Experimental Poetry:
Poem 29

while I stare at my shoes
and eatshirt,

you too, import birch
disqualified for trance motifs.

the one we are watching:
the pro-­‐audience fusion,

he wanted no thing apart
but that fuckawful accent.

afraid to wake you up

the whole time her black
verse dries into a snore.

I asked the chain elements
to put your head in my lap

so several cities and towns
did the same.

remember I told you how

the old hospital isolation boxes
paused visual aids.

backroads and river smell in a jar
ring one potential threshold:

all photos in the basement
sleep a twin process,

all comments sign that pledge
to be viewed.

still ahead, California
contained a room on the ocean

so the grant money
lies down in the chair and closes her eyes.

unable to keep myself
from acting lines of this preface.

I don’t go out for years

Project Description

The poem is comprised entirely of appropriated terms and phrases related to the number 29. A few months ago I started to document the different means through which the number 29 appeared within the mundane aspects of my life: receipts, house numbers, page numbers, clocks, highway exits, textbooks, etcetera. Using 29 of these images, I created a visual compilation and recorded every word found within the collected images into one running monologue. I put together the final poem lifting words and phrases from this text.

Kerrie McNair is a fourth year student majoring in Political Science, with a minor in Creative Writing. Her work has been published in Ditch and The Boiler Journal and she won the 2013 Alfred R. Poynt Award from The Department of English and Writing. She's a volunteer reader for The Rusty Toque.