The image is a playful collage poem made from cut-out words and phrases arranged on a muted green background. Each scrap of text is torn from a different printed source, giving the composition a fragmented, tactile feel. The poem moves vertically down the page in a meandering path, beginning with the bold declaration “poetry was appetite” and ending with the surreal punchline “the moon was a meatball.” The piece mixes lofty themes—poetry, memoir, hard work, the moon—with earthy, humorous imagery of bread and meatballs, creating a whimsical tension between the profound and the absurd.

“poetry was appetite” and Other Visual Poems by J.I. Kleinberg

October 1, 2025 0 Comments

Author’s note: “poetry was appetite” and the other four visual poems below are from an ongoing series of collages (2900+) built from phrases created through the happenstance of magazine page design. Each contiguous fragment of text (transcribed as a poetic line) is entirely removed from its original sense and syntax. The text is not altered (except for the occasional deletion of prefixes, suffixes, or punctuation) and includes no attributable phrases. The lines of each collage are, in most cases, sourced from different magazines.

Image Description: Paper-on-paper collage poems (approx. 4.25 x 5.5 inches) in which each line is a torn fragment of magazine text. The fragments and text vary in size, shape, and color. The lines are arranged on a dusty-green background.

 

poetry was appetite

poetry was appetite and memoir, Hard work And bread the moon WAS a meatball the word feast

 

 

a poem

a poem I don’t remember That one madeleine, tasted line by line.

 

for breakfast

for breakfast, the verb lunch Our conversation the language of vegetables. information soup the sarcastic wine and Word pie

 

our minds soggy

our minds soggy the dark more dark we're eating clouds slurping things – gooey, and the flavor of shade

 

THE delicious Text

THE delicious Text parfait of peppery found things poetic desserts

—about the author—

J.I. Kleinberg lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and on Instagram @jikleinberg. Chapbooks of her visual poems, How to pronounce the wind (Paper View Books) and Desire’s Authority (Ravenna Press Triple Series No. 23), were published in 2023; a full-length volume, She needs the river (Poem Atlas), was published in 2024.

*Read more of her visual poems HERE!

CategoriesArt, Poems, Stories & Poems
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