I usually begin a cento by deciding what I need the poem to re-capture, often a slippery image or sensation, then I pick lines that will carry out that function cleanly. In a selfish way, the exercise of attempting to make sense in the cento—which could land anywhere from inane to sublime—is born out of a desire to circumvent some of the conventional trappings that constrict me when writing about the self. From behind the othered “I” of this borrowed literature, I create my own method of confessionalism. As a consequence, I lean towards valuing musicality over sense-making because for me that’s what most often holds up upon rereading. Echoing the last line of “Hung,” taken from Thomas Devaney’s poem “Song of Innocence,” each read brings with it an amnesia of meaning, but rhythm retains the same serendipity. Ultimately, the poem’s conceit lives most comfortably in the line breaks—I practice threading the emotional narrative of the poem between these gaps, not inside the lines.
❧
Pink Okras
Cento
I was melting in the August sun.
Book to be read in the dark. Book-of-the-Abyss
A blue stain creeps across the deep pile of the evergreens
The buckeyes beat themselves half to death against some lit-from-within screen.
A Sunday of themselves, their tissue purpled.
You are the headmaster. Now you must master me.
On the wall at the river-divide, beyond their frail silhouettes.
In the photograph, I am the shadow of myself.
The horses were confused by my smile.
Mussolini
Cento
I thought I was the mirror that could shelter a lightning beneath its skin.
The bee in folktale plays the role of God’s spy.
From here it seems a table that can walk,
to prove we were married in the palaces of soap.
I haul a house out of the bay.
I want the rain. I want the rain.
an enormous baby sleeping on the road.
My window rolled down to the thawing air.
and lose myself in the immortal lifestream.
I worry about a tooth, worry if this typewriter will ever achieve escape velocity.
The cornstalks seem happy just standing there all summer.
dark as West Indian rum.
What does a name mean when it keeps changing shape in your mouth?
Who among us remembers the first thing we were promised?
Hung by the Guts of a Pope
Cento
When the world vanishes, I will come back.
You, island in this page,
You gave me your heart like a polished apple,
But now I’m not sure what fruit it is that I’ve eaten,
you shrug knowing less of yourself and the afterthought which goes on forever.
When that is exactly what they are, too—
How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Your words hold too much meaning once they’re released.
If you can uphold truth, in a society full of lies,
But everything that touches you or me takes us together,
It is beautiful because most music is not very good.
Be thankful it’s this dark.
I have always thought I lived on the edge,
it’s true, every day really is a new day, as i don’t remember the one before.
❧
Lines are borrowed from the following poets: Tracy Fuad, David Wojahn, Kay Ryan, Spencer Reece, Susan Kelly-Dewitt, D.A. Powell, Sam Willetts, Liu Xia, James Tate, Rae Armantrout, Frank Stanford, Larry Levis, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Lucille Clifton, Anne Carson, Terrance Hayes, Jean Valentine, Carl Phillips, C.D. Wright, Joseph Papaleo, Gerald Stern, Martín Espada, William Stafford, Michael Palmer, Laura Gilpin, Lewis Warsh, David Rattray, William Blake, John Ashbery, Amiri Baraka, Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. David Young), Joshua Clover, David Bromige, Sally Fisher, and Thomas Devaney.
Sylvia Jones lives in Baltimore, MD. She is the author of Television Fathers (Meekling Press, 2024) and Dope Calisthenics (Relegation Books) forthcoming in the Fall of 2026. She teaches at George Washington University.