When listening to “Horses” by Marcus Slease, his prose poem first appearing in Bear Review Vol. 5, Issue 1, the listener realizes, almost at once, they’ll soon find their attention in the hands of a surrealist in good faith. What’s good faith to a surrealist? I’d say one who believes in a process called psychic automatism.
Psychic automatism involves the artist’s liberation of their rational mind and their embrace of dream logics, a frame of mind wherein the utilities of language and hierarchical vertices of meaning (valences assigned to people, places, things and ideas by the current status quo) get flipped on their sides, refurnished and redecorated, sometimes by feral children and talking animals imagined from other dimensions. Just taste the tone in this poem! Hear its sugary crunch. Fill your favorite bowl … find the surprise toy at the bottom of the box…
Let me just step aside now and let this poem do its thing.
— Marcus Myers
