Reflective Lines 
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Without a Sound ...and yet, isn't there always the doubt, that maddening accusation; interpretations of imprecations, false or real, that come in the howl of the stillness you hear, that rumbles in the soul of the silence you feel? Ah, if only for just one sudden sound, a crack in the night, like a big branch breaking under thundering loads of deep snow-weight; O, for that sharp report, the pinewood's bark; come a splintering of limbs crashing down, with a chattering roar, the final dull thud, on a whiteforest floor. Oh, is it really true, as some do claim, (and as others have found it's too hard to buy it) that with no ear to hear, a tree falls in the wood, without a sound, in utterly the most absolute quiet? Now will I ask, and what will you say? How much of what's you, had been lost in this way, when the frosty cold weight of new fallen blue snow had been beyond all capacity of bearing, when every heavy care bent you low and broke you down, far from anyone's hearing, in the sharp crystal air, of the soft white night, without a sound... John Powell McDonald jmac@tg.specent.com |
Resident I can feel pain now. When I was fourteen scraped knees and tattoo needles meant nothing, hangovers were non-existent sleep was for pussies. Suddenly, I drink beer for the taste, fall asleep after two or three cold ones, television just reminds me how poor I really am and I can't read books without turning on a light. Last night I even contemplated calling the police on the noisy kids downstairs throwing yet another party without inviting me. Holly Day yves@orbiter.com |
HIGHER THAN FLIGHT for Zora Neale Hurston Gulls dive, hawks circle, herons swagger under prehistoric wings. My daughter wonders aloud if in flight birds are closer to God than us? I think of Zora: long arms strong as eagle wings, curved biceps rounding sharp edges stretching toward a hollow of brown back, shoulder blades like latent wing bones, the beat within her arms soaring to hallowed ground on words rising closer to God even than birds... Zora: in love with defining life. A golden Phoenix rising from the ashes of our own day-to-day; closer to Truth than flesh or feather allow. KRichstein krichstein@internetmci.com |
Grey Clouds 7 May 1996 Stars again, Finally. I thought the clouds would keep the twighlight to themselves. It has been a night upon night, Moonless nights, Clouds that stretch Horizon to horizon. From where they come to where they go. Grey upon grey, Nothing upon nothing, Into atmosphere, consuming light. But the starlight won in the end. Theres is a patience Which endures our earth. It ignores the parade of our heavans, And they wait. So many nights have come and gone. Chris Cobourn Chris_Cobourn/CourseNotes/US.COURSENOTES@course.com |
DRIVER Stabbing red hot poker Sun sparks fly son Blood red firefaced fury drives a cold white hot stone wind against soft white skin turning in upon itself Corpuscles release oxygen Evaporate at any rate Coal mainliner miners hash hardened rock crystal crusts lay cash on sweat stained tables Rolling cars pound through mid-morning tunnels under Black faces lining geology studies in disinfected classrooms above ground Stab stab stab steel slash marks smithy pounding out iron clad living bent back hammered home Go now son and change headlamp batteries with carbon 14 dating. timleo19 timleo19@mail.idt.net |
Holiday There was news of an accident, an explosion that was over in minutes everyone everyone dead in seconds. But it was another country and so I did not pay attention. Later the accident became a disaster, everything lost, nothing remaining at all. There were telephone numbers for those bereaved, useless digits beckoning fate asking that the terrible be late. I had expected photographs and memories of blue seas, beaches the colour of the sun and takes of how you asked for bread but was given warm red wine instead. Now there are numbers and dental records and a wreckage strewn with blood. I shall be weary forever, listening for the words that will never come. At night, in the dark, the moon remembers her dead. John Cornwall 101772.2417@compuserve.com |
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The Song Out in the driveway my son is singing his boy-voice half gone. All day he runs that block with his friends then moves away to this new silence and a song he does not understand. Above him in the feeder two jays who summer here become more vivid as the sky clears of leaves in the dusty twilight. He sits in the coppery field of marigolds and peels dry buds for seeds, twirling fringe between his fingers, listening, as I do, and waiting for the words to come home. Karen Blomain from Borrowed Light (Nightshade Press) blomain@kutztown.edu submitted by the author |
Hotel Cairo Their concern of car horns and voices raised in laughter, a child's cry, a mother's scorn. It faced the where boats race and life began to flourish, a girl's love, a nation's birth. I spoke to so they smiled and spoke to me in German, just people, only people. Their concern for my sleep and for my peace, but I sleep, Song of Life. Jimmy Dunn IntercityOz |
Human Calculus in the city hall at the center around the round teakwood table the factuous world converged to prove Pythagoras wrong: how many men might fall from one stray bullet, how many women; how many houses shatter from the shell's blast? the files were handed round the photographs were scrutinized and studied: these are wonderful pictures; this is romantic through and through; consider this marvellous chiaroscuro of carcasses strew in green and charred jungle Dubem Okafor okafor@kutztown.edu |
Colfax at Christmas It's true that if there's any time a savior is needed it's in the dead of winter when strings of lights are draped on the face of every building like a giant game of lite brite with colored pegs stuck through black paper to make a pretty scene lit from within but the scene of this city is not lit from within at the pub the boys are setting up for a holiday show there are drapes of red crepe paper covering the tables with small piles of white fluff for snow in the middle my friend Bob tells me the bartender with black hair once tried to rape him it's a small world when you're queer, he says a tiny tiny world crammed between married straights and working stiffs with their children who readily steal your style then leave you for dead. We stare into the flicker of the T.V. set television is evil, I tell Bob and before too long its sound and fast track technicolor have sucked us in. Bob sucks down his Bailey's and coffee, dreaming of cocks on good-looking young gearheads hats pulled down over their eyes their skinny legs mechanic jackets deisel grease still on their fingers he dreams of hipsters, long-haired doe-eyed dreamers boho boys who, laughing, swoon like poets in the days of Arcadia. In the dead of winter we have only our dreams and we need these as much as a savior. It is Colfax at Christmas full of human flotsam whose dreams must have had their wings broken like in the poem by Hughes no doubt it was a similar scene that inspired Scorcese in "Taxidriver" to have DeNiro's character invoke a rain to come and wash it all away. Vee Friedman bl276@freenet.uchsc.edu |
The Cough Our young father walked Ash Alley whistling "Rescue the Perishing," but already he carried mine tunnels home in his black-streaked breath. It was like first sleet against an attic window. My mother would look at him, her lips a line of impatience and fear. Your lungs will soon be stone, she said It's good money, Dorse. It's the only money. Some of the miners who stopped at our home to see my father had tongues like fish that stuck out between words. Gray-faced, shoulders bony, they all seemed about to cave in. My mother would leave the room, her lips thinner than ever, but the cough followed her across the linoleum, down the cellar steps hunkered close when she planted sage and primrose. The cough was like a child. It was always hungry. It demended attention. It woke us up at odd times and sat in the good chair by the window. In winter, it trailed behind my father like a peacock feather on a woman's hat. One summer he told us we were on a planet going nowhere fast. He made model he called an orrery, showed us how the heavens worked. The center was bright and hung there like one of my mother's peony blossoms. That's what pushes it, he said. And that's what made the coal. We looked at him and nodded, but we had our own ideas about what made it go. We could hear it behind the least little thing. Harry Humes from The Bottomland (Arkansas Press) submitted by the author |
Mirage II I have walked holes into my soles trudging from the Harlem of my neglect: oh! the same distant blood but oh! the drugged enervation you promised a rendezvous where Broadway collides with friendly Columbus; I have reached the Square prepelled by the concourse of elegance and tatters purpose and blankness magnificence and decrepitude by stern recumbent statues and I have met no arms octopused to welcome me. phantom women of my reveries when will divergent tributaries be confluent to one body of waters? when will revolving doors of glass cease deluding our brains? when oh effervescences will fantsy and reality collapse in erect slipperiness of labyrinths? when oh intangible will the silence and the solitude of my castle crumble? my purpose is not sprawled on dry beaches but the bold waddling across the river to dancing grass on green shores of epiphanies Dubem Okafor okafor@kutztown.edu |