Three poems by Mark Cunningham

Three poems
by Mark Cunningham

[specimen]

The sky turned smooth gray and then snow started to erase features on the ground, too. I was stunned when the bank teller identified me: I'd been wearing Saran Wrap over my head and I thought packaging changed everything. If he says "everything is just beginning" one more time, I'll drop a 16-ton weight on him. I think I've figured out how to work the image duplicator. I think I've figured out how to work the image duplicator.

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[specimen]

We didn’t clone the baby, but its sleep, since that would be more profitable and would keep our financial backers in power. The can’t-wish-for-unlimited-wishes provision shows the genie is on management’s side. You can lead a concept to its self-critique, but no matter how much you get it to drink, it still keeps some of its clothes on. Today is the first day of the novelization of the rest of your life.

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[specimen]

I asked him not to read in the car, because if he did I’d get car sick. A real M. C. Escher moment: the earthquake hit while I was picking my nose. The Chinese restaurant specialized in Bud Lite. Vampires command flies; I waved my hand and a fly got off my leg; I am a vampire. She told me I had no feelings and I said I don’t know how I feel about that. Those trees are absorbing the light we were supposed to get.


Author bio:

Mark Cunningham's poems are in recent or forthcoming issues of Counterexample Poetics, The Denver Quarterly, and diode. He has three books out: 80 Beetles from Otoliths, Body Language from Tarpaulin Sky, and 71 Leaves, an ebook from BlazeVox.