"Bored city, valentines day 1982.
I met a girl today...
I don't remember her name yet,
I'm calling her Halo..."
2GQ conducted a bunch of exquisite corpse experiments in 2004. The results were published in 2GQ #2 and in 2GQ #3, and were part of our "Exquisite Language" event at the Heathman Hotel as part of the Enteractive Language Festival.
Here's one by R. V. Branham (of Gobshite Quarterly fame), Mark Gunderson (aka ECC/the Evolution Control Committee), Joe Matheny (of STARE and other projects), Alaura O'Dell (formerly of Psychic TV, in another incarnation), Ninah Pixie (who produced the incredible 3-disc international collection, "Women Take Back the Noise," on Ubuibi Records), Julian Tulip (of Julian Tulip's Licorice and Cancer Fags), and dAS (of Big City Orchestra). Madness, I'm telling you, madness!
And Sky Fucks Tobacco
an exquisite corpse experiment in collaborative poetic lunacy by R.V. Branham, Mark Gunderson, Joseph Matheny, Alaura O'Dell, Ninah Pixie, Julian Tulip, and dAS.
Bored city, valentines day 1982.
I met a girl today...
I don't remember her name yet,
I'm calling her Halo,
She's a waitress by night, a waistress by day.
Serving up dice and droppers, pins and razors, makes me real anxious and a bit pushy.
I ask for a water, she brings me a pinwheel.
--
Let's go get ice cream!
Hurray!
The blitzkrieg only incited further riots for the next four centuries,
causing all children to become invisible.
My fellow Americans, "Twice as much happens".
In a day of darkness I dream solid nightmares
as the cloud of immense grief overtakes my soul.
---
I step back when she brings my order.
The order is always barked, harshly, I know she loves me, she calls my bluff, she makes me angry, she insists that I fold, yet I do not. Is this not a inequitable relationship? Why do I persevere? Why do I insist on holding out for something to change, be different, to roll up snake eyes? It is because I am a gambler at heart. and a gambler has won my heart in a game I never knew I was playing until it was too late.
----
I ask for a menu, she brings me a volume of Pascal's Provincial
letters. A small choochoo train circles & winds its way from
the formica runway of a counter to the individual tables,
bearing empty plates with crumbs, & condiments in foil & plastic
tubing. When I try to look at what others diners are eating, I
I am shot the most hostile & withering of looks. The waitress
has do a constant & dodgy mambo to negotiate the admittedly
small train tracks. I do not know the tracks' gauge.
An hour passes, digitally by my watch, sidereally by the
sundial's reckoning.
I order from the Provincial letters, & she informs me that
the new cook is getting his sea legs & might not know that
particular recipe.
A day passes, & the barometric pressure changes. I get a
headache.
The waitress mambos past. I ask for a key to the loo, & I get
the keys to the kingdom. Okay. Fine. We'll work with what
we have been dealt. & by no small coincidence this kingdom
is the kingdom of my birth. I try to book a flight to the
kingdom & am told by my travel agent that the kingdom been
crushed by a military coup.
A week passes. Other diners come & go, some have stayed possibly
longer than I, some order & some don't. Again I cannot look
too closely or they throw things. Looks, plates, salad forks,
steak knives.
My meal arrives. It is not at all what I asked for but it
will do. After all, I had asked for something from Pascal,
& instead she has brought me a rocket launcher & a kevlar
vest.
A month which includes a blue moon passes.
I ask for the bill.
----
The waitress distressess, the water unrolls.
She serves up mice and drunkard's shins, and razors make me real
Cutting my shins to the bone
I'm so thirsty.
Where's that damned water?
----
She offers it with a frown.
I slip it into her spine, draw off some fluid, and
add it to my cocktail.
"Thank you," I say, and roll the dice.
"A girl in your position should learn to smile."
----
Bored city, valentines day 1982.
I met a girl today...
I don't remember her name yet,
I'm calling her Halo,
She's a waitress by night, a waistress by day.
Serving up dice and droppers, pins and razors, makes me real anxious and a bit pushy.
I ask for a water, she brings me a pinwheel.
I love her now.
I am literally looking up at forever, makes me so sad I'm going to need an umbrella for my eyes.
Title taken from a bibliomancy reading using The Encyclopedia of Superstitions (E. and M.A.Radford, Christina Hole Ed., 1961; Helicon, Oxford), Verbal Abuse (No.2, "The Future," Fall 1993. "Max Blagg Detourns Gap TV Commercial"), and Scribners (June 1930, "Dangerous Man" by Oliver La Farge).
