URTHKIN 1
Copyright 1978 by Larry Ziman
Cover Photograph: Copyright by William Reister
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: March 1978
American Man
In your blue Chicago eyes
I see the streets of Paris in January.
Men huddle in red cafes
away from the shadowed drizzle of sky
where women in rusted black coats
hurry home with papered bundles,
where women in fake silver fur
wait in doorways with slow black eyes.
You stand now
among tall midwestern buildings
splendid with light
on a cloudless August evening,
and from the streets of Paris
you carefully watch me watching you,
my long black hair floating free
Katharyn Machan Aal
Ithaca, New York
"into dope"
ectoplasm zero
arid faces that inhabit
ghostland
hair that cannot be wired
shoe lingering
in eternity
zoom
all of space and
distance too
condensed in the coffee cup
infinte repetition
of zinc and fomica
nothing up
nothing down
corridors of irretrievable
shadow
frozen hunger
the belt the spoon
the flame like a bit of tinsel
turning in the eye
traffic of incredible mastodons
converging in the needle
rust
arabic conclusions
yawning in the metal
heap of numbers
gray meat
zap the fall
through algebraic rooms
into a single
mirror
thread of saliva
animal doing circfles
in a dry gulch
ivan arguelles
Brooklyn, New York
Decision at the Mortuary
“We’re going in to see your father now,”
his mother whispers. “Want to say goodbye?”
He stands his tallest, almost to her chin.
Beyond the chapel doors an organ throbs
a mournful dirge that churns the boy’s insides.
Except where two brown cinder-chunks of pain
are burning through, his face is plasterboard,
His eyes, like a wounded puppy’s, overrun
upon the highway. Strangely ill-at-ease
in a new dark suit that scratches at his legs,
The young boy thrusts perspiring fists into
the pockets of his coat. He swallows hard.
He can’t remember, with his head so hot
and whirling like a roller-coaster ride,
just when , or if, his father ever said
goodbye. (Not in so many words.)
The playful scuffling, ruffling of his hair;
the special handshake with a sudden squeeze –
all these were his. And messages he gave:
“Chin up! Behave yourself!” That sort of thing.
And now his mother’s hand in white kid glove
so tenderly against his stiffened arm
again, “We’re going in to say goodbye.”
He can’t look up – he dare not see her tears.
He can’t be sick, although his stomach turns
at the nauseating smell of smoke-gone-stale,
now intermixed with heavy floral scent.
Still looking down, he wiggles all his toes
inside his stiff black shoes on marble tile
and whispers raspily, “I’ll just wait out here.”
Nova Trimble Ashley
Wichita, Kansas
One Red Slipper
Look through this dirty window.
Put your face above the rags
stuffed in the broken glass
below the 1936 calendar
from Riley’s Dry Goods Store.
See that torn red slipper
on the shelf above the bench?
Old Lars never got around
to fixing the strap.
They found old Lars,
the little shoemaker,
dark and bloated in his bed;
and there isn’t a chance
that I can dance
in just one slipper
at the county fair next week.
Nova Trimble Ashley
Wichita, Kansas
she filters their sight
a dress is opened up
into a wave
she lifts from her white temples
copies of life
her statue is for men
to leave their boots in
there
in her house of dark flesh
one bowl of a knee
shimned to the bone
from the highway drivers see her
as no more than a snail
smoking under
a star lamp
night can not measure
the fur coming our of her
as her nostrils pray
over a polished apple
& a silk glove inside her loins.
guy r. beining
Brooklyn, New York
wreckage bubbles up around the open floor
blind to any word
drunkenness for deessert
each night testing the fall of pudding
to dive with one wing
only birds can’t feel
the jewels
& the woman of real flesh
is in the monkey circle
her necklace blasts open their ribs.
on the other side of a row of darkness
the traffic brightens
we wipe the weeds without touching them
& I wonder why it was
that my hand passed thru maps
& into the hills that felt
like her knees.
guy r. beinng
Brooklyn, New York
The Magician
mWhen you speak, your hands
open
their pages and words sail out
as your potter’s fingers shape air,
working from left to right
coming together to draw water.
Now, they are the long tendons
of rivers, shaping
and reshaping their banks.
Now, they palm surfaces as wind
planes branches and the sky
springs closer.
Following one another, they invent
forests, stalk prey,
stealthy among the trembling leaves.
When they part, elands
plunge through savannahs, the sky
darkening with birds.
Dr. Marguerite Bouvard
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Hobo Heaven
full of small fires
under bean cans
an all night refuge
where old friends
shake hands
and exchange
directions
Peter Brett
Ross, California
San Francisco
a fat lady
in a small room
having a hawk
tattooed on her thigh
the blood red moon
Steven Ford Brown
Birmingham, Alabama
Together
your breasts feel
as soft as the belly
of a small bird
& your heart races
like a frightened deer
skittering over
wolf-tracked snow
Steven Ford Brown
Birmingham, Alabama
THE ANTIPODES
for Thornton Wilder 1897-1975
Beyond the one-legged knots
and the ruddy turnstones
scolding the sea back,
he must have been hidden,
one shawl among those many lawn chairs
facing Mexico.
I passed him where he lay concealed
in the shadows of Australian pines.
Why should I recognize him
so far from Our Town?
The light there never lets go.
It clings like leaf scale, it infests
the acres of tangled mangrove
with its most virulent shingle.
Useless to rage.
The light is not dying, it shines
in the belly of the fish
seized by the osprey in midair.
Only a man was dying
with the light in his open hands.
If I had known.
Would he have preferred Monadnock,
any hilltop in New Hampshire, oaks
with the clouds caught in their branches?
Or was he sick
of the righteous
neverland of Grover’s Corners?
On my way to pick shells
I passed him. I would have heard
if he had said “Goodbye, world”
or “good riddance.” It was not in the cards
and now I don’t know what to think.
It is raining in Michigan.
A whirlwind has leveled a deserted barn
and a trailer camp whose vehicles
were born without wheels
and would never make it to Florida.
Nursing homes
are full
of the madness of small towns,
those who failed at everything
and then failed to die. For a while they posed
as the stomach “embattled,” firm
against annexation, the city
with its attendant psychiatry and crime,
and then gave in. At cockcrow
three times and three times again
they denied Geroge and Emily.
"In the single is the most profound.”
I think it’s more like a rope bridge
suspended over some Peruvian chasm.
The strands when they dry
snap with the weight of so many pilgrims
and below them is a darkness and a pit
the fiber causeway can span
but never explain.
As they fell between narrowing walls
were they given insight,
could they read the strata of split rock
marbled with amber and iron -
a nostalgia to be in at the beginning?
The simple is also the end
and the reduction to essential form
is neverthelesss a reduction
as the waters in the canyon's depth know.
Some of the birds on that beach
had flown in from as far as Venezuela
rounding the arc
of Antilles, the boundary stones
that may have been mountains on the rim
of a crater, islands
as high as Monandock or as deep.
Not one of us on that beach
with our heads bowed to catch
the perfect angel's wing
have ever been to Venezuela,
though I rememnber the long slope to timberline
from the pitched tent
at the foot of the mountain near Jaffrey
and the whitethroats.
Old man, were they your dead
or the sad living?
If I had seen you those final days
below the veranda or the scarred palms
of the Island Inn,
I might have asked to sit down,
to sort these colored shells
or string coral, to be present for a time
and say nothing
of what went wrong.
E.G. Burrows
Ann Arbor, MIchigan
THE GREAT AUCTION: EXTINCTION OF A BREED
Ants cart on their backs
oblongs of Rembrandt and Vermeer,
and what arts can't be lugged, they doff.
Here comnes one with a stirrup cup
Tucked inhis briefcase.
The Hals on his head keeps the rain off.
HIgh bidders have emptied the ducal mansion.
Ants trickile their loot
of candlesticks, crystal, imps
grimacing from their choir stalls,
into parked vans.
The dragon is dead. His guard
down, his very rich hours taxed
to the last chime, he took it
on the chin, his gains
went under the hammer.
Now he is despoiled of his hoard
and shuffles among the destitute of heaven.
So the ants crwoned
with a thousand flowered chamber pots
are more or less equal,
averaged by law to a snuffbox each
and a Miro.
No blood shed but no
Winter Palace left to storm,
they heed the injuunctions and erect
a condominium with the crucial stones.
E.G. Burrows
Ann Harbor, Michigan
LIVING TOGETHER
All night a battering,
the shingles wail, the doors
withstand. In the branches the wind
manufactures terror
as we huddle
in a nest of blankets
to keep out everything
beyond these walls.
Joan Colby
Streamwood, Illinois
Waking
Up late this morning
and reading newspapers
and drinking coffee
my wife brought up
on a tray.
Daughter
playing on one end
of the big mattress
while I struggled to
clear my head, naked
from the waist down.
Finally, and not knowing
it, Maxie had worked
around to where she saw
that little bit of
penis morning betrays
between my legs,
sky
overcast and thick
with the October cold and
coffee steaming and
delicious in the mug.
She had reached once
and I watched her face,
feeling myself sudenly
embarrassed. That look
all of a grasping sudden,
as though I were immediately
a little gate and a knob
was all there was between
her and the larger world
outside. I covered up
and said three or four
things in a language
neither of us understand.
Paul Christensen
Bryan, Texas
THE HERITAGE
Deep inside her cedar chest
my mother concels the faces
of cracked and holy ancestors--
the jungle, a gentlman ape
beaming at his lady,
a hairy ballerina
with Grandma's dolly on her head;
a tree shrew, bat-faced cousin
sagging on a bar stool,
eager to thrust his minaret
into a tulip.
And O the new mother
cooling while her wee alligator
reaches for the cockroach
caught in my jockstrap.
I am frightened by hoards of fish
sliding down the chimney
tail-first, strange Santas
dangling from my father's neck.
And how I love the spitting bagpipe!
Sessile and magnificent mother
of tadpoles
squirming in a sea of stars.
My grandpa's forehead
is covered with urchins and starfish.
His nose is an arm
and O the elegance
of shimmering pink flatworms--
living ribbons
writhing in Aunt Lily's hair,
while Uncle Henry's stomach
is adorned with amoebae,
stentors, and paunchy paramecia
scooting and rolling madly
around his navel.
But I'm glaed
there won't be a cedar chest,
cobweb-covered in the corner
next time--no coffin,
only meadows
embroidered with poppies and grass,
forests interlaced with junipers,
madrones and black oaks,
all beaded with nests
and woven with sky--
then I'll hope for hollow bird bones
and endless flight.
Lucille Day
Oakland, California
OLD HOTELS
Old hotels intrigue me,
Faded silk and tarnished brass
And dusty glass tiles lining pools filled with leaves,
Where broken cherubs still smile.
Curious but unconcerned,
A graying clerk observes my air of studied casualness
As I ascend the bird cage lift in cranking jerks
To exsplore in secret.
With quiet care,
I reach to touch the cracked facades
Or sit and trace the dirty swirls of thinning color
on a carpeted stair.
Decaying elegance surrounds me
in the stale and musty air of dim lit halls,
And bids me linger,
"Please!"
"Just a few minutes more,"
Like some ancient relative
Desperate to whisper her sad secrets.
And so,
I peer through grimy windows
At forgoten ballrooms,
Where satin couples once danced.
Where polilshed parquet
Reflected chandeliers of frosted glass and crystal
And nights were made of laughter and champagne and gardenias.
The whisper in my ear turns to weeping
As I gaze at broken fixtures and ruined floors,
Crowded now with old refrigerators
And piles of dirty mattresses.
Silent cripples locked with the past
Behind the frosted French doors.
Valorie Ditton
Los Angeles, California
HERO TAKING A BATH
Sea-dreams, lengths of sausage.
Boston whores and motorcyclists inhabit them.
But he's at ease now, his broadsword
limp in the suds....
Speaking of suds, perhaps a Schlitz to cool
the bath-warmed body lounging.
The refrigerator's in reach,
the opener's his chipmunk teeth.
He loves the slush of bathwater when he rolls
his nsnakeskin body from side to side.
Cleansing the mind
and breath he devours a book
pausing occasionally to tip his head and stare
out and up at the stars.
Window dressers are preparing
a new constellation for him.
It depicts him
on his back under Cassiopeia:
a rhinestone-studded ramrod connects them,
as if he'd cleaned a pistol.
He's pleased with this life,
he's met all the gods and devils,
he's drunk blood from plaster bowls.
For now the grime
of a city evening,
later a veil of angels falls
not to calm but to excite him.
The beer bottle busts in his hand, his curly
sunflower head sways on its stalk, his child-mind
closes for the night.
Dripping thunderstorms,
he rises.
The neighbors weep, but his weapons smile,
too polished to kill:
he only wants to play before
sneaking off to sleep.
William Doreski
Cambridge, Massachusetts
OAK SQUARE WAKING
When I woke, you were the kitten rasping
me up and down, your style
was gay with creosote and balm,
we could've stuck together.
Now the day perks over Oak Square.
I've hardly ever been down here,
even the dogs semed bored with dawn.
Coffee? And a little more tease, if you will.
Your body is glass, it filters the sun;
doubled as it passes through you,
conscience splashed against one brilliant wall,
its brother forked through the groin....
Propped in a corner and smiling, I still can feel
the grooves and scars on my body.
Eggs? Over light.
Whose blood mars the sleep-in sofa?
Now the sun gathers skirts and
I'm in the shade again,
your plants look out with longing while
with the aluminium keen of a star
the Brighton bus pants at a traffic light,
sours the air.
I think of your mouth and know all mouths are weapons,
that sick breath tries to quiet me----
It's not fair, not fair, the dark returns:
my mother's at the door!
Do you hear me, crouched by the stove?
I'm creeping back to those worldly plots,
my body rustles plant-like and dry....
I leave you a primer for chapped lips;
choke down your tea and stoop, and lick
the pages from the floor.
William Doreski
Cambridge, Massachusetts
PRODIGIOUS NIGHT
night of elongated shadows
night of kisses exploding like pomegranates
night of annihilating air gliding ravenously into me
night of drugs of lovers copulating into fragments
night of translucent darkness of diseased combs
night of impossible insects in motionless rooms
night of complaining motors
night of hands of clusters of reflections
night of rivers gorged on mirrors and blood-thirsty floodgates
night of sugar cane and splinter of Chinese music
night of boots of wild perfume
night of fear of prayer and astral travel
night of blood on the cemetery snow of solitude
night of clots in cumulus minds of violence
night of indiscovery of black gloves waving flagstones
night of rain of erotic repetitions of mountains
night of crushed chins of whips of lightning
night of conversational stones in the beards of bells
night of passionless cries of iridescent tears of shoes
night of silent forgetting of black caresses of bandages
night of chipped teeth and the insomnia of lava
night of electric foreskins
night of diaphanous hourglass of clearing houses for silence
night of tattered seeds strewn over black centuries
night of yellow eyes and sparks of fingernails
night of peaches of ground glass
night of forever gathering its thread on precipices and radios
night of resignation as weightless as the fog of headlong hope
Franz Douskey
New haven, Connecticut
$10,000 SCREENPLAY
morning.
cats fighting outside the window.
a friend calls & asks how
the writing is coming.
he writes screenplays;
he's "into the continuity" of
writing screenplays.
I'm foggy; don't want to talk about
poetry or how it's coming
poetry!
I'm sick of talking about poetry.
cats fighting outside the window.
I don't want to talk about poetry!
a helicopter is overhead
looking for an outlaw.
the man next-door
is kicking the shit out
of the woman next-door.
poetry is the outlaw!
nobody pays $10,000
for a poem.
C. Douglas Draime
Los Angeles, California
THE ONLY THING SHE SAID
ON THE NIGHT ROBERT KENNEDY DIED
her great aunt & uncle
died into
skeletons
in the camp;
their friend Huntz
turned them in
on the night of
August the first
1939
after he ahd eaten
dinner with them
& joked and laughed
& denounced
HItler
with them.
he was seen getting
out of a
Gestapo
car & pointing to
their house two hours
after he
broke
bread with them.
C. Douglas Draime
Los Angeles, California
In The Heart Of The Desert NIght
DARK
the deseert night
THE
the desert night
RIVER
the desert night
FLOWING
the desert night
SOUTH
the desert night
DARK
the desert night
AS
the desert night
THIS
the desert night
DESERT
this desert night
NIGHT
L.S. Fallis
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Journey's End
NOW NOW the city
snow margo DO IT
DO IT forty years
it was all for
nothing NOW NOW black
this night DO IT
DO IT the taste
of metal JUMP JUMP
JUMP there is only
this DO IT DO
IT a gold watch
NOW NOW and port
charlotte DO IT DO
IT margo how cold
the wind NOW NOW
how much I wanted
to JUMP JUMP JUMP
L.S. Fallis
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Manitoba Winerscape
twilight
the winter sky
the stars
brilliant in
forty degreees
of frost
holding my hand
yo9u skate across
this winter pond
cathy
this memory
my warmth
as
the
coldwinds
of
february
howl
along
the
desert
rim
L.S. Fallis
Las Cruces, New Mexico
San Jacinto Plaza
1 sullen 3 eye 9
2 men 4 supple
5 hips
6 and
7 curse
8 relentless
L.S. Fallis
Las Cruces, New Mexico
The Act Along The Wire
Along the telephone wire,
a squirrel pauses.
The black cord signals him,
and he squats, surveying.
Wires pass from pole to pole,
to garage roof,
highways between homes.
One squirrel
crosses upside down,
slower than the rest,
the star to work without the net.
Their home can weave across the city,
a web, their private sky;
or root them here,
in that tree or the next,
these troupe mimes
of footing and distance.
D. Folts-Gray
Morristown, Tennessee
I LIVE TO SMUGGLE BLUE-PLATE SPECIALS OF DEATH
INTO YOUR SECRET & CUSHY CAFES
In the 2nd-grade I fell in love
with Kathleen Waters
I never told her till this poem
I never dipt blonde braids
in inkwells; only borrow'd
her eraser once
Even tho her father was the finest
mailman whoever carried Altadena,
I never got a chance to play postoffice
Now, after scored years filthy with
sophistication - drugginG & drinking
& living like a thief; falling asleep
behind the voices of soft music
& hard women
Now, thinking back on all these chicks
chalkt off the old existential tote-
sheet - you know, in simply off-the-
cuff comparison - you understand,
2nd-grade Kathleen comes up in my mind
sharp as a steak-knife I stole from
the Stork Club in 1964
Michael C Ford
Los Angeles, California
This morning I walk out
to see you again
in downed precision diving
for who knows what is left
beneath icy watered rivulets
of the ice-blocked bay,
wondering as I walk
how small creatures
survive a winter.
This afternoon land developoers
plumed in coats filled with feathers
point the boundaries
of the new tall building
which will block my view of the bay
and yours. You squat
to keep your webbed feet warm,
how your broad beak holds.
Ray Freed
Westhampton Beach, New York
AFTER PAYING A $396 DATSUN REPAIR BILL
Japanese assembly line workers
sing company songs around
Datsun car bodies moving
down the conveyor belt.
They play ping-pong
on their lounch break
or squat neck-deep in heated water
at the workers' baths.
When a car completes the line,
the eight men responible
sit down ina circle
to discuss what they've done.
Then foreheads to the hood they
vow this car is free from error
and place side by side their
thumb prints on the windshield.
At night the chosen one
sleeps in the back seat;
in his constant dreams he
imagines long journeys.
Some say he awakes
in the dark of the night,
lifts up the hood and puts
his fingers where he wants.
Some days mistakes are made;
the supervisor in a quiet voice
informs the one to blame
precisely what went wrong.
He nods, bows stifly,
solemnly clenches the muscles
in his jaw and upper arms
and falls on his grease gun.
The other workers avert
their eyes for shame.
William Heath
Highland, New York
burn
maybe i would be easier to be
one woman bound by fate but i
am so many there's alwasy a new
way to look at stars from
a dancer's summer hill naked
neath a navel moon or saying
how much more i love the sun
in your hair than all the suns
in space and how much more i
fear the blackness of your eyes
than all the abyss beyond these
galaxies we seem to be lost in
from the way love is so lets hope
someway in this flashing instant
that you find in me so many secrets
you never come out again
o i would rather have a sunday
with a luscious person tham all
the multihued skin eternity could con
sume deep within the earth is
a great heart beating and i
lie upon it knowing i am where i
want to be you let me ride and i
ll show moon's tide
that only ocean knew till you
i never finish navigating
your burning current smells delic
ate as a paintbrush fire out of
control in wet spring mountain air
Mary Heckler
Pocatello, Idaho
Union Junction
cheek against the cold rail
delicate flakes of snow
on silver
grow transparent returning
for a moment their cyrstalline
form then only a prismic drop
against the silver
Rob Hollis MIller
Union, Oregon
MACHISMO
When I first went off with a freind
down into the dark unknown of Mexico
my mother worried:
bandidos lurking in every doorway
dangers everywhere
we took the train from Mexicali to Guaymas
second class
the poor people
the continuing real people of Mexico
cheap food corn meal & chiles
in through the windows
Acros from us sharing a space
during part of our tripo down south
quiet swarthy men
physically close to the desperados my mother'd imaginied
what to say
keep our knees & eyes from meeting
And when the vendors came through
while my friend & I drank beer
those dark-eyed bandidos drank milk
Dennis Holt
Santa MOnica, California
SILENCE
Through the ages the ocean cliffs
have been crying out
to the birds.
Dale Jacobson
Grand forks, North Dakota
GRAND CENTRAL STATION
A yoked Zapotec
carrying water
to nowhere
Tom Jones
Washington, D.C.
strait jacket
once harry houdini slipped your lock
and leapet out of your pocket
like a snake's skin
you molted off his back
albino monkey
you lay there
as limp as god's sock
which inmate in this amonia-stung academy
invented you?
sack of saints
bag of martyrs
satchel full of fur and squawks?
which orderly ordered you
like ether
from the pharmacy's meat shelf?
they say you aqueeze drunks dry
with your wet corsetry
they say you are fire proof
proof of voodoo
proof
how the lunatics hug you
wrapping their arms around your canvas heart
they jump up and down
halfway in and halfway out
of your cocoon
moon mohter
your leather straps
strap down the wings of those who fly
buckle up the tongues of those who tell
shell
there are no cracks
in you
Terry Kennedy
Duxbury, Massachusetts
yesterday
yesterday it was so good
love poems rising up out of the cracks
in the cafe table
waitresses with henna hair
acting polite
coffee from the top of the pot
even the rain fell perfectly
onto the hollywood set of the streets
yesterday i had the thought of you
wrapped around me like a shawl
i was a big deal woman
with men
falling in love with my name
before they met
and when they met me they stayed
because i was the answer
yesterday i was the miracle worker
today
the kitchen floor needs washing
the sox need mending
and i am eating a n.y. times recipe
called
moussaka for the masses
Terry Kennedy
Duxbury, Massachusetts
I wanted to be the one
I wqanted to be the one
who struck him as rich,
swell enough to create
applause inside his skin
I wanted the echo
of his scream of pleasure
to harmonize with my last note
to make all the notes
swimming against the white page
leap out and join me in a dance
like animated figures
solemnly drawn
by one with a plan
I wanted to bring him
that elusive high
borne down from its mountain
where others enjoy it
as common as candy bars
I wanted to taunt him
with my wrapper
and have him discover
an inside he wouldn't
squeeeze and throw away --
to be the one he would save
Binnier Klein
Westport, Connecticut
Cape May Point
clear cloud skymare's tumbleweed rustle river
banks fluff bayt impair wind will
den earth ear sea wrestler
piked marsh sedge screecfhes tangled sentinel
ramble among ground objects:
tired knot, clumped algae, horseflies, guts,
strapless gauze handbag, fish hands, battered buoy,
tire ruts, plastic botle, egg pod wreath,
scrolled periwinkle, sandfleas, ripped nest,
leathery spine, thread spool, mussel castinet
sand stunt arch shadow prowls
cluster burrow hieroglyphic
nacreous meadow wayward impulse
Charles Lynch
Brooklyn, New York
extensive harm to delicate mechanisms
the gifted are here create forgiveness
hi school is not doin they job
time river veils vile valley of tears
mind's corner cornered mined with slob
hun nuns flung flat in vestibules
curt detours moronic architectonic
a certs as physicological rule
if birth worth berth at's cool
clumsoid shriek stained glass in brownsville
tar any penny par till tootsie role
walk wild slide eddy pimp strut prance
limp stroll linger perhaps advance
wince in winch of wicked work
cop slyly apts tap room spume
ignorance print nickname object lesson
game gun show shoe shootum sputum blessin
when wheat was safe when locks was lox
linguini ledger bikini pledger box
chafed glimmer near shimmer imminent pen
drawn near brawn breeze brain drain
ought autocrats swat satin flies
ought neon snore yore thought orbit
changed angel dust on which emerged
a junta a troika a nixon a purge
thee stalagmite vane of tired jewel
he street smart idiot gores care's car
we wreath soaked sassafras husk of dawn
she whisk disco up on a star
clock empty hands off
somebody teach preachers how to live
crying scowlin
rent ragged night
saves sense satan
bomb god good book
Charles Lynch
Brooklyn, New York
Milton Lane's Snapshots
scrimage blizzard whizzed
sand blasted land escape
glance goes out in huff
full house peels in lofter: eek oing choop oonk
O wizard of technically hideous photographs
essential rout: to take
earthquake mirthmake girthfake
find views in fun house gloom room
solice life light twice in bog fog agog
forehand forehead's foreground
bow tied shark horn rim gleam
silver mud lorry caravan out
hoed elbow busy figurine
confetti clones in harmattan
grin shear cue ass ears fingers
cassava sprawl along savannah path
poise satin munch duckpin trophy
decal dorsal bumper Hertz van
termite tents in gunbboat spats
hunch caftan lecture linoleum patch
claque of chicken backs of buildings
Charles Lynch
Brooklyn, New York
HOMECOMING
the faded
pictures waiting
on warped shelves
like snipoers
James Magorian
Lincoln, Nebraska
ANOTHER BALLAD
"You bastard!" she shouted
drawing back her arm.
The beer bottle
came at my face
point-blank,
from 3 feet away.
I caught it.
You have to have
the reactions
of a gunfighter
to survive
in a marriage.
Joseph McLaughln
New Philadelphia, Ohio
Union Junction
check against the cold rail
delicate flakes of snow
on silver
grow transparent returning
for a moment their crystalline
form then only a prismic drop
against the silver
Rob Hollis Miller
Union, Oregon
MORNING RINGSIDE
The top of the tulip tree
boxes with the wind,
bobs, weaves, tips way over
(that roundhouse really landed)
and the birds whistle,
scream for a knockout
loud enough to lift me,
knocked out all night,
onto my feet again
before the count of ten.
Lillian Morrison
New York, New York
PLENITUDE
If that dogwood, attired
insoftest red, were a woman,
she would be blond, warm,
with blue eyes, a touch of rose
in her cheeks, and a delicate
husky-toned speech. She would be
in her prime, just beginning
to age, leaning to plumpness,
impeccably dressed, and with a
full-blown, drooping grace
would suddenly fill
the unsuspecting room
with fangs of fire
as this tree does
the leaf-strewn yard.
Lillian Morrison
New York, New York
PEDIGREE PARTS
"The composite liver of an alcoholic ward.
The feet of failed Olympic runners.
Two hands adept at surgery
And strangulation, questionable vices.
A St. Bernard's penis,
Starved on a diet of snowscapes.
Choice ruptures, a crushed sternum.
thumbs able to execute
Chickens in a pinch, a tongue
From the poet of that alcoholic ward.
The missing arm of an Italian statue.
Musical sweetbreads, toes like
Frozen daggers, the toupee found
In a bus station wash room.
One camera's eye, 800 ASA, vision
Enough for cruising by nightshine,
Scanning anonymous spleens and bruises,
The eternal gold tooth.
Then the tender-sided heart of Siamese twins,
Longing for something friendly.
Something blind and deaf, perhaps
An Aztec weddding mask. And museum bones,
Unearthed in Burma, packaged now
And catalogued, skeleton bait of things
That go fishing for common sutures, a host.
G.E. Murray
Oak Park, Illinois
THE HESITATION COMEBACK
Piecing together pages of a dictionary
quartered
By a strongarm, I acquire a personality
fit for
Public wear. After years of cultivating
seizures,
Lending blood money, borrowing it back,
there are
Simple signs: The vicious eyes I trained
to stalk
Like insatiable pets no longer ambush
loved ones;
Glass has lost its flavor; Artic dark
bubbles
Its last hurrah in my bloodstream. So
it goes.
When I saw these fun suds of affection
issue
From my lips like regulation language
instead
Of hieroglyphics, or words slurred along
grapevines,
When I offered to finance a new cosmos,
chisel
A monument to recipes for sainthood, I
knew then
This flight of love would seal and band me:
"pigeon."
G.E. Murray
Oak Park, Illinois
WHEN THE HILLS BECAME WEST VIRGINIA
When the wind first walked off
And whistled south,
Grass was hearsay;
Sun, the sudden rumor
Of seasons told in tongues
The sky interpreted
As a lasting accident,
A totem of love.
When night stood in the ground
Like a relic,
A secret keepsake
From the horizon's tomb,
A story was born
Of reeds and pinesmell,
Vast spans of carnivorous green,
Fropm one early winter to next,
A fortune in light
Wound through these hills
LIke a fresh scar.
Tablets of air
Went unread.
Silence improved
Its raw reserves.
Around ice and sacred backwaters,
Among the long speeches
Of trees, lectures
On rockfall, furious
Landslide omen,
Signals of other life rose
in howls, in smoke,
somewhere beyond
This spilling thickness.
Birsds here married
MId-air, wings in tilt,
Under the blessing
Hands of sunshine.
And beneath oak's splitting
Bark and crook,
A braid of insects
Wormed inhonor
Of nothing so beautiful,
Nothing absolute...
And a deer's head, dead asleep,
Educated earth
By its infinite dreaming,
Private as the chart
Once mistaken
For the original hole of midnight,
Guiding small eyes inward
In blind delight.
Then all the stones unturned
Imagined themselves
Set in a grave of mortar,
Saw nameless animials
Freeze in sight
Of new tracks,
And all stones
Spoke righteously
Of infection,
An abscess of space,
The distance narrowing
Between stone's
Word and gunpowder sermon...
And in that hushed congestion,
When scents of fear
Finally ascended
In witnes of cliffs,
When trails below
Burned up through evergreen
Like fuses,
The hearsay grass was crushed
Into Wagon ruts -- wind
Tested gingham,
Screeched like a bird
Waking to sawmills,
Gave homespun promise
to those who outfit
The dark with logfires,
Confusion's song, the rules
These hills would always ignore.
G. E. Murray
Oak Park, Illinois
THE BEEF-STUNNER MAN
The hind was a hock of darkness among the meaty trees
The boning a ghostly bacon comb just tossed into the freeze
The loader a ribbon of gripstrut over the offal door
And the beef-stunner man came fliring -
Firing - firing
The beef-stunner man came firing, over the squeegeed floor.
He'd schermer caps in his rubber gloves, a bunch of blanks
On his skid,
A duck filled cook and baker's coat, and bloodstained
Apron bib
They fitted as well as a wash-up suit, his boots by
Goodyear Tires
And he carried a primal breaking saw
To cut and quarter up the raw
His horn cutter sterilized once more on the end of his power wires.
Over the gutters he splattered, and triggered his slaughtering gun
He grabbed the steer by the withers, confused, the aniimal's head
it spun
He whistled a tune to the carcass, spreqad on the killing floor
Then dragged the beast to the drop spreader hook
Valvces and rail stops and drop spreader hooks
Unlike the cast iron lodedstar hoists, the chains and gears are for.
And dark by the Johnson hide stripper, an operator stands
Where Gus the skinner listened, his face pressed in his hands
HIs eyes were hollows of madness, his shroud pins strewn about
But he loved the bull stud's daughter
Bess the old bull's duaghter
Now fifty meat patties, in a food-shaper's route.
One kiss, my bonny patties, I'm after nutrition, I'm miffed
And I shall be back with a filmy shrink-wrap, before the
Morning shift;
If the foreman press me sharply, and harry me through the day
Then look for me by the grinder
The butcher-boy AA56 grinder
I'll come for you by the grinder, though the meat-packer bars
The way.
Gus arose in his PVC apron, he scarce could reach
Her shape
But he grabbed his neoprene glove from the bench, with
Fingers bound up in see-thru tape
As the poroduction line of paties came rolling down the belt
He kissed his Bess on the vacuum device
The bush pump houseing, the vacuum dvice
The he grabbed her tight as a vice, and bent at the
Sealer he knelt.
Opal N. Nations
Toronto, Canada
KEHOE BEACH
indifferent
to fisherman
the gray sea
I watch my urine
sink
into the sand
toe
a gull carcass
fog moves
closer
becomes
wind-burned
old man
coast farmer
"Have you seen a boy
couple years younger
than this one?
He vanished
on the beach.
Supposed to be
hauling rock.
He's not at the truck
Not at the ranch."
glasses magnify
his gray eyes
his other son
in blue nylon
is scared
we look
for him
ghost shrimp
torn crabs
Nona Nimnicht
Oakland, California
INSOMNIA
I couldn't fall
asleep. The small
town was too quiet.
Crickets rubbed night
songs bertween their
thin knees. The men
on the moon could
be heard walking
back and forth over
its grin. He was
waiting to leave with
the first rain.
The retired salesman,
who never grows
old, walked quietly
past my door, to his
room at the end of
the hall. Only his
shirt was loud. On
the third floor the
seventy-three-year-old
ex-flapper's mind
finally snapped. It
made me jump.
The old boarding
house was built 75
years ago in between
beers. I listened
to its white paint
moan gray again
and to the last
white hairs move
into the landlord's
scalp, that was
once red as a sore
throat.
Kevin Pilkington
Mount Vernon, New York
MOSES
Moses sits alone at
the bar. His red eyes
hide in caves bove
a long gray beard. All
night, it tries to dip its
tail into his gin.
Burning ashes crawl
down a cigarette, taunting
his hand, it mannequins
next to another double.
The railroad tracks run
behind the tavern's back.
Each time the express
trains by, the liquor bottles
start to dance. Moses
chaperones.
He has been coming here
for years. The moose, shot
with beginner's luck, still
grins above the songs
that jukebox against the
wall.
Smoke hanging like
the barmaid's chest, hopes
for a window to open.
The bathroom walls wait
for new jokes. Upstairs
are small apartments.
When the days are in
heat, tenants hang with
the laoundry outside their
windows.
Moses has decided to
politely wait for the paint
on the walls to fade, before
going home to his wife,
who no longerr waits
up for him.
Kevin Pilkington
Mount Vernon, New York
PASSING THROUGH
Bald tires keep me
under the speed limit.
Small animals hit by
strange cars lie in the
side of the road. Three
miles from a chipmunk's
tall white houses, village in
front of a mountain with
a cloud stuck on its peak.
Old folks don't die here.
They sit on porches rocking
naps into their eyes. Hounds
doughnut at their feet.
Women with green thumbs
worry about their gardens
and the flowers that won't
come. Good looking girls,
I blame on clean air.
Main Street is smaller
than the change in my
pocket. White Fences
picket around the church
and courthouse. Young
farm boys carve their
names into the belly of
a large oak before heading
east.
There is no crime: the sun
is too strong for muggers.
Streets don't bum with derelicts.
There aren't any alleys to
junkie in. Whores trick what
they can in the next village
too small to name on the
map and rapists never
leave the park back home.
Kevin Pilkington
Mount Vernon, New York
THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD
After 8 years I
stopped to visit the
old neighborhood.
Memories kept coming
back like manuscripts.
My old apartment
was smaller than
the tips in the diner
below it. The sinks
in the bathroom and
kitchen roached. When
the nights got cold
as the girl in 2A, a
pint was kept on
the table for heat.
The couple above me
use to methadone
visits to the clinic
3 bus stops away.
In the jazz cloub
across the street,
horn players would
bring new licks, to
dixie the sun up.
The Valucci brothers
no longer deli great
heroes on the corner.
The store is up for
sale. I heard they
left around the
time old Joe the
barber's memory did.
Italian granmothers
like to sit in front
of their buildings
during the day,
watching cars tie
themselves into jams
by 5. They worry
about the Cubans
2 blocks down and
the muggings that
keep going up with
the rents. Now they
go in with the sun.
The stickball game
started the night I
left, was still going
on in front of the
laundromat. My
old friend, Little Jack,
use to have a hard time
keeping secrets, now
it's jobs. Drunks
keep alleys
wet in between rain
storms. When the
skies clear, rainbows
crayon the oil stains
that slick the street.
Mrs. Grady runs the
magazine stand. She's
a brouge full of gossipo.
No one knows her
brother will start
to bookie time in
prison next month.
Billy's Pub has gone
topless. The girls
sell the drinks, a
color TV and good
jokes couldn't. The
A bus, with its beast
of lights, continues
to rattle past the
kids on 6 Ave. and
the firehydrant that
will always be
closer than the beach.
Kevin Pilkington
Mount Vernon, New York
GASOLINE ALLEY
The young girl who runs
Harbor Tunnel Change Booth Number Four
pops lemonheads and likes jazz
far too much to
give it up at work.
On cool, August midnights
she'll cue up none but Satchmo on the player
and shag those cars through with a fancy wave
'til half the northbound Monord Lane is just
jivin' aloud.
Michael Reis
Baltimore, Maryland
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