never ask me to perform that part of the ceremony again
By Vacant Dragon à la Subverted Lips, Kate Lilley
Published 27 June 2024
sleep by pressing a tiny button
to take away the pricking pains of the side
the green toothache
all blue spots or marks that happen therein
to take away the loathing
and leave it in the long catalogue of neglected commonplaces
spend an hour at an open window
wringing a cloth
sap of the former root
the broadest leaf:
a bandage applied
whir-r-r-r-r
the seed is ripe
shows itself possessed
awakened thoroughly
ears ajar
whir-r-r-r-r
it spreads itself
rising from the middle
a new development
whir-r-r-r-r
whir-r-r-r
slipped on and off a hundred times a day
it becomes second nature
a symphony
a radical harmony
(a substitute for mother)
when successful
a vital force prevails
strange and unusual
fresh coloured veins running through it
great spreading branches
that happen in the eyelids
Footnote: this poem was created using the Found texts constraint as the starting point. The found texts are the ‘Women Here and There’ column in the New York Times (1857–1922); John Bascom’s Lecture X, ‘Things That Mislead Taste’ in Aesthetics, or the Science of Beauty (1862); and an extract from Nicholas Culpeper’s The Complete Herbal (1652).