An Exquisite Corpse

This past Friday, there was a kick off party for Mass Poetry's Raise Your Verse at Trident Booksellers and Cafe. Aside from meeting each other. Daniel Johnson, Mass Poetry's Executive Director, decided to have us do an exquisite corpse.

One of us would write a line based on a writing prompt in a small notebook handed out to us. Then we'd pass it to the person on our right, and they would write a line based on the first line, fold the paper so the first line wouldn't be seen, than they'd continue passing and folding prior lines until the notebook (ideally) came back to it's original owner.

The prompt I picked was something to the point of "Write an ode to a piece of technology you are dependent on." The result was interesting. Especially since one provision to the corpse was that we had to end the poem with a call back to the fake name we wrote on our name tags. The title of the poem is all mine.


Identifiying the Bodies

The more my baby stays, the more it needs its umbilical.
You think that I'm not working, so you press my buttons constantly
like a Corona X57 typewriter with greasy keys,
sloppy keys, hungry eyes
One look at you and I can't disguise.
they way my edges come undone.
Slowly, until I've reached a breaking point
never vowing to break the point, existing only to observe it in pained clarity.
My name is Eric Meyer, these are my stories.


Thanks to Sara Siegel, Michael Ansara, Daniel Johnson, Kevin Madison, Lucy Yao, Melissa and everyone else whose name I didn't get but participated.