THE DREAM OF GEORGE D

by Lyn Lifshin

suddenly there on the train
to Oslo. And me, there,
figuring it’s ok, imagining
what, an affair? A hook
up? Is it too late for that?
So he was a student of mine
in another life, not one
who made my face burn,
made me shiver like Sal
Falova but a skinny good old
boy who loved poetry so
much he salted away one of
the only two copies of
one of my books in
his military trench coat. Those
days with writing work shops
at my house, at St Rose
where I read poems too
scandalous for some
but the nuns adored them.
Summer of divorce
and George was there, often, as
if ready to step in tho it was
not for me. I got my book
back, never gave him what he
wanted. Sometimes a poem
of his in a magazine. Same
formal, almost academic
piece about a Kentucky field
or the last thoughts of a
Confederate general. So many
years in other cities, never a
thought of his stillness,
forgetting maybe he took me
home after I drank too
much to get thru a reading—
old enough to have a son the
age he was. Just a few words
at a reading back in town,
no electricity, 5 minutes talk
maybe and then I slid back
to Virginia. So how am
I hip to hip, my head on his
shoulder heading past
snow peaks? Oslo, already
with its warming quilts,
mugs of mulled wine and
this feeling a feeling, a
freshness I haven’t felt
for too long


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

Beautiful And Beaten

by Doug Draime

She was hardly
recognizable sitting on
my steps
waiting
for me to come home.
It was 5 a.m. on a
Tuesday morning.
I was drinking at a bar on
Hollywood Boulevard
near Normandy, till closing time.
And then walked down
the street to Norm’s
restaurant for some steak
and eggs, sitting there downing
four black coffees, taking it slow
till I sobered up a little.
As I walked up my walk I could see
her sitting there
with her arms cradling her knees.
Her left eye was beaten shut;
blood caked on all over
her beautiful face,
and her upper lip
busted and swollen.
She was smiling under
my porch light. I got close
into her face.
“Jesus Christ, Dee, what
the fuck do you have
to smile about? What happened?” She started to cry.
“That’s two questions and I can’t
answer either one right now.” Tears
falling down her cheeks.
I stepped around her,
unlocked my door and pushed it open.
Then I bent down and gently
pulled her up by the shoulders, turned her
around and walked her
into my court apartment.

I turned on the light,
and still holding her shoulders,
guided her to the bathroom
and sat her down on the edge of the bath tub.
I dampened a wash cloth
with warm water
and gingerly cleaned her face
as best I could. She was trembling
and sobbing, with halting intakes
of breath, her whole body shaking.
Dee had been on the
streets hustling for about six months.
I met her about a year before,
when she was go-go dancer
at a place on lower Melrose.
She lost her job after slapping some
asshole for reaching up
and pinching her tit.
Not being able to find a job dancing,
or anything else, for
that matter, and desperate for money, she
decided to sell her body ...
on the streets of downtown L.A.
She stayed with me for awhile, and she
started to mean a lot to me.
I attempted to talk
her out of it many times, but to no avail.
Finding a half-way decent pimp
was the toughest part; she interviewed
them, a couple a week for a month,
like she was hiring a
trustworthy baby sitter, or a Japanese
gardener. She found one named Omar,
who set her up at the Roselyn Hotel
on 5th street. In a few months she had
enough money for
a nice little bungalow in Silverlake for her off
hours and
was saving money
for her dream of movie stardom; taking
acting lessons on the side.
She stopped by only two or three times
after that, seemingly content
with her life on the streets,
and with Omar.

I was on my knees holding her,
as she sat on the tub crying,
the tears soaking my shirt
clear through to my skin.
After a while I got her up
and walked her into my bedroom,
undressed her down to her panties
and bra.
She had stopped crying and
was thanking me over and over again
for “being here”. She quietly, slowly began
to tell me what had happened.
Omar had brought up a trick
to her room at the Roselyn.
The trick was drunk and couldn’t keep
a hard on. He suddenly got
violent and slapped her, then pulled a
knife, pressing it to her
throat, screaming foulness into her face,
as he still held the knife
at her throat, beating her with his fist.
She managed to knee him
in the balls and get away, running
down two flights of stairs
and out of the hotel. Her first thought
was to find Omar, who always
hung out at Googies restaurant
down the street.
When she couldn’t find him,
it was then she realized she left her
purse in the hotel room,
with all her money and the keys
to her bungalow. She hitched a ride into
East Hollywood, and had been waiting for
me since 11 p.m.
She said she was afraid to go
back to the hotel room without someone
with her.
I told her to lay down and try to get some
sleep, and that I would
go with her later that day.
I pulled the covers back and she got
under them like
a small child being tucked in,
still shaking a bit. She asked me to lay down
with her and hold her like I used to.
And I held her till we both fell
asleep. We got up around noon, showered;
I fixed some scrambled eggs, coffee and toast.
Her face looked worse,
especially her eye, which had swollen even
more, and was as black as coal.
I made her an ice pack
and told her to hold it on
the eye until her face was
numb; gave her some codeine
for the pain; and we set
out for downtown.

After parking in a lot off of 5th & Broadway
we walked to
the hotel. The door to her room was
wide open, but amazingly
nothing appeared to be missing;
she found her purse and
everything was there. She started
crying again out of
nowhere; I thought that that
was all over, but apparently not.
She sat down on the bed and cried harder
than the night before, nearly
hysterical. I started to move over to console
her, when I heard a noise behind me
and turned to face
a little black guy in a rumpled shark skin suit.
I knew immediately it was
Omar, from Dee’s description.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, trying to sound
as menacing as possible.
I started smiling, because he was such a weird
looking little guy. He had a lazy eye,
which appeared to be slightly spinning,
a huge nose, and a chin
disappearing into a chicken neck.
Before I could say anything, Dee jumped up
from the bed and ran over to him.
“This is my friend, Doug, that I told you
so much about. Doug, this is Omar.”
She was smiling like she was introducing me
to her father at a family picnic.
Omar looked me up and down like I was a bug,
and then smiled a real smile, sticking out
a small thin hand. My smile hadn’t left my face, and I
said. “Nice to meet ‘ya,” shaking his limp hand.
Dee began to unfold the story
of the night before. Omar listening attentively,
sat down on the bed to roll a joint.
I closed the door and went into the bathroom
to piss. When I came back out, Dee was crying
again and Omar was holding her
and smoking. He offered me the joint, but I declined.
He didn’t seem to like that much,
but when I explained
I was driving back
to East Hollywood and smoking
messed up my depth perception, he smiled,
and said he’d roll me one for later..
He rolled up a huge bomber and handed
it to me.. Dee was either smiling or crying
through it all, thanking me as she
held on tightly
to her pimp. Omar shook my hand again,
I gave Dee a hug and left.
On my way home I thought of several things
I should’ve done or said, like talk
her out of whoring, slap Omar senseless
and throw his ass out the window, things like that.
But she seemed happy, like I said; and
she could’ve done a lot
worse than Omar. And who was I
to come between a whore
and her pimp?


*first published in Zygote in My Coffee

SITTING IN THE BROWN CHAIR WITH LET’S PRETEND ON THE RADIO

by Lyn Linshin

I don’t think how the
m and m’s that soothe
only made my fat legs
worse. I’m not thinking
how my mother will
die, of fires that could
gulp a mother up, leave
me like Bambi. I’m not
going over the baby sitter’s
stories of what they did to
young girls in tunnels, of
the ovens and gas or have
nightmares I’ll wake up
screaming for one whole
year wanting someone to
lie near me, hold me as if
from then on no one can get
close enough. I don’t hear
my mother and father yelling,
my mother howling that if
he loved us he’d want to buy
a house, not stay in the apart-
ment he doesn’t even pay
her father rent for but get
a place we wouldn’t be
ashamed to bring friends.
What I can drift and dream
in is more real. I don’t want
to leave the world of golden
apples and silver geese. To
make sure, I close my eyes,
make a wish on the first hay
load of summer then wait
until it disappears


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

Love Is Another Thing

Sitting at the table
spinning the creamer
running her fingers through sugar
the kids spilled at supper, Sue

suddenly says, “Don,
love is another thing.”
Since love is another thing
I have to go rent a room,

leave behind eight years,
five kids, the echoes of me
raging at noon on the phone,
raging at night, the mist

of whose fallout ate her skin,
ate her bones, left her a kitten
crying high in an oak
let me free, let me free

by Donal Mahoney

LIPS

by Lyn Lifshin

Yours, honey, were so perfect,
a little rosebud mouth, not
those puffed up blubbery
things, my mother says when
I pointed out the models’
collagen petals. “Roses,” my
mother always says, “that’s
what yours were, a nice
tiny nose. That’s from your
father. One good thing. Not
a big ugly one like I’ve got.”
I think of my mother’s lips,
moving close to my hair, how
her breath was always sweet.
“Too thin lips, like your father’s,
show stinginess.” She was
right. A man who couldn’t give
presents or love, a good word
or money. I only remember
three things he told me and
all began with Don’t tho my
mother said stories came from
those lips, that he brought me a
big dog. I only remember the
thinness of his lips, how his
death meant I wouldn’t have to
leave school to testify for the
divorce. Lips. When I came home
from camp I found Love Without
Fear in the bathroom and read
“if a girl lets a man put his tongue
on her lips down there, she’ll let
him do anything,” and then some
thing about deflowering. A
strange word I thought trying to
imagine flowers down there, rosebuds
not only on my mouth, a petal
opening, but a whole bush of petals,
a raft of roses someone kneeling
would take me away on, a sea of
roses, flowers and my lips the
island we’d escape to


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

THE PEARLS

by Lyn Lifshin

An engagement present from my husband’s parents.
Shoved in a drawer like small eggs waiting to hatch,
forgotten. They seemed like something in a high school
photograph. I’d have preferred a large wrought iron pendant,
beads that caught the sun. Pearls were for them

and I was always only a visitor, tho he said he wished
I’d call him Dad. Sam was all I could get out.
It was hard to throw my arms around him, to bubble
and kiss. And not just because they thought
me a hippie, a witch, thought I took

their son’s car and stamps and coin collections.
Pearls wouldn’t go with my corduroy smocks, long black
ironed hair. They didn’t blend with my hoops of onyx
and abalone that made holes in my ears but caught the light.
Pearls might have gone with the suits I threw away,
no longer a graduate student trying to please.
They weren’t suitable for days with a poet hidden in trees
or for throwing up wine in toilet bowls after poetry readings
where I shook and swore not to let anyone see. My spider medallion
is in at least eight poems. Pearls remind me of the way I thought

I was: studious but not wild, not interesting. But I put those pearls
on last night tho I hadn’t planned to wear them. They didn’t seem ugly or apt to choke, seemed gentle and mild as so little is in my life
these days. I slept in nothing but those pearls, they seemed part of me


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

WHEN I PASS THE PLACE

where my car slid off the road,
where amethyst barrettes
were flung from bloody hair,
forehead scalped

I’d be late for the film
whined in siren light

And who would tell the
friend I was meeting.
stay with us a man with
blue eyes said over

and over. The night
grass, September dew.

My mustang left like
litter. I suppose my
heart took a deep breath,
If there were sparrows

I didn’t hear them

by Lyn Lifshin

sisyphus in the not for profit sector

by paul harrison

this poem is for
all the broke down
hurting people
i meet at work
trying to help with words
and the irony of it all does not escape me
it's partly why i drink alone in crowds
of young, dumb successful types
who couldn't give a shit
while the State and speakers boom
of course i was a gutter drunk
long before i stumbled into this
that's why i'm here
all burnt out
and relatively speaking
you'd think exposure
to all that pain and suffering
would help me
count my blessings
but it don't
and in this poem
you won't be hearing any of that
'empowering', small l, liberal PC bullshit
born of a Stockholm syndrome
validating a vicious system
cause and effect of it all
and in case you didn't know
it's never going away, none of it
not today
not tomorrow
not in my life-time
or yours either
so enjoy your blindness
your raucous silence
your comfort
while another child
gets thrown to the wolves

POEM OF THE RECLUSE

by RC Miller

This lovely wooden door
Protects me from the domination of dust.
A mechanical bull in a country and western bar
Invokes the prosperity of the wicked.
This lovely wooden whore
Keeps her shirt on.
I want to feel her splinters
Spray my insides.
By flashlight this unchanged mountaintop
Is a place where demons quietly replay
Recaps of my favorite original videos.
The wild beast has faith in riders
That will never return.
It's so lovely to be ignorant of coming or going.

3 poems by Hugh Fox

BRINGING

Bringing them all back, the right Andean
chemicals, prayers to the Underground
spirits, Great-Great-Great-Grandmother
Adeline Fox coming out of the Red Cedar
River, Great-Great-Great Grandfather
Sean walking over the mountains toward
our stone cabin with a pitchfork in his
hands praising Jesus, “Not long now and
He’ll be back,” The Inquisition hovering
around in the clouds as the Great-Great-
Great-Greaters make their way north into
Celticism, the latest womb-escaper, Beatrice,
coming into my workroom, “I want colored
paper, violet, I’m making violets,” as the
Weather Devil drolls on “Tomorrow, tomorrow,
tomorrow you’ll see, see, see.....,” feeling
existentially ONE as the rest of the antiquities
slither through the cracks in the windows and
drop down the chimney into the flames that
can’t/won’t touch them.



DIFFICULT

Difficult to imagine how, as art-lit-theater-film-
centric as I always was, with Hugh and Connie
in the same body, an only child unused to having
anyone around but Mom, Dad and ancient Prague
grandma, getting totally involved with doctorates
and jobs in Hollywood, Caracas, Florianópolis
Brazil, ever managed to get married three times
and father six children who produced six grandchildren
all ending up in the same town with my three wives
so that holidays/everydays become as holy as the Thou’s that
wave their wings around us in reproductive-speculative
joy as they see the universe , if only at times like these,
fulfill the expectations of creation.



IF

If you look at the rest of her it’s all
Spring legs, arms, belly-button, only
the face that’s late Fall, but Beethovening
into the Kreutzer Violin Sonata there’s
a certain agelessness that surfaces, like
all the students walking around campus
tonight, Bernadete lamenting “I wish I
could start all over again..the upswing
optimum instead of...,” two sisters dead
within the last six months.

Welcome to Bedford Falls

by Melanie Browne

You can probably get drunk here.
Maybe find a woman to do the reverse cowgirl with.
You might find an Angel named Clarence here,
but then again, you probably won’t.
It’s a nice place,
but watch out for the bank examiner.

Cloud Can

by Tasha Klein

I think in your ear, a flood that has a
no-ended expression. above. away from
feel.

doorway lips

vacant, glossy hips

a good cig kill

need. need. everything. you know
& that raging.

plastic waist. wrinkles move an emotion.

lie back. shower heat.

wet stop. until your mouth can't.

spongy elbows. foot laugh.

dark, tilting irises.

swollen knot. more blinked. your eyes
masturbate.

I Can Feel Teri Smiling

by G David Schwartz

I can’t see up to heaven
And I can’t even see to Cleveland
But I can see my sister
Sitting at the gate
Smiling down on us
Making love in the day
Where everywhere else outside
There is war, as always
And deaths as before
And I feel her shy laughter
At the wooden door
Oh Teri, the sweetest of us all
I just stand here awaiting
For and upon your call


*G David Schwartz's new book, Midrash and Working Out Of The Book, is now in stores or can be ordered here.

Drunk

by Chris Butler

I drank so much
that my brain cells
drowned
one by one,
each screaming,
swirling,
around the rounded
tub of the bottle’s
broken bottom,
in the whirlpool
of backwashed
beer and flicked
ashes,
until I finish
the final
sip
and drive
myself under
the influence
to the store
for some
more.

NIGHT WALKS

by Stephen Jarrell Williams

Biting your nails watching the sun slide
behind the smog grime of evening,
city surrounding your tight rags
hanging on you like limp fingers, white cotton
over your tanned breasts and hips,
legs smooth in the gleam of the long alleyway
you travel nightly, hiding from the man monsters
always peeking,

moon soothing,
getting off on its light against your skin,
walking through the night's breath,
the animal coming
out of you,
backs of buildings with staring windows,

you slowly begin
tearing tugs of rags,
dropping pieces of fur on the pavement,
until you're salaciously raw and smiling
on another of many
night walks.

THROBBING

by Stephen Jarrell Williams

Such a fine tummy,
you must do your sit-ups daily,
and your long legs muscled,
you must swim laps,

but I'm stronger in my sins than you,
you're just a beginner, an amateur
in my bed under the glow of a false moon,

your curves craving,
rubbing them as you moan for more,
licking you into a ready pose,

then standing over you,
leaking magical drops over your skin
gasping for me...

I settle in,
a torpedo
ramming you into the underworld.

LISTEN

by Hugh Fox

Listen to what the sub-, not terranean but
consciousness voices say, how to trill the
hands across the keyboard or slosh out into
the winter backforest, light the fire and
mind-draw the faces that will turn into
smoke-bones, Ellaraine now far away fifty
Pacific Palisades cliffs years old, and the
lipsticked lips still oatmeal and cranberry,
and bedtime it, if it’s to be as it’s never
been, BE it to the power of infinity,
the ancient Notre Dames and Nefertiti-
tunnel mummies, Machu-Tiawanaku
sacredness in the Name of The Now,
The Now and The Now.

Sitting Shiva in a Hotel Lobby

For a year this image has haunted me.
Over and over I hear on the gramophone
Cohen put in my ear
“Feature this:
On a crowded elevator
a strange woman in a baseball cap
unbuttons your fly.”
That image is on the ceiling every night
as I sit shiva in the lobby
of this small hotel,
a hookah, like a tired cobra,
coiled at my feet,
a shamrock in my buttonhole
dead from the last parade.
Night after night,
I think about this strange woman
as each hour I watch
the doors of the elevator
part and give birth.
I observe each new guest carefully,
hoping the woman in the baseball cap
will tire of the rain and ride up
in the elevator and register.
I want her to sit in the lobby
and talk with us.
We who are guests here forever
have eons to hear
what she has to say.
We have paid our rent in advance.
We can afford to sit here and see.

by Donal Mahoney

EYES

by Lyn Lifshin

My mother’s and mine were
velvety chocolate, a doe’s
eye in candle light, enormous
over a table. But we couldn’t
see, what was ahead was a
blur. What was behind was
haunted. I hated glasses,
pink plastic frames I had
by six, sliding off my nose
and making my too round
face rounder. In photographs
I’m plump, my dark eyes,
even under glasses, like
my mother’s while the new
sister’s were blue, pale
and her hair blond, her legs
skinny. “Adopted,” I often
thought. She was fearless then,
danced in those blue eyes
for strangers while I curled
close to my mother on the
couch, our dark eyes, our soft
bellies. Or I worked quietly,
alone in a room the water
fall hid, painting, or doing
science projects. Even with a
film over her eyes, she scanned
the length of my skirt, how
I “ruined” my hair, dying and
straightening, saw things
I didn’t want her to see. “Your
father’s nose,” everyone said
but in photographs now I
see my mother looking back
at me, not her presence,
like everyone said I’d feel
being so close but that dark
glistening polished bark, a
reflection of who I’ll be


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

THE JEWELRY BOX, THE ROOM OF LAVENDER AND DRIPPING

by Lyn Lifshin

Otter Creek lulling, spitting damp air
where lilac curtains were taken down. My
mother, older than my grandmother was
when I dreamt and shook in this room,
sits on my old bed, the dusty jewelry
boxes spread open. “You lost so many
of my earrings, honey, but like the
Lindberg doll you ruined, I let you.”

Rhinestones tangle with pins of horses
in the box where a ballet dancer used
to twirl to “Dance Ballerina Dance.”
My mother pulls a silver dollar to her,
tries to read the date with the one
eye she can. Remember the leaves in the
whirlpool? I held you in this bed when
you moaned with chicken pox she says

years after the Nazis I still dreamt they’d
sneak into the house. Rhinestones cloud over
like an eye, the bracelet of Cuban coins from
David before he said “suit your self” when I
asked if I should wear the yellow evening
gown strapless, then didn’t say a thing.
Hearts of rhinestones, silver ballet dancers
for ears, lavender hoops, lavender flowers.

Fraternity pins from loves whose names I
don’t remember, rhinestone spray Ron
Agasipour tried to peal from me, like the black
dress of transparent lace in the Middlebury Inn
over where the Junior Women’s Club dance
droned on. My mother untwists silver chains
pimply boys thought would make me want
them, says her fingers don’t work. “Take them

back now or throw them out,” she says of these
fake jewels in their worn cocoons of silk and
velvet as if they were dead babies I could bury
under the floor of my house to wait for their spirit
to bring back what’s gone