Tag: cento

Parallels: A Pseudo Cento by Jean Voneman Mikhail

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Parallels: A Pseudo Cento

          Texts between a son struggling
          with addiction and his mom.

i.

I am 21 years old. Stop tracking me.
I told you already,
I am somewhere on a huge bridge.
I walked out of Poetsmouth into Kentucky. Portsmouth, I mean.
I can see these huge fish in the river.
There’s this one really big fish.
I can see him on the bottom.
Then rain in my eyes.
I’m sorry, mom. I love you.
Can you Venmo me some water, Mama?
Can you Venmo me some Taco Bell, Mama?
No, I have not been doing meth.
No. I’m not on jack shit.
I am crying and my head hurts.
I can’t cry most of the time.
I am out of breath and sweating.
I don’t see any street signs.
I am so tired. I only see stop signs.
My eyes are so red and blurry.
No. I’m not high.
No. I haven’t taken klonopin
in like forever.
The lights are hurting my eyes.
I am scared to be alone, mom,
so I am begging on my knees.
Please, can I come home?
I know you don’t want me to.
I am so ready to get out of here.
I’m so tired of sober living.
I am so ready to be free.
My bed has been tilting.
I never have food.
I feel like I’m never
going to get out of here.
I just want to die.
Don’t worry if I don’t answer.
I am so scared to be alone.
I need friends. Like, Jesus Christ.
I’ve been calling him. He won’t answer.
Did he change his name, or what?

ii.

Maybe you’ve been grinding your teeth.
You need a nightguard.
Call the doctor again.
Call the court again.
I would try calling them again.
Just leave a message.
I wish I knew how to help you.
Just cry it out. You will be ok.
He will help you figure it out.
You’re not really alone.
You just need to decide.
I don’t know why you can’t see that.
Either you want to live or die.
Since you are using right now,
I can’t be around you.
I can’t be around drugs.
I’m sorry. I love you.
I’m not buying you anything.
But water? Ok.
Why are you on a bridge?
Can you stay in one place?
Like go somewhere and stay?
I will come get you.
Wait for me there. Please,
don’t go anywhere.

*

Jean Voneman Mikhail lives in Athens, Ohio, where she first came to study for a Masters in Creative Writing. Many years and a few kids later, she now writes more than ever. She has published in Sheila Na Gig Online, The Northern Appalachian Review, Pudding Magazine and other poetry journals and anthologies.

Two Poems by Judy Kaber

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Crow Cento*

The way a crow shook down on me,
such an awkward dance, these gentlemen
in their spottled-black coats, how peaceable.

Crows startle the clouds with grievances
never resolved, it seems. For lonely men to see
a crow fly in the thin blue sky, picking through trash

near the corral; that fool crow, understands the center
of the world as greasy scraps of fat caught at last
in their black beaks. Crow nailed them together.

How the crow dreams of you, flying the black flag
of himself. He tried ignoring the sea, but it was bigger
than death, just as it was bigger than life.

Each of them thought far more than he uttered.

*Lines from: Ted Hughes, Judith Barrington, Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, John Clare, Vachel Lindsay

*

Duplex: Slippage

I am most at home on my own.
My heart moves in constant give and take.

         I give and take, keep more than I dish out.
         So many dishes I’ve dropped have broken.

Broken dishes dropped, cry out.
Harsh, rough edges. Bowl emptied

         into a harsh, empty world.
         When there’s no one to spread the glue,

cracks spread. Nothing holds together.
My first husband took my son away.

         My first husband took my heart away
         on the back of a Honda motorcycle.

Back and back, the growl of the bike.
I am most at home on my own.

*

Judy Kaber is the author of three chapbooks, most recently, A Pandemic Alphabet. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Pleiades, Poet Lore, Hunger Mountain, Comstock Review, and Prairie Schooner. Her poem, “Sword Swallowing Lessons,” was featured on “The Slowdown.” Judy won the 2021 and 2023 Maine Poetry Contest. She received a Maine Literary Award in 2024. Her book, Landscape With Rocks, Sky, Nails, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2025. She is a past poet laureate of Belfast, Maine (2021-2023).

An Incomplete List of Things that Burst: a cento by Erin Murphy

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An Incomplete List of Things that Burst

          a cento

A magenta strip of Mylar balloon that glints when turned to the sun—

          or burst pipes and water flooding rooms.

Lilies, sweet peas, and snapdragons

          and the apple trees covered with blossoms and the fruit

of an orange whose cross-section resembles my lungs.

          I would be still—I would be silent and quake—

my body like a living coal—

          the air it rises through—

the break in the heart—

          the weapon—the bomb we make.

Credits: William Brewer, Robin Becker, Yusef Komunyakaa, Walt Whitman, Major Jackson, Anne Waldman, James Weldon Johnson, Maggie Smith, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Katie Ford

*

“An Incomplete List of Things that Burst” is from Erin Murphy’s new chapbook, Fields of Ache, a collection of centos forthcoming from Ghost City Press as part of its 2022 Summer Series.

About Fields of Ache: Forthcoming in summer 2022, this collection of centos focuses on identity and the natural world. A cento (from the Latin for “patchwork”) is a collage poem made up of lines by other poets. Murphy says, “I’m interested in the way the meaning of the lines shifts as the context shifts,” adding that despite the seemingly random nature of the form, the process is anything but arbitrary. “You need to have something to say before you find the lines to help you say it.”

*

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of thirteen books, most recently Taxonomies. “An Incomplete List of Things that Burst” is from her new chapbook, Fields of Ache, a collection of centos forthcoming from Ghost City Press as part of its 2022 Summer Series. Another collection, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared in such journals as Poet Lore, Waxwing, Diode, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include the Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, The Normal School Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review and Poet Laureate of Blair County (Pa.). Website: http://www.erin-murphy.com