December 2001 | back-issues, Bill Wunder, poetry
No neon glare
on the plains of Africa,
no streetlights
in the Serengeti,
only night,
black as espresso.
Parched earth revived
by generations of tears;
Lazarus land.
Hopelessness
of hunger closes in like hyenas.
Dream of them.
Dawn renews despair,
a second language here.
Red dust swirls
its death dance
with seeds of faith,
mere wishes upon the wind.
Children dressed only
in distended bellies,
adorned with flies.
I do not look them in the eye.
Tears Of Africa first appeared in [i]Snow Monkey[/i].
December 2001 | back-issues, Bill Wunder, poetry
you linger
like morning mist
opaque, tinged violet
in mountains called Morocco
you swarm of bees
noise of a thousand wings
buzz in my head
murmurs or our conversations
you train derailment
crashing
disrupting
morning schedules
colliding
with deadlines
sweet chaos
you life raft
in a needing, wanting sea
December 2001 | back-issues, Bill Wunder, poetry
On my knees,
our familiar rendezvous,
waiting for you
as I always do,
to speak in whispers
only my heart may hear.
Silence.
I know you are here,
your presence is wind
caressing my upturned face.
I await forgiveness,
offering neither reason
nor explanation.
I await boundless joy,
lifting me beyond
a sea of transgression.
I am overwhelmed
by the quiet,
cold abandonment
of a fall from grace.
Whispers From God first appeared in [i]Iguanaland[/i].
December 2001 | back-issues, Bill Wunder, poetry
Tinged silver-blue
by moonbeams,
luminous earth mother
hums with ethereal music.
Her velvet footsteps
pass the spiked fence
of coastal cedars,
solitary sentinels
old as time,
guard the night.
Luna moths,
iridescent ghosts
in magic moonlight
float among fireflies,
a starscape on earth,
fallen on a sleepy meadow.
Mother goddess,
fertile nymph-spirit rests,
bedded down on pillow moss
deliciously fragrant
while angel-fingered fronds
caress her face.
Cicada serenade,
a moondust lullaby
of echoed dreams
envelopes her.
She sighs, sleeping
among ferns, at peace.
Earth Mother first appeared in [i]Literary Potpourri[/i].
December 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
august in the
year of blind gods
no one
mentions the starving
and no one pities the weak
and no one thinks to
water the plants
you understand how irrelevant
these facts are
you stand on a boat
on a lake in upstate new york
the sun is a silent glare
the air a fist without mercy
and your wife asks a question
you don’t hear
you turn to her to speak and
what comes out is
(i don’t love you anymore)
clean and simple
and not a cloud in the sky
maybe the small laughter of water
or the sound of your son
playing at your feet
maybe the quiet roar of blood
pounding through
your veins
anything
your hands can hold
suddenly broken beyond
repair
December 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
man drowns in
a burning house
sleeps and dreams that
he wakes up
in his wife’s arms
dreams that he
never wakes up and
all i can tell you is that
twenty years spent walking
these empty streets will
get you nowhere
the man you find in a
one-room apartment in
the most hopeless part of
the city of butchered dreams
is not jesus christ
he says you look familiar
asks to borrow a twenty
but doesn’t
offer you a drink
sits in a faded chair
watching a silent television
while flowers grow from
de chirico’s bones
sleeps
through the afternoon
and wakes up
forty miles away
wakes up
on a kitchen floor
groping for air
not dead yet but
dying
