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from the editor's desk

Westerly’s Online Exquisite Cadaver

The editorial team at Westerly have been amazed to see the variety of brilliant ideas presented at SymbioticA’s ‘Quite Frankly’ conference. Celebrating the bicentenary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the conference has brought artists and scientists together to discuss their work. For the conference, we set up an online exquisite cadaver game. You can only see the most recent line posted to the poem, and then you have the chance to add your own voice to the mix!

Running the game over the course of the conference, here’s what we saw:

An exquisite cadaver
A quiet sad,
An angry sad,
Lethargic cow
Silky puppy
so slick and pure
lying there so still
and yet I sensed a shiver from within
pale, devoid of breath
cashing in on the rush,
poised
we come like a flush
with a crush, in the hush
without end.
But not without closure
without closure
we Mortein the thoughts crawling our walls
whilst hosing down the
dead corpse
lead horse
tread  norse
norse tread lightly
Vikings
screamed
the
tree sways the wind breathes
the
the
solitary Predator soldier
Searching for heat in space
Seeking light in the dusk
I crave humanure like a festoon of earthworms descending on a turd.
And I crave and I crave and I crave.
More knowledge about Astrobiology
DNA and fabric manifolds
DNA Chauvinism and genetic determinism/eugenics
is a portrait of four people
However selfish, one is
always aware of the very simple, direct need to
Have my balls stepped on
Earth like this before
Like this earth before
Prior, earlier, antecedent, and then
a point appears with the attributes of zero
swirling around the vacancy of null
clinging desperately to the remnants
fragments, each piece dissolving on impact,
protein shakes are getting really popular these days
fragments, each piece dissolving on impact,
fragments, each piece dissolving on impact,
like the severed fingers of a concert pianist 
injured in a freak industrial accident
clinging desperately to the remnants
of her testicles
that glow in the dark along with her cell phones
one pines for the press only to be repulsed
Embrace the movement, press, press again, momentum is living
enclosed in the tannic dark
Plunged in the umber deeps
Gasping for luminosity

 

Now, we’re turning the game over to you! Head over to our exquisite cadaver page and add a line to our poem—we’ll publish the results from time to time.

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