Puppet Poetry

Let’s celebrate World Puppet Day!
Bring your puppet(s) to our meet-up and have them recite a poem (short one please), something that you or someone else has written.

Any kind of puppet is good, draw lips on your fist, pull out the sock puppet we made last year, or use the fancy one that has been hanging around for years hoping to be activated!

Hansel and Gretel by Cat Doty – Mary Campbell

Why do they always go into the forest?
At it’s rim they pause to collect
The black green curls of the last sweet chard,
And with one swift look at the parents
Who cannot feed them, enter, obedient,
The prickling black cathedral, the icy pines.
Of course, when they’re starving, their house
Of cake appears- the freckled, gingery shoulder,
Redundant icing- they nibble until
They are captured and brought inside, faces
Glazed with shame and snot and sugar.

Do you suppose that the mother who sewed red flowers
On the little velvet bodice, the green suspenders,
Then counted the cupfuls of flour, the mouthfuls
Of sausage, and muttered, oh, damn them,
Send them to the witch? Witches must eat too, and some
Witches must eat children. I bet that gingerbread
House was a thing of beauty.

Then there’s the part of the tale where they trick
Their hostess, where Hansel says, that’s no chicken bone,
That’s my finger, where they flip the witch
Into her fire and pilfer her treasure. Then burdened
With precious jewels, they rush to their parents,
Dropping and emerald here, an opal there.
The world, you see, is then brought round to right:
Oily joy coats the cottage walls like soot.
The children are home, and the thick muck floor of the forest,
Be crumbled with jewels, out sparkles the pocky ink
Of that other sky.

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ALE ON A SCALE – C. Mehrl Bennett

GRADIENTS OF RAP
LATE NOCTURNAL TREES
A MAN EATING KANGAROO
PUKES WHITE MEAT OF EVE

LASCIVIOUS HEE-HAWS
CURIOUS BOWL-SHAPED CHILDREN
WE FIXATE ON ICK-ACKINESS
To KERN ZEN MOMENTS

ICE IS A LINK, A WARNING
FILL IT WITH LIGHT TO ALLAY
THIRSTY SNAKES BECAUSE IF LEFT
SOBER, THEY BUILD TO A MAJOR RANT

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Under – Morning Rose Garden Sneakers – Liz Klein

under the rosebush
Converse
Sneakers
Twist ties
Generic wrappers
Rolled up tape
Sad eggroll dust
Turpentine
Stains
Roller Blades
Carthusian
Shades
Walrus Hats
And a box of free books

Under the rosebush
Damp mushrooms
Queen Elizabeth
Magazine dreams
Ana Banana Laughs
Stark runners
Dead eyes
Cold and sneaky
Stoli drinkers and squirrels
Aimlessly
Wearing Walrus Hats
Rifle through a box of free books

Under the rosebush
Canvas Sneakers
Cantaloupe
Charred mangos
Standard Bocci Ball
Condoms
Xoxo Label
Passing the Ballet Studio
Dancing Pig meadow
Ceramics dessert
Wearing a Walrus Hat
A box of free books.

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INNER LIGHT – Meg Graham

Dripping fudge backward time stopped reflecting.
Dreaming of white cakewalks.
Drinking apples to illuminate and stretch the sunlight
To disperse,
To Ignite,
That inner, inner light.

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Plague Rat Puppet performing Add n Pass vispo to Caged Rat by Soul Asylum – Jennifer Weigel

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Puppet Brain – Viv de Dada

Cerebral finger puppet, a brain with Hand Sticker.

Puppet-like syndrome of Angelman. Autumn drops dead.

Don’t really know why you like me. Are you just starving for someone’s pysche?

Get your own crocheted Brain Slug, Digital Puppets, or Artificial Humans.

These puppets return and hunt a giant figure with wide-open eyes and a bug-like hand puppet.

Art Mind Art – Brain and mind: make me the puppet. Funny how these little crochet brains came into being.

Greetings Bird Brain London with an affinity for the bizarre and unique body, small heart, and tiny brain.

The notion that human beings walk, talk, think, and do things because our brains control us is a fringe idea.
What might be happening in your brain when you watch puppetry?