WINTER 2005-2006 (TWO)

WINTER 2005-06 One | Two | Three | Four | Five



AUTHORS
Lisa Cowley
Beverly Pion
Stephen Malin
Jim Papa
Tina Duque Corbett
Barbara Reiher-Meyers
Ray Freed
Mike Reilly
Cuddy Murray
Saul Bennett

Lisa Cowley
ST. PHILLIP STREET

A mother and son
sit on the stoop
seeking out the moon
eclipsing the foggy slum

buried shadows
where this young
white girl glows

wishing she held
the iris dreaming through
that small black telescope


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Beverly Pion

4 A.M.

inside

night light
soft shadows help me find my way
green light
on the kitchen phone

kitchen lamp
cup of tea slice of bread

clock ticks a heart beat
refrigerator hum of comfort

circles of light and sound
I am momentarily safe
in the great Stygian darkness

and the world whirling by
and my breathing
and the long road waiting

outside


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Stephen Malin
WINTERFOLD

idling downward
wide as eyelashes
snowfloats drift in grace
to land light
at just the right place
everywhere
their presence
redeeming the unlikely
reclaiming possibility and
settling so deep in the eye
they say some
never recover from it
lay so lovely and fed any
who would look
snowflake manna
we were still dancing in it
we children
late that afternoon
the grey day fading and
ready to be tucked in
drowsy with wonder
at its own white smile

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Jim Papa
WINTER

A bony finger, a broken tooth.
A dull razor dragged across the sky.

A bruised eye, a mangy dog.
A locked door, a dead fish.

The whole of summer hidden
in the milkweed's empty husk.

Or a field of stars caught
like blue stones in the ice.

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Tina Duque Corbett
AT THE CORE

Glad to share this apple.
Kings had their tasters,
I have you --
Magellan of a worm
your sepia cursive
like dribbled caramel
running around this globe.

You say: it is safe,
the world is not flat,
the rain's yet benign
and an apple still
stems from paradise.

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Barbara Reiher-Meyers
4500 MAIL ORDER LADYBUGS IN A LINEN BAG

Tiny hand-picked helpers
gussied up for Halloween
scramble for freedom
from their linen prison.

Some scatter into the air
in search of aphids
while hundreds march
onto my fingers and arms

squirming and scattered
like the speckles of poems
that tickle my intellect

only to

fly

away.

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Ray Freed
RIVERSIDE DRIVE

8am walking East
to a downtown avenue
from a penthouse crap game

up 3 days running
full of sour mash and speed
pockets fat with folded hundreds

the jagged summer sun beats down.
I stand on a corner surrounded by suits
limping to the prison of their jobs,

lift fingers to a dry mouth
and cut the timid air
with a roaring whistle for a cab.

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Mike Reilly
OTB

Still yesterday's tickets
gum and ashes.
Tatters of blue smoke.
Men were bigmouthed and strange

and every face
showed stalemate.
I sat limp
solitaire solitaire solitaire

in the dust
in the hard light
of places
my father took me.

That was years before.
Up late
my hands crease this page
its simple nowhere song.

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Cuddy Murray
ALIVE

A seemingly innocuous gearshift
shards of guilt and pointed metal,
pierced my spine,
splintered my being.
A certain rage halted
by the imposing telephone pole
that stood smiling
in front of Whiting's Funeral Parlor,
just four blocks from my home.

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Saul Bennett
JUST ANOTHER CUT OF MEAT

In the War you got sent to the German when your mother ran out
of milk or needed an egg or two to cook hard for your little lunchbox
after the American went dark; lining up underneath their bombsight
Ja? Vot? glare, head butting the bottom of their counter glass eyeing

alien meats in a sullen rank on the other side: one with pus sores
a gentile friend nudged you head cheese!; gummy, crimson
bloodwursts in huge rounds; weary, Marlene Dietrich-pale hams
worthy of sighs sufficient to cloud the glass; adjacent, bobbing in brine

in a sizable chromium craft, pickles, camouflage green; standing
sentry watch behind, a squad each; junkets, custards, puddings,
brown, yellow, rose, each precisely the height of its bruder in cups
the color of paste you could keep forfeiting the five-cent deposit.

The liver-color hair of the pair of Wehrmacht- age brothers who ran it
in smart starched whites stood fixed-bayonet straight and watching them
dart, lunge, strangle requested items with pincers off high shelves,
wipe hands on starched cloths mounted at apron belts after each

fleshy slicing mission, you felt they showered every day and twice
in August, and when your order ended, backing off their glass,
as almost nice as their dead-aim smile appeared to make them want to
appear, you feared you were being measured, for what you weren't sure.

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