...an apple is a pome...

This is a decided prompt based on some Facebook comments that came after my post, "...an apple is a pome...". Here are the comments I received:

Jaime: "A potato is a pomme de terre..."

Nancy: "beware the bad pomme..."

Piper: "and a poem is a pomegranate. :)"

Here is my go after all the comments and ideas mixed (a quick three minute poem):

to eat, or to be eaten by the inevitable edit:
beware the poem that has eyes!
it is hungry, and can see you from any angle,
but so are you. The water pot
is already boiling and the knives
are poised to peel
away the skin and extract
its knotted vision.

Now it's your turn! I would love to see if this could go further and if others might want to play. Peace!

Non-Sequitur Exquisite Corpse Pot Luck (October 24)

It is autumn, a long time away from the last Exquisite Corpse shindig. We've met again underneath Anita's apple tree, but with a variable cast:

Anita Lonergan

D. Shane Peterson

Craig Svonkin

Sandra Maresh

Tameca L Coleman

It's cooler now. There are no bees out doing their good work. There are greens left in the garden and apples on the tree. The tree has done well this year. The garden is tilled, readied for winter.

We have a wonderful feast, again. There's the Waldorf Salad that we almost all had a hand in. The apples and celery were cut in the car on the way to Anita's. There was a stop made to the store for walnuts and mayonnaise. At Anita's, we added the walnuts, mayonnaise, nutmeg and cinnamon and stirred them all together with a lovely old wooden spoon.

There were the sandwiches from a neighborhood Vietnamese restaurant, the Lonergan's buckwheat waffles, homemade jams from the garden, a lovely pan of greens and vegetables, and a beautiful, cocoa dusted Bundt cake. Tummies were pleased.

Despite a slight chill, and a greying sky, we decided to sit outside underneath the apple tree. We went three rounds, just as we went the time before. The first time, to warm up, we wrote with the ability to see the lines that came before. The second time, we folded the pages over, so that we were blind when we wrote our next lines. The third time, we wrote poetic bits on torn pieces of paper, scrambled them in a hat, and chose the pieces at random and read them in no particular order. The results of this activity follow:

Round 1:

We five sitting under the apple tree

contemplating life, love, & sex in the garden

A hole in the fence & grey skies

frame the circle, the squirrel in the compost,

taking chunks from the autumn harvest,

enjoying a discarded pumpkin,

The talk, the words, bees moving from

flower to flower,

none of us performing the role of bees.

The Bees do that.

Round 2:

The tree, the talk, enjoying an encounter between

diverse peoples, but similar

we are laughing, thinking, comparing life experiences.

Jets in the missing man formation. Who's not here?

The alliums are gone now, the peaches, too.

The pumpkins and the berries give way

to the greens, and the apples mulching

into the earth.

Can I live amidst the squalor?

Green of the hose, green grass, green

leaves, green house, all varied colors

by the same name.

Tapping and jet roar. Schmutz in the city.

Cover the windows. It's time. The season

has come to its next dot, resting

here until the next writer picks up the next sentence.

Schmutz dropping on his sweater, he

hesitates.

"Sum up air, sum up noise," Doe

says, but one can't sum up.

Round 3:

1) We are writers, the 5 of us, comparing notes, lives,

roommates, "I am best when I speak, not when I write."

2) I was gonna roll on the floor laughing.

I come from here. I ain't Chicano. I ain't shit.

No accent on the Dia De Muertos.

Kinda like the Hornada de Muertos.

3) Writing is not speaking

Is not singing or humming.

It has its own pains & pleasures,

rhythms & embarrassed pauses.

4) We're all just going to keep everyone guessing:

The hints of accents in our voices, misplaced & misinterpreted,

and the breadth of knowledge and interests

defy labeling.

5) Wrecked cars & broken sonnets litter the front yard: schmutzy.

Please stay tuned for future shindigs!

Non-Sequitur Exquisite Corpse Potluck (July 18)

On July 18th, underneath Anita's apple tree, eight of us got together for a potluck, sights in the garden and some exquisite corpse. We went three rounds. The first round had us write, one after the other, with the ability to see what had been written before. The second round had us write a line on the same piece of paper without being able to see the line that came before. The third round, had us each write on a scratch piece of paper, pile the papers together, and then read them randomly. The results follow:

Round 1:

shady seven, city sounds softly

chatting, asking suggestions for

words, but when silence says

everything. Everything, and what's seen

without words; the mini-bee turning in its flower,

part of the cycle. Or the dream.

While the Beats smile knowingly,

having done it all half a century ago,

when turtles went underground

under two inch thick cement slabs,

under lead pipes and earth packed hard

beneath years of traffic and chaos.

An ancient tool shop operator

gave dinosaurs several pieces

of shrapnel steak. Dinosaurs

ate pipes and lumber.

Cracking underneath the stone weight

each dinosaur's breath shimmering

in the plant's growth.

Round 2:

Summer hums around, circling the

salon. Tomatoes progress, onions double,

pumpkins travel down the path.

Just enough cloud cover, and just enough sky,

under the apple tree, next to plush clover--

myriad forms of cover....

Down South. South of the border.

Musical language, languid music.

It's not like here, ya know.

And to string a sentence

together you need pumpkin butter,

blackberries, half ripe, and Anitatea.

It was like ink bleeding through a piece

of paper. Or blood through butcher paper.

A sickening smell, like rotten meat wafted from

somewhere.

Over the rainbow there were

pieces of light.

The stillness of the wind

speaks to the leaves.

Round 3:

1) We were born after the war.

Then we were in the war.

Now our children and grandchildren

are gone to the war.

2) All of the rocks strewn along the path

and the constant chatter of the

passing cars, cans thrown.

3) The music was tangible. I felt almost as heavy as a mist,

but not quite. More like a tingle at the tips of your

toes when they fell asleep.

4) In exquisite corpse land

we never decided to leave

Point Pleasant beach.

Instead we launched

a hand-made book.

5) Died in the check out line

with a crab, he did.

Seafood is dependable.

Trees give us amnesia

good for the onion fields.

It's shell gave way

to red lobster.

6) Shadow and light spackled paper--

the pen courses over the pattern

another level of black and white.

7) Laughing, sharing notes & souls plot

a course in the garden, under the apple

tree, next door the door opens.

Participants:

(in no particular order, since Frank's suggestion that naming who wrote what would kill the whole idea of the exquisite corpse, as it's the product that matters, and not who wrote what).

Anita Lonergan

Michael Lonergan

Frank Bessinger

Kat Willow

Tom Gerlick

Sandra Maresh

Max Rommerdahl

Tameca L Coleman