Julia Rose Lewis Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“I suspect my poems appear surreal, because there is significant overlap between the ways in which scientists and surrealists look at the world. Commonsense is backgrounded, in both, curiosity is foregrounded. There is an interest in the counter-intuitive elements of our lived experience and experiments. I admire the ways in which science stays with the trouble and tries to learn from its surprises in order to deliver a more complex understanding of the world. I am indebted to David Spittle for drawing me into surrealism through our collaboration on amphibians. It is here in this overlapping space that I locate my work as sometimes surreal and always science poetry. In the poems Look-a-like and Get Under a Nightmare, I explore the ways in which trauma and the perception of time intersect. I have refused to trot out my trauma in name here, in order to look more carefully at the aftereffects. Photograph of the nightmare is included.” —Julia Rose Lewis
Look-a-like
it is only calories to burn inside out the barn is for the love of maintaining bone and sticks and stones.
it is the ocean naming him also licking at repetition like carbonation neat.
it is frightening fraught.
it is looking like a carbon copy is only saying like like or see see the carbon bonds inside the car battery.
it is carbon carbon bonds all the way down neat to be bound to reputation back to be taking antibiotics tick tack only a window.
it is all limits is what it is looking back and booking a cheery beach each a bonbon.
it is the ocean noting that tattoo to hide.
it is the ocean shunning to name what a tattoo is touching and yet telling a blue reputation to cope to take it inside and down to skipping and copepods in my hand done now with the crustacean crown.
it is crystalline in itself forming a metalloid among other forms from lustrous us amorphous and more rasorite.
it is coming from carbon in name I mean boring in the sense that it is sending boron filaments out to mint it might be given in carbon fibers insulation in safe filling.
it is sad that the green looks fake in every photograph I need a photographer to realize.
it is only geology.
it is safe filling in the ditch inside it grew blue willing to elude the ditch.
it is a seated body had a bird secreted down in town neat and not obsolete and not burned and not great.
it is big after bags of grain in the barn.
it is boring into me it is born it is bound to be boring it is boundaries in season banishing insects to bore right through boron ate boron eight times more as seen in insecticides dimmed and tin calling.
it is a zebrafish brain now waiting for electric calls for all the eels the ills the licking the skin outside the skull it looks like the pathetic fallacy.
it is getting the geography right to find out graphite time is tame also allergic to wool itself a loose coat and a wide ditch I love dick.
it is sitting to sit downtown is to be sitting with this situation the ocean names it is composing a pathetic fallacy not a city is one name for home.
it is for the love of far ranging usage gives way to the season it says in an obsolete sense a loose coatis the usual lies sounding wednesday is wide at a specified distance to give and take inside a weekend decision beyond the bounds wild immoderate immoral loose feeling also side to side poppyseed.
it is sassolite also known as sal sedativum passes itself forward.
it is a promise here made him.
it is good reading the dictionary for all the entries for dick and ditch.
it is a good good.
it is not sticks and stones bricks and brains peat and pets could be the cloud closed down.
it is a zebrafish shining inside the ocean the eel itself besotted.
it is a fissure near and only for minding igneous rock like to fill in the original and sometimes rising a mound or wall or murmur after they have been worn down.
it is moss singing in the peat let me repeat moss served well willing to pet peat is obsolete.
it is depositing carbon on an engine.
it is depositing carbon on a foot before football literature is falling down playing football in a library and telling him in a phone call.
it is looking like I like what it is I see in virtual reality.
it is boring as boron is as boron was radiocarbon dating yesterday.
it is carbon bound to carbon because a bonbon is also coal loose inside the hearth then my left foot behind a confection is good good.it is grinding my teeth to say he is grandfathered inside this situation is what it is sitting downtown.
it is boring as fear is boring down into my body and a body had a ditch is a fissure for sure a fishing line I took inside a necklace it looks like it will catch on everything given again.
it is a damp pace in the wet we let happen peat to post standard calls acidic conditions inside bogs and fens so often I find myself bogged down inside seated heat and dried out for fuel following a piece decomposing.
it is a little ditch all the way down a narrow to hold or conduct water
because a pond or obsolete den needs a hedge do not hedge do not let me hedge to get ahead.
it is birds all the way down it is boring down and it is boring done.
it is waving virtuous.
it is mostly water is virtual in the obsolete sense an observed effect for a head designating water giving over rising to an observed pressure held.
it is looking like a virtual light for the love of focus singing in the diverging waves.
it is sure it says press sheering is the head then the height from a column makes a pressing shore lingering by virtue of its weight it is him before he eels this zebrafish brain all the way downtown.
how like humans to imagine it is good to be a body guarded and letting gravel fall and forgetting the driveway of someone I loved.
it is looking like the difference between initiate and rotate tonight.
it is graded down.
how like humans to imagine it is bad to be remembering what it felt like to be had and better to remember what it looked like for the leave of other humans.
it is not virtual in the sense inherent natural properties being observed in season. it is so sodding done as seen in poppyseeds.
it is silence because I fear being boring or worse saying everything given again nowhere fear of failure.
it is a gimlet letting me admit a gym membership is the same.
it is letting me admit a gimlet is also a love letter too obsolete to support the bodyweight to obtain an entrance by boring or bordering on a wound.
it is only a window with mold growing on the inside in need of wiping down.
it is so I love dick I land on rereading.
it is piercing by means of a rotating movement it is initiating like a gimlet.
it is distilled into a colorless volatile liquid it could be clouded and it could be sweetened water is clear I am sweet on him more than fermented sugars are forever black and blue.
it is intimating the same musing mouse as seen downtown two nights in a row.
it is a series of hydrocarbons containing a hydroxyl also known as high riding ill land could be cyclic like one cannot have a pizza and a sandwich on a bicycle ride.
it is like lilac also wool is like to lack a clouded could be poppyseeds to be bound we had beheaded poppies.
it is dull like a lack of interest standing. it is turning over the engine turning over the boat taking it back to I love dick and tidal days.
it is like cordial likes calling a lime a lime and remembering gin is everything that was sweat is also sweetened dear bartender.
it is amusing me to imagine how I might talk to my muse about this sitting down and telling him to tell me a message.
it is liking to look.
it is looking like little kidneys could be blue or black.
it is smoking cold the lake is exhaling tiny icicles microscopic white bicycles circling the water with poppyseed tires.
it is only a disparity in temperature as long as surface is sure facing itself for the love of vapor moving there are five states of matter.
it is bloomington-normal water there is ureaplasma the risk to the sky is really low winter for the great lake the lack the cellphone in hand easy so then essay ammonia then the cell wall is all water underneath the family mollicutes not unlike mare’s urine is midnight blue underneath black rubber mats be condensate.
it is a wave of very great height it might be swollen it might be running a narrow estuary.
it is estimated that many chocolates are contaminated with heavy metals tattoos and bonbons.
it is silent to let sight alone.
it is thrilling through and through.
it is goring again gorilla it is going to look like pining to pin down the diagnosis is only knowing it is knowing it is the shore line.
it is glazed poppyseed days.
it is looking like a carbon copy is only saying like like or see see the color of poppyseeds.
it is underlying everything given in looks and likes could be bound and doe eyed like a carbon carbon bond is cloud deer running over the airplane now I want to look downtown.
Get Under a Nightmare
it is saying the best way to get over someone is to get under a nightmare, I mean lying down under a real mare resting your head on her front legs, back on the ground, and photographing her stomach. it is pear shaped and recalls a man standing on a pear and deer running over nothing his last birthday and my head on his foot for the love of being difficult to film. it is knowing that the photograph of both is better than the photograph I can take under the nightmare. it is her topline once upon a time a barrel was a barrel real. it is tear dropped. it is a drip dropped down menu meaning blue sheen on black calls back. it is countershading doe eyes.
Julia Rose Lewis is the author of Phenomenology of the Feral (KFS 2017), High Erratic Ecology (KFS 2020), and The Hen Wife (Contraband 2020). James Miller and she co-authored Strays (HVTN 2017). She and Nathan Hyland Walker co-authored The Velvet Protocol (KFS 2022). She and Paul Hawkins co-authored the visual poetry collection Postcards From Mental States (Hesterglock Press 2023). She has published nine pamphlets, the most recent of which is Nearly Identical Sharks (Broken Sleep Books 2023).
