by Shloka Shankar

Ordinary

A remixed poem composed of poems by Gertrude Stein

A little calm is so ordinary.

A likeness has blisters –

one, two, and one, two.

If it is absurd, then

this is true.

[There is some venturing in refusing to believe nonsense.]

The difference is spreading:

dirt is clean.

A violent kind of delightfulness

and even then quiet;

that noise not

privately overseen,

trying and thoughtful –

a puzzle.

A period is solemn[.]

It is absent, it is laid by.

Sources:

A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass

A Substance in a Cushion

A Little Called Pauline

Sugar

Talk Shop

A poem composed using only words from select first lines of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself

I celebrate

what the talkers talk:

hankering, gross, mystical, nude.

I resign myself

to the unfolding of words,

quivering me to do nothing

but listen;

the journey work of stars

was never measured –

it is idle to me.

Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer from Bangalore, India. She loves experimenting with Japanese short-forms such as haiku, senryu, and haibun, as well as found/remixed poetry from time to time. Her work has recently appeared/forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Window Cat Press, Otoliths, After the Pause, Failed Haiku, and so on. Her found poem was nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology in 2015. Shloka is also the founding editor of the literary & arts journal Sonic Boom. You can read more of her work here.