ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Aegisthus After/ Some Definitions
         Still there drips in sleep against the heart
         grief of memory

Justice so moves that those only learn
       who suffer
       —Aeschylus

Def. of courtship: "To court for advantages."
That's not to say we hadn't any needs
(Who hates to fuck?). In fens where such love breeds
One can feed on what is bred from rage's
Courtship. Our wombs grew fat with her dead daughter,
And my memories of sibling slaughter.
Hadn't we good reason to carve through skin?
Didn't more die for less against the Trojan?

Justice: "To get off with murder if you can."
Def. of murder? Not if you define through spin.
In 2,500 years, from then till now,
What fun to see conscience grovel, then bow.
Anger's a toilet. When you piss, it sings,
A practice refined by peerages and kings.



Fire Starter

Twenty times.
                               Twenty times
                               the tindery wood was lit.
                               Twenty fiery sparks


                                        that yawned, stretched,
                                                                 echoed, cackled away,

       streams of flame
that caulked the underbrush.

Twenty little crack babies.
Twenty fledgling birds
             crying for food,
                         sighing in the wind for breath.
Twenty kids single filing up ridges
to rich folks' houses cradled above gullies,
           and they were engulfed.

Engulfed.
And I'm the power
           man who made it
go.


Twenty thousand acres. A light seen in outer space, little candle
                                             at infinity's door,
all my doing.


                                                          *


Walking the chimney blackened, coffee grounds-
ground afterward, feeling charred,
sure, elated, a thimble full of sweet
cindery feeling cleanses.

Who says a fire out
is a pool of spent loss?

                                                           Who says
                                                           a fire out is out?
                                                           *

Because one can always go back,
back to mama earth.
Back to wind-blown-stubble-grass canyons.
Back to midsummer. Back.

Haunch down on the dry, brown brush.
Kick your boots into the dirt.
Feel it crumble into your hands.


                         The ocean sparkles over the next hill.
                                                  This the paradise.
                                                                   This the overhead flight of sea,
                                                                   the clap-like thunder,
                                                                   the rub your hands to a pyre.                                                                    These the red petals of Dido' flesh,                                                                    the million moans from Moses'                                                                          bush in the droughted                                                              nurseries of light.
                                                           *

Coolness is everything.
Take a newspaper. Light a Bic to it.
Set it out like a sweet flare.
Walk slowly,
ever so slowly,
back to the car.
                                                           *

Find a Denney's or IHOP on Highway I.
Order french toast or pigs in the blanket,
coffee. Like you have all day.

Three cups later,
hear the fire engines, like cats screaming.

Stand in the parking lot with the others,
in the toothpick dangle from jaws,
watching smoke billow out
from a gully a mile north,
mumble "Oh Lords" and "My Gods" to make polite with them.
                                                           *

On the ridge, fire fighters, little pawns,
            like ants on a kick-scrambled anthill.


            Little bridges of thirst:
Opaque sky meeting sea's sharp,
                     tingly blue, as ashes like down feathers float-drift-
                               drip through the trembling air.

Like sending out a Valentine to the sizzling sea,
and the desire all ablaze you feel is bigger than anybody's.