Stuart Ross Surreal-Absurd Sampler
In 1984 I founded a school of writing I called Demento Primitivo. It really caught on, at least among me. The people and other creatures and objects in my poems and stories often push themselves beyond the boundaries of realism and into the dementations of reality. Reality is the bubbling cauldron of absurdity we are flung into. The giant ladle of surrealism stirs us around and around until we capitulate to its nurturing demands. - Stuart Ross
EDUCATION
Hello, multitude of spindly insects
marching through my withered veins.
Sit down for a tea, a croissant.
Let me read you some Peter Altenberg.
I have been waiting for friends like you.
Companionship is a shaky ladder
leading to an attic filled with hostages.
Oh, can you help me with this crossword?
A 247-letter word meaning suit of porridge.
Come gather round this window:
yonder: beyond the creek: beyond the field:
Lipizzaners reenacting the Last Supper
for a scene in Jean Renoir’s latest
posthumous film. Comrade insects,
the world teems with such miracles.
Teach me all you know.
THE FACTS AS THEY STAND
1.
An owl
wakes in a crib.
It is morning.
2.
We pressed our hands
over our ears. The sound
of hoofbeats through
spaghetti.
3.
Is a pig
a bird?
4.
They bang their fists
on the bathroom
door. A motorcycle
is taking a bath.
5.
I lift one leg.
Does it go in
the quicksand? In
a bear trap? In
Italo Calvino? Ah,
it goes in front
of the other.
SNOW GLOBE
You unstrapped your chin anchor
and your neck began to telescope
till your head poked out your bedroom
window, leaving your pyjamas behind.
Your keen eyesight guided
your purposeful noggin
through the disdainful night
whose inky wobble choked in riddle.
With your head on the prowl,
searching for clues, what did
your arms (back in your bedroom)
wrap themselves around?
Was it a snow globe in whose waters
drifted your gal, your towheaded fortune?
The Twisted Claw
The street was carpeted with rain,
the moon an eyeball in the dark sky,
the cries of roosters shook the leaves
of trees that mourned day’s death.
A dream stumbled out from the silent bushes,
its twisted claw flailing
to regain its balance. I watched
through my grief-smeared window:
my fingers took inventory of my toes
and my open skull throbbed where my brain
spilled out in search of the dream
that had ripped me from sleep.
I can never remember that word for when
the sun is born and the claw retracts.
EL ARTE DE FUMAR PORRO
1. Gather several stray kittens and dress them as characters from Ibsen.
2. Read Mulligan Stew by Davis Grubb backwards.
3. Help a Boy Scout across the road.
4. Break an egg over a bust of Tchaikovsky.
5. Draw an outline around the storm clouds above.
6. Glue a salt shaker to a tortoise’s shell (upright).
7. Fill a blank journal with blank thought balloons.
8. Write a sestina about Rat Fink.
9. You’ve been so productive. Pour yourself some ice water, put on some Dinah Washington, sit back, and relax. Take off your pants if you haven’t done so yet. The curtains are closed—no one will see you in your underwear.
10. Light up, inhale, keep an eye on the door.
NIÑOS ENVUELTOS EN HOJAS DE PARRA
The package arrived in Trondheim.
Dag tore it open. Emergency Poems
by Nicanor Parra, its binding rotted.
Each leaf tumbled separately from
the envelope. An anti-poem on each.
Each curled around a child who’d
spent weeks memorizing
their respective anti-poem. Outside
the window, the clouds were an explosion
of Parra’s white hair, his eyebrows
the foam on tidal waves pouncing
from the Trondheim Fjord. Dag
listened to the poem each child
learned by heart, then fed them,
all one hundred, and tucked them
back into their leaves to sleep, and
slipped into his own leaf for another
anti-sleep, half-dreams shaking
their fists deep into the inky sky.
FILM FESTIVAL
A movie about two people. A movie about two can openers. A movie about death crawling through a supermarket. A movie about the tension between competing products. A movie about a wise turnip. A movie about silent music. A movie about books with no pages. A movie about a pill that erases memory. A movie about I can barely lift myself up out this chair. A movie about a movie about exhaustion. A movie about walking into a wall. A movie about a porcupine that becomes sheriff in a small prairie town. A movie about an unfilled grave. A movie about dancing with my grandmother at my bar mitzvah. A movie about ashtrays. A movie about lining up at night, in the cold. A movie about noses.
INTERROGATIVE
Why is the deer
lying dead on the highway?
How did the sun wind up
in the sky? Does the idea
of a third shoulder appeal to you?
When the forest shudders, does
the lake care? Is a poodle a bicycle?
Who is the idiot who, when
faced with the ripped-out pages of Ulysses,
plugged the toilet with them and
denied involvement? Where do
the silverfish go to dance? What
is four apples plus six dead
philosophers divided by nineteen
lawn mowers? Ethel, why the silly
grin? When did the lightning
destroy the weeping willow? How much
is too much for one of David Bowie’s
molars? Who killed your ambition?
Do what to the sentient ocean?
Where will the television put
down its roots? Can you swim?
Given current circumstances, why
do they insist on dressing penguins?
NOVEMBER AGAIN
Frisky
is the dog
galloping
under the bridge
refracting the sun.
Even my tongue
inverts itself when
November arrives.
Hurray for November.
Incidents of memory lapse
decrease as one ages.
Impish pooch!
Now pick up those
guillotines!
BIO
Stuart Ross has published over 20 books, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, the memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. Stuart runs the Feed Dog Book imprint for surrealist poetry at Anvil Press and the 1366 Books imprint for experimental fiction at Guernica Editions. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, and occasionally blogs at bloggamooga.blogspot.com.
