Kristin Bock Surreal-Absurd Sampler

“Writing the surreal is a subversive act. There’s something about surrealism that defies or resists the laws of physics, or something familiar moves or acts in an unfamiliar way—that clock shouldn’t be melting, that spider is too big. This is a landscape where the rules don’t apply and that gets me excited. I remember a line from James Tate’s poem, “Dear Reader”: I am trying to pry open your casket with this burning snowflake. He begins with an oxymoron—he’s trying to awaken, resurrect, to bring the reader back to life, or shake them out of their logical thinking with this impossible image. It doesn’t have a real-world correlate—so what transforms in the world of the poem if we follow those unreal assumptions? It ignites wonder in us. A successful surreal poem makes the magic happen inside the reader. Strangeness or dream logic can sneak past our rational sensors and scream through us like lightning. We get goosebumps. Our hairs stand on end. Our mouths fall open in awe. We may gasp out loud. The poem is its own thaumaturgy—a snowman crying tears of fire, tiny soldiers pouring from a hole in a monster’s belly, or a ghost heart beginning to quiver. We are Aliiive!”

— Kristin Bock

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POSTCARD FROM THE COFFIN

Everything was fine until the flood. Now my suit is ruined, caked with mud, especially the buttons, which I love. I remember someone at the wake whispered, mother of Pearl. I never met Pearl, though I would like to someday—My dearest Pearl, my snarl of light...How they used to shine, these buttons, even in the dark. Like promises. Like opals buried deep inside the moon.

UNWILLING ROBOT

I wasn’t prepared

for my current state

of wakefulness. My soul

sits patiently in a chair.

In this way, my body

is a waiting room,

a fish tank, a box of static.

For what am I

halfway through my life,

if not my shadow

reaching the mailbox

long before me.

HOW DRONES ARE BORN

A porcelain doll abandons her carriage and crouches like an insect in the corn. The girl, from her bedroom window, reaches for the doll, but slumps in a white ruffled collar. A wafer of arsenic crosses the sky. Green powder blooms from her mother’s dress. A black milk seeps from the child. Her father, in his rocking chair on the lawn, bites his fat tongue in the dark. All night, the doll waltzes through the corn until dawn erases her face. Blades sprout from her neck and she ascends into the cracked clouds.

MY FATHER’S PAINT-BOX

The color of grief is wolf

Forgiveness, sailcloth

Argument, oxbow—

(There is a whisper

of gunpowder in every color)

I am a wolf

wrapped in sailcloth

laid below

the hanging oxbow

GET BACK

At the party, my mother curls into a set of ovaries and vein-blue tubes. A shiny dark bag blooms from her mouth and turns her inside out. Everyone is laughing. I pick her up and carry her upstairs. She is slippery and making a sound like static. I find my brother lying in the hall. One eye whirling in its socket. His arms and legs are fleshy knobs, red and swollen like the walls. I drop my mother, and everybody laughs. It’s just so funny. She slumps over and throbs in the corner. My brother slouches toward her. I try to grab him by the stumps, but they are slick from the forewaters. I keep dropping him in the rising muck. Everyone is convulsively laughing. We can’t stop. We slip, go under. It’s hilarious. All of us grabbing onto each other. All of us ill-made, laughing, and trying to get back inside.

ON NOT FINDING YOUR GRAVE

It’s dark,

the air sick with moths

Under the canopy

of the camperdown elm,

God is a barn of blazing horses.

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POSTCARD FROM THE COFFIN was previously published by Hobart, UNWILLING ROBOT was previously published by Ghost Town, HOW DRONES ARE BORN was previously published by Bateau, MY FATHER’S PAINT BOX was previously published by Crazyhorse (now known as Swamp Pink), and GET BACK was previously published by Iterant. All of these appear in Bock’s newest collection, GLASS BIKINI. The last poem in this sampler, ON NOT FINDING YOUR GRAVE, was in Bock’s first collection, CLOISTERS.

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KRISTIN BOCK holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she teaches in the Business Communication Program. Her first collection, CLOISTERS, won Tupelo Press’s First Book Award and the da Vinci Eye Award. Bock’s second collection, GLASS BIKINI, is out now with Tupelo Press. She lives with her husband in Massachusetts and together they restore liturgical art.