SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Fifteen
THEODORE WOROZBYT
From Letters to the Alphabet
* * *
Arf arf arf, and then the chorus of helling dogs vibrates across Mrs. Heldings' laundry
Posts that have no laundry on them, but mainly it's George, in his tight chain link square.
He stands on his roof to bark. His throat must hurt all the time. No one is breaking the law.
No one is Blake. The slinky stepped down the basement stairs and the snow is gone
Though not the blunt iron that cracked open the bowling machine. I didn't do it.
Passing down some kind of side street Luke Wilson walked past with a woman,
Sorry! I didn't notice! I was thinking of another woman. The lemonade was lukewarm.
Nope, I didn't gertrude away with that. The navy set the gulf on fire. As if it needed saying.
The lister bag hangs from the tulip tree and the interruption of the water grows silver
Crust and releases farts on furlough. I didn't have time to wave my hand at a formal
Telegram of gratitude. Telegrams ceased to be sent some years ago. It's dark where
The brindle bear just went, into the living room, or out unto the grass. I am afraid
Not of my death, but of the sidewalk's white sway, and how closely I come to meeting
The baked beans, the painted nails. Who expected grease to have bacon? The
Bar is free.
* * *
I would have been Jennifer, and so I was told. I found the message in an oyster, a wild
Dark grape, a conversation between violins in Sauté, GA that seems tiny, and smells
Like the wheezy respirations of an old pump organ. Just because I do not speak Japanese
Doesn't mean I am not Japanese. "I wouldn't reccomendn it," wrote the student. The lady
On Fox News said "jism." Napoleon was small but quite Napoleonic. That remark got
Removed simply because the writer was taller than the vicar, victim, vicissitude, the rule
Of three or something like tit for tat. The commission was for translatable sex places
So ok, boys, let's get these ladies naked. Berlioz is waiting for my vacation to breathe its
First breaths. I was doomed to regard the Vatican as an emoticon gobbling argonauts.
Dark circles are no indicator of where the eyes have been; the smoke was white from
The chimney. There were extras you could purchase on the tour, geese you could cook
For a crispy and reasonable price. All telephones are black, and this is not a telephone,
Said the professor. All time has come round the edge of light and become a black
Telephone, said the student. The student said, there are no such things as those telephones
Your mothers kiss.
* * *
The pink lilypads make softness violent. I spent my time in baby lawn learning how
Nothing can be quiet. Between the times between my teeth lie the whistles that blow their
Red steam from the engines of visions of amortized eternity. "They took measures into their
Own hands," said the television. Usufructs, typed the agent of instability, are sewn to fit
Precisely your preconceived idea of how to go about them. Once Nick Nolte showed up
I had to stop what I was doing, which was watching Nick Nolte. Nothing personal.
I love Nick. It's just that I got so confused I had to take a dip and say goodbye and forever.
The portraits that scare us by following eyes through the Victorian parlor have holes
In the brocade chairs below them. The portrait over this is looking to my left.
I love automonopeeuh; didn't you? Those mirrored spheres pedestaled among the yews
Are ugly-ass things to put in a garden, even surrounded by daffadowndillies.
It occurred to me after the dream that I would never talk to anyone again whose blood
Was mind, and that Kraków had become a place I would never see. So well.
The bottoms of your feet pressing onto glass move like a pair of ungloved
Numerated lips; vulvous.
Theodore Worozbyt lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Alabama and Georgia Arts Councils. His books are Tuesday Marriage Death, The Dauber Wings, Letters of Transit, Smaller Than Death, Echo's Recipe, and The Rhino Narrative. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Conjunctions, Epoch, The Kenyon Review, Pithead Chapel, Po&sie, and the anthology entitled Gracious: Poems from the 21st Century South.
