Showing the Exquisite Corpse

The peripatetic poet of The Steiny Road to Operadom collaborated recently with poets JoAnne Growney and Christopher Conlon to create an Exquisite Corpse triptych of three stand-alone poems for an art show entitled “Le Cadavre Esquis.” Read the poems at the end of this post.

The exhibit runs from July 12 to August 9. Be sure to check on hours of operation.The organizers of the show John Landis, Mark Behme, Neil Joffe welcomed a large crowd. Mark Behme provided the idea for this show and it is his rope sculpture seen above that announces the show in the front window of Gateway's Heliport Gallery
.

Gateway's Heliport Gallery

8001 Kennett Street 

Silver Spring, Maryland 20910


[DC’s subway Red Line to Silver Spring Station]

For more information: 
call Gateway's Heliport Gallery 

at (301) 562-1400

What is interesting about this show is that the visual artists were asked to create three separate pieces involving head, torso, and legs. The odd thing is that the poets in their planning meeting over the Internet divvied up the assignment in the exact same way, not knowing the instructions to the visual artists. (The other choice was to create a back-and-forth poem in the traditional form of the exquisite corpse and there were some poems done by groups of people for this show in this manner.)

The show opened July 12 with each set of works by a particular artist lined up from head to toes. On July 26, the gallery will have a new opening to show a recombined set of works such that the art and our poems will be mixed with other work not by the same artists.

Here are the names of some of the artists in the show:
Karren Alenier . Mark Behme . Bobbi Clay . Christopher Conlon

Warren Craghead III . Patrick Finley . Fred Folsom . Gail Gorlitzz

JoAnne Growney . Stephen Hanks . Elyse Harrison . Neil Joffe
John Landis
Emery Lewis . Donna M. McCullough . Emily Piccirillo
Shelley Sarrin
 . Rima Schulkind . Ed Thomas . Joyce Zipperer
Birdie Zoltan . Student Artists
Voices from Eastern Village
Voices from Silver Spring Drop-In Center

HEAD

Aloft in space, suspended in someone’s
hands, he hears: Kiss Uncle goodbye, son.
But the old man is different now—his face
hardened, as if brought into focus
for the first time. His skin like plaster.
(They did a wonderful job, someone murmurs.
Just exquisite.) Strange: no odor of whiskey
or cigarettes now, nothing but roses, dust.

Thirty years later he’ll tell them
about Uncle, their private games that were
never fun, the old tongue slimy in his mouth.
I hate you, Uncle. He shuts his eyes,
lips touching the corpse’s cheek. And I love you,
anyway. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

by Christopher Conlon
Copyright © 2008 by Christopher Conlon




.......................................TORSO

.......................................Held in a padded box—
.......................................never proudly reaching
a muscled right arm up or shaping gestures with with a graceful left arm out—
.......................................and never more a laughingstock.
..............................................○ .....................○
.......................................In spite of coffin confinement,
.......................................rhymes flow from my felt-tip pen;
.......................................words from the other side :
.......................................surds — again and again !

.......................................From lower worlds I testify :
.......................................The memoirist cannot but lie.
.......................................Only the crust can hold the pie.
.......................................With a boring man, a woman’s dry.
.......................................You can’t be a corpse unless you die.
.......................................Then, to be exquisite, there’s a prerequisite:
.......................................never one-sided — you must be divided!
.......................................Hang on! Bye-bye.

by JoAnne Growney
Copyright © 2008 by JoAnne Growney



EXTREMITIES

Exquisite the shoes,
feet, legs of royalty—
Louis Quatorze in heels
versus the unnamed
empress, princess,
concubine with three inch
stumps, many toes missing,
pushed into baby doll
bootees of silk.
.......................At three, four,
five, six, feet broken and bound
to produce tiny hooves,
lotus hooks, later a swaying
gait if the woman could walk
on painful, rotting stubs.
.......................................The
fold between heel and ball
of the altered paw—site
of the husband’s
penetration.
.....................Hello, was the Sun
King hobbled so? Oh, no!
His platforms made him His High-
ness, not a come-fuck-me
piece of infected
property confined
to the master’s
dark house, not
a jaded
corpse
some
how
alive.

by Karren L. Alenier
Copyright © 2008 by Karren L. Alenier

Art in order of its appearance starting at the top and descending:
“Knotty Boy” by Mark Behme Copyright © 2008 by Mark Behme
“Jug Head,” “Pot Belly” and “Clay Feet” by Shelley Sarrin
Copyright © 2008 by Shelley Sarrin
“Standing Woman from La Chaise” by Patrick Finley
Copyright © 2008 by Patrick Finley
“Body, Mind, and Sole” by Bobbi Clay Copyright © 2008 by Bobbi Clay
“Yo-Yo Ma” by Steve Hanks Copyright © 2008 by Steve Hanks