Impersonal Universe Deck 3

Constraint: Use one of the two words on each card consecutively starting at card ten and ending at card twenty; with the ten words you've selected fill in as necessary to make the words fit together coherently.


Coke is a social drug.
Lesson learned from the infinite
droll of the supposed space we name
Universe. 
Hell says to Iceland 
"It's a scandal."

Writing Exercise: Impersonal Universe Deck 2

Here is the constraint: take every third card from the deck, and use one word from every card to begin every other line of the poem.

Sometimes, he is silent. The way a

cobra eye-to-eye with one mongoose would

shut his damn mouth once he saw the army behind him.

Abolish the wits that lead to plans. the voice in his

snakey skull reminds him there are no

Gods in foxholes. Sometimes he is silent because

he picked up a penny on the ground under a 

tent at a carnival at the age of 7 and forgets if it was heads up. 

This would explain the lifetime of pain though none will accept

money as a valid excuse for him. He is silent because

on the first Wednesday of every month he sends a check 

children he did not mean to have. Because the sky, too,

is silent and grey and the stars are mostly

nameless. Because far enough into deep waters there is a 

moment where he must either learn to swim or form

goodbyes and say them to the no ones he's 

never spoken to and the men in bars whose

fists he has seen all too close. The worst part is the morning

when he lifts his head, bloodied from the

asphalt beneath him and realizes that he has always

been surrounded by mongeese.

Writing Exercise: Impersonal Universe Deck 1

Constraint: Two stanzas, haiku format. You may only use words from your deck, but you may repeat them.


Eyelids yammer, wet.

Silent doorbells. Lesson: used

Asphalt--dark goodbye.

Plague and age burning

Squeeze, breathe, kissless skin cushion

Eyelids lie, repent.

Writing exercise 10/14

She folds her fingers the way she
presses his laundry. The collar is
first.--always, he tells her but
can't do it himself. Can barely change himself.
Agonies are one of my changes of garments.

Sometimes the starch sizzles.
She sits on her hands to keep from shaking
ironing them flat beneath her.
He paces in a kitchen where the two used
to cook dinner but now she just bakes resentment. 350 degrees.
It goes well with dinner. The seeds

came from the garden, after all.
Sometimes she reads there but mostly
she sneezes where the pollen settles and
remembers she is allergic to this house.
Earth! You seem to look for something in my hands.

And at a glance she took the knife and earth's advice,
back to the kitchen where blood boils and dishes break.

To the person who stole my wallet:

You are a fucking asshole.



That's all.

-Melody