Setting: Star Zone, an abandoned nightclub in Wilmington, California. Late 80s. Three characters stand on stage equidistant from each other. Long strands of twinkling blue and green lights hang from above.
Character One:
the delirium
of blotter kippers froth
& lustrate wildly blindly
(bedabble shale & wallow in the mist)
festal brides & clamlike fairies
Character Two:
ziggurats of slabber
& air-built cellars
unfurl the sparge & kyle
of siccative welkins
bedew savanna
Character Three:
behold:
the froth of bedabbled fairies!
the blotted kippers!
the wallowing savannas!
Character One:
a welkin in the hole
on a kyle in a kipper
slabbers the ziggurats
fane the shale willows, dear boys
Character Two:
bedabble the unfurled
& unfold
the froth of sparge
alit on a morning dew
w/ the babies
& the hugger muggers
& the landlubbers
(blotted & bedewed)
w/ sparkling pallium
delirium bewildered
Character Three:
air-built & saucy welkins
unfurl in the froth
of littoral bugbears
the blotted cellars & roscid
crimkum crankum of fane fairies
clamlike in the cellar
(a whisper to mother or father)
Character One:
aloft & aloof
w/ the frosty lustrates of savannas
in georgia
(our festal minds)
Character Two:
she hugs the mugs on the ziggurat of pickwickian cellars
she is bedewed on a landlubber
a littoral rillet of a circumfluous sparge
kyle! hey kyle, sorry I didn’t email you back! how ya been?
Character Three:
she is roscid (repeat)
air-built (complete)
bedabbled (indeed)
Together:
behold the pickwickian cellars!
Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. She was a 2019 Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016 - 2018), and her poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House will be published by Omnidawn in 2020. mawsheinwin.com