You’re at a party, and someone goes up to a blank wall and writes a thought on one line… a thought, an idea, or a picture lyrically or narratively stated. They walk away, and another person goes to the wall. They read the line of text and follow it up with a line of their own, a response. A third person approaches the wall and reads the last line written, just that one line, and then they write a single line in response to that. Finally, you go to the wall. You read the last line only – the one written by the person who’d just left – and you pen your response in a single line below it. Now you’re the last person; someone else will come along and read what you wrote and respond to it in kind.

When everyone at the party has written their line, when there’s no one left to add a new thought, the collected lines are read as a single, complete poem. It was written by each person in the room, line by line. And that, my friends, is how you play the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse party game.

Longtime friends in this space, you’ve now seen as many as 12 Exquisite Corpse poems here, and you know that I harvest the lines from Craigslist’s Missed Connections section. I very rarely find myself socializing with a group of people, so I visit Missed Connections online and take liberties, with gratitude: I borrow the entries’ subject lines that strike me in some kind of way, and I arrange them in a manner that pleases me. Then I post them here for you to read, of course.

And now, having arrived at the point, I’ll share the 13th poem in my Missed Connections Exquisite Corpse series. This is also my first Missed Connections Exquisite Corpse poem of 2022! We’re on the cusp of Valentine’s Day weekend, and this collection of MC subject lines allowed me to create a small lyric somewhat appropriate for the occasion – appropriate, albeit sad.

Enjoy this poem of 15 lines written by 15 complete strangers:

Missed Connections Exquisite Corpse, 13

Missed you at the park,
Train ride about six years ago,
Late Happy Birthday.
I know this is wishful thinking,
Just me,
Just a sad sack…
If you missed me, then I missed you,
Heart inside out.
You looked back twice.
I’m not supposed to miss you, but I do,
Singing in the night.
Meant to keep it casual –
What a strange and interesting way,
Entangled in you.
Distractions.

The End, and also the beginning, my friends… of a weekend that I hope will be positively memorable to you, whether related to St. Valentine or not.