the dog
man 3 bit the cigar and not the
stick to beat that dog again
for the people, by the people, of another kind of
humanity no, I haven't got humanity.

1. This corpse is unsigned. While the original manuscript was plainly penned left-handed (by those authors who were right-handed; right-handed for southpaws), it is not possible for the archivist to distinguish the handwriting, and therefore the identity of the authors. If memory serves, however, this corpse and several others included in this collection were created at the apartment of A.Codrescu and L.Rosenthal after a dinner of gumbo and ample portions of vodka. In addition to Codrescu and Rosenthal, those present, and possibly contributing to these works, included Jenny Smith, Theodore Schwinke, Robert Eversz, William Hollister. With less certainty, I might further suggest the presence of Clark Blaise, Julie Chibbaro, Julie Ashley and Anthony Tognazzini.

2. sic. Doubtlessly intended as the definite article the, but whether the omission of the final vowel is intentional or not can not be ascertained.

3. Mercifully, the word man is crossed out in the original by a jagged up-and-down scribble. I doubt the author intended it to be thus included in the final work and should therefore probably be omitted from further editions.

 

Untitled (The cherubs of insecurity) 1

The cherubs of insecurity sink their
teeth made from the keys on an electric
piano. I've always wanted to play but my teacher had
turquoise grit under her nails and as she demonstrated scales
I stared always, fixated, scared, at her fingers and never
learned a single
tune. A guitarist would do much better. All he'd do is change the
chord. Put it here, with spades and jokers. There can be
no other novelists in the fold, no other mice in the cheese. We have lost
the only reservation he had about the incident was an
immense baby in a baptism of blood with
Cossacks full of Pepsi riding their nags 2 into the
sunset, where a shoehorn becomes a newt becomes an
axolotl teotipruec teotihuocon mextal conxelmuh 3
columbo, the parrot, nabbed a necktie in his beak and
squawked and chattered.
Eggplant with the tint of an old Polaroid. I stood
suddenly a glass slipped from her hand. Red wine spilled on her dress; the
glass shards splinter my concious thoughts of fear.
pain, as deep as Paris 4 as wide as techno-parsimony and
parsley that never gets eat 5 from all the plates.
coming thru the annals of histrionic de-evolution.

1. The original ms. is untitled and unsigned. Probably created at the gumbo party.

2. The original ms. is somewhat illegible.

3. The original ms. is somewhat illegible. Plainly, a mimicking of Aztec names is intended.

4. The original ms. is somewhat illegible. Possibly Pain.

5. sic.

 

Untitled (The kitchen boiled over my thighs) 1

The kitchen boiled over my
thighs the alternative to murder by
scissors shreading 2 stripes of parched flesh, like
leather silk wood metal glass plastic cotton wool blend
of my best friend: Sasha Solanovanovitch the II,
"Esquire, Joe," he said, shaking hands.
"I'm sorry. Really. I Realize I should stand up for myself but just--
--sorry." This, of course, was wholly unsatisfactory, riddled as 3 depleted,
as riddled with holes as a careless gunman's distillery,
as coldly as he could he said "When the Revolution
comes for the ice cream, pistachio, that they had
bought a cannibal in the passage and ate her out in
spades dig you deeper than aces, but
diamonds with chocolate, strange as dice. Someone has taken
a scissors--motion, sliding. slithering. closing sharbly 4 --like
motion sickness. After the game, we took turns changing
heads will roll when the fallacy of royalty falls to bastians 5
of hedonists at the gates of heaven and the goats from the
Amazon.

1. The original ms. is unsigned and untitled. Probably created at the gumbo party.

2. sic. shredding

3. The words riddled as are crossed out, probably because the author thought they better fit in the next line.

4. sic. Probably sharply.

5. sic. bastions

 

Untitled (The Legs of Deer are Hairy)1

The legs of deer are hairy but my heart
throbs through the coarse cotton
shirt, straw hat and wire glasses fought
intensely mirrored. Plants and bees shoe themselves in
green, green as fireflies, as new peanuts. "Put this
in context." Algorhythms, however better determine the size of the street 2
"Wallah Wallah? Never been there," said Phil. "Heard they
grow apples there." He picked his
teeth, and looking down her porcine nose, snuffling and
saying what she could. She always said what she could, however
she did it. She said a lot of things but who could tell
what one ought to believe?
Once, twice, but never again. There were three competing things that got
her. Article noun preposition verb adverb, this the latest dispatch
from points unbeehooved. 3 74 women drove from St. Louis to grand woods, AK
with a precious wisdom he told her,
stop passing me these fucking papers before
I is another but you are she & we're somewhat
together with the pen
are touched by a fleshy tentacle and
fulfilled

1. The original ms. is untitled and unsigned. Probably created at the gumbo party.

2. At this point, the corpse is discontinued on the front side of the page and resumes on the back. While this was probably accidental, there is a marked difference in the tone and style of work.

3. sic. Possibly intended as unbehooved, but the original misspelling is plainly preferable.

 

Untitled (You can tell by the contents of her glass cabinet) 1

You can tell by the contents of her glass cabinet, everything
about her and garlic. With garlic she approaches music, like
a butcher, a tailor, a silly girl's mother and fourteen
angry dog leashed to it's 2
tether the dog to the lamppost beside where
she touched herself in a very private place that was
not her clitoris, but clorets he was chewing.
Importunately we spelled words, inexplicably we opened up the
beehives, or so they say, walled in with glass trinkets
like disillusioned housecoats--you know--those that were used to
gardens.
Ferns and rhodendron 3 bulbs. Profuse was not the word for
it. Jungle, tropics, palms like overgrown, long hands
gesturing with his two front teeth which, coincidentally, were
filed his thoughts in an urn and pissed in it
enthusiastically, euphorically, eclesiastically 4, ennervating
ecstacy of the insect world bright blue metallic
motorcycle vrooms it's red it's chrome I twist the handlebars
and skim, all the sidewalk down, bump cracks, and rattle
on. for. that. if. not. past. with. sport. mescaline.
toad in walnut oil
the moil circumsises you with his teeth and you
sing
sweetly sing it sister.
Blue.

1. The original ms. is untitled and unsigned. Probably created at the gumbo party.

2. sic. Doubtlessly its was intended.

3. sic. Rhododendron.

4. sic. ecclesiastically

 

Untitled (Generative left field polychromas)1

Generative left field
polychromas, arrythmia and dusting of
20 foot high
philodendrons you flowery philanderers whose
pollenophrenia infests the rain gutters - they sprout

many-headed

mushrooms totally aroused so that their caps

logointensify the spores that get into my hair

I brush my hair with
staticky like Molotov but hard like Stalin

the portophallogenic 2 dispiritely 3
slipped halfway down the steps of the botanical gardens.
Slip. Slap.
No PhD.

July 30 1997

[signatures]
Andrei Codrescu
Laura Rosenthal
Jenny Smith

1. The first line on the original manuscript is not underscored as on the other corpses, leaving me to believe that this piece was intentionally left untitled. The use of white space above mimics that of the original manuscript, although the staggered lines and stanzas may have been accidental.

2. Portophallogenic is simply my best guess, although the word here could also be porno- or portophollogenic.

3. The original manuscript is largely illegible. Possibly disparately, definitely or dispensibly

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