Be surreal rn

If you don't know how to end a poem, end it all.

Author

Nora Smith
April 03, 2024

Hello!

Apologies for the short-to-nonexistent introduction on this one — I spent much of my poetry time today learning what exactly we mean when we talk about surrealism. (Today’s prompt is to write a surrealist prose poem.)

I hope it is as absurd, automatic and psychic as you would expect from the movement. I saw a few sources suggest repetition and parallelism, too, so I had fun playing around with order and structure in this piece to make it face itself and take a good long look.

Before anything else — Shadow, friend or foe — the groundhog found his hole. It came before his name; before winter; even before ground itself; there was a hole. Inside there was the groundhog, as you now know, and a clock, ticking toward nothing. The hole saw the groundhog let the clock tick happily, eternally, and promised to grant him three wishes; the groundhog had no wishes, and the hole cursed him with the omnipotence of time.

Six months till spring and the day begins again. The wheel-turner, Harpless Hal, for the first time grasps the rusty lever, an emergency termination of the now. Time stumbles over itself before it stops. All minds start anew (except for you) as the groundhog digs deeper for that ever-ticking truth. The clock strikes the walls of the hole; now cave; now void; now finally still. And knowing what its many cursed creatures already did — their chorus falls all around saying — WE SEE THE FUTURE, AND HERE IS WHERE IT ENDS.

One of my fears in starting this newsletter is that you all might see how many of my poems end with an apocalypse. I guess now that it’s happened, I see it’s not the end of the world. 😌 

Nora