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Jessy Randall

Marriage is a Glutinous Rice Ball

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Marriage is a glutinous rice ball with red bean paste.
No, love is the rice ball and marriage is the chopsticks.

Love is the flower and marriage is the ground.
Love is the hammer and marriage is the pound.
Love is the singing and marriage is the sound.
Marriage is the blood and love is the wound.

To recap: love is one thing and marriage is
quite another, related but not even near identical. Love
is the pretty thing, the sweet little kitchen. Marriage
is more powerful, brutal, the grand hall.

Love is a rickety old building and marriage is the wrecking ball.
It destroys it and makes it into something better. A field.


The Diagonal Game

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Two fems in the cage's maw.
They peer, they bid, they want.
Tiles cut a staircase. The board
tends up. An animal becomes
a sickness, or a food. The inkers
sing in the key of Q. Aha!
So, so yummy. Let us jot in your den.
It's fair: a diver in the vein,
a radio on the pane.
Put this ode on a twig. Na.


A Box of Clods

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A box of clods, a dood bog
packaged up dumb, Aesop's cob
two-name four-eye glob of sop
six-hand double-wide block of rot

Knock it, stamp it, it won't hurt
now you've got it, what you're worth
nasty stockade, your last nerve
heave out, bellow, on you lurch

Crows fight, bees nest, earth and heaven
smacked upside-down beyond yourself
anytime baby, flock of silver
passed over, passed up, eat an orange.


Dream of the Avant-Garde

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I dreamed they were writing
long articles about you,
you and your avant-gardeness.
I looked at the photos
and skimmed the text, hoping
for mention of me. Then wondered
what you were actually doing
that was so avant-garde, and
learned you were making words
out of dried beans on your hallway floor.
Brilliant! said everyone. Genius!
And I agreed, and we kissed
like middle-schoolers. And when I
told you about this dream, you said,
that's funny, I dreamed the same thing!


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