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The Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life
Edited by Andrei Codrescu
ec chair poetick kultur anti-amthropomorphism
gallery zounds the making and unmaking of person
new economics of late capitalism
diaries and memoirs translation and her retinue
working class sweat
the corpse reads classics letters the book of revelations and epiphanies
the making and unmaking of person
Translation and Her Retinue

Four Poesias
by Jeannine Shackelton

Dr. West's Elephant Died

The book is almost finished. It's tough reading
about glands. Morgan sees herself marrying
a man or keeping her cuckoo clock. She's been hearing
time since Berkeley. Since almost everyone waited
for the beginning of the semester, and since a professor
replaced her with a sports car. Not just any sports car,
but a blinding red and singing sports car like a Mel
Brooks movie. Yet like I said, its tough reading long,
dendritic pages about Elephants and Hyraxes, Morgan
engaged between two lines and the announcement of Heidi
and Peter.



Speaking of Borders

You really can do that. You really can leave bodies

to the ants. It's no big deal: dead girls cut

in the desert, missing shoes thrown to roads

and policía in boots looking along the border.

Looking along. But nothing comes of it because

other people die under bridges. And buses still run

past shanties in the blowing, brown, choking

dust. And American tourists love the price

of drugs. Especially since prescription drugs cost

a bundle in Scottsdale, where the girls just cut

themselves shaving their knees.



Springwood

Who would want another home like this? A home
with husky men wearing the same short sleeve jackets
and standard buttons. And a young woman screaming,
her eyes watching doctors approach as they talk

under fluorescent lights. Did I really hear them say
the horse is dead in number two lock up? Did I?
Everything is tricky: a man sticking his tongue out,
sticking his tongue in and another man waiting

for a flood, at sealed windows. I want to stand
near him, knowing the whole thing is probable
when two animals do as they are told. Yet,
would you believe there is a wall going farther

and farther into a garden to simply watch ants,
and believe ants beyond, carrying something other than
nothing, something without design-- better than ordinary
afternoons that are dull and rote and jaded and hard

and hard? And I found the place once where rain
hit my head. I felt everything, even promises
and hands beside blue candles. I had a birthday
ring and two sons. I had a mirror.



El Equipajes

Who cares if you want a sombrero like Steve
Martin's? You didn't tell anyone our luggage is imported

leather, tagged with everything right, everything clear
and that something odd happened on the airplane.

Something odd: people around us ate or slept
as an Asian couple sitting next to us babbled

Mexican names (was she pregnant?) If nothing else,
they made enough noise to fill the whole front cabin.

And as I was saying, they kept repeating names, guttural
names, from a book, which made the whole flight tedious

until we arrived at Tokyo, before the airlines lost our luggage
and it hit me, that you really weren't very humorous.

 

 

 

home archives submit black market comrads hot sites search ec chair peotick kultur anti-amthropomorphism
new economics of late capitalism gallery zounds the making and unmaking of person
diaries and memoirs translation and her retinue
the book of revelations and epiphanies working class sweat
the making and unmaking of person the corpse reads classics letters

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