Directions: Write the first section of a southernism, fold paper over, and pass. Next person writes the second half blind. Fold again, pass. Third person writes the meaning of the saying.

If the mayflies land in the puddin’, then the gators of Savannah will crash yer wedding.
Meaning: Don’t change Travis’ radio station when he’s listening to his stories on NPR.

If the moonshine tastes like candy canes too close to Christmas, then it’s time to come on home for supper.
Meaning: Too much money is bad for a fungi’s health.

My daddy says “call once if it’s falling off…call twice if you fall ON it.”
Meaning: She was scared as a one legged water bug at the hydrangea festival.

If the gravy starts to curdle, wash the barking dog.
Meaning: Hasten not the demise of the well-built concert hall, it has its place…

If the pickled pig puckers big and leans in for a kiss, then even the reddest barn in the world is still just a fresh cut stump.
Meaning: Don’t bathe in mustard if you really want blue veins.

Like a Georgia swamp in mid-January!
Meaning: Change your underwear twice daily to be as a god.

If yer gunna paint yer barnacles, ya better wet yer fleas, or the millstone’ll grind neighbor’s biscuit.
Meaning: Maybe don’t put a loose chicken in the washing machine.

If the sky is bleeding sweat, then the doormats’ll go flyin’.
Meaning: Speak softly to your elders or they will abandon you in a tall tree.

He has a cricket chirping on his pee paws’ channel changer!
Meaning: This expression is used to describe the imminent arrival of the apocalypse.

If ya give china dolls to baptized gizzards, then a million little devils might come screaming Sunday out a Baton Rouge.
Meaning: It’ll be here before you know it.

Players: JF, SC, HC, AM, T

REVERSALS

Write a line, pass. The next person writes a reversal of your line, and then folds over your answer. The third person writes a reversal of the immediately preceding line, but cannot see any other lines. Repeat as long as desired.

Hi, hello, and how are you, oh dimply simply doo!
Goodbye forever or when do I, ho smooth undo!
Hello sweet second! Redo time’s hardest silence!
Goodbye bitter eternity. Stop the apocalypse’s easy song.
Hello, oh lively now — Begin universe’s difficult noise.
Goodbye oh deathly future — unendingly continued nowhere’s easy deafness.
Hello apocalypse-baby! A tiny fragment ceased the Everywhere’s difficult noise.
Goodbye, singularity-mother! The big everything begins the nowhere’s simple song.

Every time I go to the party I have a good time.
Never once have I enjoyed myself in good company.
Only forever will you suffer yourself to live alone.
I never feel good when I’m with the people.
I often think poorly when you’re with robots.
I never sense rightly after encountering flesh.
You always forget wrongs before escaping souls.
I never remember good deeds when I’m trapped.

Little garden filled with fire.
Big desert empty of air.
Tiny river full of liquid.
Expansive lake devoid of gaseous matter.
Retracted dirt, pregnant with solid soot.
Caught wind, barren in liquid ink.
A freed stillness, fertile with gaseous eraser.
An enslaved frenzy, barren with formless pencil’s edge.

REVERSAL POEM ASSEMBLAGE

We wrote five exquisite corpse poems collectively, and then wrote reversals of each line. Afterwards, SC assembled one super-poem collecting a few lines from all the various reversals.

Red, red, red, the shameless hue of morning.
Is the sun’s blinding glow still not enough?
And who has severed my elongated mole?
To become void is to collapse electricity’s murmur.
Nothing but an disenchanted narcissus.
Unnerve your own vein!
Long ago, that undertaker took my vegetables.
Semiotic, highjacking flow meticulously from other shores.
You will both run far apart and in opposite directions.
For a house of liquid prairie stills all herbs.
And arriving here was a one-toed dolphin sponge-tent,
gallivanting my gravitational centers.
Fascinating lectures of tarantula?
Solitude…is always the same.

• JF, SC, HC, AM, T

A Hippo’s Wish

Portents

ENIGMA

Dog Star