ellenwelcker, you have no events scheduled today
ellenwelcker, you have no events scheduled today.
ellenwelcker, you have plenty of time
to have neoplastic dreams, ellenwelcker.
click on five signs
you will get cancer
think slick thoughts
about confession, ellen
like, if you can give me
like me, if you can
mammalian heat & a slick thought
a blind hopping or slipping
like can you give an evasive one
this might be the ticket, and tenderer
ellenwelcker, possibly
you are some percentage red #5
possibly you strain to separate your you
from the super, mega, googly-store
brim to brim with the bad-bad, & sad sad-
ness is a radial emotion echolocating
big ass pile of laundry blocking my sun
can you give an evasive one
can you closetalk in small spaces,
intimate, soft spaces
palpate softly your tumors
& yous
a poet is like a bat
intertextual & cavey
& nothing, I mean no percentage
learning to “cope”
Weapon
It’s going to take forever—the rest of our lives, one after another
global catastrophe & I’m embarrassed to say in some ways it will be a
relief: just end it already, & let the future critters take their wet
breaths. The seabird autopsies kill me. I mean they kill everyone—I
had vowed to stop saying that things kill me after D asked me if I
would kill so-and-so if they did such-and-such minor thing. I can’t
even remember & it’s about killing for godssake. Lately
she says to me:
weaponnnnn
in a whispery, sinister voice
& it chills me, Jesus Christ it chills me. I ask her, what is a weapon &
she replies it is something that flies through the air, my friends play it
at school:
weaponnnnn
I’m not one I create
what nature does better—evolve or metastasize to block the sun, that
thing, that thing—that toothless teratoma ellenwelcker, that hairball
in the drain, ellenwelcker, that three year-old is an intertextual act of
radical social actionshe’s politeness theoryshe’s a bat poet
she’s lonelyshe’s a few feet awayfloatingin a seaof plastic
debris with a blowhole big enough for a baby to crawl through. O, to
throw out your nasty ole ratty ass sweatpants & have a whale swallow
them, now this makes me want to die
You Find Yourself Saying Any Number Of Things
for a bat, to cope
is to die
ellenwelcker moldynose poisonbody
I die & die & die
& I find myself
saying any number of things:
“The weather
is unlike itself.”
“So help me, I won’t be joining TEAM SUNNYBUNZ.”
“It’s only the second day of the year
& already
I’m eating hot dog buns
for breakfast.”
Like any document
1.
the hopeless navel dreams of a cord, rememberless. Just a relic, a scar, all
scrunched up and twisty looking or flaccid & droopy-dog, the
protrusion-formerly-known-as-a-divot all slackjawed & pokey & goddamn my
clothes look weird.
2.
there was a country
they were just in the habit of it
in the country guns were like singing
the children busy picking up bad habits
the children
gravitate
in their small armies, highly attuned
to the presence of weaponry
children had become
like bomb-sniffing dogs
3.
I entered a city that bloomed
like carrion, caught with red night eyes
the everyones: I get so lonely, coo coo
tap tap tapping like ants
on the pavement, a language
made of business—who, who
4.
ellenwelckercry dinosaur tears
tar-black & gut-deep, big baby—
cry shapeshift me, shipshape
this lifeless dust + dust & hydraulics
apocalypse v just before it
5.
sweet thing:
if strawberries
hurt your feelings
it could be
you’re even
more sensitive
than me
6.
the sad epitaph
we all share
7.
snobbish feelings
toward euphemism
8.
I will hold you
like a syndrome
a multiplicity
of arms
that melt
‘til there’s nothing
left
but goo
biography
ELLEN WELCKER has poems collected in the chapbooks Mouth That Tastes of Gasoline, (alice blue, 2014), The Urban Lightwing Professionals (H_NGM_N, 2011), as well as a full-length book, The Botanical Garden (astrophil press, 2010). She lives Spokane, WA, & curates SpoPo, a living room poetry series.