(zeugma application materials 1 of 2 - start by reading here )
The Anatomy
by Page
Your last thousand pizzas have condensed into a flake.
It works on your arteries until a trip it decides to take.
Vaguely headed to a block party in your metropolitan brain,
it must first canoe those beaten path rapids, Ye Olde Cardios.
Thus: past the tricuspid valve easily and out the right atrium
what a rush! but just there, just then, a sticky tip catches the lip,
the lip of the semiluna and this passage ends in clot, clog, coagulation.
That is the tiny event that propels you unto Consequent’s Stage:
sirens, bright lights, actors in surgical green or white,
a chorus of beeping machines and you – lying prone,
are the star of this absurdist scene, doing nothing
as your Best Supporting (doctor) pounds your chest,
and screams at your ear — “Come on, get with it Mr. X,
Live-Live-Live!” which from your detaching, out-of-body view
looks like what? Healthy exercise, the beat of a cheer.
Pantoum: When I was Six
by Gary
An old church widow drove a Mercury.
My father told me he drove one to school.
Our religion had the truth, but not the fervency.
That summer I nearly drowned in a pool.
My father sometimes drove me to school.
That spring my teacher wore mini-skirts.
That summer I nearly drowned in a pool.
Our house that winter was so cold I still hurt.
That fall my teacher wore plaid wool skirts.
My friend got his father’s watch that winter.
Our house that winter was so cold I still hurt.
That was the year they built the World Trade Center.
His widowed mom gave him that watch that winter.
Our religion had the truth, but not the fervency.
That was the year they built the World Trade Center.
An old church widow drove a Mercury.
The Waitress Psalm in a Small Man’s Testament
by Holly
The way her back pained her when she walked
Amazed him. To watch her heavy breasts
Sway on tendon strings tied to vertebrae
Pulling lower, lower gave him a twinge
Of quiet delight. What he wanted with such
Heat, what she held away from him
At every turn should cause her pain, should force
Her nightly down onto her empty bed, his coins
And bills splayed out against her face,
Tip bag empty as old age, unwilling
To tender relief or take her breakfast shift,
That was his cherry cheese, his cigarette,
His hope for a comfort that kills.