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Desire Street
July, 1996
cyberspace chapbook of
The New Orleans Poetry Forum
established 1971
Desire, Cemeteries, Elysium
Listserv: DESIRE-Request@Sstar.Com
Email: Robert Menuet, Publisher
robmenuet@aol.com
Mail: Andrea S. Gereighty, President
New Orleans Poetry Forum
257 Bonnabel Blvd.
Metairie, La 70005
Programmer: Kevin R. Johnson
Copyright 1996, The New Orleans Poety Forum
(8 poems for July, 1996)
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Contents:
Aimless
To Anika on Her Fourth Birthday
Coyness
(closed doors)
Degeneration
To God and his Dark Angels
Ode to a Southern Town
Plan of Action
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Aimless
by Andrea Saunders Gereighty
A person kicking
one solitary brown leaf down the
pavement of August
I leave the house early
before dawn and work, to run.
Clouds agitate
grey clothes
washed without soap.
The levee rises
Rain falls
silver doubloons tinkle
to the ground.
With flat, broad, strokes
the sky lightens.
The black crow of morning incessantly caws
away the night's darkness
Until the reluctant sky,
Raises the orange lantern of sunlight
dawn
that red glow in the east
the flush of fever.
the humidity hits me in the face
like an abusive lover.
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To Anika on Her Fourth Birthday
by Athena O. Kildegaard
My daughter and I sit
on the dark couch
with her first-year album
spilling open onto our laps.
She asks about the strangers
holding her infant body.
I ask how her hands came to grow
so long, the fingers agile
and gentle in their slow
turning of the pages. How she
could have learned this trick
of smiling from one side of her mouth
and pouting from the other.
How her hair could fall straight
down over her ears, hiding
that curved entrance to memory.
I want to know if those old
friends remember holding her
at just two days old--or if it is only
I who remember giving her over
to their arms and then stepping
back to take the picture. Do they
remember the way her eyes opened
with such languor and then
held there, her eyes looking
into their eyes, still as violets
on a cloudless morning?
Do they remember how the neighbor's
dog yipped and my daughter
turned to find her mother?
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Coyness
by Nancy Cotton
The bed: mattresses princess and pea high,
With quilts plump as breasts,
Pillows softly reflecting light
From snow on the window sill,
A cat, puffed as quilts and sunk
Into its dreams to a deep lusting,
Secures a corner.
You: all procrastination and delay,
Would draw out me and the afternoon
Into filtered gold dusk, then,
Magician, balance, like balls in air, light,
Gold, sensuality, with hands
Sensitive to reins of horses.
Afterward, stayed in its flight,
Dusk adores the cat, amuses
Us with its love of everything in the room.
Unneeded feathers, disturbance unknown,
Here, Lady, is world enough and time.
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(closed doors)
by Christine Trimbo
At this moment
I am quite susceptible
to Jesus hocking and
sweet candy hearts
pressed into my palms
by strangers. What I
cannot hear are
doors closing.
when I hid childhood
in the closet, I felt
the heavy clomp clomp
of mother's clogs across
the floor. If you close
your eyes tight as fists
you can see stars.
The room does not belong
to me, the pattern
is my mothers, scarred
wallpaper, stains of sun.
I hide everything valuable
in my closet and watch
the eyes behind the door.
Forever listening through
stale, cramped air. And late
at night, I leave the door
open and wait and
wait and
wait.
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Degeneration
by Cedelas Hall
Our childish acts broke his silence,
brought rage and lashes
from his leather belt.
Yet we made more noise than he.
In this there was little change.
It is the cold I remember,
air kept damp to ease his breathing.
Summer or winter it crept into me
shivered me on my ride home.
The oxygen generator
supported his degeneration
white noise
sometimes a pop
followed by a sigh.
Was it mine?
We carry on as always
aim teasing arrows at one another.
Three applaud the archer
one groans from the hit.
Desperate hilarity swirls
around wanting to include him
not knowing how.
He sits or lies
in silence,
nasal canula in place
cigarette paper man
eyes already gone.
Listening?
When I wanted to tell him
My words misted
into the cold air of his silence.
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To God and his Dark Angels
by clara c. connell
God, you picked my bones so clean when you swooped
down from that big oak tree near the railroad.
You and your dark angels flew in a loop
above, while I bled on that lonely road.
I was half-alive, hoping to be killed
by a passing car; by some farmer in
his truck, carrying the crops from the field.
I should have known you'd be the one, my friend.
You were merciful, you and the angels,
when you gathered my bones, later crushing
them into the desert dust -- each single
grain a white silence, infinite and hushed.
Dear God, living forever is easy.
Please -- do not wake me from this sweet sleeping.
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Ode to a Southern Town
by Barbara Lamont
Strolling on Canal Street just before it meets
Tchoupitoulas, you know, where it turns into Dauphine
on the lakebound side
heading to Conti with that junkety junk walk
you get into sometime
when you know a good crawfish
is waiting on the corner of Bourbon
with your name written all over those heads.
He looked fine, a bit past his prime
until he gave me a
hi howy'all doin
and I jumped back into my own private space
off stride just a bit
tryin' to figure
was this a black thang
or what
go on with your bad self
Me I never heard of a white Baptist
until I turned on the tv
at maman's house on Prytania
one sunday bout eleven o'clock
they was jumpin like the Lord done come
and blessed they feet
Go on with your bad selves
with your junkety junk walk
on streets like A.P. Tureaud
and Robert E. Lee Boulevard
so the white folks moved to
streets with uptown names
like Covington, Causeway and Transcontinental.
but they can't hide the junkety junk talk
at drive through Daquiris
where his and hers Nissans and Pontiac Grand Ams
mimic Infiniti, Avanti and Saab.
Go on with your bad selves
run those yalla lights in Kenner
the last outpost of raw shopping malls
with names like Elmwood and Esplanade
still the junkety junk walk
in your step
a hint of the Second Line in the blood
work that handkerchief, go on
with your bad selves.
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Plan of Action
by kevin R. Johnson
I will carry myself home in pieces
& sell my soul or kill fifty men to
do it; there will be a reckoning,
but I don't care so long as they
forget me; when I am resurrected
with a different face I will walk
slowly to that broken door & leave
a poem full of skeletons & a surprise
nicely wrapped; but today is a bomb
slowly detonating in the soft factory
of my 14 year old heart & if a run of
as many miles won't suck away the
fire then I will buy a carton of
cigarettes & listen to them burn into
a monument of ash as I catch my
breath & try to remember my address
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THE POETS OF DESIRE STREET
clara c. connell
Nancy Cotton is an immigration attorney.
Andrea Saunders Gereighty owns and manages New Orleans
Field Services Associates, a public opinion polls business and is
currently the president of the New Orleans Poetry Forum. Her
poetry has appeared in many journals, as well as in her book,
ILLUSIONS AND OTHER REALITIES.
Cedelas Hall is from Brookhaven, Mississippi. Her chapbook Before
They Paved the Road recounts her experiences in that state. A
writer/actress, she appeared as "M'Lynn" in "Steel Magnolias" at
LePetit Theatre du Vieux Carre.
Kevin Johnson, Piscean, enjoys Tequila under the stars and
writes about the physiology of nothingness.
Athena O. Kildegaard is a freelancer writer and mother and
makes time between for writing poetry.
Barbara Lamont writes about fear.
Christine Trimbo lives in a house that once neighbored Degas� house. She has two
bicycles and a grey kitten named Lolita.
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ABOUT THE NEW ORLEANS POETRY FORUM
The New Orleans Poetry Forum, a non-profit organization, was
founded in 1971 to provide a structure for organized readings and
workshops. Poets meet weekly in a pleasant atmosphere to
critique works presented for the purpose of improving the writing
skills of the presenters. From its inception, the Forum has
sponsored public readings, guest teaching in local schools, and
poetry workshops in prisons. For many years the Forum
sponsored the publication of the New Laurel Review, underwritten
by foundation and government grants.
Meetings are open to the public, and guest presenters are
welcome. The meetings generally average ten to 15 participants,
with a core of regulars. A format is followed which assures
support for what is good in each poem, as well as suggestions
for improvement. In many cases it is possible to trace a poet's
developing skill from works presented over time. The group is
varied in age ranges, ethnic and cultural background, and styles
of writing and experience levels of participants. This diversity
provides a continuing liveliness and energy in each workshop
session.
Many current and past participants are published poets and
experienced readers at universities and coffeehouses worldwide.
One member, Yusef Komunyakaa, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for Poetry for 1994. Members have won other distinguished
prizes and have taken advanced degrees in creative writing at
local and national universities.
Beginning in 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum has
published a monthly electronic magazine, Desire Street, for
distribution on the Internet and computer bulletin boards. It is
believed that Desire Street is the first e-zine published by an
established group of poets. Our cyberspace chapbook contains
poems that have been presented at the weekly workshop
meetings, All poems presented at Forum meetings may be
published in their original form unless permisssion is specifically
withheld by the poet. Revisions are accepted until the publication
deadline of Desire Street. Publication is in both message and file
formats in various locations in cyberspace.
Workshops are held every Wednesday from 8:00 PM until
10:30 at the Broadmoor Branch of the New Orleans Public
Library, 4300 South Broad, at Napoleon. Annual dues of $10.00
include admission to Forum events and a one-year subscription to
the Forum newsletter, Lend Us An Ear. To present, contact us
for details and bring 15 copies of your poem to the workshop.
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Desire Street, July,1996 copyright 1996, The New Orleans
Poetry Forum. 8 poems for July,1996. Message format: 13
messages for July,1996. Various file formats.
Desire Street is a monthly electronic publication of the New
Orleans Poetry Forum. All poems published have been presented
at weekly meetings of the New Orleans Poetry Forum by
members of the Forum.
The New Orleans Poetry Forum encourages widespread
electronic reproduction and distribution of its monthly magazine
without cost, subject to the few limitations described below. A
request is made to electronic publishers and bulletin board
system operators that they notify us by email when the
publication is converted to executable, text, or compressed file
formats, or otherwise stored for retrieval and download. This is
not a requirement for publication, but we would like to know who is
reading us and where we are being distributed. Email:
robmenuet@aol.com (Robert Menuet). We also publish this
magazine in various file formats and in several locations in
cyberspace.
Copyright of individual poems is owned by the writer of each
poem. In addition, the monthly edition of Desire Street is
copyright by the New Orleans Poetry Forum. Individual copyright
owners and the New Orleans Poetry Forum hereby permit the
reproduction of this publication subject to the following limitations:
The entire monthly edition, consisting of the number of
poems and/or messages stated above for the current month, also
shown above, may be reproduced electronically in either message
or file format for distribution by computer bulletin boards, file
transfer protocol, other methods of file transfer, and in public
conferences and newsgroups. The entire monthly edition may be
converted to executable, text, or compressed file formats, and
from one file format to another, for the purpose of distribution.
Reproduction of this publication must be whole and intact,
including this notice, the masthead, table of contents, and other
parts as originally published. Portions (i.e., individual poems)
of this edition may not be excerpted and reproduced except
for the personal use of an individual.
Individual poems may be reproduced electronically only by
express paper-written permission of the author(s). To obtain
express permission, contact the publisher for details. Neither
Desire Street nor the individual poems may be reproduced on
CD-ROM without the express permission of The New Orleans
Poetry Forum and the individual copyright owners. Email
robmenuet@aol.com (Robert Menuet) for details.
Hardcopy printouts are permitted for the personal use of a
single individual. Distribution of hardcopy printouts will be
permitted for educational purposes only, by express permission of
the publisher; such distribution must be of the entire contents of
the edition in question of Desire Street. This publication may not
be sold in either hardcopy or electronic forms without the express
paper-written permission of the copyright owners.
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