In these two compelling poems written using the surrealist automatism method, Angel Dionne creates strange imagistic worlds that quietly move as much as they unsettle.
Sad Algorithm
Incomplete algorithm
writhing – writhen.
Peel back the stony skin,
reveal an unready world,
drink in its tepid juice —
acid on chapped lips.
Forward slash.
Hyphen.
Imperceptible symbol.
Algorithm.
Complete.
The Fisherman’s Response
Anthers,
emaciated,
shiver into form – rudimentary polymer
from the crook of her arm,
stinking of last month’s meat.
Bastard of a thought, she says. Earnest attempt.
Hook wedged in the gullet.
Odorous material never poses questions, he warns her.
She hands him a likely explanation
Knotted in understanding – quiet as a virtue.
Daily death deals differently.
These words appear to her,
scrawled across the underside
of a fisherman’s white hand.
He knits her a yawn in response.
Xenial Zealot.
About Angel Dionne
Angel Dionne is an English professor at the University of Moncton Edmundston campus. She finished her PhD in creative writing at the University of Pretoria in 2020, and she is the author of a chapbook of strange flash fiction entitled Inanimate Objects (Bottlecap Press) as well as co-editor of an anthology entitled Rape Culture 101: Programming Change (Demeter Press). Her work has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul, JAKE, Sein Und Werden, The Molotov Cocktail, The Missing Slate, The Peculiar Mormyrid, Crack the Spine Anthology, Everyday Fiction, Narrow Doors in Wide Green Fields, Surrealists and Outsiders, Good Morning Magazine, Garfield Lake Review, and Litbreak Magazine. She currently lives in Canada with her wife and cats. Follow Angel on Twitter @AngelDionne13 and to read more of her work see her website: https://angeldionne4.weebly.com/
Feature image: Erotic Landscape by Eileen Agar (1942). Fair use via WikiArt.
