The Wordless Dance

by Luke Buckham

the sky's as silent as a photograph
and a girl with long blonde dreadlocks
wearing a shimmering black silk dress
walks like a flame among the toy houses.
her face is sharper & prettier
than the tip of a lazer-guided missile.
she sneezes on the dust of a stagnant century
and several houses in the neighborhood fall down.
she moves on innocently as I look down
from the third floor and each of her footsteps
is a small ring of fire blistering the sidewalk.
in a dance-club fingers glide on vinyl,
a few beats find her hips, she slithers in,
and I'm transported to a balcony above her,
watching her glide, a black dove flapping on placid waters.
the sky crackles above the disco lights,
if we walk out on the streets fire from another country
might come down to take us.
so we move faster than time,
the circles that hips make on the floor
gliding in and out of each other in drowning sex,
a crooked smile leaps from the floorboards
becomes a human race, we all recreate ourselves.
the faster I move on my feet the further I am
from all my angry families who won't dance.

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Copyright 2004 Luke Buckham(aworminmywall@hotmail.com).
Reproduction is prohibited without express permission of the author.

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This Fall

Richard Denner

treats from the trees
here's a maple leaf
red, brown, orange
bright as a flag

from the tree
in the yard
of the house
of an old woman

through her window, she looks
with her hearing aid turned off
living in her memories, listening
to cries and whispers of long ago
in synch with today's display

and a sprig of juniper
a clipping
overlooked by a gardener's leafblower

blown leaves
a noisy beauty for the eye

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Copyright 2004 by Richard Denner (rychard@sonic.net).
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Darla

by Bob Papcsy

Darla has been my wife
for the past forty years.
When I look at her she is still
the stunning young lady II married.
The helpmate who on our tenth
anniversary,stopped the Broadway
show, Same Time Next Year,
with her infectious laughter.
She is the loving person who
takes in stray animals and lost,
hopeless people, life's casualties.
Perhaps that explains why we
are together. Whatever the reason
it worked. I cherish her and our
life as one. Darla is the rock that
safeguards me when life's
temptations would pull me out to
sea , the surging waves swamping
my soul. I only have to think of her
and I am rescued from the depths
by all she has been to me and still
is.I can't grasp "forty" years. It
sounds interminable, but it is only
a moment in our life together.
I look forward to the minute or so,
yet to come, not with regret or
fear, but with love and comfort,
secure in my hallowed anchorage.

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Copyright 2003 by Bob Papcsy (rpapcsy@cfl.rr.com).
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Greek

by Paul Murphy

I won't even forgive you for not spelling 'bird.
It's vogel, you know. We look at it again.
The symbols mean nothing. Means lambda.
Bird. Heiroglyph. Crossword puzzle, not poem.
Little philosophy seminar. Not poem. Omeros.
alpha beta delta ipsilon sigma omekron
Graffiti on ancient tombs - 'Rab was here.'
'Charlene luvs Pete'. toilet humour, taboos,
alcoholic morning visions, obscenities, dirty talk.
Just the kind of thing one would expect
a dialogue of Heraclitus, raw fragments
of a lost Aristophanic satyr play.
all the Greek is all of you - a duck in the park
a line of sparrows. Dodo walk. Cuckoo clock.

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Copyright 2003 by Paul Murphy (clitophon@yahoo.com).
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