INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Geoffrey Philp
Chris Lord
Duane Locke
Shutta Crum
Karyn M. Wolven
Joseph McNair
Gerald Clark
Paul B. Roth
Fred Wolven
Alan Britt
Joanie Freeman
Jerry Blanton
Steve Beaulieu
Felino Soriano
Tolu Ogunlesi
Running Cub
Helen Losse
DRINKING WHITE WINE
(For
Steve and Duane)
Inside a rose-colored goblet
wine spreads
her blonde curls
against hips of glass.
The streetlamp
is a mermaid slithering
across the lawn,
rustling the cabbages
from deep sleep.
CUBIST PANTHER
(With Duane Locke)
The violin,
a cubist panther.
Geometry stalks each string
as though its life
depends upon it,
which it does
and does not.
If legs were not triangles.
ODE TO A FEMALE CARDINAL AND A HARLEY
A female cardinal, tawny,
scarlet eye-liner, scarlet tiara,
dark eye-shadow,
cracked leather jacket,
eyes me intently
each time she pulls
red berries
from a wild vine stumbling
over the top
of a split-rail fence.
She monitors my every movement
then steps across wet vines
and berries various shades of whitegreen
before vanishing.
John Keats sits beside me,
writing a letter to someone.
I want to ask him
about his nightingale, his Greek lovers,
and melancholy Autumn sprawled on a granary floor.
But he owes letters, it seems,
to everyone in London.
The female cardinal returns,
flaming beak,
cinnamon-dusted shoulders,
and two long, narrow tail feathers
like scarlet exhaust pipes
hugging the muscular thighs of a Harley.
Alan Britt, Reisterstown, Maryland