INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Shutta Crum
Joseph McNair
Laszlo Slomovits
Joanie Freeman
Chris Lord
Elisavietta Ritchie
Gerald Clark
Karyn M. Wolven
Duane Locke
Mervyn M. Solomon
Paul B. Roth
Sue Budin
Running Cub
Silvia Scheibli
Geoffrey Philp
Marilyn Churchill
Jerry Blanton
Steve Beaulieu
Don Hewlett
Fred Wolven

       JACOB'S RIVER

         We came upon a river
             so wide and deep
              to be foreboding
               in the crossing.
             Traveler beware!
             swim as you care
 minus life jacket or rescue boat
 you must not be afraid to float
  or navigate from side to slide
   to rid the current of its guile.
Look in between from bank to bank
where boats without a rudder sank
         look down on the water
       so pure and still and clear
     its surface to the river's bed
               from up above
          to deep down under
           that looks so much
            like Jacob's ladder.



CAN'T LET GO

Strange fruit float
in the waters of the Mississippi
Katrina's blast
washed in the stench
of chemical and human waste
Mark Twain would not speak
if at all
of guns or gunmen
looters or rapists
except to mark
the blackness of fedspeak
that all the toxic brine
can never wash away
nor the image of that mother
clinging to her baby girl
who would not be comforted
even by the ancestral sounds
of Satchmo's horn
oooh so sad
oooh so bad
you made me leave
i'm still in love with you
since I fell
for New Orleans

Mervyn M. Solomon, Miami