SurVision Magazine / John Bradley

The Shapeliness of Shapelessness

I slipped down, down into my shoe, where I quickly found it was impossible to climb out. Not that I had shrunken exactly, or that the shoe had suddenly exploded in height. No, I was now a semi-liquid, a gelid sea thinking about how the world was now the shape of a shoe. After pondering this for a bit, I rose and congealed, a frozen wave looking about, noticing that I had regained my old height and then some. A wave always about to fall is how I must describe myself.
     For some reason, I was wearing a top hat and holding a cane with an ivory porpoise for a handle. I looked about for a street sign but could find one nowhere. Without a street, numbered door, or even a No Parking warning, I was nameless. Perhaps I should be called What Ignited the Magma at the Core of the Earth Melted Me into This Unsightly Entity.
     This is where it gets confusing. I then slipped into a punctuation mark, though I can't discern which, due to the lack of light. I could be inside a misplaced comma, or perhaps stuck in the period loitering at the end of this sentence. Then again, I might be in a jar of blameless blackberry preserves in your pantry.
     Should you ever venture near me, do use caution. I could rise up at any time, a wave beyond all restraint and control. Therefore, it would be wise if you kept your mouth firmly closed at all times. Not that I would ever wish to abide inside you, sloshing about and gaping up at the shapeliness of your soft, teasing tongue.

So You Want to Pay Your Debt with a Pouch of Parsnips


The Head grew so large that it dwarfed its body, and soon trunk and arms and legs were subsumed into the Head, as if they always belonged there. One morning a doctor, carved out of a walking stick, came to see the Head, and he tossed a Handbook to Simplified Levitation into the open grave he found behind the Head's right eye. Eventually a miniature city grew around the base of the Head, where in certain alleys you could buy a palpitating pencil, amnesia-ridden pistol, or a ticket to the elevator that took you to the garden terrace near the top of the Head (though no one who rode the elevator ever returned). In the winter, clouds formed around the Head, so thick you could only see the mouth, which would say at fifty-five-minute intervals: Be still. This tongue carries the first letter of every sentence you will ever utter. Perhaps you've already heard how the Head counts its teeth each day before closing its eyes, and then counts them again after opening its eyes. One afternoon a drone flew around the Head, even briefly entering the left ear cavity. And when the drone pilot displayed the video footage at the local movie theater, all that could be seen was a flour-dusted baby resting on a fleshy red mattress, otherwise known as the Head's tongue. How can the Head speak with those enormous thorns rising along the tongue's inner ridges? someone asked aloud. But then, we've learned it does no good to ponder such questions about the creature we call the Head.

On the Discovery of a Secret Document Lodged in the Ex-President's Nasal Cavity


Then someone named Charlotte-But-Call-Me-Chocolat began to flicker and fade, levitating a small island, owned by Jeff Bezos, or maybe Steve Bannon, just off Costa Rica. That's when Norway began to appear, bit by fishy bit, at a weedy bus stop in Patterson, New Jersey. With scalpel, needle, tweezer, hook, and chisel, I started repairing injured language in a windy Danish farmhouse. A knife-sharpener I'm sure I met before in Purgatory, Indiana, told me: Don't go near any bowl that's swallowed a black leather jacket. History is littered with loud presidents thrashing in colossal beds. At 4 a.m., I photographed you photographing a radioactive poppy seed, edible chalk, and a cucumber with a Ronald Reagan pompadour. Yellow specks the color of translucent bread said: Yes, we were once a bust of Apollo long before the invention of bioluminescent bandaids. Behind your mutating motherboard, there was a verbal spread that read: Visible only to the temporarily visible. Back in Flatbush, I devoured the honey-almond cerebral cortex stashed in the pantry, though I despised the cockatoo that kept quoting Frank Sinatra: Oh, I just wish someone would try to hurt you so I could kill them for you. History is littered with loud presidents, drooling over the sublime, thrashing in colossal beds. Soon metafictional chaos choked the gutter, sewer, Sappho's elbow. But I remembered not to avert my eyes, even when my eyes closed the eyes behind my eyes. To delay the decay of a violin, Laurie Anderson once said, repeat these words through Lou Reed's death mask: When love is gone / There's always justice / And when justice is gone / There's always force.

John Bradley lives in lives in DeKalb, Illinois. His poetry has appeared in Caliban, Cloudbank, Hotel Amerika, Otoliths, SurVision, and other journals. His most recent book is Dear Morpheus, The Glue That Is You (Dos Madres Press). A frequent reviewer for Rain Taxi, he is currently a poetry editor for Cider Press Review.

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An international online magazine that publishes Surrealist poetry in English. Issue Thirteen JOHN BRADLEY The Shapeliness of Shapelessness I slipped down, down into my shoe, where I quickly found it was impossible to climb out. Not that I had shrunken exactly, or that the shoe had suddenly exploded in height. No, I was now a semi-liquid, a gelid sea thinking about how the world was now the shape of a shoe. After pondering this for a bit, I rose and congealed, a frozen wave looking about, noticing that I had regained my old height and then some. A wave always about to fall is how I must describe myself. For some reason, I was wearing a top hat and holding a cane with an ivory porpoise for a handle. I looked about for a street sign but could find one nowhere. Without a street, numbered door, or even a No Parking warning, I was nameless. Perhaps I should be called What Ignited the Magma at the Core of the Earth Melted Me into This Unsightly Entity. This is where it gets confusing. I then slipped into a punctuation mark, though I can't discern which, due to the lack of light. I could be inside a misplaced comma, or perhaps stuck in the period loitering at the end of this sentence. Then again, I might be in a jar of blameless blackberry preserves in your pantry. Should you ever venture near me, do use caution. I could rise up at any time, a wave beyond all restraint and control. Therefore, it would be wise if you kept your mouth firmly closed at all times. Not that I would ever wish to abide inside you, sloshing about and gaping up at the shapeliness of your soft, teasing tongue. So You Want to Pay Your Debt with a Pouch of Parsnips The Head grew so large that it dwarfed its body, and soon trunk and arms and legs were subsumed into the Head, as if they always belonged there. One morning a doctor, carved out of a walking stick, came to see the Head, and he tossed a Handbook to Simplified Levitation into the open grave he found behind the Head's right eye. Eventually a miniature city grew around the base of the Head, where in certain alleys you could buy a palpitating pencil, amnesia-ridden pistol, or a ticket to the elevator that took you to the garden terrace near the top of the Head (though no one who rode the elevator ever returned). In the winter, clouds formed around the Head, so thick you could only see the mouth, which would say at fifty-five-minute intervals: Be still. This tongue carries the first letter of every sentence you will ever utter. Perhaps you've already heard how the Head counts its teeth each day before closing its eyes, and then counts them again after opening its eyes. One afternoon a drone flew around the Head, even briefly entering the left ear cavity. And when the drone pilot displayed the video footage at the local movie theater, all that could be seen was a flour-dusted baby resting on a fleshy red mattress, otherwise known as the Head's tongue. How can the Head speak with those enormous thorns rising along the tongue's inner ridges? someone asked aloud. But then, we've learned it does no good to ponder such questions about the creature we call the Head. On the Discovery of a Secret Document Lodged in the Ex-President's Nasal Cavity Then someone named Charlotte-But-Call-Me-Chocolat began to flicker and fade, levitating a small island, owned by Jeff Bezos, or maybe Steve Bannon, just off Costa Rica. That's when Norway began to appear, bit by fishy bit, at a weedy bus stop in Patterson, New Jersey. With scalpel, needle, tweezer, hook, and chisel, I started repairing injured language in a windy Danish farmhouse. A knife-sharpener I'm sure I met before in Purgatory, Indiana, told me: Don't go near any bowl that's swallowed a black leather jacket. History is littered with loud presidents thrashing in colossal beds. At 4 a.m., I photographed you photographing a radioactive poppy seed, edible chalk, and a cucumber with a Ronald Reagan pompadour. Yellow specks the color of translucent bread said: Yes, we were once a bust of Apollo long before the invention of bioluminescent bandaids. Behind your mutating motherboard, there was a verbal spread that read: Visible only to the temporarily visible. Back in Flatbush, I devoured the honey-almond cerebral cortex stashed in the pantry, though I despised the cockatoo that kept quoting Frank Sinatra: Oh, I just wish someone would try to hurt you so I could kill them for you. History is littered with loud presidents, drooling over the sublime, thrashing in colossal beds. Soon metafictional chaos choked the gutter, sewer, Sappho's elbow. But I remembered not to avert my eyes, even when my eyes closed the eyes behind my eyes. To delay the decay of a violin, Laurie Anderson once said, repeat these words through Lou Reed's death mask: When love is gone / There's always justice / And when justice is gone / There's always force. John Bradley lives in lives in DeKalb, Illinois. His poetry has appeared in Caliban, Cloudbank, Hotel Amerika, Otoliths, SurVision, and other journals. His most recent book is Dear Morpheus, The Glue That Is You (Dos Madres Press). A frequent reviewer for Rain Taxi, he is currently a poetry editor for Cider Press Review.
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