Exquisite corpse by Hannah Fortna & Carolina VonKampen
Six Tankas
Voices of Crickets--
The sun’s deserted throne
Causes great alarm.
Cruel moon ascends, tentacles
swirling, and demands their song.
Locked legs turned skyward,
The tumbled bee clutches air--
Autumn’s strangling grasp
squeezes air out of its lungs--
wait—Siri, do bees have lungs
The focused fly
Shines its faceted body--
A jeweler’s prized gem.
It snoops, eavesdrops, and flies back
home to the man who listens.
The cappers submit,
quivering like bacon strips
on a greased skillet,
their own confidence doubting
the two crispy strips of words.
The kittens jump straight
up like Mario bounding
over brown barrels.
Trust in the floor’s compassion
is only a game to them.
Jaw ajar, blinks black
demon eyes, hissing hexes
through squirrel puppet.
Dark fate or sky, walk or run
to the star where sounds make sense.
Voices of Crickets--
The sun’s deserted throne
Causes great alarm.
Cruel moon ascends, tentacles
swirling, and demands their song.
Locked legs turned skyward,
The tumbled bee clutches air--
Autumn’s strangling grasp
squeezes air out of its lungs--
wait—Siri, do bees have lungs
The focused fly
Shines its faceted body--
A jeweler’s prized gem.
It snoops, eavesdrops, and flies back
home to the man who listens.
The cappers submit,
quivering like bacon strips
on a greased skillet,
their own confidence doubting
the two crispy strips of words.
The kittens jump straight
up like Mario bounding
over brown barrels.
Trust in the floor’s compassion
is only a game to them.
Jaw ajar, blinks black
demon eyes, hissing hexes
through squirrel puppet.
Dark fate or sky, walk or run
to the star where sounds make sense.
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Hannah Fortna earned a BA in English and a minor in photography from Concordia University, Nebraska. She is currently a freelance copy editor and copywriter specializing in Chicago editing style. Her work appears in Potpourri 2015 and 2016, and she enjoys traveling and gathering material for new writing and photography projects. Follow her at @plathfinder on Twitter and Instagram to see her thoughts on reading, writing, and editing and her photographs.
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Carolina VonKampen graduated with a BA in English and history from Concordia University, Nebraska. She is an editor from nine to five and an editor, reader, and writer the rest of the time. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, Cold Creek Review’s The Shallows, Potpourri 2017, Moonchild Magazine, and Déraciné Magazine. She writes book reviews and blog posts at carolinavonkampen.com and tweets about editing at @carolinamarie_v.
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