after Benjamin Péret
The old elephant you’re ogling
sits on the effigy of an applecart.
A gloved hand—it’s no cartoon—
slaps you through the keyhole.
A dinner-bell tinkles somewhere
downward in the wordless maze
of a rose. Birdclouds arc and loop.
Hard rain melts away the lard statues
which comprise the miniature world.
Demons who’ve tangled in your hair
glide off, toward that disused tunnel
lined with fur and crapulent ideas…
The sun’s a voracious hive of bees
for us enraptured honey-mongers.
Why, your pockets start jumping out
of your pants like grasshoppers. No,
grace floppers. Then heaven’s spoiled
into tiny crumbs like any good meal.
Every miniskirt erupts with bullet ants.
Interpreters wearing fungoid headsets
chitter from a stripmall in the suburbs.
As for proof, oof! go sweep the rubble
of square roots. Each unmeaning zero
is eager to double in a void of mirrors.
Asphyxiate in snot-drip and feculent
perfume. Shortly, spores and allergens
burp up, adrift from each mountaintop.
Your eyeballs are diabolical machines.
Will Cordeiro is the author of the poetry collection Trap Street (Able Muse, 2021) and the fiction collection Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, 2024) as well as co-author of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024) and the forthcoming New Foundations of Creative Writing (Bloomsbury, 2026). Will has work published in 32 Poems, AGNI, DIAGRAM, The Penn Review, Pleiades, and Wildness. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions, acts as president of the Northern Arizona Book Festival, and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.
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