Return to Freedom

Jennifer Connelly
JenNickels@aol.com

I placed my hands lightly on the icy railing. They appeared distorted and oddcolored in the diminishing afternoon sun. My breath came in puffs of white mist and mynose felt frozen. I shivered as a blast of the frigid Chicago winter air hit me across myback. My lungs ached for warm fresh air. I felt as if the intense cold were freezing mefrom the inside out.
I leaned forward trying to peer over the high railing. But I couldn't see. I lookeddown at the bottom of the railing. My feet seemed to move on their own. They steppedup onto the lower crossbar, slowly, one after the other.
I could now lean over the railing. I pushed farther onto my toes. People rushed allaround me; busy holiday shoppers and frantic over worked men with briefcases, businesswomen in long fur coats and Nike running shoes, mothers trailed by children of all ages. They bumped me, brushed, shoved, and hollered at each other and traffic.
Snowflakes landed softly on my nose and sleeve. I ignored everything, all of thesounds and commotion. It all blended together in the background. I only heard thewhirring of tires over the metal grating of the bridge and the gentle lapping of the water.
I looked at the cold dreary green waves of the Chicago River. I started as I saw aface staring back. It was a disfigured head, no body. The image frightened me, but at thesame time intrigued me. I strained to see it better and then it was if all motion ceased. There were no pushing, rushing families, no men and women hurrying to catch the "L", notraffic, no noise, no freezing wind, no snow, no waves. I was alone. The city of Chicagostood all around me- silent, dark, empty. There was only me.
I peered through the on-coming dusk at the face in the water. It stared back up atme, solemn and sad. Her eyes sunk into her head, black circles around them. She had nocolor in her face, no "Happy Holiday smile," there was no youthful glow; only a pale shellof the woman she had once been. Her lips were chapped and colorless, turned down in aperpetual frown. Her once vibrant hair lay listless around her face.
The young woman grown old before her time depressed me so much. Every partof my being, as an essential to my character, wanted to help. I wanted to make her laugh,to forget about her worries, to smile, grin, anything to change her expression. I couldn'ttake looking at her anymore.
I closed my eyes. I could still see the woman, the vision even more vivid. Sheseemed to reach out to me, "Help."
I leaned farther over the railing, hand extended. I wanted to grab her and pull herto safety; it was a feeling so strong. I had to set her free from her wintry prison. I openedmy eyes again and looked down at her and realized I was unable to reach her. She was sofar below the bridge, it seemed like miles in-between.
She only pleaded with her eyes, "Help, please help."
I couldn't reach her. I tried to turn away, to run as far away as I could. I didn'twant to see her face anymore, the horrible glassy brown eyes. I looked around for help,but I was still alone. The buildings all stood gaping at me, watching, waiting to see what Iwould do.
The urge to reach lower down, to stretch my arm to the green water below wasgrowing stronger. I had to save her, but I couldn't reach. I turned and screamed. Thesound echoed off the vacant buildings; there was no one to hear me. I was totally alone.
I started to panic, my heart raced, my breathing was shallow, and I couldn't thinkstraight. All I knew was to save my sanity I had to get that woman out of the dark water. How? How could I reach her? I searched up and down the bridge, but found no waydown. How could I?
My concentration broke when I heard the clock in the old Union Station ring thehour. It was 6 o'clock. I turned to look at the train station. I was supposed to becatching a train back to school. I didn't want to go, but it was what I was supposed to do. I grew scared. I was split between the pull to save the woman in the water and myresponsibility to get on that train and return. I had to make a choice.
Trembling I stood back on the railing and leaned over. That terrible pleading facestill stared back. "Help me, please help."
"I don't know how," I answered weakly. I leaned farther and farther over the edgetrying to extend my reach, groping the air with my frostbitten fingers. Still I tilted closerto the water. I locked eyes with the woman far below. I looked deep into her vacanteyes, wondering who she was and how she got into this mess. My eyes started to waterover.
I felt as if I was moving in slow motion, my mind dissociated from my body. Firstmy right leg slid over the stone cold rail, then the left. I squatted on the outer edge of thebridge, reaching out.
"Please help, please."
"I'm trying."
With my arm outstretched hanging off the bridge I looked once more at thewoman and one single tear slid down my cheek. I watched it fall slowly to the surface ofthe water. The ripple effect disturbing the image, the distant reflection of myself.
"I'll save you," I whispered. And with that one tear I returned us to our freedom.

BLACKBEARD'S SWAMP (14)

L.B. Sedlacek

Legend tells that Blackbeard landed here
near New Bern and that his ghost still
walks the swamps of eastern North Carolina
leaving bloody footprints,

and if you walk his path today
littered with arrowheads and the ravages of hurricanes
you may find forgotten proof from his ship
that proves his existence,
and that proof may or may not
carry a curse - curses! - with it, but if it does
it's likely to be bloody - the best curses - curses! - always are.

AMAZING GRACE

Michael Estabrook
MEstabr815@aol.com

Sunday mornings grandmother would sing
Amazing Grace along with the radio,
then recite the names
of the books of the Old Testament
in order. "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges . . ."
And she loved when snow covered the yard
and the streets and trees and houses
in pure, sparkling white like it must be in heaven.
And when something surprised her
she would exclaim, "Land sakes alive,"
then quickly go back about her business.

The Bottom Line

aeon logan
November 27, 1998

There are so many things I hve tried to do with my life
and things that I've wanted
and are so many things that I took care of myself

can I now even get close to any of one the things I WANT

I don't even know if I can touch them
I can't even remember what they look like

it's easy to get disappointed about things
when you think about them too much
there are many disappointments in my life
that I'm wondering when something
won't be disappointing

you can just try to ignore it all
maybe you can be okay
with just having a little
and just being alone

the last option there isn't an easy one
but it might save you at the bottom line

at least that's what I hear

Poetry.

I remember my friend Diane, when she was judging work to be accepted into the literary magazine she was staffing, found a poem she liked. I can't remember who it was by, or even what it was about, but the rhyme and the meter and the use of repetition was very good. I'm not one for liking rhyme, I prefer prose poetry or free-form, but I must admit that this was pretty good. But Diane - as she read this poem over and over again, she became more and more excited. "Just listen to this", she'd say, and she'd rattle off the first verse again to me. She too preferred unmetered poetry, but she fell in love with this. She loved to read it aloud, and she loved going over it in her head. She just loved the sound of the poem, the pleasing quality it had to her ear, and not necessarily the message the poem had. But she loved it.

That is what poetry is to me. It is something that charges a person up inside; it is something that you like reading the one hundredth time as much as the first. I doesn't have to convey a deep, great message to all; it can hold a special place in your own heart because of a past memory, a dream, or anything. But it can have that meaning, too - and that is precisely why people may find poetry with deeper sentiment so appealing. And it can fill one person up with joy and do nothing for the next person; the important matter is that it thrills that one person. It can be rhyme, it can be prose - basically, I think anything can be poetry as long as it's written - and if it's not written, then it is merely poetry waiting to be expressed, or put to paper.

I find myslef using the term "poetic" quite often in reference to things that are not poetry. Usually I refer to things that way that strike me and stir me, if they stir my senses or if they stir my soul. If I find a poetic scene like that, I suppose that if I were able to express in words what I see and make those words stir a person, then I've created a poem. I'd almost venture to say that the word 'poetic' is the quality of something that makes you utterly fall in love with it, and the word 'poem' are the written words that either evoke the imagery that made you fall in love, or evoke sounds that make you fall in love.

Sometimes, when someone reads a poem of mine, they don't get a reaction. They think it's nice, or whatever, but the idea doesn't stir them the way it stirrs me. Maybe this is because that idea wouldn't stir them. Maybe it's because the idea can't be put into words. Maybe it can.

Alexandria Rand

best friend

"I had a best friend once,"
I said matter-of-factly,
as I stared into the palm of my hand.
You laughed my remarks off a sarcasm.
So I waited for a silence
so that I would have the thrill
of breaking it.
"I had a best friend once-
and he raped me."
There. You wanted to hear it.
How can you break the silence
now? I've taken away your weapons.
Have I taken away your compassion, too?
Tell me what good this knowledge
does you now.
Reminding me doesn't help,
and there's nothing you can do
to make the pain go away.
As you sit there in silence,
I wonder if there must be someone
who can say what needs to be said to me.
A best friend, maybe.
But if only a best friend
can help me now
then I would prefer
not to be helped.
I don't ever want to find
a best friend again.

gabriel athens

Bad And Good

helena wolfe
September 2, 1998

I just heard about an
unwarranted arrest for a
man who in debt
a couple of arrests

One thing occurred to me
that some people deserve pain

why have I been
better than good all my life?
have I been paying from something
from a past life?

Poam: Militant Man With Schizophrenia

jimbo breen

I
the problem with people
in this country today
is they don't love
the US of Goddamn A anymore

All these yuppie faggots
riding their trains to work
their bmws their jags
and I went to war for 'em
went to hell and back

we chanted
sodomize hussein for 'em

and we loved the Goddman wars
WWI, II, Korea, Nam, Nicaragua, Iraq
cause we were fighting for something
something real

what the hell
what has this country
come to

II
Ha. He thinks he's really funny. Strong.
I'm Jennifer. I know him. He hasn't been laid in
years, and most of the times were with foreign
women. What does it mean when you have to pay
for sex? It means you're not a man, and he knows
it.
He doesn't usually let me come out. But, you
see, I'm really stronger than him. Oh, and that
kills him, a woman being stronger than him.
But, you see, he never lets himself be loved.
He tries to hide himself in his stupid war
talk.
But I come out every once in a while, put on
my little red dress, put on the lipstick. Mmm, you
know, lipstick feels so good gliding across your
lips.

III
I shanked a nigger faggot
when i was in the clink
the faggot tried to rape me
but he didn't know who he was dealing with

I'm a man, Goddamnit
I've robbed stores
I've killed men
I've had women

and there's always an enemy
and I can beat 'em all

once
when I was in grade school
a kid called me a pansy
and I beat him so hard
they had to take him
to the hospital

nobody messes with
jimbo breen

IV
I know I'm better looking than all those Hustler
magazines he keeps.
He keeps these old magazines, you see, old
car and drivers, old soldier of fortunes
old hustlers.
Some of 'em gotta be ten years old.
Usually when I take over I just look through
those sex mags and laugh. They don't know
what they're doing. I could make a man happy.
I could give it to him any way he wanted it.
God, I want a man inside of me, in my mouth, in
me now.
I could even climb the corporate ladder, if that's
what would turn them on, if only I could overpower
that bastard's mind. I could be fucking every man
I saw.
I could walk out on the streets and be whoever I
wanted. God, I could be something.

V
women are such bitches
they can't be trusted

VI
Who is he hiding from? Let me come out.

VII
this is a good country
nobody's got no
Gaddamn pride anymore
and I'm sick of
all the faggot yuppies
these Goddamn cowards
corporate cogs

they don't stand up
for what they believe in

and people
don't fear the Lord
anymore
know who they should
look up to

I have a picture of Ollie North
it's an eight-by-ten
it's framed in my kitchen

VIII
I wish he'd clean this place up. I'm not going to
do it. What, does he think I'm gonna cook for him
too?
Why doesn't he get a job, one that lasts for more
than four months, one that's not in a liquor store
so he can get drunk every chance he gets.
Thank God
he doesn't have the guns anymore. He used to
have a ton of 'em, keep them hidden in every
corner of this one-bedroom hole above some
old bag's garage. If the guns were still here, I'd kill
him.
No, I couldn't, I'd be killing myself then. He's all
I got. I just wanna get out, I wanna live, I wanna
stop hiding.
I want him to take down his guard for just one minute,
that guard of his that is still stronger than his
sargeant's from Korea. Damnit.
I wish his mind would just rest, so I could take it over
again, but it seems to always be there, on the
defensive, darting around, looking for ways to protect
himself.

IX
there's a war
behind every corner
you're gotta learn
to fight

people don't know
who to trust anymore
what to
believe in
but I do

Jimbo Breen

Afraid of Telling The Truth

shannon peppers
November 23, 1998

do I think about him too much
or should I at all

who do I get my nightmares from?
are the problems from the nightmare people
are they the ones that should have given me that pain
or do my nightmares come from you

are you the one that gave me that pain
without trying

maybe you were trying
maybe you weren't

I can be afraid of telling the truth
if anyone that can handle it, can quote unquote
"handle it," well then, it would be me

it's irrelevant that I want you
and need you
and play along
because you should take all of my troubles away

I'll scare you away, I'll scare you away if I
tell you the truth

A Lifetime Together

sydney anderson

started October 24, 1998,
added December 1, 1998

we were supposed to spend a lifetime together
that's what we talked about
we were supposed to be happy together

you mentioned a place, i said
i wanted to go there for my honeymoon
and you agreed

i can think about all the things you said to me
and i can think about all the lies you told me
they're all beginning to run into one another, you know

i can think about how we would act like a couple
when we were playing pool at the local bar
i think of how we didn't look like tourists

when in a way we were

you got me next to nothing for my birthday that year
well i was there, you had to get me something, you thought

i can think about the flowers you were supposed to get me
how it would have been good to be able to tell my friends
that i'm seeing someone
so they wouldn't think i'd be alone all my life

i can think about how you would shower me with attention
or how you'd tell people about me
she's a great girl, you'd say

i'm sure that's what you'd say

i wanted to feel your hand touch my face
i wanted to get a sign from you

any sign

so have a happy life, i think
when i think of all the people
who said they cared but didn't

I thought when someone said they cared
they meant it
and feelings like that
aren't supposed to change at the drop of a hat

when does it occur to the average man
that there is in fact no feeling there
that maybe there never WAS

maybe you just think
I'm going to have to end this
maybe she won't get hurt

Well, in case no one ever told you
women do get hurt

even the strong ones

it's really easy for me to say
that I didn't care about you
that I knew all along that you lied to me

so whether or not I feel that way
is irrelevant right now
because I'm supposed to be over you
because I'm supposed to not care

even the strong one

IRONY OR PARADOX, I ALWAYS CONFUSE THE TWO

Michael Estabrook
MEstabr815@aol.com

I've decided I'm not taking any
more classes at the Harvard Extension School,
I'm dropping out of the Master's
program in American Literature and Language.
I'm 52 after all, with thirteen years
of college and two Master's degrees
already that I don't fucking use.
I tell my wife I'm stopping. She's happy,
always thought I was wasting my time anyway.
I smile, "But the class this week was useful,
I got a poem out of it."
She's not a poet so doesn't understand
what I'm saying, stands before me cocking
her head like a confused spaniel.
"I mean, discussing TS Eliot and Ezra Pound
in class inspired a poem of my own,
it popped right out of me, isn't that great?"
She shrugs, "I suppose so,
but a poem about what?" "It doesn't matter
really, but it was about the young pretty
blonde sitting in front of me,
the girl with the diaphanous eyelids."
"Oh," she says, "and I'm supposed to be
happy about that?"

GROCERY STORE HEADLINE (18)

L.B. Sedlacek

My friend Rick used to rent a studio apartment on the fifteenth floor
where his kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom all were one room.
(He had a top bunk for the bed, and curtains hiding the kitchen and the bathroom
- though there was no privacy unless he was alone.)

He used to open the big picture window, and look down on the yard below
while he drank gin and smoked pot right in front of the playing kids, or
the neighbors looking out from the windows of their bordering row
houses - thick with paint, devoid of trees.

One day he got so stoned he fell out of the window right onto
some politician's kid; neither one got hurt, but Rick went to jail
for a very long time and he lost the apartment which was too bad
'cause he was grandfathered in and the rent was cheap for an apartment
one block from the Capitol. They wrote about it in a tabloid -
I mailed him the article, and he put the headline up in his cell.

EVOLUTION

Michael H Brownstein
garlic2222@aol.com

Blue blood eases through creases
and the tigers come through bush and brush,
step into the clearing, protectors of the clearing.

And I guess I should have stayed
until all of the thievery had stopped.
I gathered everything up from myself, and others.

Everything slows to one frame of 35mm film.
So we no longer question your insanity;
your eveolution into insanity.

It's best I stay to myself and become nobody
and it's best for you
to create a clearing for yourself.

Puzzle

Melanie Moore
melancholia67@hotmail.com

I still remember the day we were able to put the puzzle together inside out...
No corners, no ends,
Wrong and about
Renaissance arrived
After the money ran out

Our hopes relied on ancient forces
Living as the undead
Along our lives' courses
Somehow coping with our role models' divorces

So the Dark Ages end
And different seasons arise
We keep on mourning
As we wait for the surprise

GREETERS

Michael H Brownstein
garlic2222@aol.com

We are the official wavers of the trains.
This is what we do.
Twice a day we come to these tracks to wave.
Sometimes those in the train wave back.
Sometimes they do not.
And we always smile.
Yes, even in the rain and cold we are there.
We greet the passing of the train.

2,000 YEARS LATER AND WE'RE STILL ALL FUCKED UP

Robert W. Howington
dirtyhowie@anti-heroart.com

"The human race is never at peace."

My shrink told me in our third session that I'm not only clinically depressed but that I'm also chemically dependent. I was not shocked by this news. I knew that I was a fucked up individual but I simply hadn't had it confirmed by science yet.
"Being both depressed and CD means you're dual diagnosis," the shrink said, a look of great concern on his face. "Now this doesn't mean you're crazy. It just means you have two diseases and both are curable."
He determined my present mental condition by giving me a series of written tests for depression and drug and alcohol abuse during my first two visits. These tests asked me if, when and why I partook in various assorted legal, and illegal, substances. They also asked me about how I felt about certain things going on inside my head and life in general. Did I get along with people (No.)? Did I like my job (No.)? Did I ever think of murder or suicide (Hell, yes.)? I answered them all truthfully. I didn't have anything to hide since I wasn't wanted by the cops

* * *

The alarm sounded at 5:45 a.m. and I raised up. The cat was on the edge of the bed looking at my dumb sleepy ass. I petted her and said, "I'm still alive and I've got to go to work." I do not like working. I wished I could stay home all day long and daydream about fucking Britney Spears. I wished I could stay home and fart out loud and not have to worry about offending someone. I wished I had an understanding woman taking care of me. "Do your writing, dear, and I'll work two jobs." Or I wished I had an older, and wiser, brother to pay the rent and bills. Thinking about 'what ifs' does me no good. It just makes me think of the way things could be. And things are never the way they could be. Not in my shitty life anyway.

* * *

At work, while processing the usual mound of monotonous paperwork, I got a phone call from a friend. I stopped what I was doing and talked to Dolores. She works from home as a lingerie model (she doesn't fuck'em or suck'em, just takes her clothes off or role plays). She has an ad in a local sex mag, the Sundowner. Horny men with strange sexual fantasies call her number all day long. When they ask her what she'll do for them she says, "Body rub, lingerie or total nude. Ninety dollars for a half hour or $130 for one hour."
She said a guy told her he didn't want any of that. He wanted to give her $60 to let him stick a butt plug up her ass. "I told him, 'I'm not letting anyone stick anything up my ass. My ass ain't for sale. It ain't for rent. It ain't for lease.' Nothing goes up my ass with these clients. Now, I'll shove something up a man's ass. I had a guy call me up and ask, 'Are you all natural?' I said, 'My hair isn't if that's what you mean.' He goes, 'No, I wanted a girl who's had surgery.' So I told him, 'Go to Wal-Mart and buy a Barbie if you want a perfect fucking woman. She's on sale for $9.99' It's amazing the stupid shit these guys want. Getting requests like this is an everyday deal for me. I'm always in a bad mood because of all this bullshit. I'm tired of it. Now do you see why I'm so fucked up? I have done one call today. A nice guy who just wanted his nipples pulled really hard."
Dolores went on to tell me about her troubles with her two wild, uncontrollable school age kids, her physical and mental health problems, her love/man troubles, her constant lack of money.
"I'd get a real job but I can't handle being at the same place, and around the same people, for eight hours a day, everyday of the week. Besides, how can anyone support their family on minimum wage?"
She said she's mad at the world and is fed up with all the bullshit that comes with being alive.
"Once you see reality for what it is you can't help but go crazy. The world we live in is a terrible place because man has created it. I feel very disappointed by life in general. I hope death is better than this."
I said I felt the same way. "I know I'm not the first to say this but life consists of one problem after another. And it's never ending because the suffering never end. Right when you think things are looking up a rock comes flying out of nowhere and knocks you down again. Our survival instinct is always being tested. Today the car breaks down. Tomorrow the refrigerator stops working. I really believe death is heaven, that the only relief from life is death."
We've told each other many times that we're going to kill ourselves. But we never do. We go on like morons. We keep breathing. In and out. Ad infinitum.

* * *

As I drove my car home from a downtown daily grind job that has slowly and methodically coerced me into accepting its soulless, murdering nature for the lousy dollar it brings, I saw an old thin black man walking down Rosedale Street who had taken his dick out of his dirt stained pants. With each step he took an explosive fountain of urine splattered onto the pavement. SPLURP. SPLURP. SPLURP. With a grin on his face, he looked up into the bright sky and said, "A nice day...if it don't rain."
A couple of blocks down an overweight black woman walking down the street with groceries in her arms suddenly stopped and grabbed her stomach. An expression of pain came over her face. She dropped the bags and raced behind a stairwell next to an abandoned office building and pulled down her pants and squatted. A waterfall of shit came streaming out of her ass. I thought, "I hope she has toilet paper in one of those grocery sacks."
A group of down-and-outs were gathered under a shade tree behind Bert's Liquors. They cradled paper sacks carrying 40 ounce bottles of malt liquor. They were smiling and laughing, happy in their cheap intoxication and chronic unemployment. To them a dirt floor was just as good as a carpeted one, provided they're registering an 0.15 on the alcohol meter.
A tattered, sun baked and grossly wrinkled white man, his long beard and unkempt, stringy hair matted into angry snarls from the grease and mud he lives in under the freeway overpass, searched through a Dumpster behind a Mexican market. He placed a few wretched items in a shopping cart overfilled with bulging plastic garbage bags and false hopes for a better tomorrow.
I pulled up to a red light and watched a man in camouflage clothing come out of a 7-Eleven and use a quarter to play a scratch off game he bought with his last two dollars. He doesn't believe in God, America or anything else but he believes in the lottery. A loser again, he tossed the card down in disgust and walked back into the store and shoved a gun into the cashier's face and demanded money. A police officer eating a donut and drinking coffee in the back of the store drew his firearm out of its holster faster than Doc Holliday ever did and shot him dead. The loser lost for the last time.

* * *

Meanwhile, I speed home to my empty, one bedroom apartment. Once there, I smoke crack for its momentary euphoria. The wonderful crack I abuse eases the tight grip severe depression has on my mind. Pot and alcohol and cocaine do too but crack is the greatest, most intense high ever invented by man. So much so that if you let yourself become addicted to it you will be at its mercy and crack shows no mercy for it is a killer. It will murder your mind and then it will murder your body. It's definitely the Devil's Smoke. Why? Because once smoked crack gives you a feeling of total ease with yourself and your surroundings, an absolute happiness envelopes your entire being. It makes you feel like you're floating on a soft white cloud above seas of endless sugar. Since I've never before experienced this kind of intense feeling of joy, crack literally forces you to do another bowl because you don't want that joyful feeling to leave you. Crack's grip on your soul is strong because it's !
a great brain fuck. So when it's high dissipates you immediately do another bowl. And another. And another. Eventually, you run out of crack. So you buy more cocaine and cook it because you want that crack high to never go away. For someone like me who's never experienced complete happiness crack is a godsend, the gold at the end of the fucking rainbow, the sweet snatch of a Playboy Playmate, the Stanley Cup winning goal, the Super Bowl winning touchdown, the World Series winning home run and the love of your life all wrapped into one. And to think all it takes to attain this experience is $20 worth of cocaine, baking soda, a spoon, a few drops of water, a screwdriver and a heat source. Life is cheap and so is crack.
But crack's only drawback, unfortunately, is you can't get a hard-on while fucked up on it. Try it. You'll see. You become a dead man down there where it counts. Even if you're horny as shit you cannot get an erection while high on crack. If you want to fuck a bitch like crazy it won't happen if you're smoking da rock, bro. Just wait, however. Let the crack wear off. Give it an hour. Then you can fuck her brains out. But you won't be high. So it won't be the same as being on crack while fucking her. So then you probably won't want to fuck her anyway.

* * *

As usual, I lay on my bed and do what I did in the previous millennium: abuse drugs, drink alcohol and watch unreal t.v. shows so I can forget the reality of the great dull zero that is life. Mankind has not advanced much in how it treats itself one-third of the world's nation's are at war, eight million motherfuckers are locked up in jail cells worldwide, tens of millions are enslaved and millions more are starving to death but it has reached nirvana in how it gets off. Amen for that.

Nipple of Light

Klyd Watkins
klyd@thetimegarden.com

We are on a subway car or
railway car or something. My wife
has engaged in spirited, sisterly conversation
with another woman. A girl across from me -
long brown hair, glowing skin - bends over her magazine
spilling a tease of exquisite cleavage. She must feel my eyes
on her for she sits up and turns her face to the side
and smiles that slight, sly, all knowing, all forgiving
smile we all know. Then - lord help me! - she
leans to place her magazine on the floor, flashing
me deep down where the solid alive geometry narrows
toward nipples in shallow shadow. She
sits up. We smile formally, innocently.
Then - is this happening?! - she bends to pick
the magazine up again!
I get an urgent need to pee
and I am excited that I must pass close to her
and I feel some guilt at this subtle, involuntary
betrayal. The girl must have seen my eyes
plan the route for when I stand up she has passed
already smoothly into the hall to the bathrooms.
When I open the men's room door sure enough she
is in there. With no subtlety she holds the neck
of her shirt wide so I can see down to one
of her nipples, thick like a thumb, flat on top
like a mesa, pink bullseye in pale aureole
but I just barely glimpse it before
it begins to glow. First the flesh fissures
leak light from within, geography becoming geology,
then as the glowing grows brighter the black berry swirls
fuzz. She is taking her top off completely now I know from
her peripheral arm motion and the shadow crossing
her chest - but when the quick eclipse has passed
I still see only the one light - maybe my eyes
are crossed - one light - it brightens more - it's like
a moon now - brightens more - it is a sun flash
on chrome - then I am dislodged from that consciousness
and whether I sat there on the toilet seat oblivious
or traveled far in blood canoes I cannot say.

SPIDER'S SILK

Michael Estabrook
MEstabr815@aol.com

sometimes the sunlight catches
this long strand of nearly invisible
spider's silk stretching
like a delicate diaphanous golden hair
across my windshield
and it twirls and twists and flashes
distracting me but I'm leaving it there
because it's pretty

the explanation

so we figured we'd have to write out information
that our readers might want to know
in the form of a poem, since
they seldom look over the ads.
ha! we got you, you thought
you were reading a poem, when it's actually
the dreaded advertising. but wait -
you'll actually want to read this, we think.
Okay, it's this simple: send us your
poetry, prose or art work to
alexrand96@aol.com. Then sit and wait.
Pretty soon you'll hear that
(a) Your work sucks, or (b)
This is fancy crap, and we're gonna print it. It's that simple!
is that all? yeah, we think that's pretty much it...