ON18 otis thread

photo: Henry Cherry

homunculus / blacksmith / peony / crawls / elbow / pinnacle / facetious / cavort / tangled / branch / psychopomp / shyly

Looking within the homunculus discovered

another homunculus, and so on. All of them are imaginary. A blacksmith is

hammering a peony on an anvil. Still the problem

remains unsolved. Still the problem crawls

slowly forward hauling itself across the asphalt with its one remaining elbow.

Is this the pinnacle? Let's say it is.

Even the trees here have a facetious air.

I really don't want to cavort right now. Thanks.

See how it's tangled? That's also imaginary,

an imaginary branch of an imaginary crawling problem.

The imaginary homunculus and its problem meet their imaginary psychopomp

and sail shyly away.

discovered / imaginary / hammering / hauling / trees / air / thanks / problem / sail / unsolved / asphalt / anvil

it was winter and I discovered

work is an imaginary production line

dwarves hammering away in my head

hauling out their sacks of ore, no freeze

no trees no string lights

no audience of air

no clouds in subdued ranks of thanks

singing thine is the problem, thine is the pain

thine is the sail that catches

unsolved this restlessness

this asphalt cradled

this anvil born

it / line / hammering / freeze / lights / audience / subdued / thine / catches / restlessness / asphalt / born

You’re right, it will be winter soon enough–

Though actually the line was crossed last night.

Torrential rain was hammering the road.

The air around my feet began to freeze.

I barely saw the lights of other cars.

Yes, winter came, me in the audience,

With my cab fare in back fretting the while.

I recited, To thine own self be true,

And other catches [sic] from Hamlet,

Just to engage a restlessness that might

keep me alert on sloshing wet asphalt.

Thank my stars, I wasn’t born yesterday.

winter / crossed / rain / feet / I / yes / cab / true / Hamlet / engage / wet / stars

Treacherous the winter’s skid of salt
truck-crossed frigid bridge

riverskating rain turned

glass and hard, feet-

sled in the plows I begged

to follow, and yes, the swerve,

yes, the cab ranting the direction

true to you, the perilous

hamleting home, my boots

engaged with absence,

my mittens wet with stars

like frozen tears

skid / bridge / turned / glass / begged / swerve / ranting / perilous / boots / absence / mittens / frozen

Paper airplanes tried not to skid across the paper runway.

A bridge between clouds

turned into something

maybe glass (not ice).

You begged me

to swerve, change lanes

to avoid the ranting

prophet making every perilous

syllable his last. Soon his boots

became the absence

of feet. His mittens dangling

from the powerline, frozen.

airplanes / clouds / something / maybe / me / lanes / avoid / prophet / syllable / become / dangling / powerline

Airplanes juggernaut down from among

The puffy poof of clouds

Bringing something no one wants to see

And maybe it won’t be a disaster

If there is no one, and especially not me

In the lanes of its trajectory

We must avoid all things falling

As a prophet may have named

Every syllable and consonant

That will become treacherous

Dangling down after a storm

Like a powerline ready to ignite

juggernaut / poof / wants / disaster / especially / trajectory / falling / named / consonant / treacherous / storm / ignite

The juggernaut, when it comes, will be merciless

and incessant. Want proof? Just stand in its way. Poof.

The universe wants nothing from you but your mere

existence. That’s it. But if you want disaster,

especially some really messy disaster,

then plot the trajectory of the juggernaut

and scrawl an X where the next falling star will land.

Mark the date in red. Your mother named you and she

can name another child. No end is consonant,

though, with any treacherous beginning. Tell me

that I’m not talking to myself. A storm is just

a storm, nothing more. No need to ignite the sky.

merciless / stand / mere / if / messy / plot / next / mother / end / beginning / just / more

I am a merciless acrobat in silks. I

Stand on a cat’s whisker. A pulse from

Mere hoof beats chokes me. I turn an

“If” to a pair of dice. A bugle plays

Messy taps on the walls of my

Mouth. I will roll the novel’s plot through

A playwright’s next typographic stream

And masquerade as my mother. Now

An age of coconuts will end. The era of

The mirror is beginning. Mirrored, I

Dissemble just an image of myself.

All that I could want is more.

acrobat / whisker / chokes / dice / walls / mouth / typographic / masquerade / coconuts / mirror / image / want

In dreams an acrobat

Makes a tightrope of a stray cat’s whisker.

Dream or delusion, the mind chokes

On the difference. Throw dice

And watch what happens to the walls,

What mouth speaks their destruction.

No living face is typographic.

Every mask becomes a masquerade.

See the beach sand where the coconuts

Fell. See the mirror when the lights

Go off: the image, if you will,

Of a moment, if you want.

dreams / stray / mind / throw / happens / destruction / living / becomes / where / lights / off / if

The psychopomp dreams of following you,

To where the stray dogs lose themselves

In mind of streetcorners they cannot find.

We throw them scraps, the guides not the dogs,

Scraps of what happens to our fears

Once the destruction of breaths sets in.

Living is a road to the darkness, they say,

While time becomes a landfill of selves.

Where should we lead them?

Let’s pull the spirit guides back to the lights, then,

Off the underworld highway, as if our lives were still there,

As if we are not the ghosts in this country.

following / dogs / find / scraps / our / breaths / darkness / time / lead / let’s / highway / we

Following the news that the king was dead

we took the dogs to the forbidden glen

to see what sacred relics we could find

but only stores of missing nuts and scraps

of birdwing met our eyes, even when we'd

dug so long our breaths mixed with the dirt

rousing a dervish that wrought darkness

so pure it stopped time in its tracks

and turned our gold back into lead.

Who needs relics anyway? Let's take

the longest highway to Cape Horn

where we can watch for some new thing.

king / forbidden / sacred / nuts / met / mixed / wrought / tracks / gold / take / cape / watch

I was the king but he said actually you’re the unsympathetic character
in the story of our forbidden love & I said well you’re an unreliable narrator
(or wish I had)—we had a few somewhat forced sacred moments
but mostly I went nuts and then nothing
finally I had met my demon lover and he was even more beautiful

than mixed-up teenage me had imagined

in the city at night with its over-wrought creatures beneath
an ambiguous threat from above—a god that leaves no tracks
as it mines our gold for fuel—and it didn’t mean a thing
I told him take this child wrapped in the flags of all nations
make her a cape so when she dances
the moon can’t watch

actually / unreliable / wish / nothing / more / teenage / creatures / ambiguous / fuel / nations / make / moon

The following otises were created by
ten contributors to issue #18 and our two editors
using the following rules.

RULES of OTIS

1.Using the twelve seed words, create twelve lines. Each line must incorporate one seed word, in the order in which they are given. That is, the words are to be used in the order in which they are given, one seed word per line.
2.The word may appear anywhere in the line but the form of the word cannot be altered. This is the most important rule of all. If a verb, do not change the tense; if a noun do not pluralize / singularize. Hyphenation, capitalization, and de-capitalization are allowed and you may repeat the seed word elsewhere in the otis, in any form, if you so choose.
3.Select twelve new seed words from your completed otis for the next otis. Again, don’t change the form of the word when doing this, and do not use the same seed words that you were given in this new list.