The Crooked Treehouse
  • Tips From The Bar
  • Honest Conversation Is Overrated
  • Popcorn Culture
  • Comically Obsessed
  • Justify Your Bookshelves
  • Storefront

Interactionality

Usually poetic conversations between authors and texts.

20. Everything Is Free, Watertown, MA

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
Hummingbird feeders
Fragile things for a smash party
Shaker cups unused
Keyboard and mouse used but still working
Puffy Spider-Man stickers
Free prom dress New but didn't fit  Still has tags
Ikea style table/desk in very good condition
Toddler car seat lightly used
Lamp Shade is broken
Random cups and mugs All in good condition
Wood stain
Three big trays of chicken and veggies One tray of hummus
Smart LED strip lights (opened)
Black velvet yarn (A yard and a half?)
Calming collar for cats (Did not work on mine!)
Backpack
Laptop bag
Free 500 piece puzzle, four pieces missing
LARGE TRASH BAG FULL OF GIRLS SIZE SIX CLOTHES
Rocking chair (I was rocked as a baby)
Cola flavored CBD gummies (I was stoned as a baby LOL)
Various large and small costume jewelry necklaces
5 brand new pairs of XL Fruit Of The Loom briefs lightly decorated with cat hair
Scale, works, possibly too well
Placemat for doctors offices and nursery schools
Teddy bear Covid free A little dusty
0 Comments

18. Erotic Poetry Is Dead

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
How blest the archer
yielding so fragrant a bow
full nakedness from flowery gem nakedness
figs spill with your yields

a paradise of shoes
like silk rug embroidery made for your body

men caught root in the white linen of your amber husk
coveted jewel of fluted bed

heaven's zone shines slick
under my labour
wide spread innocence buttons my america
bleaches more meadow than seed

split conch shells are mystic books

pricking thy hand with my mind

a spangled breastplate shakes me
from the edge of you
You - a great cinnamon animal
with cloves of suck

such beautiful waterfall
I enter as spring
the boulders of our flesh glistening
a sashes warm eggs
books’ gay coverings 
your stalk has is tir’d with his earthly soul
drift flung by to be free

thy cave in burlap sack 
unclasped
​and flooded with my tongue
0 Comments

17. Description Of Symptoms

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
I tell my cat she isn't real
That she is a fifteen year long hallucination

She is not impressed
or would not be impressed
if she were real

My partner sits perpindicular to me
on the couch we bought
to test the strength of our relationship
He is doing a crossword puzzle and repeating the word
milky to see how it fits his tongue

I got out of bed early
so I could fall asleep on the couch
with multiple tabs open
​for affordable CPAP machines
0 Comments

19. Dog Photo Break

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
It is Later Than O'Clock
I walk the circuit from my house to diner
                                                                       to park
                                                                       to dog park
                                                                       to the perpetually closed pizza place
                                                                       to the abandoned school
                                                                       back home

At the abandoned school
a man walks a curly mutt the size and color of winter

The dog stops and sniffs my hand
The man clicks something plastic and gives the dog a treat

The dog stands up
using my shoulders for leverage

What's his name I ask
The man says Mortimer
and Mortimer drowns me in tongue

He gets neither click nor treat
The man picks Mortimer up
though the dog is at least the same size as him
if not bigger
and walks away
0 Comments

16. Only Masochists Use Voicemails In The Age Of Texts

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
Raccoons file their nails at the altar of garbage
while their opossum cousins screech treason and
                                                                faint like ​ingénues made of float glass
0 Comments

15. Have Your Checked Your Butthole?

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
I know we are children
who refuse to wrinkle
despite bad backs and grey hair
and neither of us able to sleep properly
because every time our keys go walkabout
​                                          our cellphones fail to appear
before a court of overturned couch cushions and
                                     redistributed table pollution
one of us will ask the other
have you checked your butthole?
And the other will grumble and
                                         stare like a barely crackable pistachio shell
before turning their back and checking jacket pockets
​that the lost necessities won't be located in this time either
0 Comments

14. How Long Does It Take Before A Ring Feels Natural On A Delirious Finger?

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
Have I ever loved
anyone who wasn't between sizes?

Our love sliding off between us?
Afraid of losing
a concrete promise of the future

I am too thin of knuckle?
           too thick of blood?

Nah

Too heavy of metaphor
Too euphoric of sense

You can't dimension the future with measuring tape or twine

​Your own phalanx a stranger in ill-fitting but comfortable clothes
0 Comments

13. Old Dead White Men Break Up In A Nature Poem

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
Past the death
Immortal birds with
breezes birchen green
a drowsy numbness
the unseen heart
the alien corn
in glee along
the margin of
the singest dawn

Once I saw thee
drink and leave
weariness to dissolve
in seas of
perilous tears Grief
more than daffodils
musks the night
twists the heart

In what distant
cloud do I
wake and float
A fluttering tyger
of murmurous leaves

Are we hand
or twinkle of
clown waking the
deep vacant tomorrow?
0 Comments

12. Cat Photo Break

3/19/2023

0 Comments

 
My stupidest cat loves
to play fetch Usually
when I am too tired to want
to play fetch I throw her a straw
or a bread clip or a bottle cap

She will race to where she thinks
I must have thrown her treasure
and occasionally will return
with the proper prize in her mouth
But just as often I will throw her
a bottle cap and she will return
with a straw in her mouth
which I will throw and she will bring back
a sock I've never seen before

Beneath our oven is a hoard of chotchkes
left behind by the previous tenants' cats

Beneath our couch
​all the dumbest things I can't remember losing
0 Comments

11. My Adoptive Mother Wants To Know If I've Ever Done One Of Those DNA Ancestry Tests

3/19/2023

0 Comments

 
I used to be better
about talking with people while they cried

Now I let them talk out their sadness
while my non-commital guttural soothes them

I saw a movie once
where someone went to a therapist and actually felt better

The therapist later killed themselves and mentioned
the protagonist in their final prescription
sending the formerly cured patient into 
the worst depression of their life

I never know who to recommend films to
so I keep my mouth shut

In real life
                        some people get better
                        most therapists survive long enough
to die by someone else's hands

When I say I don't need anyone
I don't mean I don't want anyone
Just that everyone is free to move
around this stupid playpen 
as often as they wish

My mother can laugh now
about the first dance she went to
after her husband died
when she and her four friends sat down
at a table with six chairs
and she stormed out of the room
demanding to know who was cruel enough
to leave an empty chair where her husband would have sat
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Interactionality

    An ongoing conversation between writers and the text that they're reading.

    Adam Stone is reading multiple collections of poetry each week, and producing a piece of writing or a series of prompts inspired by the text. It might be a poem in the voice of the author. It might be a memory involving the person who suggested the book to him. He might steal the title of a poem and use it to create a collage about his oh-so-inspiring childhood.

    To help keep him accountable, he's asked other writers that he both likes and likes working with to join him in writing their own interaction or two. With their permission, some of their interactions will also be posted here, clearly tagged with their names.

    There might even be interaction between Adam's interactions and an interaction written by someone else. The only rules of this project is to read more poetry and create more art.

    Archives

    March 2023
    September 2020
    January 2020
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016

    Categories

    All
    Ada Limón
    Adam Stone
    Aimee Nezhukumatathil
    Andrew Campana
    Anne Carson
    April Penn
    Ariel Baker-Gibbs
    Audre Lorde
    Ben Berman
    Bucky Sinister
    C A Conrad
    Cassandra De Alba
    Catherine Weiss
    Cedar Sigo
    Chika Sagawa
    Clint Smith
    Danez Smith
    Daphne Gottlieb
    Devon Moore
    Don Mee Choi
    EE Cummings
    Eliel Lucero
    Eliza Griswold
    Emily Taylor
    Epigraph Poems
    Erasure
    Family Poems
    Form Poems
    Found Poems
    Gregory Pardlo
    Hanif Abdurraqib
    Homage Poems
    James Gendron
    Jeanann Verlee
    Jeffrey McDaniel
    Jeff Taylor
    Jennifer Knox
    Jess Rizkallah
    Jim Daniels
    John Ashbery
    John Murillo
    Jon Pineda
    Jon Sands
    Juan Felipe Herrera
    Justin Chin
    Justin Strock
    Kari Tulinius
    Kaveh Akbar
    Kelly Cooper
    Kevin Young
    Kim Addonizio
    Kim Hyesoon
    Langston Hughes
    Lauren Yates
    Leigh Stein
    Love Poems
    Major Jackson
    Marge Piercy
    Mark Doty
    Mohsen Emadi
    Morgan Parker
    Myth
    Natalie Diaz
    Nicole Homer
    Nicole Sealey
    Nicole Terez-Dutton
    Nikki Giovanni
    Numbered Poems
    Ocean Vuong
    Odes
    Patricia Lockwood
    Patricia Smith
    Paul Guest
    Phillip B Williams
    Political Poems
    Porsha Olayiwola
    Praise Poems
    Prompts
    Remix Poems
    Response Poems
    Reviews
    Richard Siken
    Saeed Jones
    Sara Eliza Johnson
    Science Poems
    Sharon Olds
    Sherman Alexie
    Simeon Berry
    Solmaz Sharif
    Tess Taylor
    The Completely Accurate Story Of My Real Friend Bargo Whitley
    Tony Hoagland
    Valerie Loveland
    Vijay Seshadri
    Wanda Coleman
    Work Poems
    Yusef Komunyakaa
    Zanne Langlois

    RSS Feed

All work on the Crooked Treehouse is ©Adam Stone, except where indicated, and may not be reproduced without his permission. If you enjoy it, please consider giving to my Patreon account.
  • Tips From The Bar
  • Honest Conversation Is Overrated
  • Popcorn Culture
  • Comically Obsessed
  • Justify Your Bookshelves
  • Storefront