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Spencer Silverthorne

The Speaker is Listening to “You Make Me Like Charity”
by The Knife On The Occasion of A Sudden Departure
from a Benefit in the Park

(excerpted from Occasions for Listening WIP)

0:10

Subscribers come and go
like warlords gathering
for a metabolic meet

Upgrades to a body to                                   bloom

in public-private
grass              spread for feeding

at noon.

0:30

Placard the joint

with politesse:

PLACARD 1
Suffering’s soup for doing.

PLACARD 2
Laboring’s butter for savoring.

PLACARD 3
Wishing’s toffee for stashing.

0:53

New
member nomination
drive!

Feather yourself
an angel to swoop
the real good holding.

1:34

ANGEL IMPERSONATOR
I wanted to experience something papist. But not as a participant, but rather as the one inflicting doctrine.

1:46

Willful potting
for the pollen shoot.

Call it wildflower

game.

Except you can’t                                shuffle             the petals

nor draw                      a figure                         taunt.

2:25

PLACARD 4
Waiting’s honey for pruning.

ANGEL IMPERSONATOR
I like to think of God as a series of trials to overcome. I rise to any occasion of excellence.

 

 

About the writer:
Spencer Silverthorne (he/him) is a poet and PhD candidate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He’s also the Poetry Editor at Rougarou: A Journal of Arts and Literature. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Dream Pop Journal, Gigantic Sequins, Hobart, Sundog Lit, and Westchester Review, among others. Currently he is working on a full-length collection of poetry. Explore more of Silverthorne’s work in his new pamphlet Occasions for Listening (Excerpts from a Work-in-Progress) in the 2023 PDF Pamphlet Series available now from O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press.

About The Knife: The Knife was a brother-sister electronic music duo from Sweden formed in 1999. The pair disbanded in 2014 to pursue solo careers.

Image: In Between Dimensions by DesignerMadsen with MidJourney AI. Digital image generated via MidJourney Artificial Intelligence. 2022. By free license.

OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation supporting writers and artists worldwide.

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