Author’s Note: I lost out on $300 with these poems as the place I sent them to didn’t want them. Due to current sickness, I don’t have the energy to be told no, so I know my audience will appreciate them. Cento poems are made up of lines from another poem or piece of media. I have cited the source(s) beneath each poem.
Doughboy
A tooth next to a bird, scrunching
paper flowers, kneading and folding.
I wore my best crimson velvet.
I boiled over a tiny alcohol stove.
Let my heart be still and ghastly grim.
Upon the sinking, I clasp a maiden.
Of black despair, I know the Eunuch.
I like you cold as the sky, gouged out.
•
Sources: Tiny Moons by Nina Mingya Powles, The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg, The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, & 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane
Übermoth
He was part of the equation.
I called him Übermoth—the
malevolent angel. The animality
was repulsive; old manked fruit.
The burnt rib cages with their
watercolour memories. The middle
of the mundane, born in a trunk.
The brown end of an era is a wild
lynx that perished. Little earthling,
we became a blue-flamed sonnet.
•
Source: the accidental by Ali Smith
Starving Artists
I saw the best minds of my generation
selling garlic blossoms at the gutter’s edge.
•
Sources: Howl by Allen Ginsberg & Salt Point by Jack Hirschman.
Courtenay's Corner 