MY EXQUISITE CORPSE

Here is a poem I assembled.

In the game called Exquisite Corpse, people collaborate on a creative work without being able to see the whole. In creative writing classes, the process looks like someone writing a single line and then passing the paper to the next person, who follows it up with their own continuation. Person two then folds or blocks the top of the paper so that person three can only see line two and respond to that. By the end of going around a circle of nervous writers you get quite the poem-story. Here, I have played this game with myself, sourcing lines from archived posts, in order, since the winter.

What do you think? A decent artist’s statement for Dishwasher Cafe?

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I was so charmed I could hardly keep my pants on.

(“SINGING TO THE CHEESES”)

You can feel the enormity of this potential, of potential itself—

(“I SURRENDER: a #feralprofessor reading of Plath’s “The Night Dances”)

In fact, […] the greater the risk of failure, […] the more fun I’m having.

(“RAPTURES”)

Lest I lead you to believe this is all an elaborately douchey humble-brag,

(“RAT CLUB”)

Rat club usually meets under the dining room table,

(“LIFE-GIVING STARCH PODS”)

As if some sense of the world […] is already inside

(“THE ART OF ARDOR”)

propelled by the excruciating vulnerability of hope.

(“I’M NOT SLEEPING WITH MADELINE MILLER BUT I MIGHT AS WELL BE”)

Once, when I was in bed for nine months,

(“KRONYK”)

I found out that [my] Christmas tree [had] a boner.

(“CUDDLY AS A CACTUS”)

That power, that poise, that extraordinary potential of motion—

(“HERE BE DRAGONS”)

the adrenally fueled heartbeats from this fiasco surely count towards some kind of exercise.

(“HOLIDAY SMACKDOWN”)

Always tell someone when they look tasty.

(“RULES FOR LIVING”)

I can’t overstate the importance of adult connection, specifically

(“MEATBAG DAN”)

In a way-too-tight fleece suit.

(“LILITH”)

Eventually everyone partially air-dries while wailing.

(“FAQ”)

No, it’s not a thing. It’s an unfolding, a phenomenon.

(“CLOSE ENCOUNTERS”)

I’ll send a lantern and some furs.

(“ALL WE HAVE TO FEAR”)

You gotta move in, get inside that dumpster fire of death and dying.

(“THE END”)

It all falls under the genus WTF, like

(“THE DARK TIMES TIKI BAR”)

the benefits of painting yourself pastel pink with acrylics from knees to navel.

(“EXPLANATION OF BENEFITS”)

The whole operation has been hacked to pieces and the pieces are in charge

(“DISSOCIATE’S DEGREE”)

and in turn, this gifted completeness makes the speaker’s telling glow.

(“MEN”)

Here’s my exquisite corpse on the morning of my 43rd birthday (which I thought for a good week or so was my 33rd), wearing a moisturizing face mask and pretending to botox myself with one of the children’s Tylenol syringes. Photo credit: Sam Dean