1218 lines
34 KiB
Plaintext
1218 lines
34 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
|
|
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
|
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
|
S A N D R I V E R J O U R N A L
|
|
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
|
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
|
|
|
|
|
Welcome to the Sand River Journal. Our goal is to provide a proper
|
|
setting for some of the better poetry associated with the newsgroup
|
|
rec.arts.poems. We aim at an objective standard, if such exists for
|
|
poetry, but also strive to include diverse voices, not excluding our
|
|
own work. These poems have all been previously posted to r.a.p. and
|
|
appear by authors' explicit permission. They constitute copyrighted
|
|
material, and we claim ownership only to any poems we have authored.
|
|
Sand River Journal is posted to r.a.p and related newsgroups and is
|
|
archived at etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry. The PostScript version
|
|
features high-quality typesetting and is well worth printing to hardcopy
|
|
and sharing. We hope you enjoy this unique selection of poems.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Erik Asphaug asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu
|
|
Zita Marie Evensen * ac869@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu
|
|
John Adam Kaune jkaune@trentu.ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
|
|
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
|
|
|
Issue 13 -- Mardi Gras 1995
|
|
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
|
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
My Love is a Changeling
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
|
|
My love is a changeling --
|
|
All variance, progression, and transition.
|
|
Now who would dare to have her stay
|
|
In some dull, resolved and static way?
|
|
Not you nor I nor any other.
|
|
For she speaks to us as the blades of grass
|
|
While erupting through their concrete slabs
|
|
And she'll remain the same in staid
|
|
Through all her days of transience.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Scott Cudmore
|
|
scudmore@peinet.pe.ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------------------
|
|
Not the worst thing
|
|
-------------------
|
|
|
|
It is not the worst thing about sexual obsession
|
|
that it heals, in time;
|
|
that the liquid muscularity of the 20s, which turns
|
|
to the fixed and arduous craving of the 30s,
|
|
dims like the memories
|
|
that defined the scope of youthful romanticism:
|
|
the time you threw the beer bottle through the window...
|
|
the morning you woke on an unknown floor...
|
|
the night you lost the car.
|
|
|
|
Nor is it the worst thing to learn
|
|
that the height of inspiration will not be defined
|
|
by those mornings you stared
|
|
across her high hard bed at dawn,
|
|
transfixed by the rise and the fall
|
|
of the raft of blonde hair flowing
|
|
across the watery silk of her gown:
|
|
voracious, as if you could devour her
|
|
completely by watching
|
|
and play the act
|
|
over and over again,
|
|
pull closed the circle
|
|
and live within the loop
|
|
for all time.
|
|
|
|
That the standard remains solid is reassuring;
|
|
though revised from gold to silver
|
|
it is not devalued,
|
|
and it is not the worst thing that
|
|
the currency of passion in the end
|
|
is spent less on reminiscence and revision
|
|
than in present speculation:
|
|
not so much expended on what might have been,
|
|
or on the worst that could have happened;
|
|
or as to why you lived on, with no more than
|
|
the dim hope of your heart to heal;
|
|
or where what turn in the road might have led;
|
|
but on how fat has she become,
|
|
and if we met again today, would she know me,
|
|
before I spoke?
|
|
And did she ever get that job up on the hill?
|
|
And does she still make that fantastic
|
|
ratatouille?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Michael McNeilley
|
|
mmichael@halcyon.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------------
|
|
Cave of Dreams
|
|
---------------
|
|
|
|
If fish were wishes floating on a wave
|
|
of songs from peri's throats that caught the breeze
|
|
in toothy nets they cast into the cave
|
|
of dreams, would anglers drop their lines in seas
|
|
to snare their fondest hopes? The flounders swim
|
|
in open circles through the bottom weeds;
|
|
they feed on hopes. Enchanted flounders skim
|
|
the sandy bottom; they ignore the foolish needs
|
|
of human vanity. I have no dream
|
|
of wishes granted by a flounder's tail.
|
|
I have no hope that peris' eyes will gleam
|
|
with love for me. It's just a fairytale
|
|
to lull a child to sleep, a fancy or
|
|
a dream, a veil that's fallen to the floor.
|
|
|
|
Karen Tellefsen
|
|
kat@ritz.mordor.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
old
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
she harbors a girl with crossed
|
|
eyes and a pruned face
|
|
like a shrub.
|
|
an owl in her pocket,
|
|
hardened by the discovery of darwin
|
|
can't get rid of the dark,
|
|
or the onyx eyes floating
|
|
in its milk-bottle belly.
|
|
wintry paws brush like straw
|
|
on the bed, and she comes home
|
|
only to tell me about breath
|
|
and the hollowing out of eyes.
|
|
i can see her bones through skin,
|
|
the marrow strings the form.
|
|
not a bee but a spider
|
|
who never flit but waited, and not a tongue
|
|
resurfacing to lick, but teeth
|
|
solid and stuck in gum like screws.
|
|
she is glued to herself, an overture
|
|
of pure light. beyond the sheets, she can
|
|
see the little girl, all wrapped and muffed
|
|
for cold sea days and unveiling of sun.
|
|
she can see the rope she jumped to
|
|
hide the scrubbed bile
|
|
and then again, she can wonder about heaven
|
|
like she did by the wood stove in the
|
|
parlor of her buttered mother.
|
|
no, the firing of little
|
|
bugs all around like a light source
|
|
doesn't give her more life just light
|
|
to see the web between digit.
|
|
i sit by her now making my bread
|
|
and wiggling my newness. its not nice
|
|
but i'm young and so oiled and fancy
|
|
in my walk. i hook her with my tail.
|
|
honeyed was the way she held me
|
|
and now, i am the swing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hillary Joyce
|
|
haj2@cornell.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------------------
|
|
For Durnstein Ruins
|
|
-------------------
|
|
|
|
From the spire to the ruins,
|
|
history faced the seasons
|
|
as the river below
|
|
crept
|
|
by
|
|
quietly
|
|
with no intentions of staying.
|
|
|
|
At the hands of time,
|
|
the horses' heavy breathing
|
|
fought with the wagon wheels
|
|
for the lead role.
|
|
|
|
But now, from the ruins to the spire,
|
|
one can only imagine.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Vicki S. Fosie
|
|
fosie@iiasa.ac.at
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
Nuptials
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
Behold the arching aftermath of passion
|
|
rushing through me like a mountain wind.
|
|
|
|
Feel her tremble, pushing to fruition,
|
|
draining every terror from my mind.
|
|
|
|
If anyone can gaze upon this water,
|
|
leave it undisturbed. She will be mine
|
|
|
|
forever, and we'll both grow mad as hatters,
|
|
drunk as children on the nuptial wine.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Erik Asphaug
|
|
asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
guildford ararat
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
cathedral court ararat
|
|
antedeluvian cycle racks
|
|
half-skeletons of whales
|
|
beached after the flood
|
|
with their last meal
|
|
of rusty bicycles
|
|
still inside them
|
|
|
|
|
|
Paul Connolly
|
|
P.Connolly@ee.surrey.ac.uk
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
She's Gone Again
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
rain turns the cement
|
|
to black shifting shadows
|
|
streetlights become
|
|
menacing eyes
|
|
searching through the fog
|
|
|
|
i walk alone
|
|
again accompanied
|
|
only by boots
|
|
crunching into ice
|
|
and a breath fog
|
|
prayer floating
|
|
into the moonless night
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jody Upshaw
|
|
jupshaw@hfm.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
untitled
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
Walls of red logs, adze-squared,
|
|
heavily chinked in mottled yellow clay,
|
|
mantel arrayed in copper pots, pewter
|
|
plates, spoons, a green and yellow speckled
|
|
plant (what did you call it?), two navel oranges,
|
|
a leaning chessboard, ancient, _ancien regime_,
|
|
mahogany, fruitwood inlaid, with a copper
|
|
dipper hanging casually there; below
|
|
the mantel, good stonework, mortar-washed,
|
|
a delicate linen lampshade, white, in white
|
|
grape leaves and clusters; lathe-turned lamp
|
|
stand (from your shop?), rich polished rock maple;
|
|
beside it, a clock in brass and walnut, its fly
|
|
specked face roman numeraled, always at eight o'clock,
|
|
and the couch upholstered in scenes from Plutarch,
|
|
fragile to the eye, yet sturdy as are all things
|
|
here: when I see you, my friend, it is always
|
|
in this room that I see you, sitting before the
|
|
chess men, offering latakia and smoke, saying
|
|
pawn-to-king-four, even though I know
|
|
it has been open to the leaden sky now
|
|
so many years, the heavy oak floor boards
|
|
piled with fir-cones, rich in mosses,
|
|
growing morels, and only the chimney standing
|
|
among wet pine woods recalls the richness
|
|
of your pipes, your Bach, your Ruy Lopez.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Richard Bear
|
|
rbear@oregon.uoregon.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------------------
|
|
Stalin Enters the Seminary
|
|
at Tiflis, 1894
|
|
--------------------------
|
|
|
|
Claim now the lanterned world,
|
|
your sketchpad of possibility!
|
|
the deans exhorted us that fall.
|
|
So many applications read, prayers said.
|
|
All year he'd run, stiffly, to class.
|
|
|
|
Once I saw him in his wooden shed.
|
|
For days he'd gaze at an open page
|
|
till one night facts gave in to him:
|
|
If still enough, he could detect
|
|
the resting atoms of his perfect freedom.
|
|
|
|
The earth had seemed a mystic's place,
|
|
a windy vista of statements arrayed.
|
|
Now his winter's course of blood
|
|
tapped messages no protest would touch.
|
|
In January dreams he saw faint outlines,
|
|
|
|
high weathered slopes last named by God.
|
|
Next morning he walked out to them all.
|
|
A century's ticking has settled nothing.
|
|
He took paper with him and wrote:
|
|
The Lord's torchbearers won't find me here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Paul Raymond Waddle
|
|
c/o erickson@library.vanderbilt.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------
|
|
Untitled
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
Funny somehow -
|
|
the tungsten orange lights
|
|
off brown brick walls,
|
|
the shining off melted snow,
|
|
puddles
|
|
on the pavement
|
|
as winter begins its
|
|
freeze, stops in thought,
|
|
and starts again.
|
|
|
|
Funny somehow -
|
|
how far I really am
|
|
from those I'm
|
|
really close to
|
|
classrooms in orange and brown
|
|
tears on pavement,
|
|
and winter coming on strong.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kirk D. Knobelspiesse
|
|
kdk2963@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------------------
|
|
Parenthesis of Loss
|
|
-------------------
|
|
|
|
The motorcade snakes its way
|
|
through cold, near-empty streets.
|
|
Winter has marked its territory
|
|
with graffiti of gray snow.
|
|
We pass buildings that seem to
|
|
cower wasted and pathetic.
|
|
I sink deeper into
|
|
the front seat of the lead car -
|
|
the one reserved for next of kin.
|
|
My son-in-law drives, they sit in back:
|
|
my mother, talking quietly to herself,
|
|
pointing out every passing street sign,
|
|
wondering aloud how much further.
|
|
Sandy next to her thinking, perhaps, of
|
|
her father's funeral, how the year began
|
|
with her loss and ends with mine;
|
|
how, this year, our marriage has been one of
|
|
parenthetical existence, bracketed by loss.
|
|
A beige-gray sky covers us with sallow air,
|
|
dollops of black birds litter empty trees
|
|
as our small procession enters
|
|
the cemetery gates. I watch
|
|
the birds, expecting them to follow -
|
|
emissaries of death making official
|
|
my elevation from immortal youth
|
|
to mortal eldest son.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jerry Dreesen
|
|
jdreesen@xray.indyrad.iupui.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------
|
|
I'll send it to you as an earing
|
|
--------------------------------
|
|
|
|
over here the sun goes down in saffron
|
|
skies
|
|
yes over the land
|
|
this leaves the roses & the lilacs
|
|
for the marine horizon
|
|
|
|
the ocean
|
|
in silver blues & greens
|
|
folds & unfolds the water patiently
|
|
& whenever its patience ceases
|
|
it marks (with white) the creases
|
|
as the water jumps out of its skin
|
|
& pounces seethingly
|
|
|
|
after the sunset
|
|
in the cloudless afterglow
|
|
on the cold slick wet sand
|
|
flow
|
|
the slow
|
|
glazed
|
|
lilac
|
|
tongues
|
|
watch the land dry up & forget its water
|
|
(it's the sea's caresses)
|
|
but the sea always presses its case
|
|
|
|
the crashing is constant
|
|
the crashing
|
|
the constant
|
|
wuthering
|
|
give me breath & take away my speech
|
|
|
|
this half-forever is a halfway-house
|
|
to arizona's deserts
|
|
beaches of perfect solitude
|
|
there is no perfect solitude
|
|
on this beach
|
|
only half-solitudes
|
|
cluttered with beggar birds
|
|
|
|
today i found an old shell worn down
|
|
to a smooth a piece of artwork
|
|
crisscrossed with delicate grooves
|
|
so perfectly worn flat round & slim
|
|
unshell-like & tiny with a jewel's beauty
|
|
worked by nobody
|
|
|
|
|
|
Marek Lugowski
|
|
marek@mcs.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------
|
|
for nicole
|
|
----------
|
|
|
|
i want to paint my toenails funky colors like
|
|
jungle green & atomic tangerine & vivid violent
|
|
motherfucking purple
|
|
|
|
i want to eat all the green skittles out of
|
|
the bag so my tongue turns green & run around
|
|
freaking ppl. out
|
|
|
|
i want to yell sex sex sex in the middle of a
|
|
busy sidewalk just to see how ppl. would react
|
|
|
|
i want to get really drunk & barf all over the
|
|
president of the universe
|
|
|
|
i want to lick your bellybutton until you scream
|
|
|
|
|
|
dave palmer
|
|
arxt@midway.uchicago.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------------------
|
|
Snapshots -- Bedlam Boro
|
|
------------------------
|
|
|
|
Grand dad's not got
|
|
Anything to do today
|
|
'Cept sit around his checker set
|
|
And wait on old Pop Lundry to come down
|
|
Off Cooper's Ridge to play.
|
|
|
|
I watched him rock
|
|
Away this morning talking
|
|
To his bird dog Bellaret.
|
|
She don't leave the front porch much, now, either
|
|
'Cept when they go out walking.
|
|
|
|
And just as dusk
|
|
Collects along the valley's rim
|
|
All the boys and young men come
|
|
To listen and be hypnotized by tales
|
|
Of how the valley is and has always been.
|
|
|
|
"Eighty-eight years old
|
|
And the Keenus Bridge collapsed!
|
|
One righteous groan at Mandy Wheeler's weight
|
|
(Mammoth Mandy's four hundred pounds of fat)
|
|
Then rubble sixteen feet below.
|
|
Amanda too.
|
|
|
|
You know
|
|
Her screams were heard from Willisville
|
|
To Fiddler's graveyard (fifteen miles apart).
|
|
And it took two good mules
|
|
A hard days work to pull
|
|
Her from the mud."
|
|
|
|
And he enchants them
|
|
With the miners and the whores
|
|
With the wild side of the mountain,
|
|
The ridge wise boys, the foothill clowns
|
|
And the troubadors.
|
|
|
|
"The people haven't danced in Willisville
|
|
Since Charlie Waters coughed himself
|
|
Black lung until
|
|
He died.
|
|
And he was young!
|
|
|
|
Younger than the ages of collected things....
|
|
His nickel dates rented the parlor
|
|
And his white gold watch
|
|
Doesn't wear him any longer
|
|
At the stem.
|
|
Because we hocked it!
|
|
We hocked it for the band
|
|
(The Keenus Creek Quartet)
|
|
And they played "Barbara Allen" as we planned
|
|
And planted Charlie in the ground."
|
|
|
|
So go now,
|
|
Down from these older mountains
|
|
And listen to the valley sage
|
|
"He's a good ol' boy"
|
|
Pulling at his pipe and telling lies - counting
|
|
All the ways he didn't make it rich.
|
|
|
|
"'47 was a bitch!
|
|
I lost my cotton to the bug,
|
|
My dog to endless age
|
|
And my farm to Jimmy Lundry's poker game.
|
|
Boy - pass me that ther' jug
|
|
Yes sir - '47 was a year!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
JJWebb
|
|
jjwebb@cruzio.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------------
|
|
no license at all
|
|
-----------------
|
|
|
|
A sad thing,
|
|
my pencil to this page.
|
|
I don't know why the characters are formed,
|
|
why I say clouds on the air
|
|
thin and falling.
|
|
I don't have any kind of license,
|
|
waking only to roll over in the dawn,
|
|
so dense and silent with its narrative,
|
|
bleak bleeding through the off-white drapes.
|
|
|
|
Sadder still,
|
|
the mockingbirds on power lines
|
|
singing car alarms
|
|
and refuse trucks in reverse.
|
|
They are wise but I am none the wiser.
|
|
|
|
Last night I slept with no music,
|
|
alone and fetal,
|
|
so cold, I wished I could be
|
|
a cake spatula between the mattress and box springs.
|
|
The warm kept swimming away.
|
|
|
|
There've been dreams where I felt so much
|
|
I could only stand there weeping.
|
|
This is all I've ever felt in a dream,
|
|
except the tingle of those bullets in my back
|
|
when I was killed
|
|
trying to save a girl from terrorists in the cafeteria.
|
|
|
|
|
|
John True
|
|
jtrue@acpub.duke.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------------
|
|
rituals of dawn
|
|
---------------
|
|
|
|
It's his 80th birthday,
|
|
and Jack Lalane raves on
|
|
about the junk we put into
|
|
our bodies.
|
|
Boils, pimples, aging and death
|
|
scream down like bad health bombs
|
|
upon our foolish heads.
|
|
As he lectures he pumps
|
|
the barbell up and down
|
|
like some ancient hypnotic
|
|
device. He has wrinkles older
|
|
than I am, but his biceps
|
|
agelessly expand.
|
|
|
|
You wouldn't wake your dog up
|
|
in the morning and give him coffee,
|
|
a donut, and a cigarette,
|
|
would you? he asks, and as he stands,
|
|
sipping carrot juice in the Southern
|
|
California dawn, a verdant light pours in
|
|
through picture windows framed
|
|
in shades of palm,
|
|
and rollicking white puppies
|
|
circle him like earthbound doves.
|
|
|
|
But then the dog is back
|
|
to wake me up again,
|
|
his wet grey nose insistent,
|
|
and I knock over last night's
|
|
final glass of scotch, cursing
|
|
and he shies away, then pokes
|
|
once more with that sharp nose
|
|
as if to say get up, let me out,
|
|
make coffee, you lazy bastard,
|
|
and how about
|
|
a light?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Michael Mcneilley
|
|
mmichael@halcyon.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------------
|
|
looking at klee
|
|
---------------
|
|
|
|
colors merging colors into mist
|
|
flowing with the water and the paint
|
|
imagined symbols -like eyes of one just kissed
|
|
rose stained-glass veiled by a poet's plaint
|
|
|
|
distant chimes of colors soft and mellow
|
|
waterfalls of music and of hues
|
|
spring concertos savoured in Grieg's hollow
|
|
ballads selvedge with a tinge of blues
|
|
|
|
a universe espousing my existence
|
|
transported from these concrete walls of flesh
|
|
through folded time and vision's persistence
|
|
into ethereal dreams and cosmic space
|
|
|
|
a half-shy smile proferred with mischief bend
|
|
a candle laughing at a furious wind
|
|
|
|
|
|
zita marie evensen
|
|
ac869@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
quiet intrusions
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
don't try to bleed me
|
|
i've rained cherry blackbirds in the middle
|
|
of winter and
|
|
fought mexican pelicans on baja beaches
|
|
|
|
don't try to heal me
|
|
i've picked orange agates off the
|
|
windy dunes at shipwreck shores
|
|
and drank from
|
|
lonely distant phonecalls
|
|
|
|
don't try to feel me
|
|
i've ridden south bend train crashes
|
|
and soaked in savannah nights
|
|
by flickering roadside attractions
|
|
|
|
don'try to dream me
|
|
i've bent my frozen bones with
|
|
strawberry flames
|
|
and manic silly string at
|
|
monkey moon shots and
|
|
skeleton parades.
|
|
|
|
peter j. tolman
|
|
an445@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------
|
|
The Goddess in Como Conservatory
|
|
(After Toulouse Lautrec)
|
|
--------------------------------
|
|
|
|
She wanted a shadow as much as a friend
|
|
yet she yanked drunkenly the thing on her leash.
|
|
Elegantly tired of the familiar faces,
|
|
she had the talent to snag men by the eyes.
|
|
Killable and toothless all soon surrendered;
|
|
whatever powers they once had soon left them.
|
|
Here was an extraordinary success,
|
|
hands and knees and other parts approaching her
|
|
from every corner in a prayer of peristalsis.
|
|
In her was a map charting decades and distances
|
|
broader than the thoroughfares of light
|
|
she delighted in. What she wanted
|
|
was a pavement to the stars of the crushed bones
|
|
of her numberless supplicants, and her worry was
|
|
that somehow all the things she dearly wanted,
|
|
were they to prove as clear as the teardrops
|
|
she'd extracted, one by one, she might get.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mike Finley
|
|
mfinley@mirage.skypoint.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------
|
|
Renaissance
|
|
-----------
|
|
|
|
You are the rasp that rips my husk
|
|
the seed so old and dried.
|
|
|
|
It opens as you enter in
|
|
crest on your floodtide.
|
|
|
|
The swollen seed now sprouts and buds
|
|
love filled and satisfied.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Alma Engels
|
|
alma@indirect.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------------------
|
|
The way of small creatures
|
|
--------------------------
|
|
|
|
I do not seek them yet they come
|
|
like small animals of the forest they arrive
|
|
silently beside me
|
|
not touching but with the hint of their presence near me
|
|
so that when I move aside they may pass through
|
|
as is the way of small creatures
|
|
they announce their beings with a vast silence.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ralph Cherubini
|
|
ralph@bga.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------
|
|
Monkeybumber
|
|
------------
|
|
|
|
French toast air
|
|
slides under my
|
|
bedroom door where
|
|
James has finally
|
|
escaped, giant peach
|
|
and all. I hear my father,
|
|
not a scream,
|
|
something with more
|
|
power and direction.
|
|
"Has he said Monkeybumper?",
|
|
James asks, his sketched
|
|
features staring at
|
|
a point beyond my head,
|
|
just like I do in school.
|
|
"I'm not sure, James,
|
|
it sounded more like
|
|
Motherfucker."
|
|
James sighs as I turn
|
|
the page, burying him
|
|
between chapters six
|
|
and seven, never
|
|
allowing him to
|
|
change the story
|
|
again.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Christopher Simons
|
|
211simons@wmich.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------
|
|
Ann Marie
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
divorce brought her city
|
|
maturity to dull bungalow
|
|
hell pastel suburb one
|
|
ticket town to my
|
|
high school one grade 10
|
|
seat behind my own
|
|
|
|
too big too bold to blend
|
|
with anorexia peer pressure
|
|
cooked trendy pastel girls
|
|
her hair drooped long
|
|
and greasy into smudged
|
|
black bloodshot eyes
|
|
|
|
she sold me her Beatles
|
|
Abbey Road for 5 bucks
|
|
needing money to buy
|
|
temporary escape out of
|
|
boredom but for absolutely
|
|
free she taught me to smoke
|
|
|
|
curb sitting student parking
|
|
lots of leather grimy faces
|
|
and smoke delicious and
|
|
shrouding blue grey no
|
|
pastels no halos
|
|
just cool and hot
|
|
|
|
Player's Light regulars
|
|
held between first two
|
|
fingers spread as lips
|
|
love suck cheeks sunk
|
|
the brown sweet weedy
|
|
taste deep and hold tight
|
|
|
|
my mouth my lips my
|
|
excitement too wet
|
|
i'll ruin the filter
|
|
she laughs a husky loud
|
|
raspy throat noise
|
|
keeping my attention rapt
|
|
|
|
Ann Marie got enough sold
|
|
everything worth anything
|
|
money to leave my boredom
|
|
and move back to Montreal
|
|
her largeness her loudness
|
|
never missed by the pastels
|
|
|
|
|
|
Karen Hussey
|
|
ai500@freenet.carleton.ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
----------------
|
|
balloons at dawn
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
they sleep silent bound and patient on the earth
|
|
huge currents stroke their brilliant flanks
|
|
rippling grace in grooming light in warm yellow air
|
|
with the handle in your fist you prod them
|
|
the air screams as flames leap to wake them
|
|
they rise from a dream of sky
|
|
|
|
Bruce Yingling
|
|
bryingling@delphi.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----
|
|
stare
|
|
-----
|
|
|
|
_twinkle twinkle where you are,
|
|
tincture picture, blanc et noir._
|
|
|
|
I cupped the sky
|
|
with a small-moon smile -
|
|
|
|
then the triptych of the cosmos
|
|
beamed closer - while still I gaze
|
|
through Orion's grasp
|
|
|
|
I wander. Dawn creates these
|
|
possibilities -
|
|
|
|
to seek an answer
|
|
in the depth of milky seas.
|
|
|
|
|
|
John Adam Kaune
|
|
jkaune@trentu.ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---------
|
|
Ereskigal
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
Go, it cries, one veil each gate
|
|
and eyes are madness.
|
|
|
|
The green of dye and gray-pall
|
|
afternoons that loom forever mornings.
|
|
The green of fall.
|
|
A travelling mouth, no muscles,
|
|
no lungs, all velvet teeth
|
|
between rocks and slowly
|
|
rising a green thief to trunks.
|
|
Yes -- not the hanging southerners
|
|
but sloth and anti-equinox
|
|
a birth that kills and steals
|
|
back to the vagina-hall
|
|
and guards green cups as
|
|
innocuous velvet dragons.
|
|
Moss, I mark.
|
|
|
|
You -- twining earth in bulbous birth
|
|
(which gate? Two? Seven?)
|
|
dead limbs to sculptural tapestry
|
|
frills -- a Victorian sorceress
|
|
twine turn Celtic knot.
|
|
Now somehow you sprung
|
|
from your sapsucker life.
|
|
Death-feast on death to death-feast
|
|
on hoary dryads -- hoary
|
|
wrinkled thick skin, high crowned
|
|
elephant-limbed, but alive.
|
|
I can't wait, you say, and
|
|
eat them to frill yourself. See?
|
|
Thread for a rug. Death is Picasso.
|
|
Life is paint, silver-canned, not
|
|
swift as we, not miracle-cloud-thrall.
|
|
Mushrooms, I mark.
|
|
|
|
And I brush my arms and brush
|
|
and brush -- cobwebs, can't remove
|
|
or see.
|
|
Something is glowing or fading
|
|
there. Windburn flecks dissolving
|
|
lips' Cupid bow. Glass savage-torch-lit--
|
|
a wild Muse with serpentine tongue
|
|
Melpomene
|
|
I am not drunk -- oh it goes
|
|
to mushrooms again and my
|
|
pubic hair curls moss --
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jenne Micale
|
|
jmicale@drew.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
mother suckles universe
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
|
|
mother expressed it
|
|
as food for a mouth
|
|
and the echoes gave rise
|
|
to this patchwork creature
|
|
sitting watching itself being made on TV
|
|
as the circle gets tighter
|
|
the eyes pressed against
|
|
the tube fuse with it
|
|
electrons and fluids
|
|
mingle becoming
|
|
the next creation in the next vacuum
|
|
|
|
and
|
|
mother
|
|
finds the skin left behind
|
|
and
|
|
mother
|
|
suckles universe
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ray Heinrich
|
|
heinrich@va.stratus.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------
|
|
feeding time
|
|
------------
|
|
|
|
boy at the door,
|
|
cutting your teeth on my
|
|
form, mottling up
|
|
my porch with your guilt,
|
|
carve me some pity,
|
|
you, with the belling eyes,
|
|
your bag full of sadness
|
|
weighs like an oath, forgotten
|
|
or mislaid. i'm the one that
|
|
should be sad, me,
|
|
with my made milk. the house
|
|
where my mending happens
|
|
is paved with curses, soot bones,
|
|
orchards of poems, unripe,
|
|
picked. and you, banking your
|
|
scooped out eyes against the screen,
|
|
you know the poems, the hips,
|
|
the lap and cuddly wounds.
|
|
into the street with your head.
|
|
like alice, you hoped for better.
|
|
no hearts, certainly not a queen.
|
|
instead, your jacket keeps you warm,
|
|
holds your skin in place like a
|
|
dream of uneven spaces.
|
|
i am a thigh, i am a hand held
|
|
sage. wink at me. go ahead.
|
|
|
|
|
|
hillary joyce
|
|
haj2@cornell.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
The Hat
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
Today I saw a hat
|
|
lying on the pavement
|
|
with a note attached
|
|
that read
|
|
|
|
_An invisible man_
|
|
_stands before you,_
|
|
_imagine my plight_
|
|
_and be generous_
|
|
It was raining
|
|
and feeling sorry for him
|
|
I added a coin
|
|
to the pile in his hat
|
|
|
|
while in a shop doorway
|
|
across the street
|
|
a man with no hat
|
|
looked quickly away.
|
|
|
|
|
|
J. Brookes
|
|
sacaik@thor.cf.ac.uk
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-------
|
|
Markets
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
one.
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
two step
|
|
past mangos
|
|
tomatoes, dizzy
|
|
from charcoal
|
|
and kerosene fumes
|
|
|
|
a leap of faith
|
|
lands you here
|
|
sunday morning
|
|
Maxwell Street
|
|
|
|
Chicago's gauchos
|
|
wear tall white hats
|
|
the march wind
|
|
doesn't dare steal
|
|
|
|
in the hollows
|
|
of their throats
|
|
gold crosses press
|
|
belief against skin
|
|
as they stir pots
|
|
and turn tortillas
|
|
|
|
a vendor's cry
|
|
translates - this market
|
|
Chicago
|
|
Mexico
|
|
Taiwan
|
|
|
|
the jade and flowers
|
|
we left behind resurface
|
|
on card tables - hubcaps
|
|
imposter perfumes
|
|
|
|
foreigners again
|
|
the taste of strange juice
|
|
runs down our chins
|
|
wary eyes watch us buy
|
|
a beggar's
|
|
yellow pencils
|
|
follow his gentle,
|
|
wobbly gait.
|
|
|
|
|
|
two.
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
she swims
|
|
face down
|
|
on asphalt
|
|
navigates refuse
|
|
and legs
|
|
her right arm
|
|
propels
|
|
left clutches
|
|
shirts, plastic wrapped
|
|
above her
|
|
the Night Market.
|
|
|
|
he spits
|
|
a wad of betel
|
|
two dictator's faces
|
|
one cherry blossom
|
|
land by her head
|
|
she does not count
|
|
the coins
|
|
or watch him lift
|
|
the shirt
|
|
carry it away
|
|
ignore the haggling
|
|
foreigners
|
|
fake Rolexes
|
|
pale hair streaked
|
|
red and green
|
|
beneath the neon.
|
|
|
|
|
|
three.
|
|
-----
|
|
|
|
he walked the market
|
|
a hungry moon followed
|
|
|
|
stopping by a steaming cart
|
|
he perched on a three legged stool
|
|
ordered wide noodles
|
|
floating in broth
|
|
pieces of jade
|
|
|
|
the moon longed
|
|
for soup
|
|
broke her orbit
|
|
|
|
everyone fled
|
|
but the man
|
|
his face in his bowl
|
|
and a woman
|
|
her back to the sky.
|
|
|
|
her limbs break like a clay jar
|
|
where can a goddess
|
|
fallen
|
|
find soup?
|
|
|
|
in the Market
|
|
the floating
|
|
eternal market
|
|
|
|
her arms outstretched
|
|
her back to the sky.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Irene Sosniak
|
|
isosniak@indiana.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|