Russell Edson Cento

There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree. (60)

Then he saw summer its field and its tree. He heard the wind and he saw a cloud. (43)

We had electrocuted the family monkey. (86)

But we’ve already called the other toad that, he said. (120)

There were feather’s growing on his wall. (96)

The moon lifts him up into its white field, a cloud shaped like an old man, porous with stars. (112)

The old man finally ate one of his hands. (25)

The old man, growing angry, swallowed himself. (25)

But the cow must remain with these long eared ones for the rest of its life. (17)

Well what’s with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates? screamed the father. (118)

…As to the courting of a fat woman…One says, oh my chicken bone! (110(

A man had just married an automobile. (101)

So that the police were called to chaperon the farmer and his cow. (116)

Be good enough to go to bed so you can not think too much longer. (51)

A heavy woman with a rolling pin said, I am the king. (26)

Look, said the wife, the eternal clouds. (15)

The ceiling was quite displeased and so it grew pleased again. (45)

Sometimes, I just breathe. Did you ever do that. I say to mother, look I am breathing. (64)

For some reason there was a vein of teeth that had developed without jaw or appetite in the earth, like precious stones or metals. (82)

Oh where is the Vomit Doctor? At least when he vomits one knows one has it from high authority, screamed father. (97)

In the summer my brothers’ tails dragged in the grass. What is more natural than their tails in the grass? (105)

But, best of all, he liked making toy shit. (129)

Her neighbors are curious about her, this large woman who lived alone with a parakeet. (141)

The ape’s hand has become a fist and is pounding the table. (152)

They slap his face. His cheek comes off; bone underneath, jaws and teeth…(161)

Nevertheless Dr. Brilliance, I have brought you a lovely breakfast. (163)

In a back room a man is performing an autopsy on an old raincoat. (172)

The bridge looks like one of those skeletal reconstructions of a huge dinosaur one sees in a museum. (173)

With ceremonial regret I lowered a seed into the earth as though I laid it to its final rest…(174)

Oh my, now he’s buttering toast, another piece of history is being made. (182)

But meanwhile the Large Thing has come back anyway. Good, I was just about to call you back, says the same someone to the Large Thing. (184)

He’s a lonely traveler, and finds companion in the road; a chance meeting, seeing as hw they were both going the same way. (186)

It was the last Thursday of November, and a large turkey had been murdered… (190)

I am the closet-man, I am ether going or coming, and I am never sad. (192)

Immediately, a taxi crashes through the wall; never mind that my room is on the third floor, or that the yellow driver is really a cluster of canaries arranged in the shape of a driver, who flutters apart, steaming from the windows of the taxi in yellow fountains…(193)

The window watches with all its meadows and rivers, its trees leaning in the wind to see more fully…(194)

In a nearby field a butterfly is being folded up by a praying mantis into a small bright package. (199)

(Russell Edson cento; Poem 7 word count – 611)