Untitled Poem by Guest Poet #4: W.F. Roby

Guest Poet #4 is W.F. Roby, and he selected the words provided by Christine Swint.

Untitled

No more etcetera, only ephemera of catalogs
locked to brims. We wear our weighty sweater-vests to hide
the donut-shape. Out front, vendors
print placards thick to keep others from knowing
the name of your shrink. Here: take the luff, fill it with wind. Here:
take blue and roll it into snakes and O-shapes
until the rims of your fingernails wear, (mine
are bitten raw to rims and tire). Every raspberry wears a wig,
thin hairs that line up by name to impale
beggars. They ask the alphabet for words.
At rise, a gust from an open window winnows
digits from the alarm clock. Meanwhile,
the neighbor pulls a board of ash
as gently from its cord as you would scrape
a new egg from a nest – those three white wriggling worms
sitting bright in the dust of a dream, they are
new as crime. Just below a molding silt stone
(stuck moss-wise to its fast gray flesh) I find
the gristly nest of some subterranean spider.


Christine's Words:
luff, raspberry, impale, winnow, scrape

Guest Poet # 3....

Emari DiGiorgio is Guest Poet #3 at Quarrel. Look for her first draft on 8/24/09.

"Drinking Song" by Guest Poet #1: Andrew Demcak

Guest Poet #1 is Andrew Demcak, and he has selected words provided by Justin Evans.


Drinking Song

the bits of wet paper
salamander within a Chinese screen
minding their labeled sides in a blown sky
I shouldn’t exist, stopped,
I fight humor my shot glass
my strength divorcing emptiness
my bitter pail
the surprise of my half-corpse
I scratched and didn’t sleep
I was careful, I bragged ahead
my waiting mouth covered with hope
the way I was complaint-filled
supported by alcoholic forgetting
entirely resentful
shaped by a chilled rasp
the superior body
poured in two pale versions
absolutely white
not to upset time regretfully
distilling
I might make a living
inescapable but not whimpering


Justin's Words:
salamander, fight, rasp, pale, pail