#zjoot

[uutpoetry]

1 in 10 Americans Do Not Fall Asleep

Nick Rizzuti

At night she floats from house to house opening sunroofs with malice. No cream in your coffee this morning, there is no cream left. Your son ate the cow several months ago, starting with the legs while it was sleeping, and while you were sleeping, also.

At night she lays wide awake and perfectly still. “This is the only patch of grass left” she tells you when you ask about the stillness “and if I move, then poof, there it will go.”

“There was no malice in it,” she tells you when you ask about the sunroof, lying.

The computer produces blue light, and the television also. You think maybe they are dancing.

You think maybe they are dancing without you.

art by austin1227

[uutpoetry]

Collecting Plastic Dinosaurs in a Wild and Explosive Manner

@zjoot

Sometimes I think you’re confused about who has the teeth. I’ve seen it all before: reinforced shelves, paint fumes, the distant hungry look at Steve’s dinner party. I like my rubber in the shape of an inflatable tube. You like yours painted neon pink, I guess. It grows over the years; a backyard filled with reinforced plastic bags. A stack of newspapers too heavy to lift off your now withered chest. Admit it: you were never going to make papier-mâché solar systems. Your house is designed like you’re trying to trap a minotaur. My house is a crystal blue pool of water with no bottom; it goes straight through the earth then keeps on going and I float in circles on the top, naked even of hair.

Based on the “In a ___ Manner” prompt and I guess trying to talk myself out of buying a bunch of garbage on ebay? Wasn’t expecting that but I guess that’s how it goes.

art by ||

[uutpoetry]

The Ladder Tree

@Zjoot

Lots of things grew on the apple tree we planted, but none of them were apples. There were some glass swans, some hammers, some glow stick necklaces; there were quite a few telescopes, which followed us around on their spindly legs. You climbed hopefully up a tall orange ladder to pick the crate labeled “apples” that had grown on a high bough. You opened it and your dad was sleeping in there. The ladder slowly sank into the ground. The orchestra stood around with its hands in its pockets, mumbling awkwardly about the weather.

Next April, there was plenty of rain. Lots of things grew on the ladder tree we planted, and you were one of them. The first thing you asked for was a glass of milk. The second thing you asked for was as many telescopes as I could carry. You built a tiny observatory in the palm of your hand and I crawled in, but all of the astronomy had leaked out of the telescopes during winter, and all I could see was a sort of muted beige. When your dad woke up, he was stuck in the high boughs of a bald and withered apple tree, and it was snowing.

Nick Rizzuti is an undergraduate at Hofstra University. He has appeared in Little River, No Assholes, and Fur-Lined Ghettos. Art by owlwise12.

[cosmictacobeachshack]

Terrific View of Mayberry

Knee high socks on D-List celeb Shot dead because his skeen was pink people are not into the soft pastel variety Too peaceful and erotic

What is the future of Planet Noxu? Why do The Police look like moles in funny costumes? I have Vision of Sheriff as Southern-gospel crooner squinting into sunset No necks Long Wizard Whiskers I'm in the desert with zen monks and zjoot talking water to a mermaid, boot-scootin' with that Gonzo Possum Sea Creature Her Message for you is Put Your Shirt On, Putin Then buy a microscope Put your socket to it

[unknowmenclature]

Little beads like hatchlings Interim and lonely to die, Pick and choose their phobias Under mechanic jungles and swamped Homework paper-pipes. Question mark hands cup cheap Gold and scrape teeth free Of cement holding brackets onto Perfect smiles hope ----------- Try #4 of the five in five challenge proposed by zjoot

[unknowmenclature]

rivulets drum up congo dance line of cicada star bursts, liquid light parting the parking lot into a schism where cars on either side honk to drown out the apocalypse on a leaf the tiny automatized bug split in an airwave. -- #3 try at the five in five challenge proposed by zjoot

[unknowmenclature]

if you hold 
me tight
 in arms made 
of the sound of clanging 
metal pipes, i’ll make sure to 
ignore the
 body at the end
 of the hallway; every time, walking by it, 
 I hear the breaths in between 
lines in that finger-licking
 orchestra, and shiver. —
#2 five in five exercise proposed by zjoot

[impossiblepoem]

Will there ever be a prompt 3?

Yes — and its difficulty will break the very fabric of the community — madness!!!