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Desire Street
September, 1995
cyberspace chapbook of
The New Orleans Poetry Forum
established 1971
Desire, Cemeteries, Elysium
Listserv: DESIRE-ST@Bourbon-St.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 Johnson
Copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum
(16 Messages for September, 1995)
---------------------------------
Adam
by Kerry Poree
every man should
in principle
name his son
Adam
and be to him
the ready ear
and the sovereign
hand
---------------------------
Breathing
by Christine Trimbo
Forget about clocks.
I've seen such pinched
faces and their tiny
hands leave no evidence
on the cherrywood.
Days spread quite easily
into night, an arched back
cat, curving around
a chair leg.
Time is for those who
wait, wanting.
I might drown in the
sundown before morning
leaves me
gasping,
a breath
one breath.
-----------------------------------------
Double Vision VI
Loss
by Bonnie Crumly-Fastring
I
Wolf's pup is out
out of her mother's den
seduced by another.
Wolf whines
licks the empty paw prints,
worries anxiously with her teeth
the tiny tufts of hair left in the den.
She wants to pounce
to tear the limbs off this intruder
to rip gashes down an unguarded shoulder
to pull her daughter back
but she's afraid. She doesn't know
whose blood will be on her paws.
II.
This is my body.
Eat this bread.
The living seed ground
into a fine white powder.
Take this bread into my body.
Let the yeast rise, stretch,
until I let these bodies go.
My daughter's body
stands a room away from me.
One hand covers the bone between
her breasts. Crow's breast,
my mother told me, flying down
from generation to generation.
The other hand holds on to the
doorknob, as she reassures me
she loves me, she isn't really
going to leave.
My own body whispers "fifty"
behind dark glasses that shield me
from the awful light rays,
Cold lasers slow down
corneal tissue erosion,
but nothing erases
the empty skin of my lover's touch.
And my mother.
"Don't stay," they said,
"the undertakers are coming,"
but I had just arrived,
just felt her hand, warm,
could not walk off
from her body so quickly.
So I stayed outside the door,
until they brought
the brown zippered bag out of the room.
Eat this bread. It is my body.
-----------------------------------------------------
World Class Fishing
by Andrea Saunders Gereighty
For piranha at San Leonardo
deep in the Orinoco Rio basin
with beef/huge chunks of blood red
meat raw with bleeding
The razors of the piranha snap
Saw reeds, flesh, stiletto�style.
Snarling fish growl their impatience
Scarlet and green ibis fly overhead
into the dust grey dusk
Monkeys moan
Caimen babies whimper like puppies
to mother who slides thirty feet
in five seconds into 27 feet of water.
Hooked on the river
Hooked on the sounds
Hooked, I get a bite
Look at my guide hold up the fish.
Piranha, you are crying tears of blood
I have to stop. Lay down the rod.
---------------------------------------------
Hazel
by kevin R. johnson
So there's this girl I know, right? she don't wear underwear, and man, when
she looks into my eyes, I swear, it's like my brain's all laid out - like a
heart shaped bed, right?
Get this - I'm talkin' bout weather patterns and chaos theory with some real
bad-asses when she butts in with "the soul's an anarchist but the hands are
fascist", what the fuck?, get this though, her voice was like Venus singin'
The other day, man, hey you listenin?, I'm sayin you remember that really
trippin' sunset- all polluted and gorgeous and shit?, that day she comes up
while I'm meditating, right, and can you believe it - she says "as long as
you remember the color of my eyes, i'll love you till the day before I die",
what the fuck?
I say "why till the day before you die?", she says "cause, since the first
day of life is a public spectacle, I want my last to be private"
Enuff is enuff so I get her alone and it's like, you know the fierce
eloquence of butterflies, right, and man you won't believe what happened, she
said- "open your eyes & I'll tell you what you've got inside, but first tell
me what color are mine?", then she blind-folded me and kissed my stomach till
I whispered the answer
Damn, the bitch has turned me into a raggedy man, what? ... yeah, I'm one
with or without her, yeah. Say, how bout you and me, we get some mad dog and
write haiku under the new moon tonight - real quick tell me what you think:
beasts tricked out
anything, for love
puppets.. naked.. disguised
--------------------------------------------------
King Pierus Speaks to His Daughters
by Athena O. Kildegaard
King Pierus challenged the Muses to a singing
contest with his nine daughters. When the
daughters lost, Apollo changed them to magpies.
I see you out there
standing in the cypress
like a hung jury
waiting for the judge's note--
am I to be the writer?--
your tail feathers fluffed
by a half-earth wind.
Below you, on the grass,
lie all that you have hoarded:
muscadines from the lintel
my tiny gold amulet foot
your mother's burnished brooch
the stylus from the metronome
nine earthenware beads
snipped from a lampshade
knicks and knacks you've spied out
here and there, treasures
you chattered over for years.
They're yours, keep them,
idle comforts, hardly enough
to make up. Help yourselves.
So what can I say
my pica-picas
my noisy songstresses
to make up for my pride?
For whom is the punishment greater?
For you, all nine flying
(stanza break) King Pierus/Kildegaard
with flags unfurled
your phosphorescent feathers
dropping rainbows?
Or for me, who has to listen
to your raspy queg queg queg
where once you sang
to make springs rise up
the sun turn hallow-gold?
I was wrong, that's plain.
But listen, they are haughty,
Zeus' daughters, not so easy
to love. And I have seen
your melodies follow them
like shadows under a stubborn sun.
They will come back to you, they will.
--------------------------------------------------
Advanced Mathematics
by Andrea Saunders Gereighty
Your wet dream, age twelve
an Andre Gide fantasy
woman spread-eagle:
alive, though wrists
handcuffed.
Free style, breast stroke:
arms earthbound wings
tied to stakes, mattress springs.
Legs tethered in leather
her body a perfect mathematical X
the one variant, a real restraint
Constricts
constraints
silk blindfold.
My style? Astride,
side by side
or some position more
akin to Y, the other unknown.
----------------------------------------------
Night
by Kerry Poree
There is poetry
for night,
when land
and night
turn to
face each other
and the press
of their kiss
is pressed
upon the hearts
of men,
and the heart
of man
is pressed upon
his breast bone
and made tender,
tender like
fat hands
that just
won't callous,
tender like old eyes,
old eyes that
know the night
and the tenderness
of night,
when words return,
darkened, and used.
--------------------------------------------------------
Oneness Engine Low on Gas
by kevin R. johnson
Zen notwithstanding, I am
empty as a poem without an O,
like the place called nowhere,
or like bombed-out cathedrals
because a girl tripping on acid asked me:
using the desert as a metaphor describe the flesh of love
and I, just beginning to trip, said:
mother, she drank, did smack, slept around
she loved us, really she did,
she filled our ears with "good for nothing, low-down, dirty scumbags"
filled our nights with moans
because the girl had exquisitely pierced nipples and
tattoos that meant nothing to her,
because given the opportunity, two
people who don't want to feel dead,
who are enamored with a place called breakage,
will fuck
because like the cabby, who eked out extra
turns of the meter by letting me weep in his back seat
or like anyone, whose parts summed
equal something less than a whole,
what else is there to do?
---------------------------------------------------
She said "Yes"
by Bob Rainer
When our SoHo apartment seemed confining and the job offered
the move to Anaheim,
I volunteered to go knowing that she would come with me and
bring over the boys from Sligo.
I was not prepared for the tears and tribulations that accompanied
her protest,
but I had put my job on the line and felt
we could make the best of it.
She finally agreed to come out later and I knew that
an Irish woman saying "Yes" is the most forgiving word
in the English language.
Anaheim on St. Patrick's Day is the loneliest place in the world
when, just two days before,
You were planning to march up Fifth Avenue in a real parade.
Goofy in a leprechaun suit is as Irish as gefilte fish, and
made my eyes swell with self-pity.
FantasyLand was a cruel reminder that my hopes and dreams were now
just a fantasy,
And TomorrowLand was all I had to live for until I called her
from the motel lobby across
Harbor Boulevard, and knew that an Irish woman saying "Yes"
is the most inspiring word in the English language.
She called me at work from Kennedy before her flight left
to tell me when to pick her up at LAX.
At best, she thinly disguised her wish that I would tell her
to go back to the apartment in
Manhattan, and, God knows, I wanted to but this trap/plan
was too far gone to quit now
and I made myself sound cheerful. I did not say:
"Stay there and I will come back to you
and we can live forever in the place I never should have left,
and not have to spend Sundays at
FrontierLand wishing we were at a ceili in Montauk."
But I made myself sound cheerful, and told her it would be a nice
vacation for her, and I knew that an Irish woman saying "Yes"
is the most patronizing word
in the English language.
She called me at work from LAX to say goodbye, that she would miss me
As she spent the summer in Greece with Michael and Tara.
She said the three months In California were like toothpicks
in her eyes, that she would never brings out the boys from
Sligo, and that if I ever wanted to see her again it would be in New York,
Sligo, Dublin or Greece.
I told her my lunch hour wasn't long enough. She told me she was taking the
American Express card and I cried.
I asked her if this was a really bad joke and she told me to fuck off and
hung up the phone to board her plane back to New York, where the rent was
Three months in the hole. In my mind's ear I could hear her response
as she returned in a fantasy Cab
and I knew that an Irish woman saying "Yes" is the most elusive word
in the English language.
She called me at work from the little phone box in Drumfarnaughty
and said that I should come for a visit so she could tell about
the summer in Greece.
She said Michael and Tara were lovely hosts and she had not had to put
too much on the American Express card.
Although I had sufficient reason to doubt her last statement, my mind reeled
in crisis mode as I planned my getaway.
Visions of becoming an indentured servant to TWA mixed with high-side hopes
of operating the Guinness in a Galway prison for what was going to happen
when I left Anaheim to go find happiness in the Connemara outback
-- quite a stretch.
As my mind pondered my dubious future it was packing for the journey.
The trap/plan was reversed and I asked her if she would be there when
I arrived, that it would take a few days and I knew
that an Irish woman saying "Yes" is the most compelling word
in the English language.
Driving the Renault out of Shannon was already an adventure as I tried
to forget about the right side of the road. Many new changes were
coming at me and, still, all I could look
forward to was arriving at Drumfarnaughty. The map said I had to get
into Ennis and head North to Galway, then take the lesser road through
Tuam, Gorteen, Ballymote, and the ageless
relics that I passed were shouting their history on deaf ears until I stopped
to give a lift to the two plump sheep ranchers' daughters who asked me if I
liked sheep more than cattle.
I said nothing until I put them out in front of a country cottage the size
of New Jersey, but they wished me well and told me to stop off for stew
on my way back to America.
Befuddled, I soon stopped to ask another young woman if I was on the road
to Galway. She pointed to the sign above my head,
and I knew that an Irish woman saying "Yes" is the most motivating word
in the English language.
Having stopped underneath several more road signs to ask young women if
I was on the road
That the sign said I was on, I made much-interrupted progress but delayed,
perhaps for reasons
of masochistic self-depravation, for a few sweet hours my arrival at the
cottage.
The collie greeted me like we both spoke the same language, and the Russian
heating oil in the exterior tank
Promised me modern comfort from the ancient turf hearth. Massive udders
swelled under the slow-moving
Fresian cattle, smoke curled from just-high-enough chimneys, and Uncle Jack's
twelve children came walking up from the cottage below, and I was inspected
and interrogated, and given their blessing.
She called from the cottage that if I hurried on in, I would be in time for
supper.
Afterwards, I was shown the huge slooping bed where we were to sleep, ALL
of us.
When she and Aunt Jane and Sister Kate and the boys and the collie and
Miss Lillie from down the road and I settled in for the night, I whispered
To her that it was good to be home, and she whispered back, and I knew that
an Irish woman saying "Yes" is the most beckoning word
in the English language.
So many lifetimes passed. New York was never colder, my life was never
more alone, she was never more gone from me.
The promises I kept for her were not strong enough to entrap us in life
she would not have.
We had made the best of Dublin and Youghal, and had chipped a piece off
Blarney Castle,
and we swam naked off Dingle Peninsula with fifty German bicyclists we
never saw before or after, and it all meant nothing.
Outside the Eagle Tavern, she came towards me in the dark, saying to her
companion,"That's the man I warned you about. Take care he doesn't
start something. Southerners are crazy, you know."
I held my gaze at Fourteenth Street while he asked her if she was sure
she wanted to go into the Eagle
For the Seisiun. As she led him past me, I knew that
an Irish woman saying "Yes" is the most traitorous word
in the English language.
-------------------------------------------------
Steel Guitar
by Cedelas Hall
Fear inside,
strung tighter
than a steel guitar.
Pluck my strings.
They sing
a twangy song.
Faithful
as a St. Bernard.
Would have stayed
with one mate,
mourned his death
like the swan.
Betrayed,
life script shredded.
New blank page
set before me,
ending unclear.
Try to re-write
with fits and starts.
Discordant song plays.
Country novice
on a bad practice day.
Hope the strings
will hold me together.
Broken strings
are hard to repair,
the music suffers.
-------------------------------------------
Amplified obscenities
by Robert Menuet
After it was said of us, they kill their king, they eat their God,
the Montagnards cut months into three, abolished weeks,
condemned Sunday, suppressed worship,
except new rites at Notre Dame renamed,
incredibly, the Temple of Reason.
Through Thermidor and beyond
we children born before the Year I
watched our National Razor chop
and slice
right and left
heads of families, next of kin,
whole towns, aristocrats,
burghers, servants, Montagnards.
Grown to manhood after the Terror
I joined the Incroyables at the victims' balls;
Sons of the decapitated,
we promenaded through the Tuilleries
talking baby talk,
our marvelous women robed a la grecque,
diaphanous drapes, red piping round their necks.
In oversized collars, grotesque, we strolled
seeming headless till we lisped:
Ma pa'ole d'honneu', c'est inc'oyable!
I look upon the Terror of this unchurched time,
a place of amplified and broadcast obscenities:
a new world order of drive-by shootings at the taco bell.
With no Committee for Public Safety
certified victims carry side arms to protect themselves
from mortal enemies and school chums that demand their shoes.
Parents pay for earrings and tattoos.
One sees fine young cannibals, some with Attitude,
and talking heads that sing of
burning down the house,
hears of pierced tongues and nipples,
wives, husbands, children,
body parts cut down, severed, eaten, or
re-attached to jeers and cheers;
Ma pa'ole d'honneu', c'est inc'oyable! We are outdone:
they kill their God, they eat their young!
THE POETS OF DESIRE STREET
Bonnie Fastring is a poet and teacher from New Orleans.
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 has returned to poetry writing after a 20 year hiatus.
Her works range in subject matter from nostalgia to sex.
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.
Robert Menuet is a psychotherapist, marital therapist, and
clinical supervisor. Previously he was a social planner.
Kerry Poree is an electrician from New Orleans.
Bob Rainer is an Alabama redneck who lives in Metairie, Louisiana.
Christine Trimbo lives in a house that once neighbored Degas'
house. She has two bicycles but no cats.
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. The New Orleans
Poetry Forum receives and administers grant funds for its activities
and the activities of individual poets.
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 backgrounds, 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.
In 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum began to publish 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, and submitted by members for publication.
Publication will be in both message and file formats in various
locations in cyberspace. To subscribe to Desire Street via Listserv,
send an Email message to DESIRE-ST@BOURBON-ST.COM and put the word
SUBSCRIBE in the topic field of the message. You will receive an automated
confirmation of your enrollment. Subscription is free of charge.
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.
The mailing address is as follows:
Andrea Saunders Gereighty, President
New Orleans Poetry Forum
257 Bonnabel Boulevard
Metairie, Louisiana 70005
Email: Robert Menuet
robmenuet@aol.com
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Desire Street, September, 1995, copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum.
12 poems for September, 1995. Message format: 16 messages for September, 1995.
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.