read up! today we have this captivating jolt of a poem from Joe Carr: Spring Flung. Joe is a favorite local poet here in Denton and even won Best Writer in the 2016 DAM Awards! he runs a bar and studies as an autodidact, burying himself in literature, poetry, theology, language, and philosophy. you can find more of Joe's poetry on his website and check out the creative exercise he's shared today, which can be found in our new Prompt & Circumstance zine: Go to a public place, find a clean grassy area. Lay down face first. Feel the pull of the moon, the warmth of the sun on you back. People will be weirded out, remain fearful and uncomfortable. You are facing downward, inward towards the place you will forever live, breathe in the earth, that smell is the bones, and skin, and dust of all the past lives you have been, the moisture shared in every aspiration you've breathed. This is the place you will be buried in. What will you do till then? What has come before? What will never happen again? What can only happen now?
Spring Flung
Somewhere along the way
someone replaced your heart
with a pile of dried leaves
and a repurposed nuclear warhead
the launch confirmation codes
released into the air
like a field of kicked dandelions,
you just wanted fusion
but all the materials escaped
rattled off unchained to their purpose
divorced of anything remotely
resembling formal or causal meaning
now it’s all body parts in the freezer
old flames lit in endless tea lights
around a lukewarm bath you’ll never take,
porcelain sharpening porcelain,
buzzsaw wit full stop
scurrying to stay still
and silent like a hologram,
placid like a lightning rod
waiting to be struck.
My name is Joe. I'm a hedonist who loves to write. I try to live poetically in a constant masochistic bacchanalian whirl.
Joe Carr reading at Spiderweb Salon's first 35 Denton showcase | photo by courtney marie | 2013