M. Mack & Alyse Knorr
A Yoshi Addresses Mario
"Regardless of gender, Yoshis can spontaneously lay hollow eggs after eating other animals or fruit, and
then use them as projectile weaponry."
--Super Mario Bros. Wiki
The causation in gestation,
not cessation or fertilization,
just: I have eaten you and
I have turned you into this.
The emptiness of it. What once
was is now a shell of what once
was, thrown to explode what is
into what once was. Will you
weaponize me? Will you feed me
something sweet, some other
enemy, until I lay this egg of us?
Toss it. Hop on my back,
small red man. (You’d make a red
egg.) I am man or mom or not-man,
and these are my not-eggs. What
once was, now a weapon: yours.
POLLS SHOW BOWSER PICKING UP STEAM
Bowser (D-Ward 4),
it turns out, was closeted
in her office, working
the bureaucracy...
It was never about Peach //
never about // anything but
getting him // into my lair—
See, a giant horrifying spiked
turtle’s gotta do // what a giant
horrifying spiked turtle’s gotta
do // I am steaming // with
lust // steaming to make you
see how much // I want to eat
your soul // yes I said it—
SOUL // I am breathing thrusts
of fire at you Mario // I am
aflame // I am hidden // am buried
“Damsel Scrappy”: A Found Poem
with the periods to be read in the fashion of morse code
age-old [“]classic[”]
device .
places a woman in danger to add
. tension to the story .
love interest or . relative .
Designated Victim
other times, well....let's just say
the audience starts wishing the
Big Damn Heroes would get stuck
in traffic, just so they won't have to
put up with her anymore .
she steals . time from the story
they're actually interested in . Most
of the time, [her] plight is due entirely
to her own stupidity . She doesn't
just pick up the Distress Ball . she runs
it into her own endzone and gets
tackled for a safety . And she keeps
on doing it . again
and again
and again
.
….Even if she's just unlucky
she may be disliked for other reasons .
Perhaps the audience .
finds her
too bland .
or too bitchy .
Like useless dead weight
whose only purpose is
to pad the plot .
by getting in trouble .
[Hello? Hello? Is anyone--]
See also[:] Too Dumb to Live .
Compare The Scrappy and The Load .
Compare The President's Daughter,
Defiant Captive and Damsel out of Distress .
See also[:] Reckless Sidekick,
Sympathetic Sue .
Peach Is Dressed
Well, prepared for this.
Golden corset, garters.
She’s seen all of the
cartoons. Pictures of
her in bed, long drag
on Bowser’s long cigar.
She’s wearing a large
chain around her neck,
a big chunky thing he
knew she liked when she
saw it on the network. The
tag in the middle with what
look like diamonds. A “B”
engraved in the back that
she tells Mario stands for
Beautiful, for Baby, for Bitch.
_______________________________________________
M. Mack writes in or around Washington, D.C. Mack’s work can be found in Wicked Alice,
APARTMENT Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle, Cactus Heart, and elsewhere.
Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture
Press Books, 2013) and the chapbook Alternates (dancing girl press, 2014). Her work has appeared or
is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Alice Blue Review, Birdfeast Magazine, Caketrain, and Drunken Boat,
among others. She lives and writes in Anchorage, Alaska.