Exquisite Corpse Poems: 12/12/11 and 10/17/11

Poems written in The Sanctuary/Iowa City/11 PM by Stephen Anderson, R.C. Davis, Russell Jaffe, Justine Retz, and Eric Roalson

The red exit pointed toward
the setting sun in wide-open Texas,
something about cast-iron skillets and rubbery eggs
to stimulate an appetiteless day.
The key is not to eat too much
anxiety or you will somersault your stomach
turned out by a look or sound of
pinwheel dinosaur masks that hide the face of
fear leads to mistakes
but not well done steaks of a
different animal. So choose your zoo wisely
and run softly, little lion, run softly.
Through the tulips and lipstick and red.
I would like to tiptoe through the tulips
with Tiny Tim but he is
himself some kind of unavoidable shape.



The air in Paris is fresh.
Don't wait to eat, you must
eat the plum around the peel.
This is a recording. Eat the remainder
of something that happened when
Sam Spade would find out.
That the fedora was an inflated frisbee.
And the frisbee was made of gold.
So when I caught it it broke my middle
finger and
this is how I was tamed. I became
obtuse while discussing the nature
of polka-dot bikinis and financial liabilities.
The people on Wall Street are living it up at our expense
because they think minimum wage is enough
of a thing. So be this thing:
Walk into the fire with snake boots on.



Today is the day you finally
become the that you
becoming is exquisite.
Being is a yellow light wanting
to be laid by a gigantic red hen.
To be the egg you believe in most.
That one in the middle of the box that
is left more romantic than gym shorts and unpicked
lint from between toes manicured in
full living color and produce placement plethora
on The Price is Right.
Only if you're of the 1%, sot he rest
can drink the blood of whomever needy or poor
while the chosen take champagne showers.
And tell you to eat cake you can't afford.
Elites are telling us to eat cake
like Marie Antionette.



The yellow sun dips into the cheese fondue.
I eat heavily thereafter. Something about containers
that make me hard, succumbing to
life can submerge you
under the branches of a sycamore
tree wrecked by
the disease you call fire. I call it
the echo of the sirens calling
long distance like a javelin in the clouds.
The Greeks are having a hard time
but are used to having hard things
on rustically imposed planets like this one.
The beings with guns and metal own
your sorry ass that cries and whimpers sad.
Don't feel sorry for yourself
because it only serves to annoy us.


Hampered by the blues of my soul
I was welcomed at Uptown Bill's
by a demented hairdresser who
sang Sinatra while cutting hair with eyes closed.
Personally, I cut my own, so let me ask you:
Did you really think that you...
yes, I thought that I.
There is an answer to everything
under the sun that burns my arse and
I say arse because you make me feel so declarative.
I shout it from the rooftops in New York City
and then hear it in the canyons of Utah.
The saints settled in the Utah territory
because they ran out of fuel and
crashed into couches unknown. Teleport
the sparkly sex glands wrapped in gold lamé
and I love to lick the labels of paradise.



Poems written in The Sanctuary/Iowa City/10 PM by R.C. Davis, Russell Jaffe, Justine Retz, Eric Roalson, and Saul Schwartz


It's a smooth, cold stone I'm hearing.
The rain it makes is a cathedral.
The ceiling is open allowing
it inside.
The worm curls into a small ball.
I kick like a frustrated planet into the
cosmos. What constellations do you know?
Orion is the only one speaking
but there is a galaxy on his
belt.
Flash Gordon in spandex,
his obvious package exposed
for what it was not in the New Age
was what it was in antiquity.
Rewind. Pause. Reliable '92. An armchair
made soft with wear.
Wolves are softer
than the litany of short stops
and other seasonal transgressions.



And. Now it's time. For:
No, not Monday Night Football.
I threw the ball into the ether
but it came flying back
a silver, gelatinous
parasite, you'll always be burning and weird so
turn around and go home! You'll find
there are many ways to feed the
habit but only one way not
too Egyptian for the bartender.
To mistake them for thieves
is to carry a mouth of glass daggers--
shattered when the clock
chimed 12:00.
Choirs drinking Guinness, pray
for rain and whatever else
I feel like, amen, always, always.



The cheese had holes in it.
I crawled on factory nights into
machine shop days. Spinning lathes
the hours yarn and yawn
like myself
silver haired fox on the
hood of an abandoned car. XOXO radio,
and there you are, sitting on the trunk
of an elephant or a vegabond or a
hundred other scared giants who know
what I look like in my trembling underwear.
The ones with the holes in it
fit better than
you would ever dance alone
not at some honky tonk bar but
the base of the skull. The soapy blood
spurts, meeting the moon
halfway.


Silver spoon on the tabletop
nestled against the fork
in the lackluster spaces youth spit blood at
their friends and friends' friends alike
concentric circles in the social pond
I backstroke across the sweaty jungle
of teenage undershirts and abandoned
children. Who will take care
of our graveyard fishbowls, our weekend
warriors with feathery fins
fly only halfway before
before gravity teaches you about
what it really means to pickup speed
hits me in the face like a bug and its fluid
yellow mixing with blood
sucking vampires.


The sandman in black robes
flashes the old ladies in the park
feeding windswept pigeons
alka-seltzr--I heard it made them
feel...much...better. What makes you feel
that the rose lady is blooming with
something other than roses.
The stench in my nostrils
was cream sauce. That's how you can tell
it is fresh--vodka.
Or maybe whiskey will
drown the river of insouciance
and see there, what is that floating
in your head of beer? A lone tooth,
scraggly and yellow floats to the top,
pointing erections included
in the deluxe box set.

The Wee Hours

By RC Davis

A single candle burns upon its stand
The flame flickers bold in its singularity
Contents of corners remain a mystery
Sitting motionless in wingback comfort
I try not to breath too robust
For I wish to hear my thoughts
I want to catch the echoes in the abyss
Of a mind where there are no right angles
No place for them to stick, they bounce
From my lips they may escape, peculiar in the silence
I am alone in the presence of piano and sideboard
The lyre table remains silent in its deception
Furniture, does not good company make
Yet I am not truly alone
For now the moon is at the window
He presses his face against the glass and seeks me out
A voyeuristic orb, framed by jacquard and gold braid
I cannot look away, his pallor captivates
Finding me, he stabs with a radiant blade
But there is no pain, only the sensation of a gentle curiosity
I seem to bleed, a phosphorous stain expands and saturates
Spreading now, it flows out into the grass of the garden
Lighting the leaves of sentinel trees, making glowworms dance
A feathered spirit glides past in the brilliance
Its silence an example; be still

Exquiste Corpse poems 4/27/11

Written by R.C. Davis, Russell Jaffe, Eric Roalson, and Justine Retz at Sanctuary Pub. Punctuation has been added because, well, some lines were punctuated and some weren't that needed to be...
Special thanks to Ravel's Bolero and special apologies to Justine Retz for cutting the street corner on which the pool hall in the second poem appears, and which was beyond legible.
-Russell Jaffe


How the stones are thrown like musical notes
Geography becomes a landscape orchestra
of horns and horns alone. The way you
blow yours turns me on.
The sockets beneath your eyes
are ripe for fishing
as were your simple stockings, a condition.
It was the run that disturbed me,
it was the song that exhilarated me
but the tempo moved me
like a tree. The river. The branches and the way
I was incapable of reading the prior line.
My laundry calls me instead
of the pretty boy next door
whose windowed body was the silhouette of my god.



A candle burns my ass.
The heat is well contained,
but the frigid air is uncontrolled.
I count myself among the unthawed kind
dripping only on warm days.
The harvest is waiting in line
but Fall will come soon enough
when your laces are untied. Remember:
It's a lack of short term memory
the elephant dances down the lane
a soft so exact thump
so microtonal, so hold your keyboard hands
but I have no keyboard hands. You must
lend me yours in case I
lose my pearls at the pool hall.



Here's my life story I'm ready to admit:
I wouldn't admit too much.
The borders between two worlds
are sewn by invisible thread
made visible. It tells the truth by day but
in the oncoming dusk it will lie.
The purple reproduction machine
is Prince singing "Kiss" in falsetto?
Well? Are you afraid to count the lines on the face
face of time and be
the portrait of obtuse fantasy in the
mind of Asimov, whirling
computer chip dust. Feel the grain of
my dog, do you feel the imperfections?
I pant with a tongue of compassion.




Fire flickers, in dim candles
I pull spark plugs from my rustic imposition
and they light up the morning sky.
The eyes of the chipmunks
daft black in furry furtiveness
ye squirrels:
In their language it is "hear ye."
My eyes cannot perceive the subtitles
but my heart speaks many languages
but I can't translate any. Hello? I'll tell you why:
please do, so I can turn a deaf ear
on a dime to the rhyme with
the Miami sound machine blasting
a kind of youth. You're sweat. I'm
dry like a horned lizard in the sun.

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Ars Poeticas

Marianne Moore
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Mark Strand
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