In late December

silence looks like

the moon waiting

in a railroad yard

from just across

a two-inch pencil stub.

Real. Bullet-proof.

Like nice playthings.

Source: Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 

Method: This is a remixed poem composed only from column inches (I measured one inch of text and used only those words that formed a part of the column on that particular page) from chapter 3 of the novel. The chapter number was determined by chance that involved picking a chit from a bowl.  


Note: First published in the summer 2016 issue of  'Lines + Stars'.