#RemixReallySystem piece by Taunja Thomson

Taunja Thomson’s image-based #RemixReallySystem piece, built from these words.

Taunja Thomson - Part 1 - The Declined

Taunja Thomson - Part 2 - We Decline

Taunja Thomson - Part 3 - Bell

Taunja Thomson’s poem Skull, My Former appeared in Issue Five. Her work has appeared in The Cincinnati Poets’ Collective, The Cincinnati Poetry Review, and The Aurorean. Her poem “Seahorse and Moon” was nominated for the Pushcart Award in 2005. Several of her poems will be featured in the summer and spring editions of The Cahaba River Journal, as well as in winter issues of Squalory, Lime Hawk Journal, and Wild Age Press.

#RemixReallySystem piece by Charlotte Fressilli

A #RemixReallySystem story by friend-of-the-journal Charlotte Fressilli, based on this pile of text.

The Perks of Loving a Cabbie

When I climbed to Heaven I could feel my feet sifting through granules of cumulonimbus the way they once dragged through Cape Cod sand and the heaviness made me so tired I had to stop and rest. Huffing my soul’s salty breath out of cracking lips, I strained to remember the summer hush of dry red wine passing through them, chasing down pasta, but I could not.

When you climbed to Heaven they offered you the escalator but you took the stairs. So slight you are, but somehow you made it easily and the wives of the cloud-workers stopped their stitching and watched you samba past their windows.

When I climbed to Heaven I went wondering. Weeks of ascent I spent feeling the crook of a wooden spoon still imprinted on my palm and I tried to sing the way my mother taught me but all I could think of was the Yankees and how that grass looks in the middle of the Bronx.

When you climbed to Heaven, the Rainbow Widows watched you glide on the atmosphere and they cheered out their assessments of your grace in quadrilles wrung from the scarves they dipped in pools of their syrupy paint.

When I climbed to Heaven, my steps seemed an allegory—what were they telling me?—and I thought on it ceaselessly but it made the trek harder and so I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth instead.

When you climbed to Heaven you did not question why. You have always understood better than I do what writers often try to say and only stand-up comedians truly know: when the time is right, you walk.

As I climbed to Heaven, I called out for reason, at least reason.

As you climbed to Heaven, you thought only of me and called out, “Cora!”

When we met in Heaven it was closed. We had disenfranchised ourselves. Our visit was unlicensed.

I sobbed and counted my sins: the summers spent huffing the vapors of wine instead of teaching what needed to be taught; the lies I had written in quadrilles and allegories to keep them hidden from even myself, buried beneath the pool; the weeks’ worth of assessments and replacements I had parceled out into granules of my time.

Then I looked at you, at the slightness of you, and somehow your eyes were dry. You switched your headlamp back on, took me by the hand and lead the way back down to earth on foot. It was only when we were among the trees that I realized—saw in those eyes—that the door had been open to you where it had been closed to me.

What could I do but love you for your sacrifice and thank fate to have been the wife of a cabbie. You guys have always understood better than I do what writers often try to say and only stand-up comedians truly know: when the time is right, you walk.

Charlotte Fressilli is a senior at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, majoring in English and Italian Studies. She acts as the Co-Editor to Rushlight, Wheaton’s literary magazine.

#REMIXREALLYSYSTEM PIECE BY J. Bradley

J. Bradley‘s #RemixReallySystem piece, based on this set of words:

Yelp Review – Medieval Times

You will draw a moat of seduction around salt and pepper shakers using only animal grease, skin. Worry not of errant lance shards seeking to pacify you. Worry not how the beer refracts your intentions. Worry what you look like when the photos protect this moment from revision.

 

 

J. Bradley’s poems Yelp Review: Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando & Yelp Review: The Milk Bar appeared in Issue Three.  He is the author of the graphic poetry collection The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014), with art by Adam Scott Mazer. He lives at iheartfailure.net.

#REMIXREALLYSYSTEM PIECE BY TERRY WOLVERTON (PART 2)

Here is the second installment of Terry Wolverton‘s #RemixReallySystem piece, based on this pile of words.

Become silver
I’m looking for alchemy. I want to transmute myself from flesh into precious metal. I want to increase my market value. I want to be around for hundreds of years, needing nothing more than a little polish once in a while. Fingers will caress my surface, eyes will appraise me. I would be able to dress up any occasion. I would be hard and shiny instead of withered and sickly. I would be able to hold my head up high in any setting.

The last council
You’ll never get that group together again, not after what happened last night. We knew there might be friction, but we hoped some good might come of it.  Nobody expected the fat man to start throwing pies at the skinny lady, and for sure no one expected her to take off her pumps and start thwacking the tired hunchback on his head. That’s when the snakes were let loose, and this caused Elinore to pull the fire alarm. Unfortunately the mouse was trampled in the rush to escape.

Land opening into the east, there’s a bowl with hide sides on the west but the opening is to the east. I saw rabbits on the property and hawks flying overhead. There is no more land once you reach the Pacific Ocean, if you want to travel farther you have to go into space; that’s just what people want to do now, book a one-way trip into the stars. It costs all the money you have and more but where you’re going you won’t need money, no Walmart on Mars at least not yet it’s a sense of adventure that brought us here but now we’re pressed up against the edge and feeling hemmed in

Hardly fell
I meant to take a big leap so that I would descend until my consciousness funneled to a small dot and disappeared so that there would be no one left to feel the impact but I miscalculated and instead I just fell a short distance and all the time I was yelling at myself about this stupid mistake and when the sidewalk appeared underneath me my bones felt a most unpleasant sensation of shattering

Environment blooms
You’d think it would take the hint—we poison it, overpopulate it, store nuclear waste in its womb; we burn it; we siphon off all its water; we farm it until the topsoil is dust that blows into the wind; we overheat it; we buy and sell it as if it had no sentience. Still the environment produces. It’s as if it can’t help it. It loves us despite ourselves, and the worst we do, the more it tries to grow.

Buzz go
She’s driven by a kind of speed that comes from a supernatural source she can’t seem to stop herself and she’s always in motion. The light that shines from her eyes is not like the sun or the moon but like some kind of artificially generated wattage that makes you want to put on sunglasses or pull down the shades. There can be no darkness in her presence, only that relentless illumination that assaults the eye but doesn’t really shed light; it’s a demonic power.

Parsecs
I wouldn’t know how to measure the distance between the sun and the next nearest star. I figure if I needed to get to that star I would suddenly understand how to do it. I wouldn’t build a tin can and try to fly there.  I would dematerialize and travel as energy and then could go wherever I want. Earthlings can be so literal and it’s too bad because we miss a lot that way. Big numbers tend to give me a headache. I’m smart enough but not in that way.

Terry Wolverton’s Sizzle & Chew appeared in Issue One. She is the author of ten books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, most recentlyWounded World: lyric essays about our spiritual disquiet. She is the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing studio in Los Angeles, and Affiliate Faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles.

#RemixReallySystem piece by Terry Wolverton (part 1)

Here is the first installment of Terry Wolverton‘s #RemixReallySystem piece, based on this pile of words.

Chase Mommy into the underground she’s tiny and can’t run very fast under the street it’s cool and dark and Mommy will take off her cape and the long black opera gloves she will not sing in this cave beneath the earth but she might tell stories if the hour gets late enough, she might confess to the unsolved crimes of the city or she might tell you where the bodies are buried all the little angels that never grew up they’re tiny too and they have the ability to foretell the future they wear tiny dresses with ribbons

Travel abuse
I told him I refused to stay in another goddamn Howard Johnson’s, not one more night with fried clams for dinner, not one more dream glowing turquoise and orange but now they are closing, one of the last three Howard Johnson’s is closing and I think of my grandparents and how I’d ride in the back seat of their Buick unmindful of my grandfather’s porn collection in the trunk, watching the dull landscape go by. I would miss them once I was back home and wish to listen to the wheels hum again.

Sonic disorder
That girl loved to sing but she had some kind of sonic disorder that made her sound like whales in space whenever she opened her mouth. We all tried to be nice because it made her really happy to let those notes out of her mouth but it was hard to encourage because our ears would start to bleed and our foreheads to melt. She sounded like she was juggling chainsaws and it made us afraid. Still, we didn’t want to hurt her feelings so mostly we’d just sit and weep.

Integrated flock
We weren’t sure we could get them all to get along, those birds of different feathers were used to mostly sticking to their own kind, but we thought it was worth a shot. We brought in the starlings and the magpies, the pigeons and the finches. We had big bags of seed as icebreakers and a spacious birdbath so they could hang. Norma thought there should be music, but we thought that was silly—birds are already musical, so she was voted down.

Happy Face
She told me I should wear my happy face but it was in the laundry. I had worn it the night of the eclipse and ended up spilling hot chocolate all over it. The engaged face had a big rip in it, and I’m about 900 years behind on my mending. The angry face was freshly laundered, but only because I bought three of them—identical—on sale last year. The morose face was another option, but it tends to make other people feel morose too.

Unconnected pictures
My therapist suggested I stop making so many unconnected pictures. She wanted me to try to find a thread to link one image to the next. But I told her this was how I saw the world—flash, flash, flash—like boxcards that had come unglued and spilled over the tracks. The picture of the house did not belong with the picture of the beach or the one of the mountain. Monday had no bond with Tuesday, each day a distinct universe like teeth set loose from my head.

 

Terry Wolverton’s Sizzle & Chew appeared in Issue One. She is the author of ten books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, most recentlyWounded World: lyric essays about our spiritual disquiet. She is the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing studio in Los Angeles, and Affiliate Faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles.

#RemixReallySystem piece by Douglas J. Luman

Here is Douglas J. Luman’s #RemixReallySystem piece, based on this chunk of text.

Deterioration as Philosophic Method: Grammatical Theory of Insubstantiality

after Rem Koolhaas

past radio tragic / to describe that light / o, beginning
of century / not fires, not / fade, hermetic shell / quiet
solipsism nests in spaces / tag at seams / sentences
spelt
p-i-n-e-s / we wept pretty

 

Note on process:

  1. The poem is a complete anagram of the words sent &
  2. Was found in Rem Koolhaas’ book Delirious New York (I’ve included the citation in Chicago format below)
  3. The title is from the letter pool as well, though not every letter is used in the title (only enough to get the piece to be cohesive)

 

Citation:
Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Monacelli Press, 1994.

 

An excerpt of Douglas J. Luman‘s Star/formation appeared in Issue Four.  He is the Book Reviews editor for the Found Poetry Review, an intern at the Chicago School of Poetics, and an MFA candidate at George Mason University. He is sleeping in a library somewhere in Northern Virginia. Follow him on Twitter @douglasjluman, or at http://www.douglasjluman.com

#RemixReallySystem piece by Kelly Nelson

Here is Kelly Nelson’s #RemixReallySystem piece, based on these words.  Kelly Nelson’s poems My Uncle at Nineteen and His Mother Writes the Warden, 1955 appeared in Issue Three.

Three Falling Outs

toes traveled together
toes traveled together
toes traveled together
toes traveled together
toes traveled together
toes traveled together
toes traveled together
toes traveled together
toes traveled together
toes traveled together nation dri

poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping
poetic particles stepping

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Kelly Nelson‘s poems My Uncle at Nineteen and His Mother Writes the Warden, 1955 appeared in Issue Three.  She is the author of the chapbook Rivers I Don’t Live By (Concrete Wolf Press, 2014). Her poems published here were created from her uncle’s 500-page prison record and are part of a book-length found poetry project supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Her found poetry has also appeared in Verbatim, Found Poetry Review and NonBinary Review. She teaches Interdisciplinary Studies at Arizona State University.

 

tK

#RemixReallySystem piece by Jude Marr

Here is Jude Marr’s #RemixReallySystem piece for April, inspired by this chunk of text.

[in] and out

[d]rum [f]in[gers] [g]lint

bar[n] [inci]dent

[f]all [in]sects [di]sin[tegrated]

[re]cord [st]ate [c]lear[ance]

[e]rad[icate] man[ners]

ex[clude] [caro]line content[ious]

pill[ed] [pl]aid [sh]or[e]

[pi]rat[es] [sp]arse

[f]air glut[en]

per[haps] [w]ay

Jude Marr‘s poems adrift & flight— appeared in Issue Two.  Originally from Scotland, she is currently a teaching fellow at Georgia College, where she has recently completed a poetry MFA. Jude’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Cortland Review, r.kv.ry., Black Heart Magazine, and Cider Press Review, among others. She is also an assistant editor at Ghost Ocean.

#RemixReallySystem piece by KJ Hannah Greenberg

Here is KJ Hannah Greenberg’s #RemixReallySystem piece for April, inspired by this chunk of text.

Perhaps Whale Neurons: Life-Saving Work

© KJ Hannah Greenberg

Perhaps frail, whale neurons,
Foraged on great white boats,
Full of mad scientists seeking
Spinal, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s
And What-His-Name’s remedies,
Get sourced in surgical suites’
Firefighting, life-saving work.

Maybe, multiple sclerosis cures,
Minus Marie Curie’s toxic doings,
Or hasty nasopharyngeal airways’
Executed methods, offer roads against
Snoring hope, horrid huffing diseases.
Such might bring bustle, evening rains,
Miracles, mayhap stay coffin makers.

Feasibly, non-invasive ventilation,
Military acumen, also pathologies,
Miles out from veracity, don’t merely
Tend sick and broken bodies’ never-
Ending ribbons of hospital floors,
Clinical trials (that camera obscura

Of established medicine), implants.
Exactly, doctors’ payloads, first light,
Plus at dusk, formulate possibility’s
Rivers, like balmy vacations, like old
Tinctures, like witch doctors’ charms.
They resist G-d’s timeout, His network
Parameters, Fahrenheit or Celsius,
Fight to limit cosmic permanence.

KJ Hannah Greenberg’s poems have appeared in issue #2 and issue #4 of Really System.  Her newest books include: The Little Temple of My Sleeping Bag (Dancing Girl Press, 2014), The Immediacy of Emotional Kerfuffles (Bards and Sages Publishing, 2013), and Citrus-Inspired Ceramics(Aldrich Press, 2013). Among her forthcoming collections are: Cryptids (Bards & Sages Publishing, 2014), Jerusalem Sunrise (Imago Press, 2014), Simple Gratitudes (Propertius Press, 2014), Word Citizen (Tailwinds Press, 2015), andMothers Ought to Utter Only Niceties (Unbound CONTENT, 2015).

Our first #RemixReallySystem piece, by Jeremy Dixon

In celebration of National Poetry Month, Really System Labs will feature works from RS contributors and friends all throughout April 2015. This work is based on randomly-selected chunks of text from Really System issues 1-5 that were distributed to participants.  To start us off, Jeremy Dixon used these twenty-five words to create the piece below.

my accidental
my amateurs
my boat
my button
my carrot
my drag
my entrance
my exegetic
my fast
my geese
my hard
my inlaid
my language
my now
my operation
my pillows
my platitudes
my primordial
my printing
my rear
my scathing
my tuna
my unratified
my village
my witch

 

Jeremy’s poem In Retail (xxii) appeared in Issue Two.  He was born in Essex, England. He now lives in rural South Wales making Artist’s Books that combine poetry and photography. His poems have appeared both online and in print. For more information please visit;www.hazardpress.co.uk, or follow him on Twitter @HazardPressUK