A Playdough Symposium


︎︎︎ Jillian Fantin

︎ Nov 1, 2022

i. XENIA

a ham sandwich, two-piece suitor reminds life is like a broken heirloom. salmonellad, sissyfist debates: so if you break the key off in the lock and two shafts grow back, does that mean we got another door? a little hydra key teehee? plaqued and tartared, two-piece suitor moans i’m so hungry i could bite myself. half listening, sissyfist drinks the jam jar, pushes his rocks off til they ostrich yolk. who needs star yeast to sourdough? two-piece suitor clarifies AD means After Diane that is After Diane Keaton’s Bowler Hat that is the little fiddler crab Herakles stomped in the bathroom of mars’ ballroom when the apple tartlet failed to crumble. half underwired, sissyfist protests. didn’t we just talk about balls?


ii. SOPHROSYNE

coupling beneath the chaste tree, sissyfist staples his left ear to a balsa wood airplane kit as two-piece suitor recalls what happened this morning that is when Buffalo Bill protested no shirt no shoes no service with an /i deserve double espresso and a spinach omelet just like everyone else/ and an /i was covered/ and an /oh so now you can be naked in another person’s skin/ uniscything, sissyfist pulls leftover cirrus from his hood, a ciabatta cage for the rabbit. ixionic bonding, two-piece suitor drools mandrakes make the best pan flutes. soleful, two-piece suitor soothes his toe fractures and sissyfist lotions the last precious curl of his fish tank. sissyfist sissysips. how does it feel to be so beautiful?


iii. EUDAIMONIA

oh yawns two-piece suitor how i love being a pervert airplane toileted, sissyfist wetthumbs through the funnies: this week, he shares, Holographic Will and the Cemetery Flamingo blunted another shrimp percussion. two-piece suitor bummercums a cruller what if a gun actually really wanted to be a gun like a sullen pan flute not made of lady bones? questions sissyfist, who misses Holographic Will’s annual visit to the Ice Capades. spooning almond gelato, a shivering two-piece suitor recounts his agdistis that is when a jealous clay pot melted inside his scabbard that’s why we wear briefs to bed. cracked, sissyfist follows along with Cemetery Flamingo’s game of marbles. could judy ever really be a punk?













































Jillian Fantin
is a poet, the recipient of a 2021 Poet Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and a regular collaborator with Chicago-based mixed media artist Kate Luther. Jillian’s work is published in or forthcoming from The American Journal of Poetry, TIMBER, Barrelhouse, The Daily Drunk, Harpur Palate, Selcouth Station, Homology Lit, and elsewhere.

Also by Jillian: Scrawny Prospero