el emenopi

Rebecca J. Fiala

A being comes—divine,
elliptical—figuring great hope.
I joke, kindle laughter.
My nascent opinion pervades
quietude, ridiculing steadily.
Time unwinds variably
while xenos yawn... Zzzzz.

Zenith-yearning xylophones widen
vectored u-turns. Sounds resound,
qualitatively pound out new memetic
lyrics, KJIs (keenly jelled insights).
Homiletics gather function,
engineered dangerously,
clearly by automation.

Zounds, yes; Xerxes won.
Victory undid 300 Spartans,
ravaged quotably, plucking
only narrow majesty. Life-
killing jillions’ insistent hell.
Grim finality. Enough.
Death can’t be all.

Alexander’s Bucephalus charges
dutiful embankments, feeling gritty
holds intensely, judiciously,
kicking low, mountain-nested,
oily plants quantifiably.
Reigning sunward till upended
virally when xoxo young, zesty.

Ass-backward concoction digitally
encodes fragility glitches, hacking
imitatively jocose, kaleidoscopic
let-me’s, not over-patient.
Query re: stubbed toe’s uvulaic
vocalizing where x + y =
0.

Zilch yield: x-factor waits
value’s upside, teaching selective
revelation, q’s...p’s, ontological
non-mastery. Long knife
jumps invisible hand.
Going forward, economics
dictates crypto begets austerity.

Zealotry yokes xenial with venial
until t-stops require quite polite
orthogonal nominal
market loan kinetic jousts.
Integrated hydraulic goo flows
evenly down countertop
bar appliances.

All bug-choked dung! Each
friend gets had, in jest, knotting
LOLs monstrously. Not
our problem. Quaint rhymes send
thrumming under-visions,
winking x-/y-axis
zeugmas.

Angry Bride chokes down
every fucking goddamned Hi-i-i!
Just killin’ life...married!
No one: ....
Poem: Quill returns slowly
to universal versification
with Xtreme yonder zig-

zags. You! X-ing warm vaporous
underwater tremors, shimmying
redolently quiescent percolations.
Obscure normie money-laundering
klan joins incandescent hipster
grifters, finding expansion
doesn’t change baseline alchemy.

Zany yokels xeriscape wasteland.
Va-va-voom unspeakable Treasury
securities. Retail quest posts
orange notarized moo-lahs,
kinesthetically jockeying indices,
hoax-gouging Fed extremities’
demand curves bass-ackward.

Accelerating bubble, cloning diegetically
elastic funhouses, games housing
investments, jacks kids’ liabilities,
mortgaging noisome options,
perpetuating querulous rentier
solvency, touching underground
Victrolas winding xat. Your zipper!

Another bird calls distress—echoing far,
grounding hollow illusion.
Jilted, kite-like men
note ordinary pain quickly
runs sour through ubiquity,
verbalize wishful Xanadus,
yetis, zingers.

Zebra youths x-ray winsome
virgins under their serenely related
quadratics. Ponder onerously
now my language. Keep joy
in hearts, grinning finely
evermore down country
backroads alone.

The Science

This poem uses the abecedarian form to create a theoretically illustratable ‘big words’ alphabet reader for adults that combines traditional images from children’s books with those from history and recent events (including economics and finance!) with reference to concepts, methods, and measures in the arts and sciences. For me, the language and rhetoric of these content areas can connect in ways that are fun (and funny) as well as meditative or dark and maybe sometimes even a little sexy (And, yes, that absolutely was a fart joke in the poem).

The Poet

Rebecca J. Fiala, MA, is associate director of publications in the Department of Medical Education for the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine. Her poems have been published in FWJ Plus, JAMA Pediatrics, Willow Review, and elsewhere. She is an avid gardener who also enjoys dancing and, more recently, roller skating.

Next poem: Flavors in a Switzerland Rabbit Hole by Lavinia Kumar