by Jennifer Met

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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-a cento for Max*

The moon was dark. 
She had eyes, I could see them— 
eyes like blisters.  

She described an orgasm 
is like a quiet, clean man folding sheets— 
small, precise, and a little wicked.  

The hilarious moon— 
part bone, part me— 
your gift for gab is of cosmic import.  

Made of shadow 
with white chalk, 
your lips, right after mine, form a crescent.  

In our bed, in the dark, 
when you smile, every tooth is a perfect O 
staring at pictures, paralyzed for hours.  

Look at me and bore me— 
to ever be bored 
under the light of the moon.  

Listening to you makes me naked, 
my body lit up— 
not sleeping, for who can sleep  

beyond the door, in the realest bed 
where we levitate— 
true not only of the world, but of perceiving it. 

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*A circular cento using lines from different poems in Max Ritvo’s Four Reincarnations (Milkweed Editions, 2016), starting and ending with “The End.”  

Title: “Appeal to my First Love”; 1 “The End”; 2 “Plush Bunny”; 3 “Radiation in New Jersey, Convalescence in New York”; 4 “Stalking My Ex-Girlfriend in a Pasture”; 5 “The Senses”; 6 “Lyric Complicity for One”; 7 “Universe Where We Weren’t Artisis”; 8 “The Watercolor Eulogy”; 9 “Poem in Which My Shrink is a Little Boy”; 10 “The Vacuum Planet of the Pee Pee Priestess”; 11 “The Blimp”; 12 “Poem About My Wife Being Perfect And Me Being Afraid”; 13 “For Crow”; 14 “Poem Set in the Day and Night”; 15 “Dawn of Man”; 16 “Sky-Sex Dreams of Randal”; 17 “The Curve”; 18 “Troy”; 19 “Hi, Melissa”; 20 “Afternoon”; 21 “The Big Loser”; 22 “When I Criticize You, I’m Just Trying To Criticize the Universe”; 23 “Poem To My Dog, Monday, On Night I Accidentally Ate Meat”; 24 “The End”

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Jennifer Met lives in a small town in North Idaho. She is a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology, a finalist for Nimrod's Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and winner of the Jovanovich Award. Recent work is published in Cimarron Review, the Museum of Americana, Nimrod, Ninth Letter, Quarterly West, Superstition Review, and Zone 3, among other journals. She serves as an Assistant Prose Poetry Editor for Pithead Chapel and is the author of the microchapbook That Which Sunlight Chases (Origami Poems Project) and the chapbook Gallery Withheld (Glass Poetry Press).

by Jennifer Met

a cento for Max*

The moon was dark.

She had eyes, I could see them—

eyes like blisters.

She described an orgasm

is like a quiet, clean man folding sheets—

small, precise, and a little wicked.

The hilarious moon—

part bone, part me—

your gift for gab is of cosmic import.

Made of shadow

with white chalk,

your lips, right after mine, form a crescent.

In our bed, in the dark,

when you smile, every tooth is a perfect O

staring at pictures, paralyzed for hours.

Look at me and bore me—

to ever be bored

under the light of the moon.

Listening to you makes me naked,

my body lit up—

not sleeping, for who can sleep

beyond the door, in the realest bed

where we levitate—

true not only of the world, but of perceiving it.

*A circular cento using lines from different poems in Max Ritvo’s Four Reincarnations (Milkweed Editions, 2016), starting and ending with “The End.”

Title: “Appeal to my First Love”; 1 “The End”; 2 “Plush Bunny”; 3 “Radiation in New Jersey, Convalescence in New York”; 4 “Stalking My Ex-Girlfriend in a Pasture”; 5 “The Senses”; 6 “Lyric Complicity for One”; 7 “Universe Where We Weren’t Artisis”; 8 “The Watercolor Eulogy”; 9 “Poem in Which My Shrink is a Little Boy”; 10 “The Vacuum Planet of the Pee Pee Priestess”; 11 “The Blimp”; 12 “Poem About My Wife Being Perfect And Me Being Afraid”; 13 “For Crow”; 14 “Poem Set in the Day and Night”; 15 “Dawn of Man”; 16 “Sky-Sex Dreams of Randal”; 17 “The Curve”; 18 “Troy”; 19 “Hi, Melissa”; 20 “Afternoon”; 21 “The Big Loser”; 22 “When I Criticize You, I’m Just Trying To Criticize the Universe”; 23 “Poem To My Dog, Monday, On Night I Accidentally Ate Meat”; 24 “The End”

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Jennifer Met lives in a small town in North Idaho. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist for Nimrod's Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and winner of the Jovanovich Award. Recent work is published or forthcoming in the Comstock Review, Gravel, Gulf Stream, Harpur Palate, Juked, Kestrel, Moon City Review, Nimrod, Sleet Magazine, Tinderbox, and Zone 3, among other journals. She is the author of the chapbook, Gallery Withheld (Glass Poetry Press, 2017).