Shuffled frequencies:
Say something specific but utterly preposterous
Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem
Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place
Use a piece of false cause and effect logic
Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but finally makes no sense.
Use a piece of “talk” you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand)
Make the persona in the poem do something that they could not do in “real life.”
Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
Use a metaphor.
Use a phrase from a language other than English.
Source:
Imagine swallowing the moon, sun, land and sea in one violent gulp, reverberating waves
slinking and sticking like teardrops around what once was everything and nothing, drowning life,
reversing genesis, spilling into that unchartered void and filling what’s empty with sacred
emptiness. Miniscule droplets reflecting hues of yellow and orange, distorting the world behind
them, elongating, squishing, creating new images from the old. A unique world within each
droplet. Steve once said “we contain god within ourself”. Water from loch 9, West Glenville.
I got to be god of that small summer. From water came the world, pushed in pulses of flowing
earth. From flux the sphere took shape and knew itself, became aware of origin calling it a
knowledge. At the third position, light sheens through, calls a question with a gargle and spills
us upon a floor. Popped latex isn’t biodegradable even if you can recycle the picture from
Facebook to Twitter to Instagram. Quit bursting pollutants when there are thirsting
people–instead balloon filters, clean our water. I can’t drink likes no matter how they flow.
I hate to burst your bubble but you’re not going to make any money doing that. Thanks, but that
bubble already popped and I’ve been having the greatest time drowning in its dislocated
droplets. I hold the orb still with my mind, against the spray and watch the water run over it
and drip off, sunset glowing through. I do not let it sway. Wonder if this is how God feels about
the sun, the moon, the earth, letting each single droplet drip where it may, but not letting it
waiver. Moons aquatic // nebulas the mind // wet & never drowned // breath, blue-orange
paradise // and the eye is all sandy horizon. There will be more things breaking: the light
through winter sea. This egg of ice will flood and shatter, will spill yellow, pale at first, and paler.
It’s raining and the hammer drops in pieces. A dizzy background, something’s focused: in this
droplet is the sunburst. Where we fall is no man’s land for our orb of yellow but for the
one-two-three seconds before we dissolve into a purple-black, we’ll be the epicenter of a ray,
a bedizened heat, until we—ca pika shiu—pool endlessly. For a moment, liquefied silence, bursting.
by Jessica Melendy, Westley Smith, Jaime Chernoch, Nick Snow, Kieran Moriarty, Jessamyn Wolff, Megan Waring, Shannon Kafka, Christie Towers, Nick Trefonides, Krisela Karaja, Sabina Lindsey
