Verbatim found poetry is an intriguing collection of found poems. Poems found in ordinary, and not so ordinary places. Submit yours.
books and comics
A false alarm,
caught in the act:
A joke on me,
my peculiar mistake.
The stalled car,
my experience
in a strange Sunday school.
The experiment I never repeated,
nearly on the rocks.
(Essay writing prompts from ‘English Composition Book One’ by Stratton D. Brooks, 1911. Submitted by Alex Albright)
Too few countries
in the world
have chosen
a vegetable
to be their national symbol
but Wales chose the leek
(From something that came from The Sacred Kitchen. Submitted by Melanie Barbato)
“Two left shoes” he remarked encouragingly.
“And an equally devastating sight of two practically blind states in America”.
Smiling broadly, they were leaving like a airship. The war is
(P20) always exciting.
In a harmless war he had not had time to dig light that is
confidential on Monday afternoon.
I suppose you knew it was not out at sea, took it for granted.
Our submarine is echoing all which was expedient for a well-
(P40) known lady employer.
“What course for the news?”, replied the girl. “Can I see who
had been asked out?” The man will tell you anything and rather
gratuitously it seemed.
Carrados could watch them licking. When the answer here
should be paid no attention until this chair is vacant and the
(P71) room without a word; like a shaken hand.
Murder something with one mistake. He will never notice a
strange message of misgiving had no difficulty in finding her.
A little attempt now to hear there’s nothing like a good
testimony in a low voice. No photograph possessing
(P95) identification is unnaturally white.
It was the first time an empty chair splashed like a moments
worry. The most difficult alibi forgotten in case you cared and
nothing else at first.
It was the faintest idea to come prompted on the bare earth
(P114) followed through seriously simple explanation.
He would like to see time from just one window. Drink this
garden and assist melancholy admiration before the seal of
iron.
And the angel looked at me. A dazzling thing. The lady of
simultaneous voices rising in the dead of night without the
(P133) remotest hope to prick up their ears.
Interment, there in the dark. Unique mothers of the coming generation.
More happened if they could be drawn into the now vigorous soil.
That was plainly so much. So the giant in charge within
(P156) straightened spirits on that heart-throbbed dead weight,
His face was not her husband and children didn’t know his wife.
You can hear a very intoxicated man a mile away. You must not
ask him sometime about when the paper said you could give
me an idea.
(P174) I wish I’d known. The blind and the first people who were not a
painting gave him the details of the letters.
Burning the place down was his way to be the victim.
To be spread:
(P189) Afraid to trust silent and deserted streets.
We used to have just coffee and water beetles. The very
opposite of money before our faces of pink.
(P198) A plague that furnished nightmares with quick feeling.
Touching, I appreciate onions…
As we are shrank back into fluency. The dirty appetite too near.
Hard-cased sleeping inside the dynamo to transform
(P212) mechanical force into quiet professional clatter.
The cigar that made the alibi unconvincing and the man it might blind.
To outwit five senses of old. His eyes were open, voice ingenious.
I should advise of traffic mentally described. To get some reason in the five minutes that they had atmosphere.
His mind was an inexhaustible hunger. A dish of water to be left at night. No means of stopping the leak it seems.
(P237) And for god’s sake, don’t stop there.
(From Max Carrados Mysteries, 1964. A hole was drilled through the book and words taken consecutively from every page, next to the hole. Created by Winston Plowes)
When these birds move their wings in flight,
their strokes are slow, moderate and regular,
and even when at a considerable distance
or high above us, we plainly hear the quill-feathers,
their shafts and webs upon one another,
creak as the joints or
working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea.
We had this fowl dressed for supper
and it made excellent soup;
nevertheless as long as I can get any other
necessary food I shall prefer his
seraphic music in the ethereal skies.
William Bartram, in Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws. Spelling modernised. Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.
About midnight, having fallen asleep,
I was awakened and greatly surprised
at finding most of my companions
up in arms, and furiously engaged
with a large alligator
but a few yards from me.
One of our company, it seems,
awoke in the night, and perceived
the monster within a few paces of the camp,
who giving the alarm to the rest,
they readily came to his assistance,
for it was a rare piece of sport;
some took fire-brands and cast them
at his head, whilst others formed javelins
of saplins, pointed and hardened with fire;
these they thrust down his throat
into his bowels, which caused the monster
to roar and bellow hideously, but his strength
and fury was so great that he easily wrenched
or twisted them out of their hands, which
he wielded and brandished about and kept
his enemies at distance for a time;
some were for putting an end to his life
and sufferings with a rifle ball, but
the majority thought this would too soon
deprive them of the diversion and pleasure
of exercising their various inventions
of torture; they at length however grew tired,
and agreed in one opinion, that he had suffered
sufficiently, and put an end to his existence.
Taken from Travels of William Bartram by William Bartram, published 1928. Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.
the Altar is not incensed at the Introit
and the Subdeacon does not kiss
the hand of the Celebrant
nor is the Subdeacon blessed
the Deacon does not request the Blessing
nor does he kiss the hand of the Celebrant
nor are the lights held at the Gospel
nor is the incense carried
the book is not incensed
nor the Celebrant at the end
nor is the book brought to be kissed
the Subdeacon does not hold the Paten
the ministers
when handing something to the Celebrant
do not kiss his hand
nor do they kiss that which they hand to him
the breast is not struck
(From the Rubrics of the Missale Romanum 1962, section XIII. Submitted by Dale Wisely)
Trust no one.
Keep something back
Not everyone is subject to rules
Don’t walk away
Don’t let go of the cliff
There are clues everywhere
All rumours are true
Trust no one, least of all yourself
Don’t look back
There is no such thing as truth.
Taken from Meg Rosoff’s What I Was, 2007. Submitted by Angi Holden.
I don’t like those high-class cats that purr
on the couch in the parlor.
I adore cats that have turned wild,
their hair standing on end.
They hunt birds, prowl,
roam the streets like demons.
They cast their wild eyes at you,
ready to pounce on your face.
Have you noticed that female cats in the wild
are always pregnant?
Obviously, they think of
nothing but love.
From Conversations With Picasso, Brassai (University of Chicago Press, 1999). Submitted by Amy Schreibman Walter.
with that wasp waist,
your lungs, stomach, liver, and other organs
squeezed down out of place,
and
into one half their natural size,
and
with that long trail dragging on the ground,
how can any man of sense,
who knows that life is made up of use, of service, of work;
how can he take such partner?
He must be desperate to unite himself for life with such a deformed,
fettered, half-breathing ornament.
If I were in the matrimonial market, I might marry
a woman that had but one arm, or one eye,
or no eyes at all,
if she suited me otherwise; but
so long as God permitted me to retain my senses,
I could never join my fortunes with those of a woman
with a small waist.
A small waist!
I am a physiologist, and know what
a small waist
means.
Taken from the 1871 book Our girls by Dio Lewis. Submitted by John Rodzvilla.
Banners of
Spanish moss hide
the feathery foliage of
living trees, cover up dead stumps.
Through the vast
drowned swamp two tiny
streams creep sluggishly to join
at last before a spit of quaking land.
From Suwannee River Strange Green Land, Cecile Hulse Matschat (1938). Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.
Verbatim Poetry 
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