EXQUISITED CORPSES

Written by R.C. Davis, Chris Eck, Russell Jaffe, Justine Retz, and Amanda Strzalka, 12/13/10.

Cold runs through her body.
She finds strangely comforting
the tiny charge of static unleashed.
My hair rises reaching for
electric stars like moth ash in streetlamps,
attracted to what kills it.
It moves toward its demise
and finds what it seeks:
open, blossoming like a creamy, pink sea amoeba.
This is a feeling I butter my toast with:
warmth that can feel cold,
cousin of hate who can feel love
at a family picnic with ants.



Speeding don the road
a.m. radio crackles, coffee drips
but still my brain pounds.
I add salt and sugar to dilute this type of cake
until I can't taste it anymore.
Satisfying dissipation.
Sedated and spread across the toasted crust
the roe still refuses to give in
but the youth therein are empty
for they don't believe
but could if the just wanted to,
just like Santa only brings peppermint if you believe.
And are naughty.
(sort of twisted Christmas theme...-Russell)


The doorway in my hip, the one I heard your bell from
across the alps. Cows on parade
are glass in Chicago's dark, wet teeth tonight.
The city sleeps, but I don't.
I want to walk the dark streets
but it's daytime. What can we do?
But co-mingle in our natural habitat...
a spider web of cans tied to a rented limo; A
car filled with nothing but hopes and dreams
transcends the guard rail, airborne.
The air is thin and rushes past, but pockets envelop, you float
on currents gliding between the clouds and metallic
tongues of upturned faces--we now from here glide.


Pam Grier mixed steroids into her hot cocoa.
That's how I know she can act like a bulging
rambunctious Amazon woman.
Run through the streets
echo doorway shell, avoiding traffic/
The snail meanders glittery rainbow arcs
but not the animal kind--the kind more or less like
a person, the kind you love to hate.
The guilt of judgment invades your mind.
Surrender now, hot not to internalize, how
to fall eyes and arms wide
into embracing this dark majesty, this
fear that runs our lives.

No Teeth

Hey class members,
I think this is a great starter journal to submit to!
http://litlist.net/noteeth

This. Is. Awe. Some.

Look at this, everyone. It's great! I joined. I advocate that you all join, too!
http://litlist.net/

The Fine Art of Surfacing

Great idea, Russell. I have perused and piqued my own interest in several journals. Most of my publishing experience is from the late 1990's, so tonight I dug through "the drawer," finding some evidence for my lack of proliferation in that time. I thought I'd take a few lines to honor some defunct publications from that bygone era of internet innocence. Almost every organization that ever published a poem of mine is dead. I'm pretty sure I didn't kill them, though. I do get a kick out of their magazine titles:

24:7 Magazine, Bunkum, Conspire, Gravity, Ink e-zine, Leticia Dahling!, 191919, Croyden Online, Orbital Revolution, Radio Free Topeka, New Improved Mushrooms, Indigo Pig, Papyrus, Aabye's Baby, Savoy, Thunder Sandwich, The Poet's Cut, Green Tricycle, Sky Blue Water, et al....

Of course, I'll be turning this list itself, in unabridged format, into a poem.

A few of my old haunts still exist, though! Check out A Little Poetry at http://www.alittlepoetry.com/ - they still seem to get it on (as of 2009) and you'll find some terrible examples of what the 90's did to me in their 1998 "ancient archives" section. Another great past-blast in the lit zine Children, Churches & Daddies http://scars.tv/perl/ccd.htm and yet another in The Alembic from Providence college at http://www.providence.edu/English/Alembic/ .

Interesting, the old e-zine Shadow Voices seems to have evolved into a mental illness support services center. Convenient, poetry isn't always the most effective therapy.

Cheers, see you all Tuesday.

Christopher