Jessica Bozek, Nathan Hoks, Alexis Pope and Katie Peterson

Instead of a standard introduction (and because they were in the middle of the poem-a-day April National Poetry Month challenge), Farrah and Jared collaborated on a new poem that they read to begin the reading. Here it is:

FELIX HOLT SCATTERPLOT

By Jared White & Farrah Field

We do not live in reality we live in ourselves so it is us spooking us.
Maybe the Girl Scouts will give us an Empathy Badge.

Pencils sharpened into grief. Almost until.
This poem was found not heard.

Spooky weather.
Your stanzas are paragraphs your columns are pillars

from the Bible. World War Z arrives in dispatches,
the light of the contagion switching from yellow to blue.

The director films under a pseudonym.
I love your forward slashes.

Populated loneliness. We took a tour of your scenic face.
Survivors are guilty. With a sick stomach

you were parading me around. Thumpadee thump thump
thumpadee thump thump look at your morals go.

Bozek’s boxes, Hok’s hawks, Pope’s pop-ups, Peterson’s peet moss.
Pigeon feather and the bird flocking down the page.

That’s not testimony, that’s a poem!
This allegory points nowhere but the gap sparks

low amperage, high voltage.
I painted the sunset and photographed it with a black lens.

Up comes the tale of the tentacle monster.
Just another person made out of person parts.

Inside your ears there are flowers.
Stealth death drive sex talk elegant brutality

because we can talk, we can lick
and who cares what it tastes like, it’s like we are speaking

what we touch with our tongue. Hentai. Hallucination.
My friend Sarah orders food at drive-thrus

and eats only a couple of bites.
Illustrations of the dilemma

the paranoia of dreams. Dark experience.
In the blue snow there is plenty of context for feelings.