Edward Wells - Three pieces

Edward Wells is a writer from the United States of America. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing and are an adjunct instructor of writing and literature. They are enamored of the possibility of connection and the cool air that descends into a desert with sunset. Their poetry manuscript, *meyond,* is newly available through Alien Buddha Press, and their fiction, "forest," is included in the The Text.

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wooden arms

(arms in Two Little Wooden Shoes by Ouida)
(wooden in The Arm and the Darkness by Taylor Caldwell)


glittered like tiny sliver balls the room contained a wooden cupboard leaning sideways and filled with mugs jugs and wooden (p12)
arms (p18)

they turned away from the bed and from wooden (p28)
arms (p125)

they rose and went to wooden (p56)
arms out and looked (p146)

three golden bowls a long black wooden (p134)
arm to them their old (p233)

word as they talked their hand played with the wooden (p155)
arm about them and feeling their flutter (p235)

empty stone wall opposite them hung a huge wooden (p183)
arm and turned cold as (p236)

then when Charlie Finley had done they sank onto the wooden (p198)
arm that (p237)

linked its wooden (p262)
arms close about their throat they kissed (p239)

flesh pleasant and their wooden (p325)
arms stretched out piteously (p272)

skirt was drawn high and knotted behind they saw their wooden (p331)
arms and lifted the curls (p308)

they flung themself sprawling on the wooden (p342)
arms nevermore (p4 index)

***

up you

(after Dr. Seusss’ Oh! The Places You’ll Go)
(and Shel Silverstein’s Falling Up)


you’ll be on the way up (Seuss)
if you give me a people-back ride (Silverstein)

that bang-up poem (Seuss)
twenty-five cents is all you pay (Silverstein)
and hang-up poem (Seuss)
here’s what you had for lunch today (Silverstein)

you admit I’ve told it all (Silverstein)

you can get all hung up (Seuss)
oh well you just missed by a little (Silverstein)

for a mind-maker-upper to make up their mind-make (Seuss)
no thank you (Silverstein)
if you have a lion that’s fine (Silverstein)
if you brought some walking bacon (Silverstein)

and face up to your problems (Seuss)
when you can make the grandest noises (Silverstein)

you’ll get mixed up of course (Seuss)
cant you walk faster than you do (Silverstein)
as you already know (Seuss)
they yawned and said you must be kiddin (Silverstein)
they said you want me to strain my words (Silverstein)
they said why don’t you make tea for me (Silverstein)
they said first lemme hear you beg (Silverstein)
I told my poetry there’s a song you can play me (Silverstein)

you’ll get mixed up (Seuss)
as you walk by (Silverstein)
it’s a good thing you didn’t (Silverstein)
you did (Silverstein)

and never mix up your right foot with your left (Seuss)
there is a voice inside of you (Silverstein)
what’s right for you just listen (Silverstein)


***

lessness Americans

(after Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans)
(and Samuel Beckett’s Lessness)


the Prescott city house was of this sort a nervous restlessness of luxury was through it all often the father would complain of the unreasoning extravagance (Stein)
in the sand not holding one step more in the endlessness they will make it no sound not a (Beckett)

restlessness inside of them they had all these years been in the place they now lived in (Stein)
holes in one step in the ruins in the sand on their back in the endlessness they will make (Beckett)

Charlie Oakley would get their very angry feeling and Charlie Finley was a little ailing and the fierce little temper broke into weakness and helplessness inside them and the (Stein)
one alone all alone in the sand no hold they will make it (Beckett)

weakness and helplessness inside them and they had in a way to be good to them (Stein)
in the endlessness they will make it it will be day and night again over them (Beckett)

they yield to them, or later when the temper broke down into weakness and helplessness inside them to have them then be good to them all the rest of their feeling (Stein)
the endlessness they will make it never but silence such that in imagination this wild (Beckett)

mostly they do not know it inside them that they do not want to have inside them the restlessness of adolescent living and so they keep up inside them always (Stein)
in the sand no holding they will make it ash grey little body only upright heart beating (Beckett)

Charlie Oakley was then such a one they had a certain gayety in living but no wildness no recklessness in their being and no one would think such a thing (Stein)
one alone all alone in the sand no hold they will make it (Beckett)

Charlie Oakley had not any recklessness or wildness in them they had very little weakness in them they had a certain ambition a certain desire for freedom and (Stein)
holes one step in the ruins in the sand on their back in the endlessness they will make (Beckett)

had no good nature really in them they had no heartlessness in them they had enough sensitive being to make a pleasant sympathetic sweetness in them that (Stein)
in the sand no hold they will make it ash grey little body only upright heart beating (Beckett)

recklessness in living they had gayety in living, they had in them very little anxious being they had in them always impatient being they had some sensitive bottom (Stein)
in the endlessness they will make it it will be day and night again over them the (Beckett)

clamoring of that other one who has been given everything and by one who never wants anything from any one another put them yielding down to guilelessness (Stein)
the endlessness they will make it never but silence such that in imagination this wild (Beckett)

Charlie Oakley was quite a sweet one to some, poignantly sweet one and generous in living and having careless domination in living and having thoughtlessness (Stein)
in the sand not holding one step more in the endlessness they will make it no sound not a (Becket)