Centos | No River Twice

nrt centos (community made poems)

A cento is a poem composed of lines written by others:

the term comes from the latin word for "patchwork garment."

At a no river twice performance, we track the lines that have connected words or ideas from one poem to the next.

We assemble the lines into a cento at the conclusion

of a round of reading.

Kind of a meta-poem of the reading. A verbal collage.

A motley thing. The poem the audience made.

We'll even send it to you afterwards...

Here are a few recent centos...

NEW CENTOs from April and March 2025 readings

Likely

Mother paleontologist amongst balloons

never risen found the meaty muscle

of the fruit donkey— it is easy to confuse this

for love. She was the show.

No glossy haunches, no muddy footpads

trampling the apple blossoms.

Her head, an oddly endearing flower,

a late-season pollen burst.

Sometimes, she falls in love all over again.

4/12/25 Moravian University Writer’s Conference

Tracing a Hand-Drawn Cat

I know this to be true: that a turkey
vulture soars like sound beyond decibels,
parent intertwined with child at the base
of the bottomless sky, crowded with food
and death, little different. I know this,
too-- crowded under a still white sheet, we
shelter like indigo smoke, pouring through
holes in the Carolina sky, brief lives
like glycerin bubbles, sky-buoyant, large
as the answer to the question of what
is as good as a straight line?
The zigzagged pad of a finger, the lamps
in the planetarium switched off
one by one, a transition from disorder
into cleanliness, sky into silence.

3.12.25. via zoom

Spring as a Broken Machine

Because ice is held in a snow globe, ladies
counting stars by taste, mouths gracing each shock-cold
wrath in the night sky -- show me green shoots,
show me red in barkburned legs, a wind-voiced
mother calling with her long-handled brush,
stubby-legged, sagging, many-colored coat
a swollen fishnet cast over the world.
Like school, write it a hundred times
on the sky -- love like a Sunday, be open

to wanting you, wake each day to cast the spell
of forgetting, the pear-tipped wand to make us
green and new.

2.12.25 via Zoom

An Evening of Lost Loves

A little later, and "Free Europe" pours
from your every word. And because I love you,
I am willing to forget. And because I love you,
I listen, branch-brown eyes overturned,
letting you pour in like manna,
making space in the middle of me
for another loss. It wasn't all bad,
was it? There was death there, of course,
marbled with forgiveness, pages bookmarked
by grace. I ask you to scatter me,
buoyant as glycerin sky, so summer wind
and its pale night can settle in again.

1.15.25 zoom

All the People You Have Loved and Unloved

Marbled skin like a bookmark bursting, loved
like metal in the earth, the cold cooing
of late fall's moon. We droop like berries, sweet
and lambent, sun-strangled husks, defiant.
Let us gather one another close, late
season's shush, storing of wood and pollen,
retired dancers reflexively taking
first position, second, mid-air, scraping
the polished wood floor. Smile from a distance,
smile in the face of it all, but the smile
is what matters, what colors the season,
undefeated.

11.20.24 zoom

Eve Evokes Heavy Leather

Night-cut, more insatiable than Adam
can bear, human and utterly awake,
his doughy love quavering, her slopes
unassailable. At night, with the lights
on, his mouth agog in quiet objection--
I don't want you to leave. She arises
early, like their wedding day, feeds him
cornbread and apple slices, spreads flower
seeds and waters them, and without goodbye,
she slips out to make a trip downtown,
a genie unbottled. When home, she wrinkles
her nose, asks herself, What's wrong with my companion?
But the sprinklers, for all their pneumatic
power, only rattle and spit in shame.

5/10/23 via zoom

Insatiable Lust

Awake at night, ankle winked above

the cut of leather, utterly human,

looped into doughy love knots, agog

in chlorine lights and slopes unassailable,

mouth dropping to a small quiet vowel

without a goodbye or an objection.

We never wanted to leave. Wedding day,

you arise early for flowers, corn, seeds, bread,

one-quarter cup of hamster food, an apple slice, slipping in details I kept like a genie in a bottle.

What’s wrong with you, my red bullseye of shame, my companion? The sprinklers rattle and spit.

5/10/23 variation with same lines

Through the Windshield

and gone, rain-lapsed into dream-blur, an exile

from everything, this love that steals us, makes

us slink away into an idling cab--

gone, not the name it preferred to go by

as a child, but its given name, the name

the doctor repeated, his hand humming

down to kiss your underside. This moment,

we mourn the immensity of this love,

its loss, deep and old-fashioned, barging head-

first outside to find us, a screen door wedged

by a branch, a wayward rhododendron

flowering in blue.

5/11/23 zoom

Rain, Silver, Tongue cento#2 from same lines

An idling steals you, slinks into rain-blur,

gone the dream-lapsed love.

Everything else an exile. Name it.

Children? Marshmallow? Not clear.

Heels side-by-side, hum a constellation

of kisses—star, moon, star—a kind of eerie

vulgarity, the underside of love.

Mourn the immensity, the deep

vastness of old-fashioned blue found

wedged inside the flowering rhododendron.

Come out the screen door, own that moment

when her deep voice cheered you on.

5/11/23 via zoom

Density

We embrace, buoyant, immersed in this blue
blanket, graceful and amniotic, us
in our dips and crevices, skin fluted
as skeletons crouching in a fountain
clotted with red dust. This virgin mantle,
quivering with psychedelic mint, leans
like deck chairs against the wall. Let us go,
and be glad of it. Send us no flowers.
We'll be the sapphire swishing in the sink.

9.13.23 on zoom

The Density of Buoyant Periwinkle

I don’t know where I’m going

with this blue immersed in amniotic sea

beneath our blankets, graceful

dips and crevices of skin.

Fluted column of light!

Cold fountain of light!
The creek's hard bones crouch,

regurgitate skeletons, spines

bound with rust-red cloth, red dust,

psychedelic remember-me-blue,

and quivering mint. Bright pink

deck chairs swish in warm sink water.

I have let go, and I’m glad of it—

Lapis, sapphire, never say goodbye

9.13.23 cento #2 composed from same lines..

It Might, At Last

Be sufficient, a balanced love --
he, ex, me, ex, an equation
one falls prey to in half-sleep,
a dream we can't recall. Do not risk
a breath, its thread like stripping
hair, like nicked secrets, the surety
of death we cannot grasp. Pay attention --
here is beauty, sweet, green corn; here
is pain, a failed crop, bursting. Mornings
spent lifting our voices in green-lit
supplications, hosanna, hosanna, light
in darkness -- a muddy light, but imagine
if we just let our guard down, if we reached
for it, glinting in the give and take
of the tide. We may find something there --
a home we may not always see, but one
we can return to when our travels are done.

4/13/22 via zoom

Love Might (cento #2 from same lines)

Love might, at last, be a balanced equation,

sufficient, half-standing alongside

the dream of stripping death, the knick

of last breath, the waiting grasp

of beauty and the pain it remakes

like fields of green corn bursting

sweet hosanna to the green-lit morning.

Expect light when darkness falls.

Hope, though we may not see it.

Guard down, completely home,

we return when our travels are done—

briny, ruined, new, and soft as spiral

corridors of conch shells spreading silver—

the way the tide gives and takes.

4/13/22 via zoom

Not What You Thought You'd Be Reading

In eighth grade already, no longer fourth
grade girls at a lunch table, outcasts in yellow-white
dresses and daisy bouquets, the best
of every color. The elevator in my dream sprouts
like seeds scattered before a closed door, a sign
of emerging green and easy, a sign of growing
like we wish we could, marking the spots where breasts
will be, in the pits between arms and legs,
the bare animal of our bones working
in the sun, tiny scraps stripped from the spinal column,
letters in tiny script on squares of blackened paper
leaked from the pen, fingers on skin, a puzzle
of blotted scribbles, we scavenge this beauty
from the garden of our bodies, in desperate daylight,
a letter, written from a distance -- I love you.

3/9/22. via zoom

Already, This Is (variation on same lines)

Not what you thought you’d be reading: two outcasts

& a lunch table of fourth grade girls, yellow dresses,

yellow daisy bouquets, & the best parts of

your yellow-white mamma. Like the elevator

in dream, mushrooms sprouted from moist carpet

like these marigold seeds scattered and already

green— we could wish them away, beat their breasts

in the backyard, mark the spot our pit bull died

in my husband’s arms. Bury bones in the sun, strip

down any animal to squares of blackened letters,

tiny scraps of tiny script the pen leaked.

A puzzle of love letters from jail, scribbles

with a gloved finger you scavenged overnight.

Chaos and trespass. Beauty in a desperate garden.

3/9/22 via zoom

An Afternoon Flirting with Lapping Tide

I believe it is love, and let the ocean have me,
now that I'm done with the boy with dangerous curls

from white-hot America, a honeyed exit door
pulled outwards, a symphony too beautiful to leave.

Moonlight, a paper-necked boat down a long river,
carried on the smoke-soft current of the sky,

sifts the buttermesh, the silt, the silk, all three
worlds in one glance -- resuscitates me, rushes in

through my cottage door, the keys left hung
on the rack in the corner, keeping quiet there

in the summer dark, the purple of each other's bodies,
adoring the same moon -- be this. Let go. Let it in.

2/9/2022 via zoom

Silt and Shadow (variation on the same lines)

After flirting with the white-hot sun

and the boy with dangerous curls, I want

to stop moving and let the ocean have me.

America, now that I’m done with you,

all exit doors pull outwards, the world not

too beautiful to leave— the symphony,

the imperfect dancing, paper boats down a river

beneath moonlight, milksilver, smoke, ocean,

buttermilk sky—water is the finest mesh.

Silt, mud, silk, all three worlds in one glance

reveal with clarity the crime scene: keys left,

hung on the rack by the umbrella stand

quiet in the summerdark, same moon,

same earth, same purple shadow. Light tries

to reach you. Be this thrum of letting in.

2/9/2022 via zoom