What Are You Working On Now? Exquisite Poem Collab
Yasmina Chavez, Exquisite Corpse #1, Microsoft Bing's AI image creator program, 2023
What are you working on now? is a Couch in the Desert series where we ask artists what they are making and thinking about in and outside the studio.
Exquisite Corpse Collab
Contributed by Yasmina Chavez
As a group we've completed four exquisite corpse poems over the last two years. Thomas Wong started the collaboration after inviting a few of us to poetry writing lessons with Dawn-Michelle Baude in early 2021. We just started the 5th iteration of the exquisite poem cycle and, after completing this one, we are going to try a sestina version.
As an accompanying visual that fell in line with the frankenstienian process of an exquisite corpse poem, I fed each poem into Microsoft Bing's AI image creator program to produce the corresponding images.
EXQUISITE CORPSE POEM #1 (3/22/2022; KD Matheson, Thomas Wong, Cassandra Espinoza, Yasmina Chavez)
She puts her bird in the lipstick drawer
I don’t ever recall not seeing you
Whispered Braille along my fingers
Like a soft kiss From Judas
Betrayal flows deep -- retrieve your heart
from volcanic ash
Thrust from a volcano, she sails amidst a moon-bright
sky riding upon a giant black rabbit
Yasmina Chavez, Exquisite Corpse #2, Microsoft Bing's AI image creator program, 2023
EXQUISITE CORPSE POEM #2 (7/24/2022; KD Matheson, Cassandra Espinoza, Yasmina Chavez, Thomas Wong, John Schmitz, Reyna Pingul, and Jem Agustin)
Oh your confused mis-en-scène further boffo required reading
There you stand draped in lilacs and recycled cardboard, full of audacity
Broken balcony sunshine boasts bold, leafy hurricanes – November blooms Stringy yellow powdered limbs mingle, mangle
zzz zzzz zzzzzz zzz
Showered beneath siren's wall of theft
Mystery blooms like fire within her golden eyes as she lies
resplendent upon a river of sapphire
He chases the twinkling horizon with volcanic haste, transfixed by impossibility
and the imposition of abandonment
Grandiose ink-slinging in seer sucker looking askance I swear this time
Trespass upon the downward spiral at the risk of life under the circus tent built of stars Laced, honeysuckle promises saturate, heavy, hungry – drowning
Abandon this zero zest zeitgeist
For a stardust dance delirium
I dreamt of Misha & idiosyncrasies en pointe
Up – retiré – side – back – squeeze out tears for those who can't
Longing for release she circumnavigates the lavender rose and whispers softly a lullaby of birds. The words split and twist a thousand ways riding the winds past the shore, out over the churning dark, and beyond the veil.
An effete fetish for bow ties and funuculars curious about the paintings
Tentacles envelope the brushes that once caressed sharp edges of their world. Dip the tips of toes upon a celestial
moon-ride, teeth sank into cosmic
lemon rind
Shhhhaped Susssstained Suspended Surrendered
Bristleconed at 10,000 feet of unresolved emotions.
Exist with porcelain reams in palms
Don't hold too tight
Silent crows float above the distant cenote as a sultry breeze invokes the secret of twilight Phantasmal regrets press their insidious crusade
As the swells surge to thunderous heights,
The captain tightens his manacles
A toothy afternoon laughing in advance where stops an errant photon
Languid and in love, overcome
bleating beads of blood – sipping coffee
In some lights, repulsed, in others, endearing –
Unfair, denied yearning, once again, sunrise, sea foam,
skills and me, staring at the wall
Takes a bite, surrenders a smile, then stuffs the remainder of a warm
pupusa into the mouth
of her Louis Vuitton bag
Downstream free-for-all – a sea where none exists
Yasmina Chavez, Exquisite Corpse #3, Microsoft Bing's AI image creator program, 2023
EXQUISITE CORPSE #3 (2/12/2023; Yasmina Chavez, KD Matheson, Cassandra Espinoza, John Schmitz, Thomas Wong, Reyna Pingul, Andrew Romanelli)
Midday shadows melt across a broken face.
Iguana tears melt like poppy-juice
Along a filament of grenadine and ocotillo thorns
Prick fingertips of luscious cacti milk until dizziness dances me to a prickly Jupiter Distant crooked crags promise safety from scalding sands and insidious illumination The noirish landscapes of my summer beach reading
next to me another daiquiri requiring my attention
Hardboiled Art Deco sequence atteindre la vérité
Oasis liquidators sculpt action figures of kakocracy
With loquacious anuses spewing gold-plated tyranny.
Thoughts like shots of lightning parade
Along the sawtoothed edge of his brain-scape
Praying to unlock, reveal Embered dreams manifest
Charred squeals
All the pines burn together,
Herds shed antlers and blackened leather;
The sky rips, blooms, and bleeds,
Washing the ashes out to sea
I wake up drooling in a laundromat outside of Omaha a small child points
a wet finger at me sunset and still 1000 miles to go.
Jam covered dreams litter the horizon even when the water bottle won’t open, no refills.
Newsboys show you the trees in their lungs, sucker you with paper cut tongues
Shaking fists erase the etch-a-sketch selves,
blank slate for the fascist elves.
Narcotized on self-endowed enlightenment
They laugh, cheer and applaud one another as
an eighteen-wheeler comes into view . . .
a jack-rabbit poops out a prayer
Rolled over endless stretch of dummy-dotted cactus spines,
Loving blood kisses trail streets of hubris
An arid sigh sweeps southerly across sandsunken spires,
Snuffing a final sanguine flicker.
Now the court of the stars governs haunted miles of silence
Me naked through the warm atmosphere free-falling from an airplane
The Earth’s crust is crunchy on the outside, stuffed with endangered hopes of capitalist cheese. In the cartwheel competition I am slathered in bright gouache flavors, bolking out executive operators
Sycophantic spit showers the drought ridden soil which they stole,
in an irony thicker than the mud on their sole.
Stuffed within a pink sequined muffin-top her pale doughy waistline rises like a fleshy souffle poised to breach the fortress of her fake leather bugaboo hot-pants
Erupted molten love letters whimper
Strangled tenderly by a lover's girdle
Slow, steady sighs in and out again
A final howl and a fade to black.
Obsidian ash sinks the moon and draws a curtain of glass.
Whispers and exits in search of a glow.
All in due time, once more, again and again . . .
But not for a long, long while.
Still it feels rather rushed with a comic instinct for a very polite uproar
Tiny tentacles of comfort in the constant disruption of wild flower bomb making With a slew of petals progressing, the matchbooks form a question—wait for the boom
Yasmina Chavez, Exquisite Corpse #4, Microsoft Bing's AI image creator program, 2023
EXQUISITE CORPSE #4 (11/2/2023; Andrew Romanelli, Yasmina Chavez, John Schmitz, Reyna Pingul, KD Matheson, Genevie Durano, Thomas Wong)
With a slew of petals progressing, the matchbooks form a question—wait for the boom
Tik Toks the dark mind en route to prevalence.
Insidious clockwork of psychic destruction wrapped in a kaleidoscopic saccharine veneer
May cause intensive intracranial dematerialization and temporal anomalies
Now were dancing to the beat of a universe that we weren't meant to see
in the fog of delusions and mocktails with tiny umbrellas
Nestled upon the furrowed chenile bedspread,
her sunburnt body savors the subtle cool softness
Her pores are pinpricks of delight, forming an ancient constellation
lighting the way for lost and forgotten sensations.
slowly, assured in measured steps, serpentine
honesty breathes out a whisper of cosmic
awakening beneath star-kissed lashes
those light years when you just couldn’t in four mercifully short acts
Demonstrate how the lipstick weakened from the heavily muscled
cigarette With a rancid desire suffocating your spat out flirts.
A sick howl twists through the canyons, back to the place where it all began Soft sands and seething rage, a salted moon with iceberg clouds
Opposition fills every nook and cranny of a sad english muffin,
sodden with tears from a mother of four legged heathens
A choir of croaking frogs inoculate the warm moist breeze as a din
of fresh raindrops percuss my bedroom window
I listen with hopefulness that today and all days that follow, someone will come and pierce this velvet fog of oneliness that permeates my waking hours.
Parachuted pillowy plunge into a soul of fire, oozing possibilities
juicy circus
lover boy
genius schadenfreud
cigarette spends into lavender sorbet, banana strings pull up a smile
Fallen ash dims the sprinkles on a McBethian ice cream Sunday for
two
Snow crystalline in galactic stasis, then an ethereal sapphire wink.
The bells ring and the whole world tilts.
Petals of dusk flutter down the lane as the fox yawns and returns to sleep.
Peaceful ignorance blankets the world for one last night in the before,
before the fraying strands of after suffocate
With curious resistance she surrenders the lifeless form then slowly
descends into the cool watery deep
Her skin is mottled, turning from blue to gray the farther she goes into the abyss,
then a stillness, as the last of the light leaches out from her eyes.
Nothing – infinite womb, throbbing onyx
Tunneled whispers into Velvet obscurity
exquisitely botched every sly
infamous lie smaller than itself
unrequitably romantic pretty teeth
the eyes plucked from their masks, collected in the palm,
grant me vision, make me real
But make them a fantasy, surprise me, I don't care.
Only lies feel good these days.
Trace the images in the mist. Slink down a shrouded walkway into a mirage. Vaporize
and flow through the keyhole.
The cloak of time whirls around the desperate for another chance, for less regret,
to start anew with the advantage of hindsight, in vain perhaps.
Luminous protean forms float high above in the midnight sky as she swoons
to the electric warmth that surrounds her.
It’s a dance as old as the universe itself, a Big Bang of beauty that singes
her to her core and remakes her into a million new forms
Celestial serenity enveloped
glittery galmour gamut, melodic
untamed
anarchist’s news flash tangentials in a minor key
hypocrisy, cynicism: newsier, jauntier than ever
Seriously? Who makes this stuff up?
OK, I didn’t see it coming either
The Exquisite Corpse Collab members are based in Las Vegas: Andrew Romanelli, Yasmina Chavez, John Schmitz, Reyna Pingul, KD Matheson, Genevie Durano, Thomas Wong, KD Matheson, Cassandra Espinoza, and Jem Agustin
Yasmina Chavez is a time-based media artist, curator, teacher, and award-winning photojournalist who lives and works in Las Vegas, NV. She received her BFA in photography from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2011 and MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University in 2016. Chavez works across disciplinary boundaries, including video and sound installations, experimental documentary cinema, dance, printmaking, photography, performance and design of custom systems for cinematography. Her practice explores individual and social identities expressed through different rhythms of time and idiosyncratic relationships to everyday life, creating openings into complex and paradoxical social systems and structures.
Chavez has exhibited nationally and internationally and has been a featured artist in various media and performance based festivals including the 2019 Goldwell Bullfrog Biennale, in Rhyolite, NV, Vibrant Digit in Shenyang, China in 2018, Life Is Beautiful festival in 2013, London Biennale Las Vegas satellite exhibits in 2012, 2014, and 2020, and the Off the Strip new genres festival in 2010. In 2011, she co-founded and co-curated 5th Wall Gallery, which was located in downtown Las Vegas, bringing new genre installation-based work and performance art events to the local art scene. Most recently, she was an active performer in R.A.D.A.R. L.V. – a Las Vegas-based recurring performance event, exhibited her 5th solo show–an abstract photo-based series called The Suchness of Light.
Posted and published by Wendy Kveck on February 17, 2024.