MOMENT

RB

He sank upon the floor in grotesque posture, his obesity overflowing all around him. The pink window-curtains fell across his huge mass of uncombed, raven black hair; and the half-moon chartreuse colored woven-yarn rug formed a dais upon which he slumped, his fat face stupidly-his eyes unintelligently expressing some strange voluptuous bliss.

Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun crept sensuously through him and he turned. the radio knob and muted the music to a soft surge through his lazy blood, pulsating with the slow rhythms of desire so pregnant in DeBussy's masterpiece. One great hand clawed at the pink curtains and dragged them aside, and he stared lewdly, lasciviously out upon the countryside.

The rolling green hills stretched endlessly, broken only by scattered clusters of throbbing trees and fiercely singing birds-beautiful spasms of blue, sharp swords of red, and quivering throats of speckled brown and gray. The lilac burned purple in the slow distillation of desire, and the roses burst visibly with uncensored meaning torn with the excruciating pains of a thousand thorns.

by Clarence Alva Powell

one

20