Bloody light of basement bars

From the surrealist poetry workshop

Bloody light of basement bars

Cat in funeral singer’s clothing

Twin-tipped tongue, glacial ice eyes

Skin a pale palimpsest

Warmth of a faltering fire

Prim on the fainting couch

A crow’s familiar

Launching Poesy, the poetry section of Read Write Repeat, with a quick sketch from my workshop last weekend.

Piper Writers House on the campus of ASU has been putting on amazing fiction and poetry events for years: conventions, classes, speakers, workshops, readings. Last Saturday I had the good fortune of participating in a Surrealist Poetry workshop led by Kelli Russell Agodon, a terrific Seattle-area poet whose work I’ve admired for several years. (Subscribe to her Substack, Notes from My Electric Typewriter.)

This first-draft poem is from our first workshop exercise: Choose a favorite or least favorite person or place, then write a list poem with surrealist phrases.

Which do you think I picked? Let me know in the comments.