Shelly Hall

POETRY

Try to dye it, try to tie it, that deep dark knot of love; sighing, dying, denying, crying, all for that above. It comes at you, ball of fire, bounces off the wall; Open, open, a word be spoken, and JOY that is ALL.

To My sister

I expected the door to slam shut

in ungratefulness.

Like the time before

and the time before that

when you shut your door

and closed your eyes

and wanting to hear nothing

of my stifled gagging chokes

of pain.

left the house.

I swayed from left to right

like a pendulum,

cringed in cloth

doubled over in the muted darkness

of the cavern

where bodies never touched

and minds never met

and the decay never ceasing.

The moss was never really planted

and it never really grew

to a blossoming green

of growth.

I sit here now before my self

and wonder

when

there will be no more pardons

and woman-identified talks

of understanding and sympathy.

I wonder when

but realize the time

is now.

Karen Tierk

See silly man?

Mama nature has stopped you once again, Paralized.

Your mechanized progress of Centuries in one night

With a light touch of her primative, pagan hand.

Stilling the earth with her cold white blanket

Of beauty and hidden death

(Scene that suddenly reminds me

Of the woman that populate your "' used bookstore" paperbacks.)

You pompous ass

Know you yet that Mother Nature will no tolerate

Your blind ignorant denial of her absolute importance?

You crazy fool.

When will you learn that this mother does know best?

APPEL

song: east 115th street for phillip

Joan E. Beard

Why in eyeing someone dying, is there such despair? Why the sighing and the crying, a stillness not to share? Is the praying really saying'Mother stay by me', So the seeking and the speaking mask the futility?

Joan E. Beard

first a blacktopped space for cars

then a vacant lot of

weeds stones and

shadows that teased the fear in me. first my feet searching

then my eyes and hands tentatively for the fence -hole:

the squeeze through a bit like a birth

or an escape maybe

stones shadows fance and

fear left behind.

(a hand stretches through my head

clawing through the rubble for just one image

of just one place where i felt

at least comfortable and

some welcome and maybe

at home.)

arriving on that street

fear and fence behind came close:

the rain and i were both invited there big old trees cracked the sidewalk roots earth chunks grass patches and long skinny weeds creeping among bricks boards window-eyes. the rain sang soft and silver,

the weeds and i held hungry mouths up and drank glowed grew.

the houses sat close to each other

like old friends smiled the warm smiles of old painted wood

Yes towers shutters and porches offering a welcome seat from which to watch the rain.

(the hand stretching...)

i loved him as much for what he was a part of: odd old things neighborly things.

he had a porch, we sat on a makeshift swing. peeling paint and neighbors all sharing a bit of whatever hope: beer pipe thoughts went

round. someone had an orange.

someone alsa a sad harmonica

he had a room too

a place to make love quiet protected

by walls of neighborhood art

a window-eye of plants and

the memory of the night's soft tunes.

(the hand clawing...)

it's not for me to say what they should do

with the broken fence that was my birth-hole the cracks of green the sycamore the rain.

roots

if they what to pick it apart plank by plank

bury the roots under blacktop cremate all the porch swings and erect tall lights where the trees were well that's also not for me to say.

(the hand stretches through my head and reaches out to the image of him and me arms entwined eyes all tangled up: shadows stones weeds window eyes smiling porches love and yes the rain.

the hand touches and holds, holds tight.)

theresa bacan

-

page 4/What She Wants/February, 1975