It's heeeeeeeere!!
the most exquisitest exquisite corpse you ever saw
Beloved Caravaners!
We asked you to join us in a Caravan experiment—a large-scale, long-range, virtual version of the classic poetry parlor game (we bet non-writers hear a phrase like ‘classic poetry parlor game’ and think wow that sounds…less than scintillating)—and you generously obliged.
We thank you—and you killed it!
(oh ho ho ho we thought that was quite clever thanks folks we’ll be here all week)
For those of you who didn’t join us this time around, here’s what we did.
Exquisite Corpse (cadavre exquis) is a collaborative process of making a single work of art—sometimes a drawing, sometimes a story, often a poem—whose invention is credited to the French Surrealists of the 1920s. In the case of a written work, each participant writes a word, sentence, or line before passing it to the next, based on only a glimpse of the preceding contributions—in the case of a poem, a single line. The result is a surprising, sometimes surreal, often uncanny collective artwork.
And that’s exactly what you’ve written.
A word from fearless leader and Caravan Corpse Coordinator, Paul Corman-Roberts:
Hi everyone...this is the poem that we as a collective composed over the past six weeks, starting during National Poetry Month. There has been some slight rearrangement due to variations in response time, so the order of authors’ response is, in one or two cases, slightly rearranged. In those cases I tried to err on the side of "best poetic flow" from one line to the next, where exact order of response could not be maintained. I am so honored to have conducted this experiment with each of you talented authors, and we should all be proud of this wonderful monster we have created!
Did you participate? Thank you! Share, tag us, tag yourselves if we missed your tag!1 Did you miss it this time? Share anyway, invite other writers, and let us know that you want to participate in the next round!
Without further ado, we give you….
The Inaugural Caravan Community Exquisite Corpse.
Revolution/Requiem
The new revolution's first photons hurtled over the Eastern horizon.
Earth felt a tug at her core, like the crash of a nickel-iron wave breaking
against her hard belly, like a shiver of solar wind whooshing
north, like a warning
Every leaf on every tree shook, each blossom shimmered, while
earthworms wiggled into mouths of hungry birds, never
noticing the north solar wind whooshing.
"That is so goddamned Disney," I said to her.
"You fell in love again, didn't you?"
The lay down always comes before the layoffs
The lowdown usually comes low and squeaks when done low
when they go low, we get high, high as dawn breaking down the doors of
darkness
we watch the shadows shriveling, fleeing; fling our hope to the trusted
wind, to soar and never sink
Below the knife edge of the mesa, the city of the night gives one final,
desperate, glitter and is flooded by the sun.
Try to catch your breath (or breadth) whilst drowning in abject amounts
of light and warmth
Sensation attends and width spreads from a place no direction ever
named.
hummingbird above finds improbable sweetness, surviving within what
remains.
unrotted--all those woozy wallflowers kissing with their eyes open
people who haven’t decayed, but also haven’t lived: performing
closeness with fingers crossed
and, still, cities clothed in mantles of fear fade to bloodied dust, no
questions, no luck
no hope, only dire destitution.
should’ve started out by telling you you’d be one step behind
forever changed, never quite fully human.
I tend the quiet galaxies buried in my marrow
Black hole this failed human science experiment
I do not hope to see the light of tomorrow
I hope instead for darkness—
A mystical darkness like the ocean’s depth
from which monster creatures swim secretly, silently, sensually
smoothing the path to ever deeper depths.
The cool waters lick my toes, gentle, a caress of none-too-subtle danger
One step further and the world disappears under me, if I allow it I am
taken out of sense
Do I dare? Some waters are always meant to stir your fears.
Fear lifts its face to meet my gaze, glowing like an underwater moon.
The authors of this exquisite corpse (in no particular order): Deborah C. Segal, Julie Gabrielli, Paula Kostel, Diana, Aoife Carty, kristinoel ludwig, Elise Rosen-Levin, Elle Wilding, Margaret Luke, Deborah Black, Bryan Franco, Jay Siegmann, Teyani Whitman, Paulette Bodeman, Nikki, Miz Liz, Susie Mawhinney, Brenda McInnes, Sarah Frison, Phynne~Belle, Ïmola Tóth, Terri Rose Jertson, Joanna Eleftheriou, Sarah Siegler, Ingrid, Gillian Annie, Marya Hornbacher, Holly Starley, Paul Corman-Roberts.
Absolutely brilliant. Thank you all for contributing to this fine piece.
I’ve never joined in on something like this either.. great fun! And rather magical in the way the poem twisted away then turned back to the place where it began.
Does that sort of magic happen every time?
Marvelous!