1112 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
1112 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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S A N D R I V E R J O U R N A L
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Sand River Journal is a collection of poems gathered from the newsgroup
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rec.arts.poems; it is posted monthly in ascii and TeX formats to r.a.p. and
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related newsgroups. Current and archive issues may be retrieved by anonymous
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ftp at the site etext.archive.umich.edu in the directory /pub/Poetry. This
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archive includes PostScript versions of the formatted journal, which is
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publication quality and can be printed on most laser printers.
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Poems appear by authors' permission and constitute copyrighted material.
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Free transmission of this document (electronic or otherwise) is permitted
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only in its entire and unaltered form; to inquire about individual poems
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contact the authors by their email addresses. I take no responsibility
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for the fate of this document, and claim ownership only to any poems I have
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authored. Send comments and finished contributions (please reference SRJ)
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to asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu. Enjoy!
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Erik Asphaug, Editor
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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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Issue 9 - Beltane 1994
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First Anniversary
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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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------------------
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Raft of the Medusa
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------------------
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Gericault never painted the obverse
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yellow and purple wind-shells
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with legs open and
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occasionally inter-twined
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drunk in the brazen serendipity
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of too much sun
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Kate Armstrong
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kmarmstr@uoguelph.ca
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--------
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untitled
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--------
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child
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i am old
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pluck me from the earth
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with your chubby potato-chip drenched fists
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rip out my aged white hair to the roots
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hold it up to the wind let it scatter
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toss my stem broken body over your left shoulder
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make a wish
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child
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i am young
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crayola yellow hair
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i don't mind if you break my body
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stuff me in a pink plastic bunny cup
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on your kitchen table
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more things to see than all this grass
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bring my friends, will you please?
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Michelle A Freeman
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maf2d@galen.med.virginia.edu
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-----
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Lions
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-----
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You have seen lions yes?
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males
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females
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slowly
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and how they approach one another
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when it is time
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with open mouths and recognizant mumbles
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and she rolls over for him
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and he paws her slowly
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with such care as goes for gentleness among their kind
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and when he bites her neck
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it is not hostility
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but the irresistible generosity
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of her loose hide.
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Ralph Cherubini
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ralph@bga.com
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---------
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innocence
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---------
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little bird
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nodding in sleep
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do you know
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you are inside
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a temple bell?
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zita marie evensen
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bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu
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-----------------
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Remembering Kitty
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-----------------
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screams
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slice through
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heavy city air
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echo off
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faceless buildings
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metropolis
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of millions
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you are
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alone
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anguished
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cries will not
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be answered
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not today
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thirty-eight hear
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feet shuffle
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open windows
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slam shut
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hands reach
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for phones
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stop short
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thirty-eight see
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heads turn
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away from
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savage scene
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eyes close
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in ultimate
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urban denial
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succorless
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suffering
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unabated
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by kindness
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of strangers
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you die
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Michael Kushner
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mkushner@eden.rutgers.edu
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-------
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No Moon
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-------
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I woke and saw
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where my fingertips
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spread the dust
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on the windowsill
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the night before
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when I was
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startled
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by
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no moon.
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Zazu Pitts
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an79015@anon.penet.fi
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-------
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Kiss #7
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-------
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A black pebble
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in your palm:
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a summer night.
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Place it
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in your mouth
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and I taste it.
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Alex L. Karan
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alk4@midway.uchicago.edu
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-----------------
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Men Seeking Women
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-----------------
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By grace of candle light
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and Chopin's Nocturnes
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Blythe scans the
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men seeking women
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for possible stories,
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but only
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men seeking women
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over five foot seven,
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just in case.
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In under fifty words,
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men seeking women
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lay their lives and longing
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paper thin
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in stranger's hands.
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By grace of candle light
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and Chopin's Nocturne
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Blythe cuts out a few
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men seeking women
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who are all
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over five foot seven.
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Blythe says
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"listen to this one"
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A nocturne ends,
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peeling away from her laughter.
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The candle has dripped
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blood-red wax
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on a few
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men seeking women.
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Alex L. Karan
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alk4@midway.uchicago.edu
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---------
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te faruru
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---------
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frozen in tahitian woodcut
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braided in passionate embrace
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silhouettes against the warm
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firelight and tropic moon
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lovers sinuous as the undulating flame
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her arm supple in sensual abandon
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contours of their spirits shimmer
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forever in a gauguin umber-rust
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here they love
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zita maria evensen
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bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu
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-------------
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wait a moment
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-------------
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night changed to day
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with the turning of an eye.
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opening a shutter
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new light finds us caged,
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solemn or silly.
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hearts on our sleeves,
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we stir fingers through hair
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palm fire across arched bodies.
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we make a new night
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behind shutters, sealed and caged.
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a sudden burst of laughter
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speaks another's silence.
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your face and shoulders
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smile and shake.
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spare the joke and we'll move on.
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so somebody weeps
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and another's tears ebb;
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liquid in a limited system.
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shed a tear, one crocodile drop,
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and rid me of these oceanic eyes.
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empty breath flows from another's body,
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dragging life from a dying man.
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suck fast gasps past puckered tongues
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as newborns test lungs.
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in a moment they shall change.
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yesterday glued to the day before it.
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we scream to separate the sheets
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and spin, thoughts wild,
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casting for a glimpse of any when.
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an orange sun urges us to turn another page.
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wait a moment
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Steven L. Fitzgerald
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sfitzge@unix.cc.emory.edu
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-------------------
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Shifts, Invitations
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-------------------
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How we studied it,
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the sea,
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bucking, banal.
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Its outbawlings, crooked finger
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of the seawall,
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its outpourings, its invitations.
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And how it hammered flat
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our moonlight,
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its metals,
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roadlike.
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James R.J. Sheard
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jsheard@kampnagel.win-uk.net
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-----------
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Boddhisatva
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-----------
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find brothers who went under,
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teach them breathing:
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Boddhisatva is the truth of healing.
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Never damage
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what you dare pursue,
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no-one stares
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into the glowing orb
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but you
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Erik Asphaug
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asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu
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--------
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Savannah
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--------
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Melancholy swims in your hot breath breezes
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Palm trees swoon and sway
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Houses with belle porches clutch the ground
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So storms may not tear away
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Tropical intoxication makes me dizzy
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And I fall on Georgia red clay
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Something old and rich here
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Despair hangs like Spanish moss
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Trembling twinkling in moonlight
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Make love to me the gardens say
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Jennifer Williams
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jaw4936@acfcluster.nyu.edu
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--------
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untitled
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--------
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it occurred to me, lately
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that in between your spontaneous
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corruption of my perfect world
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with your honest tugging eyes,
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you might have kissed me!
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or turned me on my back and rubbed me
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with your big, beautiful hands,
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or held me
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in an embrace of sorrow
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that told me that love was allright.
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but I forgive you,
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honestly - there is nothing but honesty
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with you, oh that part that reaches
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right in between my ribs and tugs
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and says, ``you know me...
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in you,
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I am."
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Sean M. Colletta
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mamushka@eden.rutgers.edu
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------------------------
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how does she eat a mango
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------------------------
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moths fluttering around a candle
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wing shadows trembling
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in the ritual
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of loving and dying
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upon a marble floor
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bits of colored paper
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of what may be
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a photograph of my day
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street brat slinks at dusk
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throwing diamonds at passersby
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it is from me it is free
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oh come on take the gift
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and take time to the read poems
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on burger wrappers and old newspapers
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laundry-clipped by the wind
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to sidewalks broken by dandelions
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and chain-links fencing empty
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parking lots of words
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i know i know you'd like to see
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what is the color of the nail-polish
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on the keyboard what is that book
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hugged too closely to the breast
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how does she eat a mango
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do her eyes change hues
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when she kisses
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in the rainforest of blue screens
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i lose a lot of friends this way
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zita maria evensen
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bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu
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-----------------------------
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Catechism for a Witch's Child
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-----------------------------
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When they ask to see your gods
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your book of prayers
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show them lines
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drawn delicately with veins
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on the underside of a bird's wing
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tell them you believe
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in giant sycamores mottled
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and stark against a winter sky
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and in nights so frozen
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stars crack open spilling
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streams of molten ice to earth
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and tell them how you drank
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the holy wine of honeysuckle
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on a warm spring day
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and of the softness
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of your mother
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who never taught you
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death was life's reward
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but who believed in the earth
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and the sun
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and a million, million light years
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of being
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Judith Stanley
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powell@ingres.com
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--------------------
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Up, ant, at my Touch
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--------------------
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Covet this, she drives along tooling
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her sheath--it fits well
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and erotically lyricizes my lobes,
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Laves what skin of mine is bare,
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Nude--and covet I do. She's
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defined Want her insidious disastrous
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Way. I wish she would hold the
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wheel Tighter. Some shame in me
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is afraid of know-not-what;
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She pretends not-knowing, only
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her Nerve endings are touched,
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not her Spikes. She says I'm too
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Serious--goddam! Those fucking
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potholes make my jaws click together
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Hard, two lovers' sudden sparked
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Orgasms; hurtful, she Laughs.
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Other cars frown at us, coveting.
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She fucks them all well; they
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veer away, seeking shelter.
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I had an accident in my pants,
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Please downshift! I yelled but the
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Wind grabbed my words as her mouth
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opened to swallow me, and still she
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Laughed, 'til the Wind was gone.
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Ann L. Knight
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annkni@delphi.com
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---------------
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Like This Water
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---------------
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I told him while the water was washing over us
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never to stop experience
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like this water
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just to be there while it washes over him
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and I held him to me
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as close as myself
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let it make you clean I said
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and he was crying
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because it hurts as if the skin is peeled back
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it could only be that kind of crying
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and I took his face in my hands and made him look at me
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as I told him against the stream
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that the other way is death.
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Ralph Cherubini
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ralph@bga.com
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-------------------------------
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grotowski and his lovely poland
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-------------------------------
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(Jerzy Grotowsky, Polish director, founder of The
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Lab Theatre, pioneer of theatrical psychotherapy.)
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grotowski, roaring through "Akropolis,"
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hinted
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at the source of his angst:
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"Poland, you see, is the largest graveyard in the world."
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aushwitz is now a headstone,
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and citizens can view names and dates,
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realizing their soil sings with millions of
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earth-choked
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throats.
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no historical dialogue can erase the thunder of
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blitzkreig or luftwaffe.
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goebbel's tap-dancing can still be
|
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heard
|
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over the roar of smelting plants.
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so.
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do we stop the world in our fair poland?
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eh?
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do we cease daily life and build more tombstones?
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no.
|
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we go on doing what we always have done before,
|
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it served our grandfathers through all kinds of facisim.
|
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even the modern kind,
|
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that seeks to bring all filth to the light
|
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of politically correct truth.
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but what of dear grotowski?
|
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he is in california now,
|
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holding encountergrouptheatretherapy in the mountains.
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far away from the singing
|
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boneyard
|
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that is his poland.
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Tom Witherspoon
|
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78witherspoo@cua.edu
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---------------
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Scorch and Burn
|
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---------------
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Work is done, then forgotten. Therefore
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it lasts forever.
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- Lao Tsu
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Past five o'clock, the time for reconciliation settles upon him
|
|
as hard wings brush past. Wings meant for another,
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still near enough to startle into reflection.
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The countryside drapes over his life.
|
|
He has spent hours picking through the folds,
|
|
searching for everything that sank away.
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Topsoil has winnowed past, leaving a hard clay,
|
|
red under nails and gray underfoot,
|
|
for him to tunnel to himself.
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Spent tobacco overflows ashtrays,
|
|
too much effort trying to internalize the land
|
|
until it lay ravaged in him.
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|
|
A cough was the first sign of pregnancy, but the smoke warns
|
|
of twins and triplets, spiraling up in fading wingbeats,
|
|
hinting of hidden fires.
|
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|
|
As quarter to six approaches,
|
|
the exfoliated plain is too barren
|
|
for anything but rebirth.
|
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|
|
Time turns up a new soil.
|
|
New seed eager to rise, crops waiting to climb.
|
|
To reap.
|
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|
|
Steven L. Fitzgerald
|
|
sfitzge@unix.cc.emory.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
untitled
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
I wear it like a death mask
|
|
Stolen from an ancient king's barrow
|
|
Pallid
|
|
No color
|
|
Jaw clenched in the mockery of a smile
|
|
A frozen scream
|
|
A hideous laugh
|
|
|
|
I use it as a weapon
|
|
An axe to cleave what was joined
|
|
A spear to pierce the unwounded
|
|
I am not whole, why should you be?
|
|
It is deadly poison, sprinkled liberally
|
|
Would you like a glass of wine?
|
|
|
|
I cherish it as a companion
|
|
Always there when I am in need
|
|
To be called on at a moments notice
|
|
Faithful
|
|
Of whom else can that be said?
|
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|
|
Ralph Haefner
|
|
haefner@iastate.edu
|
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|
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------------------------
|
|
Ano Nuevo at Mating Time
|
|
------------------------
|
|
|
|
If only the selky's stolen cries,
|
|
(broken on the water and strained upon the dunes),
|
|
could fire the mind with an imaged flame remembered
|
|
in caves of savage mankind.
|
|
Then more completely would I find identity in the
|
|
wauling song that sets to rhythm these gale-beat thrummings
|
|
which chaff my ears.
|
|
|
|
Thus exhumed, the light of fires long gone
|
|
would mark with hi-light tabs this roiling view
|
|
which unlocks its own visceral thrill.
|
|
|
|
Indeed.
|
|
|
|
How simple are the frothing calls which cater to nothing
|
|
but that which stays wildest even when standing
|
|
the cross-town queue.
|
|
|
|
This ghosting companion who holds himself aloof and Free.
|
|
Free to wither a parting glance at cool sensibilities
|
|
mouthing their hysteric complaints.
|
|
|
|
Nurture proves to be heartlessly efficient.
|
|
|
|
Here in this farthest reach of sand/sea/sky;
|
|
we dangle an exploring finger toward the pooled chaos
|
|
and watch as a terribly real fight transpires down the beach.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stuart Tanner
|
|
toadhall!stuart.tanner@netcom.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
Someday
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
Highland pipes, mountain mist, and ancient
|
|
legends reborn;
|
|
Will the great heroes walk the earth again,
|
|
Will great Cormac again be king?
|
|
Ask if the desert will be blessed with rain.
|
|
|
|
The only answer is someday.
|
|
|
|
Irish harps, emerald moors and old tales
|
|
remembered;
|
|
Shall we ever see the old glories made new,
|
|
Will the Pirate Queen ride the waves again:
|
|
Ask if a stormy sky will ever be blue.
|
|
|
|
The only answer is someday.
|
|
|
|
Gaelic chants, ancient songs, dance once more
|
|
on the tongue;
|
|
Will they dance and repeat in future history,
|
|
Shall Taliesin and Merlin make magic once more?
|
|
Ask if a villian is ever remorsful.
|
|
|
|
The answer is the same, someday.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sheila J. Lester
|
|
shiela@tcity.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------------------------------
|
|
In the Shape of Snakes, Our Bodies
|
|
----------------------------------
|
|
|
|
And as we were anonymous on a summer's hill
|
|
You would think that we laid seige on one another-
|
|
Lying as we did, in some immortal embrace
|
|
With long dark hair curled over your milk face
|
|
|
|
You brushed your hair away to mouth a phrase
|
|
And told me that the stars
|
|
Were rushing from each other
|
|
I felt three times your age!
|
|
Just the simplest of statements, and the stars exploded...
|
|
|
|
It seemed like we were on the skin of a bubble
|
|
bursting into nothingness
|
|
while, up above, the shapes of men had named the stars.
|
|
But, down below, the fields. And in this,
|
|
dusk and perfection;
|
|
In the shape of snakes our bodies carved.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Niall Richard Murphy
|
|
kennedys@unix1.tcd.ie
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------------
|
|
on lake monroe today
|
|
--------------------
|
|
|
|
on lake monroe today the blues fuse with grays.
|
|
the browns refused. brown county indiana --
|
|
a morning mess of twig and twine. the spirit,
|
|
eyelining the hills, fills the hollows, fills
|
|
the woods -- delicate, leafless and so. eyelashed.
|
|
last night -- no wind, no sky, no coyote, just owl.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Marek Lugowski
|
|
lugowski@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------
|
|
Haiku #437
|
|
----------
|
|
|
|
ten thousand things
|
|
left done and undone
|
|
the tea steams
|
|
|
|
|
|
William C. Burns, Jr.
|
|
burnswcb@gvltec.gvltec.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------------------
|
|
Some Days To Remember
|
|
---------------------
|
|
|
|
As when the great Lady herself
|
|
Fell victim to the placid sea
|
|
In what was otherwise a night
|
|
Of silent starlit serenity
|
|
|
|
And floundering in the cold waters
|
|
Where no fish would dare to stray
|
|
Were the faceless souls and voices
|
|
Of that ever tragic day
|
|
|
|
And near the lifeboats, all around
|
|
Side by side, but all alone
|
|
Were hands that had no raft to hold
|
|
They were on their own
|
|
|
|
Some slapping, splashing, {\it screaming!}
|
|
For a paddle or a board
|
|
And the louder they cried out
|
|
The more they were ignored
|
|
|
|
And soon they slipped beneath the shine-
|
|
Their last eternal dive
|
|
While not a single hand would reach
|
|
To keep these men alive.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tim Edgar
|
|
edgart@qucis.queensu.ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------
|
|
In the Midnight Chill of a Winter Solstice
|
|
------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
I remember two eager faces in the match-light
|
|
sublimed in the trouble and rage of high school
|
|
dances just let out...pretty girls, perfume and cologne
|
|
intermingling. We had a confidence, you might say a way
|
|
with manners. We kept aloof and found our solitude
|
|
in Blake and in Yeats. Breathing the crackling fragrance
|
|
of clove cigarettes, our bodies shivered in the cold air.
|
|
The thin sandy smoke was like silver in a street-light.
|
|
The dull illumination of the rock-ridden mountainside,
|
|
The faint blue stars, the cherries of two cigarettes,
|
|
and the gold glittering of the midnight traffic below
|
|
blasted our thoughts like a symphony and spoke
|
|
to our minds a religion --- an enchantment of the beautiful...
|
|
The cluttered clouds against the bare, black night
|
|
glimmered with the brightness of the moon. We felt
|
|
the dizzy hope of spirit enkindling our dreams.
|
|
And from night to night we felt a constant surfacing
|
|
and resurfacing of something larger than us, threatening
|
|
to smash to bits the entire order of all
|
|
that held us still. As if we were the only two
|
|
in a long time that ever dared to think these things,
|
|
in those days we walked well dressed and in vain
|
|
triumph. We quested after magnanimity--believing
|
|
all our troubles and our fears could be dissolved
|
|
with an subtle gesture or a sign. I remember occasionally
|
|
a tear after gulping down that rusty smoke,
|
|
would soak a ring around a cigarette,
|
|
turn it yellow-brown, and then sizzle
|
|
and vanish. Again and again against madness
|
|
we tried to shake from ourselves --- to erase --- the cold ---
|
|
to banish the unfeeling and the sleeping from our lives.
|
|
What love did we imagine could master such vizardness?
|
|
We sought out emblems from ancient Ireland
|
|
and longed for ghosts within the landscape to come,
|
|
to rise up and to teach us their secrets, songs
|
|
and wisdom. Staring at the darkness surrounding so
|
|
many lights, we heard thousand thousand questions
|
|
asked in the midnight chill of a winter solstice.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Daniel Newell
|
|
daniel.newell@m.cc.utah.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------------------------
|
|
Elegy for an Older Sister
|
|
-------------------------
|
|
|
|
after the day you died
|
|
I went to a mountain lake
|
|
all warm and piney
|
|
and as I floated in the gentle water
|
|
transfixed between earth and sky
|
|
I thought of you dying
|
|
just the plain sorrow of it
|
|
and of how it would never end
|
|
|
|
|
|
Judy Stanley
|
|
powell@ingres.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
silence
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
just as
|
|
an echo
|
|
in an
|
|
empty room
|
|
is no response
|
|
|
|
silence after
|
|
a shout
|
|
in the dark
|
|
is still no
|
|
proof
|
|
that no one
|
|
hears
|
|
|
|
|
|
Michael McNeilley
|
|
mmichael@halcyon.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------
|
|
Among Stones
|
|
------------
|
|
|
|
They have sculpted your back with cruelty
|
|
those surgeons of shallow imagination
|
|
did their best, in ancient time
|
|
would have sent you to the temple
|
|
with votive bones of clay, with
|
|
prayers like futile narcotics prescribed or
|
|
exposed you on the plain of Argos
|
|
where the red earth is eager
|
|
to reclaim what came from it.
|
|
|
|
Today I will follow you to the water
|
|
and every day
|
|
sit among stones with paper
|
|
working my only magick and seeing
|
|
you change fishlike abandoning
|
|
the vague gravity of earth
|
|
to water you are
|
|
my most precious fish of salt and
|
|
lapis the touch of water again
|
|
makes you supple.
|
|
|
|
I wait for waves of linen,
|
|
a tidal bed, the moons rhythm
|
|
secure beneath the planet's wing.
|
|
No sky, no stones.
|
|
|
|
|
|
James Reiff
|
|
jreiff@pyramid.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------------------
|
|
after he touches me
|
|
-------------------
|
|
|
|
after he touches me
|
|
just his fingertips barely
|
|
on just my hips
|
|
it rains.
|
|
there is a nighttime orange sky
|
|
and there is lighting.
|
|
lighting strikes i read
|
|
make the air around them five times hotter
|
|
than the outer edge of the sun.
|
|
the air then must be very hot
|
|
after he touches me
|
|
but my hair is cold and wet and clings to my face
|
|
and on my arms each hair stands on end.
|
|
|
|
|
|
JJHemphill
|
|
jjh54139@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
heroes and fools
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
beloved
|
|
here i am in the embrace of night
|
|
confused by perfume of orange blossoms
|
|
i am laughing with a sadness
|
|
i do not know from where
|
|
|
|
beloved, you are
|
|
the madness i cannot hide
|
|
the poem i cannot write
|
|
love makes us such heroes
|
|
and such fools
|
|
|
|
|
|
zita maria evensen
|
|
bu016@cleveland.freenet.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------
|
|
Secret Door
|
|
-----------
|
|
|
|
Where is the door, secret and hidden,
|
|
that leads to the halls and chambers of your heart?
|
|
Picking the lock, I softly pad
|
|
down the corridors of your mind.
|
|
Stopping to read the inscriptions of your love,
|
|
fragile thoughts, like bone white china,
|
|
carved on tablets of stone,
|
|
scattered around like errant rose petals.
|
|
More beautiful than angel's wings.
|
|
More precious than the treasure of kings.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Larry Rupp
|
|
rupple@u.washington.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------
|
|
Thumb Enclosed
|
|
--------------
|
|
|
|
{\it A thumb enclosed in a fist denotes a suppressed will.}
|
|
|
|
Concrete's bitter sting:
|
|
hewn stone and pavement sprout from seeded clay.
|
|
Steel mountains bloom and hundred-armed poles
|
|
climb through the ground, caught in flurries of emerald moths.
|
|
Their wings flutter as countless hands
|
|
wring their neighbor nervously.
|
|
|
|
{\it The weaker will always look away first.}
|
|
|
|
Animals lurk in the shadows,
|
|
a chorus imposing deathly silence on otherwise empty sound.
|
|
Organic automatons following an instinctive program,
|
|
pausing to rewind when gears cease whirring and clicking.
|
|
Then restart.
|
|
|
|
{\it We'll always turn from the eyes of a stranger.}
|
|
|
|
Restraining itself, the car urges forth on spinning legs,
|
|
yellow cat-eyes scanning the darkness.
|
|
Pinholes in the sky's shroud let through tastes of glory.
|
|
The headlights illuminate only those patches of space
|
|
directly before them as tunnel vision weaves down the road.
|
|
|
|
{\it And I'll refuse to match your gaze, preferring
|
|
the ambiguity of our relationship.
|
|
Looking past each other's shoulders, eyes halved apart
|
|
and tongues filling in the graves of fresh-spent words.}
|
|
|
|
An enclosed thumb smiles against a moist palm,
|
|
its nervous grin reflecting lines
|
|
carved into the hand's tender belly.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Steven L. Fitzgerald
|
|
sfitzge@unix.cc.emory.edu
|
|
|