Elizabeth Bishop calls the Poetry Crisis Line

COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?

CALLER: The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

COUNSELOR: But would you want to?

CALLER: so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost

COUNSELOR: So it’s conceptual art? Or more like, a gallery display of missing things?

CALLER: that

COUNSELOR: Wait—would that also be conceptual art?

CALLER: their loss is no disaster.

COUNSELOR: I’ve never been into conceptual art either.

CALLER: Lose something every day.

COUNSELOR: So do you start with socks and cell phones, and work your way up to extra pounds or a guy in 10 days?

CALLER: Accept the fluster

COUNSELOR: You lost a fluster?

CALLER: of lost door keys,

COUNSELOR: Now I’ve lost my train of thought.

CALLER: the hour badly spent.

COUNSELOR: Were you looking for your fluster? What is a fluster, anyway? Some sort of petticoat?

CALLER: The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

COUNSELOR: So you said.

CALLER: Then practice

COUNSELOR: How many hours a week do you practice losing? Or do you mean like practicing a–

CALLER: losing

COUNSELOR: –religion?

CALLER: farther,

COUNSELOR: Did you look in the corner? Maybe in the spotlight?

CALLER: losing faster:

COUNSELOR: If you lose too fast, it can be hard to keep it off. That’s why those fad diets, like

CALLER: places,

COUNSELOR: South Beach

CALLER: and names,

COUNSELOR: Atkins

CALLER: and where it was

COUNSELOR: Where what was? The weight?

CALLER: you meant / to travel.

COUNSELOR: Uh, from my hips to my chest?

CALLER: None of these will bring disaster.

COUNSELOR: I hope not.

CALLER: I lost my mother’s watch.

COUNSELOR: Was she watching? When you lost her watch?

CALLER: And look!

COUNSELOR: So she watched you lose her watch, and it was still lost?

CALLER: my last,

COUNSELOR: So you’re retiring?

CALLER: or / next-to-last,

COUNSELOR: Or thinking of it? It can be hard to quit something you’ve put so much time into.

CALLER: of

COUNSELOR: So what’s the biggest thing you ever lost?

CALLER: three loved houses

COUNSELOR: That’s impressive. And you don’t know where they gone?

CALLER: went.

COUNSELOR: Sorry—I was excited. Guess I lost my grammar.

CALLER: The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

COUNSELOR: So you say, but I’m impressed. I mean, you can’t just lose three houses in the washing machine.

CALLER: I lost two cities,

COUNSELOR: What, like Atlantis?

CALLER: lovely ones.

COUNSELOR: Like, um, Yerevan?

CALLER: And,

COUNSELOR: Did you try looking behind the foothills?

CALLER: vaster,

COUNSELOR: Behind the mountains?

CALLER: some realms

COUNSELOR: Behind countries?

CALLER: I owned,

COUNSELOR: You owned your own realms and you lost them? How big were these realms? Like the space between–

CALLER: two rivers,

COUNSELOR: Right. And how long were the rivers? A couple of miles?

CALLER: a continent.

COUNSELOR: Now that takes talent. And no one’s heard of it? Did the press come to interview you?

CALLER: I miss them,

COUNSELOR: And they don’t come back?

CALLER: but

COUNSELOR: So how do you lose a realm, anyway? Earthquake? Tsunami?

CALLER: it wasn’t a disaster.

COUNSELOR: How, then?

CALLER: —Even losing you

COUNSELOR: What? I’m still here.

CALLER: (the joking voice,

COUNSELOR: No, I take you seriously, I’m just blown away.

CALLER: a gesture / I love)

COUNSELOR: So if you love it so much, why are you thinking of giving it up?

CALLER: I shan’t have lied.

COUNSELOR: I didn’t say you had. It’s just—

CALLER: It’s evident

COUNSELOR: But if it’s evident, how is it lost? Is it, like, hiding in plain sight?

CALLER: the art of losing’s not too hard to master

COUNSELOR: Are you sure it doesn’t just seem that way to you?

CALLER: though it may look like

COUNSELOR: Exactly! It seems easy to you, but that may be because it’s easy for you.

CALLER: (Write it!)

COUNSELOR: Write what? Like a poem?

CALLER: like disaster.

COUNSELOR: So, a screenplay? Like Dante’s Peak? Or…um… Sharknado?

 

 

Read the original here.

The Queen of Cheese Presents: Shakespeare’s Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

by David Sklar
Originally published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

 

If meeting three strange ladies in the swamp
Seems ample cause for murthering the king
To take his crown, turn to page 86.

If this seems kind of sketchy, turn to 12.

– – –

If thou slay’st Claudius while he is praying—
A villain kills your father, and, for that,
You, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven, turn the page to 93.

If thou postpon’st the act until such time
As he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,
So that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes, turn to page 5.

– – –

If cowards die a thousand times, but thou
Prefer’st to die but once, turn to page 9.

If dying does not bother thee, so long
As thou surviv’st it, turn to 42.

– – –

If, rather than stand prisoner in Rome,
Thou press the venom’d asp against thy breast
Then shalt thou turn the page to 17.

If thou prefer’st to hug a fluffy cat
Then turn instead to page 108.

– – –

If, after being shipwrack’d thou proceed’st
To take thy brother’s name, and don his clothes,
And swagger like a man, turn to page 4.

If trousers please thee not, turn to 16.

– – –

If, having found fair Juliet in her tomb,
Thou dost set up thy everlasting rest,
And take th’apothecary’s lethal draught
To shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From thy world-wearied flesh, turn to page 9.

If thou prefer’st to wait ten minutes, turn
To page 117 instead.

Khaled Mattawa calls the Poetry Crisis Line

COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?

CALLER: My mother forgets to feed her animals

COUNSELOR: Is there someone who can feed them for her?

CALLER: because it’s only fair.

COUNSELOR: Fair or not, the animals have to be fed.

CALLER: She rushes to them

COUNSELOR: Oh, good.

CALLER: when / she hears hoarse roosters crowing

COUNSELOR: Don’t they do that at daybreak? How early does she feed her animals? Or forget to?

CALLER: and billy goats butting

COUNSELOR: Are you sure they’re not bluffing? Or gruffing? Is there a bridge?

CALLER: over

COUNSELOR: a troll?

CALLER: a last straw.

COUNSELOR: I was only asking.

CALLER: This month the moon becomes a princess.

COUNSELOR: She does! Um… why did you call her the moon? Is that a crack about her butt?

CALLER: The stars fan her,

COUNSELOR: I’m a fan too. I loved her in Suits.

CALLER: Jupiter pours cups of wine,

COUNSELOR: No, that’s Bacchus. Jupiter is in charge of—you don’t think it will rain, do you?

CALLER: Mars sings

COUNSELOR: Shouldn’t that be Apollo?

CALLER: melancholy mawals.

COUNSELOR: Where did they come from? The melancholy narwhals?

CALLER: Bearded men

COUNSELOR: And they just show up, holding narwhals?

CALLER: holding prayer beads

COUNSELOR: That sounds much easier.

CALLER: and yellow booklets

COUNSELOR: See, a book and a string of beads—easy to carry. A book and a narwhal, not so much.

CALLER: stare at her

COUNSELOR: Uh, are they hoping for autographs? At her wedding? That’s the tackiest thing I can imagine.

CALLER: and point aching fingers at her waist.

COUNSELOR: I stand corrected. What is this obsession with women’s waistlines?

 

 

Read the rest of “Ramadan” by Khaled Mattawa here.

Carlos Hernandez calls the Poetry Crisis Line

COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: Abuela of the Headless Saints:
COUNSELOR: Uh, how do I respond to that?
CALLER: hello.
COUNSELOR: Hello, but I’m not–
CALLER: It’s Carlos,
COUNSELOR: Hello, Carlos. You don’t have to tell me your name.
CALLER: Emma and Osmundo’s son,
COUNSELOR: Or your parents’ names.
CALLER: tu nieto.
COUNSELOR: No, you don’t have to sing me a tune yet, either. Or ever, if you don’t want to.
CALLER: You’ve been dead ten years.
COUNSELOR: I think you have me mistaken for someone else. I would have remembered that. Or not remembered, because I’d be dead, but–
CALLER: Your ghost / is cheesecloth thin now,
COUNSELOR: So, wait, even the dead do fad diets?
CALLER: prone to holes,
COUNSELOR: Oh, I liked that book! About the kids in the prison camp! And the one who’d been arrested for stealing shoes.
CALLER: and if I held your soul
COUNSELOR: No, the whole shoe! And they had to labor all day in the desert–
CALLER:  up to the sun
COUNSELOR: Yeah, the desert sun.
CALLER: I could count the threads of your integrity.
COUNSELOR: Wait–integrity has a thread count?
CALLER: Ten years:
COUNSELOR: So it’s measured in time?
CALLER: no hauntings, geases, duende pranks,
COUNSELOR: Those wouldn’t make very good units of measure.
CALLER: secrets,
COUNSELOR: Those would be worse. How would you know?
CALLER: curses,
COUNSELOR: Again, that could foil your measurements.
CALLER: visions
COUNSELOR: You wouldn’t know if what you were measuring was real–
CALLER: or possessions.
COUNSELOR: –or who was measuring the threads.
CALLER: Not one.
COUNSELOR: Measuring one thread at a time?
CALLER: ¡That’s not the way your afterlife / was meant to work
COUNSELOR: That’s not how any of this works.

 

 

Read the original in its entirety here

Mark Strand calls the Poetry Crisis Line

STAFFER: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: A train runs over me.
STAFFER: Oh my God! Are you hurt? Can I send an ambulance?
CALLER: I feel sorry
STAFFER: Don’t. You don’t have to worry about me.
CALLER: for the engineer
STAFFER: Or him. Or her. Whichever. We need to focus on you.
CALLER: who crouches down / and whispers in my ear
STAFFER: OK…
CALLER: that he is innocent.
STAFFER:  What? He said what?
CALLER: He wipes my forehead,
STAFFER:  That’s good. But it’s not OK to pin this on you. That’s called victim blaming, and it’s not OK. The train would still have hit you if you were dressed differently, or if you weren’t walking on the wrong side of the tracks–
CALLER: blows the ashes
STAFFER:  –I mean, OK, it’s a train, so you had to be on the tracks for it to–wait–ashes? Is something on fire?
CALLER: from my lips.
STAFFER: This guy has NO concept of personal space.
CALLER: My blood streams
STAFFER:  What? Never mind about personal space, you need an ambulance! Please tell me where you are.
CALLER: in the evening air,
STAFFER: Well, yeah, but where? In the evening air where?
CALLER: clouding his glasses.
STAFFER:  No. This isn’t about him.
CALLER: He whispers in my ear
STAFFER: You need to understand this is not about him.
CALLER: the details of his life–
STAFFER: Clearly he needs to understand that, too.
CALLER: he has a wife / and child he loves,
STAFFER: That’s great. Can we come back to this after we’ve gotten YOU some help?
CALLER: he’s always been / an engineer.
STAFFER: Right. Any chance you could put the engineer on the phone? Or somebody who actually WANTS my help?

 

Read the original here.

The Queen of Cheese Presents: Before I Kill You: An Arch-Villainelle

Although I’m not particularly vain,

I’m sure you’d like to know how you will die,

so, first, before I kill you, I’ll explain

 

my brilliant plan. Don’t bother to complain;

you won’t escape, no matter how you try.

It’s not that I’m particularly vain,

 

it’s just that after taking all these pains

I would like you to look me in the eye

before I kill you, so I can explain:

 

a cistern in the mountain gathers rain

through ducts in my enormous statue’s eye

(not that I am particularly vain).

 

It enters a robotic water main,

which, on command, can self-electrify.

Before I kill you, now, I will explain:

 

I’ve added some enhancements to my brain—

you’ll nev—What’s that? You’re out? Good grief! Good bye;

good riddance. It’s a good thing I’m not vain;

next time, before I kill you, I’ll explain.

 

First published in Stone Telling

William Butler Yeats calls the Poetry Crisis Line

COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: I will arise and go now,
COUNSELOR: Already? But you just called.
CALLER: and go to Innisfree,
COUNSELOR: That sounds nice. Business or pleasure?
CALLER: And a small cabin build there,
COUNSELOR: So more of a permanent move? What kind of a cabin?
CALLER: of clay
COUNSELOR: Like a cliff dwelling?
CALLER: and wattles
COUNSELOR: Uh… like the skin under a turkey’s neck?
CALLER: made;
COUNSELOR: Under a maid’s neck?
CALLER: Nine bean-rows will I have there,
COUNSELOR: Wait… like fava beans? And a nice chianti?
CALLER: a hive for the honey-bee,
COUNSELOR: So, mead…
CALLER: And live alone
COUNSELOR: That’s not helping.
CALLER: in the bee-loud glade.
COUNSELOR: They won’t silence the voices! Please, let me put you in touch with someone who can help!
[click here to read the original]

Shel Silverstein calls the Poetry Crisis Line

COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?

CALLER: They’ve put a brassiere on the camel–

COUNSELOR: What?

CALLER: She wasn’t dressed proper, you know.

COUNSELOR: I know, but–who would do that?

CALLER: They’ve put a brassiere on the camel

COUNSELOR: Victoria’s Secret?

CALLER: So that her humps wouldn’t show

COUNSELOR: So the other direction, then? Puritans? The Moral Majority? TV censors?

CALLER: And they’re making other presentable plans;

COUNSELOR: Should I be worried? To whom are they planning to present these presentable plans?

CALLER: They’re even insisting that pigs should wear pants.

COUNSELOR: As if blankets weren’t enough.

CALLER: They’ll dress up the ducks if we give them the chance

COUNSELOR: Why?

CALLER: Since they put a brassiere on the camel.

COUNSELOR: So it’s a one-upsmanship thing, like conceptual art? The last one wasn’t weird enough–what else can we do?

William Shakespeare calls the Poetry Crisis Line (as himself, this time)

COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?

CALLER: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

COUNSELOR: In what way are they not like the sun? I mean, uh–

CALLER: Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

COUNSELOR: I thought coral was more pinkish. Or if it dries out, then it turns white.

CALLER: If snow be white,

COUNSELOR: No, I was still talking about coral.

CALLER: why

COUNSELOR: You brought it up, sir.

CALLER: then her breasts are dun;

COUNSELOR:  Done with what? Did she just wean a kid? Or are you–

CALLER: If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

COUNSELOR: Now she sounds like a cyborg. Did you just call me to complain about your girlfriend’s looks?

CALLER: I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

COUNSELOR: Did she hear you complaining? Flowers might be a good start, but it sounds like you need to work on communication skills–and on reasonable expectations. You may want to talk to a couples counselor.

CALLER: But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

COUNSELOR: Or a face painter. I mean, if that’s what she’s into–

CALLER: And in some perfumes is there more delight

COUNSELOR: Have you asked her what she likes? Perfumes, or flowers, or face painting? What would she want to see or hear from you?

CALLER: Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

COUNSELOR: No, I don’t think that’s something any woman would want to hear.

CALLER: I love to hear her speak,

COUNSELOR: That’s much better. And in the long run, it may be more important than how she looks.

CALLER: yet well I know  / That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

COUNSELOR: And we’re back to expectations. You can’t expect your girlfriend to be some goddess.

CALLER: I grant I never saw a goddess

COUNSELOR: Of course not. May I say something about expectations?

CALLER: go;

COUNSELOR: See, society sets up these lofty expectations that no one can really meet.

CALLER: My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

COUNSELOR: Exactly!

CALLER: And yet, by heaven,

COUNSELOR: So on heaven and earth at once? That’s not very common.

CALLER:  I think my love as rare

COUNSELOR: See, now you’re getting somewhere. You complain about the things you don’t like, but deep down you know she’s special. Like…uh, like…

CALLER: As any she belied with false compare

COUNSELOR: So she does it too, huh? I’ve seen that happen. It’s sad when women feel the need to compare themselves to others.