Love Lines 

Love, and the air thick with lunacy. 

We tend the heart whose gallop 

would rest tender and bright, 
 

we tend and gather in a beauty. 

And such pleasure, heaven-sent, 

mentions names 
 

and roads on which to travel, 

such passage of time 

fixed and absolute 
 

as jesus on a cross. 

What room have we entered; 

what have we become? 
 

Silence consummates each heart. 

Love, and the air thick with lunacy, 

tall treasures fallen down 

then taken up exactly. 

John R Cornwall 
101772.2417@compuserve.com 
England 

The arsonist without a match 

I ring your number, humbler from having weathered another 

dry fall without you. 
 

The line between us crackles 

like the skin on my parched lips. You're a thief with too many 

distinguishing marks. 
 

Reach for me a wooden hands shake. 

A flame appears within your palms, ticking-- 
 

Delighted with this sleight of hand 

we laugh and grass begins to smolder. 

From under my hat I watch your sleeves for 

rabbits. Your eyes plead, "No rain, no rain..." 

Kelly Richstein krichstein@internetmci.com 

It is night, a night like space, huge 

and endless and terribly cold. 

The stars are there for reference, 

pointing out disasters and worries, 

they have nothing to do with me at all. 
 

I have become used to it, this kind 

of isolation, this time when nothing 

happens and the lights grow dim. 

I will learn to smile at the losss of you, 

returning from journeys real or imagined, 
 

it does not matter which. 

I will access crowds, befriend those 

who have sadness nestled in their eyes, 

angry at people who write the maps 

of their lives, roads without end, the rooms 
 

empty and left to dislocation. 

And soon everything becomes a memory, 

a list of words and happenings that have 

their own time, their own presence. 

I shall sleep then waked refreshed, 
 

the image of your face erased completely, 

quick as jesus blessing souls. 

John Cornwall 101772.2417@compuserve.com

Momma, wanna hear what I learned today? 

I heard daddy's gonna go away, 

And there is but one thing I-just-got-to-say... 

You better keep your goddamn hungry hands away! 

Jeffrey Bradley shane_bradley@surgery.missouri.edu 
 

Untitled 
 

they told me it was five months 

i said it couldn't be 

but sitting here on this wornout park bench, 

mulling over dreams, 

i know it was five months 

and in the strange way that numbers have 

of adding up when they do, 

i know you were gone for 

more rains, more springs and more summers 

than earth knew 
 

Jayan 
jayans@wildcoast.co.za 

The time he slapped me 

in the bathroom 

I cried out, forgetting 

that the children 

would hear. They ran 

to find me on the floor 

and him, just finished 

beating me, leaning over the sink 

at the mirror to smooth 

his hair, a hard-breathing 

giant. When he left, our son 

stuck his face in my shoulder 

and said, Papa asked me 

yesterday if Daddy was nice 

to you, and I said yes. 

Whether through a wish, 

a secret or some kind 

of denial, I wonder now. 

We curled together on the pink 

tile and took those shallow 

swimming gulps, learning 

to breathe fear, the element 

our air was made of. 

Karen Blomain 
from The Slap (Nightshade Press) 
blomain@kutztown.edu 
 

Recitation 
 

Already I've misplaced the significances. 

This heavy-paged book was faith. 

This platinum band, fidelity? 

Or what might be found with practice. 

The jade vase was a receptacle 

for budding hopes, 

or perhaps just dreamed-of fragrance? 
 

Recitation 
 

Let me start again. 

The mnemonic should be simpler. 

Here is a window. 

Beyond it, a sun and trees 

stretching green fingers to blue. 

My hands lean on the dust-covered sill, 

each reaching out in a way. 

It is a good point for beginning: 

Here is a window. 

Beyond it, the trees. 

What they do or don't mean is the same. 

They are enough. 
 

These are my hands. 

This is a window. 

Between the trees and me 

a pane of glass. 
 

Steven Fitzgerald 
ax391@freenet.HSC.Colorado.EDU 
 

Do I Love You? 
 

I dream of you 

As I wander about intolerant freeways. 

I smile about you when I sit alone 

In the silent courtyard of my dreams. 

There are so many gods- 

Why then do I light incense 

For your image in my mind? 

And when we meet I touch 

Your hand with love 

Yet only ask: Have you eaten? 

Zita Marie Evenson 
from E-MAIL (Ysilakan Press) 
submitted by the author 
 

Awakening  
 

you awake in a 

rose petal shiver 

at my fingers on your lips 
 

a breathless kiss 

lingers into a 

closed eye sigh 

of drowsy love 
 

and supple tenderness 

weaves us a lovers' knot 

as we lie happily dazed 

like cats in the winter sunlight 
 

Carl Seiple seiple@kutztown.edu 

FORGOTTEN ANGELS 

Home base shouts my five year old 

clutching the trunk of the old apple, 

skin smelling of Ivory soap and fruit blossoms. 

Playing tag, she drops to the ground 

declaring home at her convenience. 

Not fair, I say breathing hard, you'll always win. 

Yeah, she says like I'm some kind of stupid 

hair flying, 

wind on her smiling teeth, 

home under her feet. 

With every move 

we built a shrine 

to forgotten gods and goddesses, 

exorcising rentals 

dirty with past sins. 

Dancing on pinheads in fifth floor walk-ups, 

harmonizing with voices through thin walls, 

we blessed the borrowed corners and leased histories, 

the first and lasts, 

and cleaning deposits we could never get back, 

homesteading with altars. 

Even in a tent, 

threeweeks walk and a thousand years 

from anywhere, 

Lakshmi danced in bronze 

across an old steamer trunk, 

rice bowl offerings at bare feet. 

Women of the village 

squatted for hours outside our zippered door 

hoping for a glimpse of the girl with blind-blue eyes 

and untamed limbs moving 

with a foreign freedom. 

Strange stars and an unfamiliar moon, 

in colors beyond rainbows. 

Back in the homeland, 

flying fast, 

busy with small ideas 

flying fast, 

busy with small ideas 

and big mortgages, 

30-years on the dotted line, 

corporate clerics, clocking 

in clocking 

out no time 

for the ordinary miracles 

until the first cry 

of a recent angel, 

the smell of forever gods 

still lingering on milky breath. 

I found an altar in the thrift store, 

marked half price and holding firm. 

It is the color of clotted cream 

and less than immaculate souls. 

Seraphims and cherubims, 

discarded with doctrines, 

Seraphims and cherubims, 

discarded with doctrines, 

fly on its front balancing 

between feathery tipped wings, 

two gold letters, 

initials of the Virgin Mary. 

I say my name aloud, 

take a hint from the heavens. 

Hefting piety up the stairs to our bedroom we rest 

on the landing 

Damn, I say then 

laugh. In the hallways we hit a corner, 

crack plaster. A picture falls shattering glass, a sharp rain 

falling over my face. 

He touches me and his hand comes away stained 

crimson with my image. 
 

It will be our shrine to sex I tell 

my husband turning 

out the light. 

He rolls his eyes, 

rolls over in bed 

shoulders weary with work. 

In the rustling of white sheets I hear 

the whispers of forgotten angels. 
 

Vivian McInerny 
c/o JonNicholas@eworld.com