FALL 2000 (SAMPLES)



SPRING 2000 | SUMMER 2000 | FALL 2000

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AUTHORS
Roxanne Lynn Doty
Virginia Terris
Robert Phelps
Caitlin Doyle
Vivina Ciolli
Florence Hughes
Jennie Hair
Rita Katz
Christine Zabrouski
Lawrence Carradini
Charles Ferrara
Diane Moritz
Linda Opyr
Rose Slivka
Carol Sherman
Philip Appleman
Dorothy Schiff Shannon

Barbara Goldowsky


Roxanne Lynn Doty

MIRACLE

Your baby is perfect in every way, more perfect than you could
have ever imagined and as he grows his human flaws are part of
this perfection so that you forget anything could go wrong, other
than the skinned knees, the ear infections, the broken leg, the
chicken pox - and it doesn't for a long, long while but at some
unknown point in time something happens to your miracle and
you wonder when that exact moment was and what you were
doing and was it a sunny day or was it raining and were you
preoccupied with dinner, or bills, or some other mundane aspect
of life when that invisible, faceless monster began to spread its
ugliness across the promises yet to be lived, your wonderful
flower that was almost fully bloomed and then you wonder if
perhaps it was there from the very beginning hiding its darkness
within some deep crevice of this shining child so blessed by your
love, so ready to take his place in the world, so grown up but
still your baby and this thought about the point of origin haunts
you, even though you know it really doesn't matter but you
think it, ask it nonetheless because the only perfect thing we
ever do is produce these miracles and perhaps because you
cannot bring yourself to ask the real question that burns indie
your torn heart, the "why?" because you know there is no
answer

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Virginia Terris
SISTERS

As she pinned back her thick chestnut hair
I so admired and drew on her lips, she said
You'll never be a femme fatale as she
glanced up at the photographs she'd clipped
of Ronald Coleman and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
she's tacked above her dressing table
next to the shots of her wedding to Ted
ten years before. The pictures rustled
every time she passed. In my room green
with the light of early summer trees
I peered into my mirror. All I saw was
the startled face of a sixteen-year old
with small breasts and hair the color of mud.
When their friends came weekends from the city
I hardly looked up. As if I wore LITTLE SISTER
around my neck.

I took her at her word and stepped sideways
the day Ted knelt before me hazy eyed and reached
his arms around me whispering so she wouldn't hear.
The day Werner with his closeclipped beard who came
to see her every day and lived beyond the hill
drew me toward the antique bed
in his old farmhouse while downstairs
the women fixed picnic food -
the rush I got I thought was fear
that made me stumble into the hall
just as she in a panic called me down.
The way I kept my eyes turned down.

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Robert Phelps
ON THE ORION FERRY TO NEW LONDON

There's an anger on the Sound
resentful
because condemned to undulation
she is constant becoming;
no conclusion
no line
no boundary
an apostrophe
an immense cubic in-between,
grabbing then tossing
a million shards of sun.
Shoreline knows he has no character.
Squatting sumo and
pumping cloudiron
he enjoys without merit
constancy
plantedness
a clear surveyor's plat
a landmark.
There was no "semarks"...
only the swirling sky
upside down,
only a certainty
inside out.

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Vivina Ciolli
AFTER THIRTY YEARS for B.A.

When I saw that cat, I knew
he would be mine:
sloe eyed, sure footed, clothed in
coat of beige and orange fur.
He rose from sleep and climbed
out of his cardboard box, curious
to lick my ordinary hand.
Once he settled in at home,
he gently touched a younger
restless silver tabby,
rescued from the streets,
who spat and hid for days.
But when I learned how long cats live,
I guessed they'd outlive me.
A kind of wild grief entered then
for all the colors, shapes
and ways of being cats
I'd never know. And suddenly
I wanted more to cuddle, stroke and feed.
And I understood how men
who marry feel a need for other women,
their ache arising out of loss
of all that pleasure, within reach,
and I forgave you.

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Florence M Hughes
WET SPRING

Across the green lawn
crows row their black boats
anchor claws in wet soil
stand like broken shadow
in windless air

Down from the deep trees
a pair of cardinals
one red as an autumn leaf
the other a winter brown
drink from a mud puddle
dark as an eye's pupil

Dogwoods hide wide jade eyes
behind stark white petals
weepy as children
when closed in...
adrift in their arks

Rain begins feathering the window
slides down heavy as old blinds
Like Buddha I sit waiting
for the world to return
swinging its lantern.

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Jennie Hair
SHE KEEPS GOING AWAY

Nor words nor love of day
will bring her back.
She wears a gown of white,
diaphanous against her
long limbs,
the brown of her eyes
laughing,
all in motion
I see her waking
in white again
a kiss on top of her head
as she leans to say hello -
hello, Sarah -
hello and good-bye.

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Linda Opyr
TWO MOUNTAINS

I am going to the dream book.
For two nights I have dreamed
of cars on mountains.
My mother could have read these dreams.
Her mother, too.
They knew what to make of a wedding
or funeral balled up in vision
knew how to crack the colors and textures
of sleep's interior design
would not have needed a map
for these two mountain dreams.

Their eyes would have met me
like nails on a road.
"Be careful."
"Watch yourself."
And my young laughter would have curved
beyond them quick as a wheel.

But now I wander between entries
for "mountains" and "cars"
my fingers climbing their snowy pages
before falling off each silent edge.
Two dreams of mountains
and come to think of it
a black sky
not to be crossed tonight.

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Philip Appelman
THE PARLIAMENT OF MAN, THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD

The Labrador is hounding a French poodle,
The Persian kitten nipped the neighbor's Scottie,
The Siamese Fighting Fish ate the Peruvian
Longfins, and is gulping at a guppy.

Japanese beetles vandalize the Swiss chard,
Dutch elm disease has blighted Kalamazoo,
Kansas kids are catching German measles,
and Maine reports a plague of Asian flu.

So goes the nation - and, in fact, the world;
Our skin is our frontier, our life's a border.
World order would be nice, but we make do,
Stuck here in the same old pecking order.


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