Verbatim found poetry is an intriguing collection of found poems. Poems found in ordinary, and not so ordinary places. Submit yours.
Solo and ropeless
Edlinger climbs out
underneath an overhang,
hangs effortlessly off one arm
several hundred feet
off the ground while
dipping the other
into a bag of chalk,
utterly indifferent
to the danger,
before swinging his foot
into a crack above his head
and pulling himself up.
From an obituary of Patrick Edlinger. By Angi Holden.
Things started to go downhill
while I was trying to
administer novocaine to a dog.
I’m still not entirely sure what happened.
I was trying to inject his gums with anesthesia
when a message popped up,
telling me I had failed.
Game over.
From a review of an ipad app called ‘Dental Surgery’. By Mat Riches.
that he would die a happy man,
that he would consider his meager life
a success, if
in years to come,
somewhere,
someday,
someone
kicked in Jonah’s door
and Jonah was surprised.
Shocked.
Amazed.
Let him be utterly
bewildered, dear God.
Let him wonder,
raised-eyebrowed and slack-jawed,
They kick doors in now?
Since when?
Hang on, hang on—
they’re putting people in ovens?
You can’t be serious.
Since when
do people
put other people
in ovens?
From Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander (2012). By Ailsa Holland.
I don’t mind snakes
but sometimes
they’ve been quite
you know: snakes
going up legs
and snakes everywhere
warm on your skin
lots of snakes
like giant white albino pythons
I don’t mind them
so it’s all right
I don’t mind them
I quite like them
but yeah
if you didn’t I mean
From an interview with Kate Moss in The Times, 26 January 2012. By Thom.
Let us also recognize
our own native
detachable snake-hips,
our rangy legs,
our educated feet.
Our arms and fingers
wave and snap
in a special way.
Our shoulders hang
as no other people’s
shoulders hang.
A quotation from the writings of Lincoln Kirstein from ‘Musical Myths of the American West’, by Stephen Brown, a review in the Times Literary Supplement, 9 November 2012. By Rishi Dastidar.
Even our ideas
Rick
are most certainly not our own
We have read everything
somewhere
or have heard it
somewhere
We’ve got nothing
really
except each other
And we hate each other
From a discussion of the political divide on Salon.com. By Wesley Brown.
And
painters don’t
know they are.
Not
Ed Ruscha.
Not Robert Indiana.
They
just don’t
know. But they
are.
It’s good
they don’t know.
They’d
be impoverished
by their art
if
they knew.
Taken from Will Vispo Last? Will Vispo be? on dbqp. By Andrew Bailey.
Wait until the moon is out
then go outside
eat a multi-grained bread
and play your guitar to a bush.
If the bush doesn’t shake
eat another piece of bread.
From Captain Beefheart’s 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing. By Grace Andreacchi.
Slippers are designed
to be slipped into
without help from the hand.
They are monuments to
the hatred of bending down.
A quotation from Theodor W. Adorno’s Minima Moralia: Reflections on Damaged Life. By Marika Rose.
I remember running
across the sand at Seaforth beach
when I was three
chasing a red bouncing ball
and hearing my aunt scream
before picking me up
her stepping between silver studs
in the sand
I’d run into a minefield
There was no red ball
It was the family dog
that I had chased
It had been blown up
From Roger McGough: this much I know. By Lisa Oliver.
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