Ben Niespodziany Surreal-Absurd Sampler

“I'm often either bored or overwhelmed with reality. Too much stressful hustle and bustle, or too much mundane routine. To disrupt this norm, whenever I seek media, I always look for the strange: surreal poetry, off-kilter novels, hallucinatory films, atmospheric albums. Anything that will throw me in a new headspace where possibilities are endless, and normalcy isn't a possibility. These selected poems are further examples of this desire to escape into the weird. The six poems are part of two separate manuscripts: one of prose poems written while watching movies (tentatively titled Ekphrastic Jazz), and one of visually leaping/abstract prose poems (tentatively titled Clocks).”—Benjamin Niespodziany

BRAIDING FRANKENSTEIN’S HAIR
after Living Still Life (2012)

[1] I was looking for a clown. A circus, even. I was looking for an even. Instead I got pink smoke. A dead rabbit and purple foam. The tea is never iced. Why shall we stop-motion the dead? Why must we mist? Where the blood lived there too lived a bird. Sliced by the snow. Snowsliced, we know.

[2] It’s hard to write about the dead dog while watching the dead dog and thinking is that a dead dog or is it just a movie prop and if not is this a movie that uses dead dogs? A man hides behind a dust bowl. It snows upwards.

[3] Flowerdog turns the dead into weapons of art. Turns the dead into petal wolves. Galloping canines. What does the rain mean to a crane with a horse? Slowly it climbs. Its legs lackadaisical. How the dead grow neon fog and neon smoke. Watch me weep in the shadows of my own cold silhouette.

[4] He has a head made out of horse hearts. It’s hard to catch one’s breath, he says. We rest on our knees in the deepening mud. Taxidermy heartbeat, turn me into love. The horse and the dog and the rabbit are all alive in black and white just like in their dreams.

[5] He couldn’t afford stain glass so he broke his window and covered it in the papers his kid painted earlier that day. They cut holes when they heard knocks. They let the rays take shape. Grief in French blue. Everything’s leaking, raining hell. I hold this story closely. We weeps when we leave. The mud we’ve become.

THE DEVIL SUGGESTS

The devil is wearing a scarf and we do not know why. The final island is not the final island. The shoeboxes are full of old dolls. I have kept this rug in my car for years. I named her after kerosine drying on a wall. I'm writing a final thesis on puzzle pieces. The sea urchins earning room in my foot. Hollow trees, we apologize for our pouring of sand. The end of the world is a camera capturing the silence. Every time my knee clicks, I know I'll live forever.

ROBES THROWN ONTO LOCUSTS

Two teams eat fevers. One man sands a hand grenade. The lake nearby is on fire. It's a rotten time to debate baseball, says the fountain to the gulls. Rounded out wisdom flies in for the winter. Bits sizzle, then smoke.

OLD WOLF

The old wolf appeared at my door with a miracle between its fangs. The old wolf was close to gone. Hair loss, scars patches, scratch marks. “I don’t have time for the impossible,” I told the old wolf. The old wolf opened its mouth and the miracle fell at my feet. The old wolf died some days later. A jar of blood discovered in the middle of my woods. The old wolf wrapped in black, given a medallion, a tribute, a tomb. Oh, how the crows know the road to mourn.

WHEN I THINK OF HONEY

At the police station, the policemen called me a seminar. They harvested my fuel. They took my pants and my gloves and threw me in a cell with a sofa full of skulls. Supper was a poor throat of old honey. A herd. A cigarette crushed under a shoe.

A few months later, I was through. They took out my wings. Took off my arms. The surgeon was a newborn. His blues were peculiar. His mood was lined. The time I had on this planet was like dancing after champagne. Waking in the woods. My legs, taken by the hips, were lifted in the box.

TRAFFIC JAM OF FLOWERS
after Songs from the Second Floor (2000)

[1] A vagabond ponds through the trash with a stick. He finds a lemon, a rat, and a sweater. He finds his father's skull. He disposes of them all and with the stick he continues to pick, the moon like a seizure, eating its kin.

[2] His train has a banquet hall. His train is made of rope. I can't walk any faster, he says to the train. The conductor explains the menu. Many briefcases left behind. The wine arrives in a jug.

[3] The train doors open. Everyone forgets nightmares are not forgotten. It's my birthday, he says, and 100 years later, he says, it will be my birthday again.

Benjamin Niespodziany's chapbook The Northerners was published by above / ground press in 2021. His writing has appeared in the Wigleaf Top 50, Fence, Fairy Tale Review, Maudlin House, Salt Hill Journal, and various others. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net. He works nights in a library in Chicago and runs the multimedia art blog [neonpajamas].