Magnanimous Morning
by Ray Succre

Morning comes engorged on voiceless air,
and the night whiners return to doggerel trees--
you see, I am not a morning man;
as the Sun tendrils into my ears and across my simian ass,
the warm sky-fire baring my naked exhaustion
to the Earth, my hair sticking up,
my legs weak, and my mood spilling
up from overflowing toilets,
I can't but speak gibberine English,
patting my head like damp, round dough.

"Are you up?  Will you make the bed?"
I am asked first.  It is the start
of the citizen nova that will shoot-star
evaporating questions at my skull until
I pass out again.

"I made the bed when I fell into it," I say,
"you just want me to turn it into furniture."
Having wrapped my babied feet in various
elements people will probably use to gauge me,
the Sun slips across the hill like an egg-yolk
edging down a window.  It reaches my house
and slaps me in the face, running
bird noise scrimmages against my ugly ears.

I design the blueprint for a cosmic syringe
that I can stab into the Sun and use
to draw out all its poison.
I'd place the poison in a display and title it

             'Magnanimous Morning'

but I know hippies and aerobics pets
down the hill who would only steal
my caught Sun and have sex in it,
smoke it, write better things about it
than I would, complete with a-ha moments
and wondrous conceits.

Somewhere, a truck is backing over a dog.
It is just more morning.

I spy Sky
by S.L.Parry

Capitalism claws tonight
like a crow pecking at a corpse
socialists pray it’ll take flight
and wipe free its blotted black blight.
So the ‘rogue’ states can eat tonight.

But the sky is my butch blanket:
a safety blanket they can’t touch
the moon hovers like a crumpet
the sky’s portly loyal crutch.
Culture’s communal snug blanket.

The patchwork’s pure - no logo -
the backdrop to every last scene.
It hosts the night and the day-glow
and cuts crusts where the planes have been.
A blank space retreat. No logo.

Peter Pan
by S.L.Parry

Downstairs there would be banging
and plates smashing like weak shells,
our Mum would be flames-fanning
trying to stop raging hell.

She said he couldn’t help it.
She said he liked a few drinks.
But then he’d go, throw a fit,
before she had time to think.

I’d gaze out of the window
and wish I was Peter Pan.
So I could block out his blows
and over the skies I’d span.

Away, away, up on high!
I would take my sister, too.
Riding our carpet of sky,
whilst he beat Mum black and blue.

A shelf sneered in my direction; I did not succumb to hoisting
myself up on to its bracket, to sit starved of male affection.
I wore my wrinkles like some stripes emblazoned proudly on my arm,
locked ticking-time-clocks in the drawer and batted off piggish swipes.

A spinster rocking chair swiped out, striving to seat my sunken spine,
but I kicked it into the fire! Then watched its last breaths simper out.
Soup-for-One cans beat the old maid as if they were metal batons,
sleighing her to a scarlet pulp, while I was still out getting laid…

I peered across my grey contours, checked myself from top to bottom,
scavenging for this ‘sell-by date’ which would deem me a dinosaur.
My biological clock – mute, it did not dare to bleat a sound,
nor throw me on life’s scrapheap just because of some greying roots.

When I was very small
I fell
In my grandmother’s
Gravel driveway

And got a rock stuck in my lip.
You can barely make out
The scar
From behind the stubble now,
But it’s there.
Then when I was ten,
I fell on a fence I was climbing,
And got a long deep one
From the bottom of my spine
To about the middle of my back.
This has been the basis
Of many romantic fabrications.
I got another a year or so later
When I dreamed Indians
Were burning down my hallway.
I got out of bed,
Threw my guinea pig cage across
The hall
And punched my hand through the window,
Ostensibly to save my little brother
And myself
From the marauding Indians.
Girls don’t leave scars
when they break your heart,
Neither do suicides.
But I’ve got tons of little ones
On my knees and my hands
From bike crashes, school fights,
And an assortment of other things.
I just got another one a little ago.
I was taking a spaghetti au gratin
I had made for the kids for dinner
(the wife is working late) out of the oven,
And I touched my right knuckle
To one of the enflamed irons in the gas
Oven,
And the flesh is already oozing,
Already rising, pink and angry.
The dinner was good--I didn’t drop the dish--
And we listened to Branford Marsalis
And talked about Cyrus the Great, wondering
How he died in his battle with
The invading Massagetai tribes;
I think he was shot with a dozen arrows,
My oldest thinks he was run-through.
My youngest--just learning to talk--said some
Poignant gibberish,
And we moved on.
The spaghetti scar is only lightly throbbing now,
And I’m blowing on it from time to time. I don’t
Know if it will stay long,
But I think it’s my favorite.

In Silence, I heard the word
it spoke to me
as if a Master’s voice stirred
drowsy morning--

Only moments ago
I dreamed of silk--
the road too cobbled
as I slept--

the stirring grasses
curious
outside my drowsing house--
ominous

the coach’s wheels pausing
near the black door
while my heart still rested
innocent, a flower

not ready to be pried
into violent bloom--
as the word lured
me from my slumber--




17


Sanctity
by Karen Bingham Pape

The Congregation for the Causes
of the Saints travels to the far
corners of the earth
searching out miracles.  The girl
chews gum and fixes hair
and cries out to the sky
as the battle for evil continues
in the back, hands, feet ,
the iridescent green of her
ring without intaglio.  A stone
rolls away from a grave, and
the Magdalen sees empty
space and testifies.  Two
thousand years later on a
corner a baby cries, a dove
flies over a gargoyles as
the rain washes gutters clean.

two shadows
on the road
going somewhere
side by side
together

one is mine
I don't know the other one
it is yours
isn't it?

Every night I scurry
through your eyes again

for the first time.
Unimpeded by your dwelling-
barred doors of spasm flatter

the roof erected from tears.
I summon you nightly.
Hurling doctrines

at busted windows,
awaiting on sanction while moaning

ethereal hymns to your imperfections.
I see you there-
tearing off your morning coat,

broadcasting your splendor to the world.
Debased weeds waltz about her curious

constitution as vines parody her plight.
My ventricle begins to whistle

vows to the vaults. 
Dancing upon your lashes,
I watch her

emancipate her cognizance.

Ten layers of space exist between where I can touch the window sill and the furthest point I can see out my window. The sill begins as an exterior, I can touch its contents, put my ashtray on it, lay some receipts on its edge, but it tends to dirty when I open the window. I mostly keep it clean with a wet rag though two yet-to-be-discovered and permanent blotches near its back remind me to be more cautious. The window, the second layer, is divided into two equal halves, like a half-dressed body, with the screen only covering the lower half. The dirty screen, the third layer, which I can’t reach because the sill is too long, comes within only a few centimeters of the seven black bars, the fourth layer, their cast shadows on the pavement create one of the three problems of such an obstructed, ten-layered view from a window.

The problem is that without the bars’ shadows on the fifth layer, the sidewalk, no one would realize that a window existed where it does. Instead, their shadows attract any general stripling and I watch as they bob their heads below their knees and peer into my window, wanting to see what’s on my desk or in my bedroom. Rarely do I make eye contact but when I dance or play loud music or sleep with my window open I occasionally find a few strangers peeking in.

At night the bars blend with the darkness but still divide the white gutter in six separate regions like any arm -- if you count each joint in your hand, your wrist, your elbow, and your shoulder as separate regions.

The grass and mulch fill the largest layer between the bottom and top, like a thick fur of misunderstanding (who is it that decides to put a flower bed or small yard between the curb and the sidewalk?) and when it snows in the street the grass rarely fills with snow and if I were to go outside the window’s view wouldn’t help me decide if it’s cold outside or if I need more layers.

Most mornings I wake up and wonder why my only window looks out onto these ten layers, or why the tenth and last layer, the red fence, is all that I can see when I’m in my chair. If I bend my head down low enough, straining my neck, I can see over top of the red fence and I see another window, always closed, with seven other bars. The brick around the window is painted white, but I can see a few spots of the red brick. I don’t know how many layers one can see outside of that window but I imagine it’s more than ten, which is the second problem.

The third and final problem is the ninth layer, my favorite, the gutter that lies along the red fence.

22

I breathe on my hands
wonder where that stairway goes
say shhh don't cry shhh

alarm the birds in the tree
look for a picture of the person
I've been told I resemble

an uncle missing since the war

change trains wake up tired
and still trying to think
of another word for all this

23

I am so frustrated
I want to chew
the dandruff
out of the internet hair implant
and dislodge it,
for a lost love affair I never cared
about and hardly knew.
Don't tell me about my sentence structure,
I am human in these simple words.
I swear to you I curse.
Then the ram of my affair falls short
frustrating my approach to the world
at my fingertips.
No Yellow Pages here my love.
The dial up of my local connection
is wretched, stuck unincorporated
in the land I approved to live in,
monopolized by Comcast the
robbers of the poor and the humbled.
All I hear is the rambling of the railroad tracks.
I grow numb in my deafness faint with my hearing.
Did I ask for your opinion?
I am a frustrated foreign camper
in my own community.
Of a village I don't live in,
but I love this local village I lie about.
I am estranged.
I tie knots in contradictions
when I travel light and far,
visit home I long for a journey
past where I have never been.
Is this the reason I am lost
forked in between
the poet I think I am
and the working man
my bills dictate?

24

Jesus lives
in a tent
not a temple
coated with blue
velvet sugar
He dances in freedom
of His salvation
with the night and all
days bearing down with sun.
He has billions of ears
hanging from His head
dangling by seashores
listening to incoming prayers.
Sometimes busy hours drive Him
near crazy with buzzing sounds.
He walks near desert bushes
and hears wind tunnels
pushed by pine stinging nettles.
Here in His sacred voice
a whisper and
Pentecostal mind-
confused by hints of
Catholicism and prayers to Mary-
He heals himself in sacred
ponds tossing holy water
over himself--
touching nothing but
humanity He recoils
and finishes his desert
walk somewhat alone.