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[justin sirois]

count chocula is sXe




i
lets try


ii
to make all of what we say, so much more


iii
important


iv
if you dip sponge bob in beer & ring him out over a naked girls tan belly he might not be gay anymore


v
you’re


vi
my favorite cereal, you’re
a golden gram
of Holden Caulfield, when he had the edge


vii
before the Tina &
Crystal
turned him into


viii
depress furniture

[theirishsea]

I think this little poem works. It is completely off-the-walll but it is because of that it works. Whatever expectations you have as you read along are wrong. The poem is one surprise after another. The sponge bob reference may be too topical for 10 or 20 years down the road but right now it is a part of pop culture. Sponge bob being gay? Well that is another story.

That image of wringing a sponge over a naked girls tan belly is definitely sensual & captures any reader with a little adolescence in them---or maybe just plain kinkiness. I like it. It is graphic. The "depress furniture" image is interesting. I'm not sure to what it  refers or exactly means---maybe depression era furniture?----but it feels right.

This poem is a scaled down version of some of the longer pieces. Same modus operandi. For all the irrationalism and apparent arbitrariness this style intrigues.

I don't know if there is any great core of meaning in the poems---certainly not in any rationalist sense but maybe the poems are like abstract paintings. Instead of splotches of color and squiggles of line we have splotches and squiggles of language.

Are these poems in the Ashbery tradition? I don't know. They seem to point to more definable areas of meaning but that meaning is a collage of disparate images.

There are definitely things that appeal to me in these poems.