. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 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 posted to 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. We regret an error made in the initial posting of the ascii version of this issue (labeled "Christmas 1994"). A poem by E.L. Van Hine was inadvertently excerpted as it had first appeared in rec.arts.poems, instead of being reproduced in its entirety. The error does not appear in any PostScript document; this corrected ascii version of Issue 12 replaces the earlier version in our archives. Sand River Journal is posted in ascii and PostScript formats to r.a.p and related groups, and is archived at etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry. It is composed of poems previously appearing in our newsgroup. The PostScript version features high-quality typesetting and is well worth printing to hardcopy and sharing. Poems appear by authors' permission and constitute copyrighted material; we claim ownership only to any poems we have authored. Special thanks to Jenn Hemphill and Karen Tellefsen for helping to solicit poems for this issue. Enjoy! Erik Asphaug (asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu) John Adam Kaune (jkaune@trentu.ca) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Issue 12 - New Year's Day 1995 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ----------- mixed media ----------- I want my poetry written on the blue damned sparkling sky biplaned against the ozone while brass bands play anthems and the mayor rants on written wide and large in no wind so that god herself can look down and say even upside down and backwards it still looks good to me and if a letter drifts away on a stray breeze will place it back with a gentle godly hand but for now one of your crappy xeroxed chaps with my name on it would be nice as hell give me something to sell at slams and readings might even get me laid god yes and I do love your small press michael mcneilley mmichael@halcyon.com -------- untitled -------- She was no pink ostrich feather falling from a steeple finished but for the dust in the light She was a pickled baby in a mayonnaise jar no ma no ma no She was a fat whore taped shut by big boys on Saturday night Hey, you know, she had no right to be there- no right at all She used to be the echo of a butterfly Not no perfume lippy-sticky suck skin Not no feather falling fat whore taped shut She used to be a green walnut wiggly-worm and the sigh of a puf-puf pigeon on a fence Now she is a flower- a step-on weed flower Liz Farrell efarrell@ossi.com ---------- priesthood ---------- dreams filter into this universe of steel and grit breezes intrude from beyond this randon arrangement of concrete spires and dulled clouds we spurn the ancestral songs of warm winds and fragrant scents residues in the anagrams of our ancient souls does the priesthood of particles and molecules reserve for us a single choice can we not chase fractals and monarchs with dream-catchers having witnessed the precarious dance of atoms can we ever again write poetry zita marie evensen ac869@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu ---------------------- A field guide to birds ---------------------- Below the wide window of the dining room is spread the slant roof of the well-house. The previous owners kept cracked corn there through twenty winters, and the birds came to rely on it. We thought they ought to live more wild, and so we did refrain awhile. The birds came to the empty roof and stood about, cranking their small heads to look with first one eye and then the other into the house; had their gods abandoned them? I stopped by the seed and feed, and picked up a ten pound bag. A handful on the roof brought instant jubilation. Each day first come the juncos in their black hoods, perched taut and wary in the lilac bush; then one by one they dart for a choice bit and retreat, cracking and dribbling hulls. They are followed by field sparrows in red caps, and rose-colored purple finches. Black-capped chickadees appear when these have gone, and heavy-bodied mourning doves crash and scatter them, and bob like gulls on a green beach. None can dislodge the doves but jays: scrub and Stellar's. I tell the children of the habits of jays, stealers of eggs, bullies. The middle child hates injustice, and claims he will shoot the jays, so I tell him a story: in Georgia, when I was young, I watched a cat catch a robin. The robin fluttered and cried, and the cat clamped down, muscles bulked. A mockingbird flew low and strafed, and the cat missed a hold. The robin crawled off, trailing breakage. The cat pounced again. The mockingbird perched nearby, screaming. A male cardinal, biggest I had ever seen, parrot-bright, flew in from nowhere and landed, wings outspread almost in the cat's face, and began, one wing down, the dance of bird mothers who hope to divert cats from nestlings. The cat dropped the robin and went for the cardinal, missing by a whisker. This was repeated many times, but the robin was dying, so the cardinal had in the end to give it up. But I have never forgotten that strange unequal battle, and a bird that would so risk life for another species. The boy seems unimpressed. I add: the cardinal is a jay. He gets it: life is not so simple as its known and quantified habits. Out there on the well-house roof, or in our own lives, or anywhere, bad we can expect, but good, if rare, comes also, and so we scatter seed, and then sit by the window and wait. Richard Bear rbear@oregon.uoregon.edu ---------- Sandy Hook ---------- New York skyline, flotsam garbage, naked bathers in October. Brooklynites with sunburn noses combing sand for missing baubles. Weathered bunkers, missing missiles, cold-war relics in decay. Holly trees and browsed-on cacti. Styrofoam and cockle shells. Karen Tellefsen kat@ritz.mordor.com -------------- Mourning Light -------------- The bitter residue of dreams still upon me I weep at fading visions of beauty dan graves dan@skipper.berkeley.edu -------------- Triangle Power -------------- the cable slopes from oak to oak casts a long afternoon shadow on the shifting grasses treetop creaks with holding me sways in the fall's first breezes triangle's iron in preflight palms hands spasm in damp fear that precedes the leap once in a dream i touched thumb to thumb leaning fingers inward two triangles placed against my head i stared across the base into a sliver moon when the buzzing seized me my body hummed with rhythms of new found power rising from the quiet earth Jody Upshaw jupshaw@hfm.com --------------- days like these --------------- on days like these when the chatter never ends my son yells, "where you at?" and when i ask he tells me he's afraid of the sky it is too big too vast to keep an eye on to always see allways and a thistle in the weeds i pull draws my blood and me closer whispering it isn't only your back that remains behind you can't see through our sky Karen Hussey ai500@freenet.carleton.ca --------------- Cats and Fishes --------------- under the sumac shade i sit by the sun-dappled pond watching the goldfish break the surface feeding the little ones darting here and there trying to break off small pieces the big ones opening huge maws engulfing the cat sits hunched on the rocks tail twitching waiting watching for an opportunity the canny goldfish know that cats hate water Marguerite K.A. Petersen petersm@csos.orst.edu ----------------- bugle (call) girl ----------------- rings. i want real roses. silver heels. tap taps -- legs march -- steps stepped home. hips swish -- unprivate shimmy -- little girl squeals. composes. arms support. elbows form blithe love triangles. shoulders square. chokered neck painted face fake fake hairish stuff. position. set. play. C-E-G-C. i want fingers for my rings. i like F. once i had them but i lost my lips. i'm bereft bereft. i like lips. they part they close they shape 3-D. i go half-lipped. snip. i lost F. i lost C-E-G-C. i fake it. i want music. strike my notes -- resemble F but fall half-assed on E i dote. half of me. i want him to wake before i leave. maybe he will write or play or make his sound. he neither wore nor offered rings. he is many. i lack lips with which they taunt. but do not use. i want back my trumpet. whole my notes. back i want rings. Heather L. Igert hli893s@nic.smsu.edu ------------------- The Last Hitchhiker ------------------- The last hitchhiker before town, a pony-tailed Jesus with a sign wavers wickedly in the door-panel. *Galway, Ireland? Is that what you mean?* As he leans through the cocked side-window an inch-to-the-mile map spreads from his side and a long, dirty fingernail pierces a bay. Yes, I like the cut of you, hitchhiker, hijacker, you may lay your backpack inside my hatchback, let your sleeping-bag roll on the back-seat as the exhaust-pipe opens its flyblown parachute. One by one, the road-signs flicker by and we sleepwalk under the skin of a car, passing the lay-by, the drive-in eatery, the scrapyard where lifting-cranes scrunch up spent engines and a bald-headed man pursues with vigoour the hare-lipped, shirt-tailed assassin. john redmond jredmond@vax.ox.ac.uk --------------- untitled memory --------------- my earliest recollection: watercolors dabbed haphazardly about a paper napkin. that day the blurred horizon had no vanishing point - a sky of suns that danced in a circle, singing songs I could no longer remember. in my bow tie and Sunday shoes, I never cried when I was told. the birds were silent then, hovering above while I counted each one. they had no names, yet they all knew me - they watched while I played in the sand after dark. they scattered when my name was called, the floodlight's reflection still shimmering in the pool on the other side of the fence. inside, the halls were narrow, casting shadows at impossible angles. I stared at my fingers while water washed the sand away, a clockwise swirl against the blue porcelain. then, the long march. fighting sleep, the contours of night assembled behind the billowing curtains, laying the toy soldiers to rest. Paul David Mena mena@hydra.cray.com ----------- how it came ----------- it was like rain. though the writer from cosmo says falling in love is like falling in a puddle last night it was like falling rain. like this: it is a sunday in july and i am under an awning. i am dry but the yellow sky-- the yellow yellow sky-- it deceives me and i leave my awning to find dew on my skin in my hair on my eyes. it fills the yellow sky and i am wet. this is rain. and that is how it came. JJHemphill shilo@uiuc.edu ---------------- Becomes a Geisha ---------------- Small face finely burnished, Delicate glaze. Her smile holds forever. Can her jade-lidded eyes arrest her descent to despair? Thomas Bell tbjn@well.sf.ca.us ------------------------- He Bids His Love Lie Down ------------------------- I bade my love lie down amidst the purple amaranth and keep her troubled soul at rest from heartless circumstance. How gently did I wipe the drops of dew that were her tears and round her, I enwrapped my arms to comfort all her fears. My heart thus died a trembling death resolving not to kiss her, I pressed my lips into her hair and voiced a sorrowed whisper. My love, my love, weep not for us. Be not o'erly vexed. While in this life we cannot love We surely will the next. Scott Cudmore scudmore@peinet.pe.ca -------- canon 36 -------- and here my trip ends and it is season for sticking shelducks goosefat broils and the women crouch to their hominy works here is sedge for the tufted marsh a throne stock for the saints where the bull mires and the magpie jags on the quickwood Umbria! Tuscany! last lands with hyssop for my homecoming drink caserns overrun by goats, broken pillars ruins of altars, chancel-full of snakes terrible animals all of marble mossed: St Francis in the carob, St Justin in the bunchberry and the remnants of the masters' gargoyles of the mouflon and the horse and here my trip ends with behind me the forest in a soakage of psalms canticles, madrigals, and poems spent in vain marking the Delphic track villagers draft me as your washer of stones your cleaner of plinths and marbles and with a heather broom leave me cleaning after these stumbled loves cleaning after the butchers' pelage the revel's wreckage, the driven packs and the duels and the killings and the wayward doggery cleaning after the daydone jobbers who carol lewd their drunk homeward trek pissing on the high road once and once on the church's wall Edgar Y. Choueiri choueiri@princeton.edu ------------------------------- portrait in blonde and smarties ------------------------------- i am blonde. very blonde. when i go to the sea it goes white-silver. my eyes go bright blue. i have a very sexy body. i have been told i have perfect breasts. a dyed old wedding-dress sounds purrrr-fect. it will make me purr. okay, you don't have to shave your beard off. but you do have to wash my hair, feed me canadian whisky and read long paragraphs from garcia marquez. then you will not fuck me senseless. we will fuck each other senslessly fuckless, breathlessly staccato. i made a dash out to a cafe and bought strawberry centred smarties. i am blonde. very blonde. Helen Walne / Marek Lugowski marek@mcs.com ----------- male father ----------- fully dangerous he is the hot pistol that amazed my mother and he is looking at me right now laughing as i try to find a way to impress you men of the life of my father i invoke your names in fear and distaste and respect i am slipping again into shotguns and dead animals around fires and whiskey the dream is of taking that shotgun to your football helmet to your aftershave to your knives and boots and goddamn jokes about sex and woman but i want another hug furry with body hair and caution Ray Heinrich heinrich@va.stratus.com ------------- The Space Age ------------- Bony sidewalk was our daybreak gangplank, humming launch pad, historic surly speedway. Brother's chalk was a hacking cough of hieroglyphs and racing stripes. When crayola failed us, we'd just roll over, surprising the numb-still grass. It was the space age: We kept an eye on the powder sky for satellites and sudden flashes. The tiniest metal jets drew rigid lines, floating from the west--we turned them into messages from the rounded silver future. We didn't read mythology. We had our own versions of magnificence: TV test patterns, invisible Russians, the suburban planners' sleepless grid and the prayers of every white-coated Sunday morn. Our busy boy-silences pounded the sidewalk more superbly than any book could promise ... Then one time the blanketed vet across the way dragged by in the morning orange, a melting detonator in his head, doing the mental math it took to make the last 20 years come out right. After that, he was always our library of collected sounds, fabulist of solidest earth. Paul Raymond Waddle c/o erickson@library.vanderbilt.edu ------------------- Counting Past a Few ------------------- People puppets dangle on pretence Hollow, wooden, mute, mastered by the hands Who irrigate this paper world with word And sketched pools of politic: Boiled essence of a way to be, a line: Countless dots drawn in a necklace Of strung desires. The audience sit staring through the voiceless shells To the people within, unaware of their skeleton slavery. A cloth of unmade rooms makes the stage A waiting cloak ready for embrace. These puppet players are the days Of a strangling season, ripe with the lines Of breathing anathema. Caressed by the coat of darkness on their eyes, weaving A dose of dialogue to tame their ears to sleep, bleeding. "In all your pavement days you will meet me At obscure distance seen through your paranoid eye, Felt by your muffled hand. My saying herd and Flock of looks come to shave your fields bare, Teasing leaves from hanging hope and roots from water. You are rough to my feel, feeling with your hands, Dry to my taste, sucking with your mouth, against My every grain you are the driving plough. I am The way to live, the life to lead, the death to die, The body of fashion, patron saint of people. I am the one who weighs your weightless dreams." "Drink my poison, feel my fist, The days are never more wasted than when they live with me. Your words wither in my barren land, Darkness is never more dull than in my shadow. All your knowing, all your thoughts Turn on the spit of my scorn, writhe In my ignorant heat. Here is hate. There is no Learning love. I am a vacuum of reason in my glee. I am the one who burns your righteous book." "You are like the grazed surface of a lake to me, Crazed and buffeted by your senses wind, whipped Into waves of interest and fascination. My mind is once a noose around the noise, a burial stone Whose eyes forever watch the dead, And once the rapids of a song, a blur of foam Whose eyes are wasted on the world. I am a knife Which trims the living skin from dead. I am the all who don't see and overlook." Matt Ford mausr@csv.warwick.ac.uk ---------------------- Ghost of the Narcissus ---------------------- Ghost of the Narcissus rotting in a sea-broth, sea-weed stew --- Ghost of aching sailor, sea-gull who came picking through his slaughter, Damned upon this blank, huge sea-broth water. Erik Asphaug asphaug@lpl.arizona.edu -------- Untitled -------- one ripe tomato pulls down blackened frostbit vines among fall cabbage Michael McNeilley mmichael@halcyon.com ---------- Olden Daze ---------- When all animals were deer, all strong drink cider, sky was cloud and blue was yellow, prestige was illusion and buxom obedient, grammar was glamour and it was foolish to be nice. Smiles forced older smirks to specialise, all franchised meaning traced back through flattened vowels and metathesis to an unrecorded Swiss account. Old deaths quelled and sweltered away, surviving in heraldry and saws until they're dashed to boot, dead metaphors overtaken by the waiting wolf's teeth which became a rake, a frame for candles then a hearse. Our heyday's lightyears from hay or day, and either's got nothing to do with neither either, and there never was any sorrow in sorry and only listless opposites remind us of how things really were. Tim Love tpl@eng.cam.ac.uk --------- purloined --------- i wanna be isolde. but i think i'll be a spinster. i hide behind blue steel bastions -- spinning yarn from dissolving flax. i play with cats who long to be kittens splayed on spinet keys. i named them with alphabetical euphemisms for lost lovers. t is for my tristan. nine bitter lonely lives. i've wasted three while knitting needles clink time with vinyl-spinning vvagner. i never sang my aria. we meow instead a blue-note chorus. knit one pearl two. we worship yarn and nap. but i wanna be isolde. my parapets and i know the wiles of pining fond men and dull gnarled yarn. so i claw rats myself -- plink my tunes with furtive paws. but kings would call me beautiful behind these cold cat eyes if i were isolde. i'd flitter through noble cathectic lovers. hey -- it's blue skies from here babe. tristan rubs against my leg and purrs. we share tender vittles on weekends. Heather L. Igert hli893s@nic.smsu.edu -------- untitled -------- until you look away all that's left is weak hold my hand until its time in time i cannot even speak touch me softer this time slowly i am dying slowly my heart is crying Soon Hong hong199@wharton.upenn.edu ------------ fathom seven ------------ each unseen flicker fortifying his religion he fathoms its presence, but no one yields to his seventh sense emotionally stamped a vagrant by the surplus civilized world he makes this pilgrimage honestly and hourly his eyes burn with anticipation his ears sear with apprehension his mind charred by intuition eventually his expectations drown in his own quandary his reverie extinguished by the invisible ashes of his fantasy They burn his eyes blind They melt his ears deaf They boil his mind numb it is over now alone in his mutilated pathos he lived to die Jason Fried fried@gas.uug.arizona.edu ------------------- Aux cath\'{e}drales ------------------- Des vagues, des vagues des vagues, Celle qui les a envoy\'{e}es du bout du monde, Elle a pris mon \^{a}me et l'am\`{e}ne Jusqu'au fond de sa m\`{e}re ? La vague, vague et effac\'{e}e sur les sabres Ils ne savent rien \={O}hara, Kazutaka c20229@cfi.waseda.ac.jp ---------------- Only In The Mind ---------------- rubbing gritty tiny abrasions a face peeled away from a mask beneath carbide sleep particles eroding the eyelids greasy soot blackening the egg white whites of blood shot orbits sand papering away the vitreous bright too smooth clarity with the last glitter of broken diamonds never to be mended rubbed upon marbles wanting to wear away the delicate eyes that never wear away the magic lantern of inner visions that see her as if she is alive more cherished than only in the mind only in yesterday only in any sandcastle we might have built. Bob Ezergailis bob.ezergailis@canrem.com ------------ Premenstrual ------------ I'm so premenstrual it's dripping from my fingers and I really want a cigarrette but then I remember I quit three weeks ago to make my body a temple of God. All this crap of life is driving me unstoppable, uncontrollable, unsatisfied. I wish my lungs were as black as tar, my heart as thick as a mound of mud, and my clothes as smokey as my ex-boyfriend's car. At least then I'd have an excuse for being so damn bitchy instead of this stupid hormone thing. Rebecca Peatow beckied@gladstone.uoregon.edu ----- quill ----- hush child sit sit on the corner and learn to punctuate and conjugate be still child listen but do not be heard hush child do not run about looking for metaphors most of them are tired anyway drafts on first-grade lined newsprint written with fat jumbo pencils do not read like laser print hush run along now let the people of the quill chant the mysteries of the words zita marie evensen ac869@freenet.hsc.colorado.edu ------------------------------ Why Benny Went to Windsor Once ------------------------------ Between you and me here's why Benny went to Windsor once it was late the Windsors dine at eight when Benny told Elizabeth Bowles Mountbatten as one professional to another he loved her doing the Queen Mother and that's why between you and me Benny went to Windsor -- once David Bolduc bolduc@forsythe.stanford.edu ------------- September Son ------------- He came straggling up the road after a night of lowdown and high spirits on Rat Row, his belly full of booze and his head gone to seed, but still good enough to drive a tractor at dawn, the same morning my mother told me with a look of resignation in her eye, "Watch your ways...the Devil's afoot today," knowing I was ripe at the age when He comes a-knocking, before she sought respite in church and ladies, leaving me behind with idle thoughts and empty rooms, the echo of mantel clocks inching toward my prime, yearning for a taste of future wasted within four walls and murmuring the name of Daddy Mark Hallman c/o bolduc@forsythe.stanford.edu --------- measuring --------- 1. 5 inches along the curve or 6 when fully engorged. you make me watch from the corner, eyeing me. all sixteen years of me, measured straight. balled tape measure thrown at me. i+m old enough to understand your battering-ram lessons +dirty, nasty. been a badbad girl+ nocuous rantings +bitch. you fucking. cunt.+ incestuous innuendos +lovely-lookin, taut, sweet honey nipples you like me. I can tell+ you. drive. me. c r a z y. brother. 2. I busy myself measuring our tenement flat 500 square feet plus a cubby hole i crouch in. figure I could, if I had to survive, bring in some food a peach and Ouzo enough to dizzy me masking the sensation of roaches crawling in and out of holes. 3. staying up half the night hoping you+ll leave half way through. memorize your steps the left a little harder falling more controlled. drags behind half an inch. a guided missile that+s pursuing your body. crawl into my cubby Ouzo. no peach shadowless. safe. my mind recites things things i understand things i+m not sure i can. anything. for company. holy mary mother of god pray for us sinners now. 4. crush an insect skull who scurries my thigh as light filters under door jamb. flick it away. i hear your back slide down cubby hole wall. i think if i look may see your eyeballs searing through support beam. now i lay me down to sleep i pray the lord my soul to keep if i should die before. lost recitation. your voice. tenor. +come out come out wherever you are+ your fist knocks asking invitation. i know you measure along the arc --I am measured straight-- i crouch further back to escape the curve. 5. i hold plate glass under nose to feel breath. too little light i touch moisture with fingertip for reassurance. 6. i think now you are hardcooking hungry man. meat and something. so much of me, cubby hole me, growls gurgles weeps my lips moisten from tv dinner steam seeping through the door jamb. i imagine you having carrots drenched in butter and for dessert, chocolate pudding. i have plate glass. tape measure. black and blues. semi circle roach motels. Ouzo. peachlessness. 7. again i feel your breath outside my hole. jailer breathing hungry man breath fogging my thoughts rubbing figure eights on plate glass. your breath. it eats me. i cup my lips (now i lay me down to sleep.) encircle round and round my neck (i pray the lord my soul to keep). precariously close to abnormal, with begged whisper i begin... +brother take 500 square feet not a square foot more. leave me a small hole. Ouzo and. peach.+ Erica L. Wagner wagnerel@maspo2.mas.yale.edu ---------------- Breathing Ground ---------------- The subdued dead are here. The ground--pale ash, broken headstone--lifts and settles with their breathing. Churchbells ring the ancient angelus; the dead slow their breathing, heavy with respect for the old ways. Flags, paper ribbons, crinkled bunting; festival trappings flap in the breezes of a late afternoon. Children march to the tune of the Fourth of July. To a father, the bells are quaint, out-of-time. He takes pictures of his little towheaded girl. She marches the grass into the bald ground, slaps a stone marked "Goody, wyfe" with her mini-red white and blue flag. The severe sound frightens the blackbirds, her high voice chanting "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" and beating time with her flag on the ridge of the headstone. Quiet maple leaves swing low in the humid air. Father steps over the grave marker, standing, as if no one else is there, no one bound in little worn out pieces to the ashy, scrubgrassed earth, takes the flag from his daughter and picks her up lightly like leaves. The blackbirds fly low and drop lightly to the ground, careful of the headstones, pecking for seeds in the yellow grass. K.E. Krebser krebser@erg.sri.com --------------------------------------- i will sing with the birds in the trees --------------------------------------- I each year the birds return to sing the same songs yet they are not the same birds the notes must be written in the trees each year leaves paint the trees with the same brilliant colors yet they are not the same leaves since they die, is there nothing to remember? each year my bones wither further they promise to support me only until they find my grave i will sing with the birds in the trees. II one year the birds returned to sing new songs! look! is there not one unfamiliar feather among them? the notes moor unstaid in the breeze each year leaves canvass the trees with new hues see! how far they can travel before coming to rest! before leaving, they want something to remember each year my heart expands to contain itself a young heart never dies, and i believe this i am singing with the birds in the trees. III next year the birds should return unless there are no more songs to sing... to sing freely is the bird's only reason for returning next year new leaves will decorate new trees because even the forest cannot last forever old leaves give birth to new trees next year my soul may be a leaf and all of the forests could become my soul i still sing with the birds in the trees. John Quill Taylor jqtaylor@hpbs114.boi.hp.com -------- untitled -------- The odor of dark fur flies out at us. Twisted green pieces rumor the end. Wizened winter sun speaks ochre blossoms again. Thomas Bell tbjn@well.sf.ca.us -------------- name me latent -------------- go-train Coltrane sentimental loser pain tell me I'm a winner so I get a quick fix hand-held mind meld strangled with a garter-belt chewin' gum & gettin some I try another trick the writing on the washroom wall says "nirvana = clit" free-fell dinner bell separate the when from while salivate a little so the rhthym gets quick bland lines second times fuckit till the ending rhymes offering an answer so you know how I tick the writing on the washroom wall says "better" the writing on the wall says "nirvana = clit" John Adam Kaune jkaune@ivory@trentu.ca ----------------- fear of the known ----------------- if i could scrape the bedding from my ear, the flecks of tired from my teeth, i might have strength for dying. but i am older now, harder to combine with sleep. another welding into ice. oh, if i could open up my belly, let the frail out and keep just one illusion around my neck. hillary joyce haj2@cornell.edu ------- Magpies ------- From the birch, the crack of magpies heralds the solstice of junkie dusk. Each morning the world is more like tar, but your cold, bloody robes thin my eyes. St. Peter, lecherous old angel, waggles his staff at us and I pluck the down from my husband's head as he rocks beneath the roof. If I loved you, your teeth would tumble from your lips-- I'd collect each dark root in my grandmother's porcelain cup. If you loved me, licks from the sun would steal your wife, your prior life. I already see the fraying ships stalk near, disappear, reappear and the torches flash from the reef to my bed and the magpies pick the flesh from collarless mongrels. Blake Kritzberg kritzber@ucsuc.colorado.edu ----------- marble love ----------- i fish a cat's eye out of the leather squeeze warm the glass until stiff finger's jerk open dropping the marble to my toes wriggling between over and between kick a little to calves rolling fast now to knees pinch and catch for just a second before letting go to softer white thighs slowing marble progress lost in curls bumping a drawn in breath pushing hips roll over quivering thick thigh slack rubber band skin rolls pink and silver crepe heavy restless hips catching belly button before climbing ribs rebounding on absorbing motion breast to the other and back following fat edge striking collarbone bounce to neck arching back and a quick climb to chin tongue catching glass taste just in time as the marble teases my lips and the taste of me of me clinking teeth as it slides finally inside warm taste of me Karen Hussey ai500@freenet.carleton.ca -------------- No longer then -------------- The city is an open grave. All the streets howl with a call for the dead. The bare earth lies like a blank page on which No cross or dot is ever drawn. Never a word, never a vowel will cross its lips And leak into the past. A stagnant pool of progress; Only the sewers run with the words of water pouring. They raised a desert from the destroyed earth. Suffocating in space, out Into the countryside vigilante suburbs sprawl Breathless, spitting at the sky and horizon. Turn any stone and you will find a spider, Squeeze any stone and it will bleed. Torn apart mechanism and Machinery, foreword and the following, Scattered ashes adrift in sand like A song in the radio spectrum Or a pale letter in the proof-reader's task. The clouds too thick a filter for the light, Too strong a censor for the sun, lamps ring in your eyes; Telephones with news of the street and a clear message: You are never alone, even in a dark corner Such as yourself. You are always alone, even your thoughts Are a heard heresy. Everyone speaks the language of traffic, Then in two tongues A beggar and a poet whine. Nobody will read. Nobody will notice. In this cemetery The corpses rot before they die. Matt Ford mausr@csv.warwick.ac.uk