Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney
Tritina Five

Where did I leave my bracelet? Imagine
a world without wrists, is my next thought.
Imagine a world without thoughts is next.

If time went backwards, I'd know what's next.
I'd never play games that start: imagine.
Or in my ignorance, that's what I thought.

Acts committed with malice aforethought
are so passé. Random/desultory is the next
new blonde. New black. New thirty. Imagine!

Now imagine the new thought. & the next.

***

Author's comment: We have been working together on poems in a variety of lengths and forms for over a year. All collaboration has taken place via email, while Elisa has lived in Boston and Kathleen has lived in Provincetown, Chicago, and Tacoma. Along the way, we've experimented with established forms such as ghazals, tritinas, quatorzains, and beautiful outlaws, as well as new forms of our own devising, including limited freedoms and out of orders. Our collaboration is both serious and a game; it falls somewhere between Oulipo and MadLibs. As in the Ouvoir de literature potentielle, the workshop of potential literature, we focus on “the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy.” These particular poems were composed line by line in alternation.

(go back)