Mark Cunningham


Ship-timber Beetle

        One cow, then another, ignites in the March sun, then stands in the long shadows and crops hay. In space, no one can hear you scream, and if anyone could, all the helium would make your voice sound funny. Traffic doesn't start to move until the light has already turned red.

Giant Palm-boring Beetle

        The post-colonial theorist buys her Tide and sunscreen at Wal-Mart. He thought the fact that he had his left turn signal on gave him the right-of-way. De rerun natura. Stars shining over summer boughs are romantic; stars shining under summer boughs are sultry. What you see is what you see: I'll buy that.

Feather-Winged Beetle

        She got all up in my face about privacy. I’ll check her blog to see what she says about me. For "an ever-existing bruise" read "an ever-exciting bruise." Superman’s day has come and gone, but any Super Burrito still packs a wallop. I always end up just another person to just another person.

Dried-fruit Beetle

        Always that little tightening in the chest as I walk up to the hotel desk to check in. I hope the stars aren’t really pollen glowing on the black iris of night, because I am allergic. The Cocteau Twins have a song about sugar hiccups, but no one has a song about nut coughs. I guess this isn’t one, either. Sometimes I think my B-complex vitamin is more complex than I am.

Fruit and Seed Weevil

        When we learned that "Coca-Cola" translated into Chinese means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse fastened with wax," we thought it was hilarious and went to get a 12-pack. When we learned that my middle name translated into Chinese means "insect naval mucous," she stopped answering my calls. Judging from the committee's reaction, burping curry is not an appropriate multi-cultural activity.

Mark Cunningham's poems have appeared in recent issues of Sawbuck, Dusie, and Sentence. Tarpaulin Sky Press will be bringing out a book tentatively titled Body Language, which will be a sort of diptych containing two separate collections, one titled Body (on parts of the body) and one titled Primer (on numbers and letters).

 
 
 
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