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IN RAPTURE
by Stan Kaplan In rapture, I require memory mixed with madness. I coordinate all restrictions, and resentfully send them back to inner space. Say it. Say that speech, the song and dance that separates that space, that soundless muffled mess. Melting asphalt, and rude, ridiculous sweat. In dreams I find my dead father, faint, far away, eating pigs feet in a smelly greasy spoon in some Brownsville dead end. O God, who is godless himself, boxed away on some dusty store shelf, chewing on a cheap cigar, where are you, you brittle baby? Leaving us to lament a long ago loss you side step your clay, a character actor in a stale movie, a fancy man forever far away. |
HATSHEPSUT by Samantha Cox Colborn |
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JOSEPH BRODSKY'S MEMORY
by B.Z. Niditch How you learnt English from the Russian you told us it was Auden who made you modern after "the bronze horseman" of Pushkin in the land of Lenin, how you wished to emigrate after reading "Notes from the Underground" and we signed petitions to the new heads of state and waited for years until you came appearing to be our emigre reaching out to us suited for us in grey to teach us by our shore, in newborn smart verses you held us captive as a sounding millstone took your enlarged heart only to soon leave us, as we translate and celebrate your days in a nightfall you depart. |
WINGS by Brent Wiggans |
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DER ROSENKAVALIER
by Frank De Canio I don't believe in miracles. I only know the aging Marschallin, rising before the tabernacle of the heart-stopping dawn; slowing up the flow of time clocked across her puzzled face. "In God's name," she'll grow resigned to giving up with solemn grace, the young Octavian who, in her place, holds Sophie in his arms. His former love's by younger love, displaced; her love transformed to that of chaperone. Out of the bittersweet formality of stale custom's silver rose, a blushing fervor crimson's Sophie's cheek which now, "in Gottes namen" glows with young love's golden luster. Yearning churns the bawdy measures of a waltz to sparkling clusters of light-conversant stars. The stage is paved for the servant boy to brush away the mist that grows with a handkerchief's wave, imparting solace as solvent as the tonic close. |
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