issue 7 home | broken news | criticual urgencies | cyber bag | ec chair | ficciones | gallery
letters | reviews | secret agents | serials | stage and screen

HomeArchivesSubmitCorpse CafeCorpse MallOur GangHot SitesSearch
Two Poems
by Tom Robbins

The Origin of Cigars

On the morning after the lunar eclipse,
she awoke with a funny feeling,
massaged her belly with hurricane drops,
rubbed barbeque sauce on her eyelids,
donned a necklace of alligator bones
and walked down to the Caribbee
where, asquat in a spice canoe,
she gave birth to a green banana.
"Not mine!" growled her husband,
pitching the new baby overboard
into the path of a barracuda,
who seized it like bait
just as lightning's alchemical zippo
ignited the infant's nib.
Transformed into a pufferfish,
the 'cuda was soon upstaging cookfires
as it smoke-ringed past the strand
in luxurious loopy-doops,
languid, masculine,
respiring like some kind of don
-- waiting for a cognac rain.



Full Tilt

The phantom arrived in a neon speedboat
ferrying a cargo
of coconuts and diamonds.

                              *
From the veranda of the malaria hotel
we saw it coming:
a kabuki magazine published by a hurricane.

                              *
Its clown-head prow sawed the surf in half
causing Crayola buddhas to run
over the hill with sacks of tadpoles on
their backs.

                              *
A fat old tropical radio
interrupted the news to announce
that it was now king of the waterbugs.

                              *
Watching it turn wine into mink milk,
bedsheets into sandwiches of snow,
we imagined it must be a wind-up toy
designed by a mad scientist
to brighten the long frown of time.

                             *
But ...
in the end
it was the moon.

issue 7 home | broken news | criticual urgencies | cyber bag | ec chair | ficciones | gallery
letters | reviews | secret agents | serials | stage and screen

HomeArchivesSubmitCorpse CafeCorpse MallOur GangHot SitesSearch

Exquisite Corpse Mailing List Subscribe Unsubscribe

©1999-2002 Exquisite Corpse - If you experience difficulties with this site, please contact the webmistress.