Tony Mancus and CL Bledsoe
Collaborative Poem #1
Don’t be fooled: the dodo is playing
the long game. Faith walks into a bar
and steals Science’s seat. Given the current
moment, Science decides to hide as matter.
As a matter of fact, so many things begin to
hide in their forms – lakes as the drawings
in maps, an organ as a pipe in a painting with
the words that describe it as not the thing
it’s supposed to be. Reason as an upvoted
celebrity cameo. The secret no one wants
you to know is there’s nothing secret
anymore, just things you’d rather not
have to see when you’re trying to watch
Star Trek reruns. Who cares what Klingons
get it as long as the corn stays popped
and the wireless doesn’t drop in the middle
of one of Patrick Stewart’s more contemplative
moments? There will always be things outside
of knowing. For example, what happens
to popcorn in the middle of a black hole?
When will it be my turn, my daughter’s turn,
my mother’s turn to make Trending News
Happening Now? What they don’t tell you
is that the caloric value of the average human
body is far less than a boar. What they do
tell you is how to identify what you’re supposed
to be afraid of. Popsicle sticks in summer can
easily be choked on, the patterns on the
trapper keepers could cause a lazy eye, too
many hens and the roosters won’t crow when
it’s sunbreak. Don’t worry. They’ve got Band-
Aids with your favorite extinct hominids
on them. I’m wearing a homo ergaster
on my knee and a homo sapiens on my elbow.
I’m eating a chicken that tastes long-dead.
Its bones are piling up like fingers in the threshing
machine. I mean, some days I can look right through
anyone’s skin and see that they’re drying out, too.
Tony Mancus is the author of a handful of chapbooks. He lives with his wife Shannon and three yappy cats in Colorado and serves as chapbook editor for Barrelhouse.
CL Bledsoe is the author of seventeen books, most recently the poetry collection King of Loneliness (lulu.com, 2017) and the novel The Funny Thing About… (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2018).He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter and blogs at How to Even… on Medium (with Michael Gushue).
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