Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life

Poems
by Rex Rose

The Nobel Prize

her ex-lover won
a nobel prize for poetry
i don't think it was my poems
that got me in her pants
it was my nobel
prize winning dick

Chewed Lip

she chewed her lower lip
this display was intended
to represent the sadness
she wished she felt

Picking a Horse

the way to pick a good horse
is to watch him drink
if he laps at the surface
with his lips
that is not your horse
if he sticks his whole snout
in the trough
that is your horse
and that is the way to pick
other things and people
imagine them as horses
would they stick their whole snouts in?
it's a foolproof system
and always stick your snout in deep
when you drink

Irritant

i had this friend
with this annoying laugh
a laugh for laughing at you
stylized calculated
to irritate and make you
try to kick his ass after "shut up"
didn't work for the fiftieth time
but he was strong and could wrestle
and rub your face in the dirt
a good looking kid
with a good singing voice
but with that one flaw
that monkey moron laugh
that vocation to annoy
when he got older they caught him
stealing tampons from a store
for an undisclosed purpose
my mother pulled a string
to keep him out of jail
finally he became a preacher
and from then on he never
gave us that laugh again
it was always jesus this
and praise the lord that
and do you know jesus
until you wanted
to kick his ass again

Red Neck

walking back from her house
i saw shadows of thrashing branches
celebrating on the sidewalk
and felt caustic noon falling
with the laughter of a crow
on the back of my red neck

The Men Who Get the Kind of Women We Never Get

she has the look of a Frank Lloyd Wright chair: elegant with a high straight back
and way too expensive for you
ever
she falls to those guys
who believe in things
like a bullfighter turning his back
on an beaten bull
everything they do
has four more zeros after it
than anything you do

those poor guys
and the women who fall to them
trying to grasp a little life
when they can't even afford
their own company anymore.

Email: cyberrex@att.net

issue 4 home \| ec chair \| broken news \| critical urgencies \| burning bush ficciones \| secret agents \| stage & screen \| letters \| gallery
corpse home \| search \| submit \| corpse cafe \| archives \| corpse mall \| our gang Exquisite Corpse Mailing List Subscribe Unsubscribe ©1999-2002 Exquisite Corpse - If you experience difficulties with this site, please contact the webmistress.