Terry Wolverton produced the following fevered writing based on four prompts provided by this month’s collaborating poet, Elena Karina Byrne.
birthday cake shot
It was a not untypical white trash holiday gathering, everyone shitfaced and argumentative, and ending with a bullet in the middle of the cake. The cake bled raspberry sauce onto the white tablecloth and everyone was quiet for a moment. But only a moment. Everyone forgot about the cake except the girl whose birthday it was, but they had forgotten about her too, left sitting by herself at the wrecked table while two uncles punched each other in the face and an aunt started screaming.
…low energy transfer orbits to the Japanese lunar
I want to plug myself in to get the energy transfer. I’ve been feeling kinda peekid, pale and anemic, as if my life force needs a booster shot, and that’s when I heard about energy transfer, how someone with too much energy will download it into someone who needs more, like a blood transfusion, but it’s a great way to invigorate. Choice of donor is key–I don’t want some road rage testosterone maniac who’s going to make me yell at my boss and lose my job.
An Iceberg flipped over and its underside is breathtaking
Its underside is breathing, taking oxygen for the first time. It’s spent its life in water and now it turns toward the sun. The iceberg begins to release what’s long been trapped beneath its frozen surface–fossils and bones and stones and fish and darkness. It will lose everything. Its solidity becomes fluid and then seeds attach to its mass and begin to grow. In a few months there’s will be moss and tiny flowers that create a new perfume in the atmosphere. Somewhere, scientists are mourning this development but the iceberg celebrates its metamorphosis.
Double Game is too tame I had no shame it’s really lame the triple quadruple fGame, that’s my name but players gotta play and so I take the first leap onto the hopscotch squares and my hoola-hoop is spinning around my hips and I’m jumping the rope that two girls are patiently twirling. How can I not win but what does it even mean to win, will I get the big red heart or the stuffed panda or will I get both because it’s a double game or will it end in flames as I spontaneously Combust over the Stadium and will someone start singing the anthem for me?
Readers are encouraged to write your own poems inspired by the prompts or the fevered writing and post them to comments. The best poem we receive this month will be awarded a $25 prize.
dis•articulations 2015 