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Desire Street
October, 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
The Beast
by Rhonda Manolis
Thundering Hooves...
straining muscles
hot flesh on flesh
one with the beast
slow, rhythmic nature dance
fence in sight
t e n s i o n b u i l d i n g
take flight...flying...soaring
landing...dust flying.
Thundering Hooves...
Alone on a Life Ring
by Craig A. Fisher
Adrift.
The world is
a shrinking island of light
on the aftermidnight sea.
Quiet.
Only sounds,
whitecaps lapping,
and diesels, dwindling.
Dark.
The world is
larger than the moon,
still.
I don't see it often enough.
Deep.
Deeper than the world is distant.
She might not find me
tonight.
Flatland Funeral
by Andrea Saunders Gereighty
Eight of us, one pallbearer
for each sister's family
at the burial of Grandma Grace.
She and seven sisters
raised in the depression;
in this dustbowl place Gran outlived
Three husbands to bring up the children.
These men returned to dust, left
her embrace, I recall,
As I ease the clutch on my Renault
first car behind the hearse.
Wish I had a beer to quench
the thirst of a long drive
Past the smell of money,
to Balco, whose plots sectioned
off for coffins are the only break
in the monotony of treeless Kansas.
I imagine the dead
like opal miners in Australia;
at Coober Pedy
people live underground
in mud
it is surely that hot in Liberal.
The cortege twists like
the great Gobushau snake.
I see it behind me, as I
take a right turn
one mile
down on the bushless plain.
Thoughts of Grandma
mothering young brothers:
though just a girl
her mom gave up that work
was laid to resT.
Uncle Dennis interrupts my reverie
shifts his weight in the car seat.
When Grace goes in the ground
Notice the inscription on
her mom and dad's plot:
These people generous with
pain; I see why mother begged
for my presence, and not in vain
to share the lineage of guilt
and bones.
Hope Cousin Jim has some weed
I sure could use a smoke.
We move again like the sloth
found nowhere on this prairie
As a dusky sun stretches like
The wagon train that brought Gran here.
This land, bad from the Mormon
point of view; no Indians complained.
Across this flat arid desert
I turn left for shade
At the one conspicuous tree.
St. Charles Avenue at the I-10 Onramp
New Orleans, Louisiana
at night
by Craig A Fisher
Alone, between lanes on streetcar tracks,
he looks to passersby for help.
From behind a cardboard sign he looks
homeless, stranded, scared to death.
As I pass him by, in his eyes I see
headlights, approaching; taillights, receding;
and streetlights, still.
Mom always says, beggars
most times have
more money than me.
Looking through the rearview mirror, I reconsider,
"Might he really need my help? I could drive
around the block, maybe give him five."
Woody would have spared a dime.
And played a tune or two.
November First
by Kerry Poree
The winter cabbage is still standing.
The last dragonfly is motionless
the wonderment of autumn is staggered
by gloom,
but no half cocked pox from all hallows eve
can make it die.
I have forgotten my discouragement
watching my son run across the field.
His stopping to turn and smile at me...
Felix, feliciter
by Robert Menuet
Nearing you, Land,
I push past Key Largo,
caress Bermuda, call upon
Kill Devil Hill,
close by the Outer Banks.
Land, in my wake Men
defer elections; others
before me have swept away
rum, slaves, sugar. I hold
little birds in the embrace
of my eye, swirling, swirling
waves, swells
rip tides from St. Augustine
to the Merrimack.
I want to strike home
at Cape Fear or Kitty Hawk
or Chicoteague, for you, Land;
to hurl their Monuments into the Potomac;
to die, where? in you, Land.
Lexington
by Adam Josiah Poree
age 7
I have wings
I scare bad spirits away
I am the living kind
I have others like me too,
That's why I am the true
Stone Gargoyle.
When you are awake I turn to stone.
When you are asleep I turn to flesh.
So whenever you are asleep
I will fly to your window
Like a cat I have a tail and ears,
I am Lexington.
Ha! ha! ha!
The Smokehouse
by Yusef Komunyakaa
In the hickory scent
Among slabs of pork
Glistening with salt,
I played Indian
In a headress of redbird feathers
& brass buttons
Off my mother's winter coat.
Smoke wove
A thread of fire through meat, into December
& January. The dead weight
Of the place hung aroud me,
Strung up with sweetgrass.
The hog had been sectioned,
A map scored into skin;
Opened like love,
From snout to tail,
The goodness
No longer true to each bone.
I was a wizard
In that hazy world,
& knew I could cut
Slivers of meat till my heart
Grew more human & flawed.
A LITTLE LESS
by kevin R. johnson
poor Sundae, sweet kitty ...
cut by the edge of today
my gut is open
so pink, tender
glass new from the oven
the garbage truck noise swells, fades, passing by
facial muscles gently twitch
though barely weeping, I saw the over-worked trashmen release
delicate sighs
my response to necessity: smoke a cigarette
it helps to think of chimes, a breeze, the cat napping on my lap
is the proper response: to work, or speak with God about
all my good intentions?
I know why that mother took her dead baby on the plane
you can't trust the angels
Banking Potatoes
by Yusef Komunyakaa
Daddy would drop purple-veined vines
Along rows of dark loam
& I'd march behind him
like a peg-legged soldier,
Pushing down the stick
With a V cut into its tip.
Three weeks before the first frost
I'd follow his horse-drawn plow
That opened up the soil & left
Sweet potatoes sticky with sap,
Like flesh-colored stones along a riverbed
Or diminished souls beside a mass grave.
They lay all day under the sun's
Invisible weight, & by twilight
We'd bury them under pine needles
& then shovel in two feet of dirt.
Nighthawks scalloped the sweaty air,
Their wings spread wide
As plowshares. But soon the wind
Knocked on doors & windows
Like a frightened stranger,
& by mid-winter we had tunneled
Back into the tomb of straw,
Unable to divide love from hunger.
The Haunting
by M. P. Sorrels
She is no graceful ghost, Bloodlessly stumbling
Into doorways, embracing them as she wanders
Through cold rooms, seeking some demarcation
To this, her grave, she is inconsolable.
But she is lost within this morgue of memory
And fear forbids her the sun. Flickering
Gas lights cast no shapes upon her shadow.
She cannot recall when she had substance.
Nor does she remember being called "beloved"
For Death has denied her flesh its senses.
So, at the full moon, her mortal soul,
Bewildered by this desolation, weeps.
Time has no position within her prison.
There are no clocks, only infinite repetitions.
And the final penance for her past existence is
Knowing she has no life beyond these walls.
Victor, Idaho
by Andrea Saunders Gereighty
We slam through the curve of Highway 90 West
so fast we surprise snow drifts
stacked like sun-dried pillowcases
sleeping in the sunshine.
Beyond soft, soiled mountains
we glimpse a town
so desolate,
The green '52 Chevy
rusting in abandon
looks new.
Images of seats
spring from patches of weeds
where the movie house died
and left its art deco marquee
to rest in a semi-vacant lot.
A grey mare, her blue eyes
aged with the soot of patience
has all she can do to steady
both her colt and a shack,
shingled in another century.
She is musing, like the mountains.
I imagine she blanks her mind
from pain and
lies to herself,
waiting.
She waits for those people
who willed her the house
who wiped their feet on the town
who moved west.
Maybe, Once
by Athena O. Kildegaard
I'm waiting for the cedar waxwings
to come feed on these ripe loquats.
I'm waiting for their chirrs and cheers
to alarm me out of the silence
piling up like laundry.
Even if I were to whistle
the silence would crowd.
I have known these delicate birds
since childhood, the red glint
at wingtip and the way they come
only at dusk, jesters
to lift the spirits. Maybe, once,
they were eaten, stuffed with berries
and marjoram, or kept in cages
by some withering dame, like me,
to watch, knowing the beauty
of their small bodies could lift
any emotion from her breasts any
other than this one I have--even
before seeing them--of intense longing.
The Good Friend
by Bob Rainer
Oh please, dear friends,
Please do come visit me this summer
Please stay a while
And let us talk.
You both are all I need;
You, Gill with the golden hair and
You, Evelyn with the ready laugh.
You bring from England no love for your Queen --
You aren't offended when I call Elton the john
"the Royal Prickless Wonder."
Just laying in bed till noon and
then having tea and biscuits at La Marquis
is your penultimate rebellion against
the sense of industry you abandoned
when you first came to America and
told me you would give me the night of my life
if you could stay the night with me.
It was a night of glory -- my night of glory --
even though two women got the best of one man,
and I never complained.
Please come and stay again, good friends.
We deserve that much.
And this time I promise not to fall in love
with the Australian.
Zen and the Art of Unloading the Life Insurance Money
by Mary Riley
I am giving away a lot of this money
Paying for things that feel
Like they should happen to this one or that one,
Paying a friend's school loan so she can go on and finish,
Buying a pair of airline tickets so my daughter and
Her new man can come down to New Orleans to see me,
Helping another friend with five children rent
A bigger, safer house, helping to
Finance this flying in daughter's next little leap back into her life,
I am happily paying for
These things which just feel like they ought to be allowed to be,
Ought not to be out of reach of all but the rich or the lucky
I am discovering with delight
How to be the unlucky, lucky, these beneficiaries of brokeness,
And am trying like crazy to help out such people,
Who I now dance with, still trying a new step or two forward,
And of course that tricky little one back,
I am slowly getting smart enough to know that we
Can't begin to earn our way, until we're poor again, and
How when it comes to other people, and
Loving them, we'll never be all that poor, or all that smart.
Four Kinds of Soft
by kevin R. johnson
i) yo kissin' fills ma big belly
I'm gettin' fat on ya honey
yo gojis hips afrenzy
baby, I can smell ya comin- like rain
an yo talkin's apowaful red wine
an I'm beggin jus a lil mo time
an yo laughter's sweet n angel fine
baby, I can smell ya comin- like rain
ii) thunder & lightning-
they are talking about revolution, again.
count the rain
centuries are falling
bathed
in
waves/smashing/waves
I touch you
iii) mouth open lips to lips
more than kissing less than surgery
tongue: a hand, an eye:
you swallow me
iv) Last night:
dreaming of s o f t n e s s
a granite rock cracked open
s p I l l I n g
into today:
a downpour of light
filling the a i r very nicely with
sunshine
bright in the sweat on your back
The Death of Old Cat
by Mary Riley
Old Cat wanted out,
He decided these annoying cats and dogs
He'd had to live among, so scrappily,
Were after all just cats and dogs,
He looked at them,
As if to say at last,
"So we've had a round or two, what harm in that.?"
The past few days he'd given up
Some stubborn
Hold on something, not life, whose to say what?
Certainly not the future, or the past, just I guess
An air conditioned life with private nurse,
He decided to give that all up to prowl,
Around this cluttered houseful of art
And creatures, this fumbling mistress, these dogs,
These other cats, this plethora of smells, He sniffed
Everything like a visiting professor,
Watched us all chew our morning kibbled,
Cat chow and grape nuts,
With a newish, wide eyed look,
And then he went outside
For the first time in his life
Right through the uncloseable
Cat door, I thought of bringing him back,
Did once, he left again,
And of course I'd showed him the dish again,
Offered him special treats, freshened the water.
I found his body near the street.
I was glad to see
That he hadn't been run over.
Simply died,
In the way of those who've been
Given a little opening in which to die.
I buried him in the garbage,
In the name he'd earned in his last days,
Old Cat, scrawny,
Pinched faced, but no longer frail,
Belly up but still waving
The cat nation's flag of tawny stripes,
At the end of his stiff tale,
Now permanently braced for come-what may.
THE POETS OF DESIRE STREET
Craig A Fisher was born in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, currently
resides in Slidell, Louisiana. He earns a living programming computers, NAVOCEANO, the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office.
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.
Kevin Johnson, Piscean, enjoys Tequila under the stars and writing about the physiology of nothingness.
Athena O. Kildegaard is a freelancer writer and mother and makes time between for writing poetry.
Yusef Komenyakaa, a native of Bogalusa, Louisiana, won the 1994 Pulizter for
his book, Neon Vernacular. He teaches at University of Indiana
Robert Menuet is a psychotherapist, marital therapist, and clinical supervisor. Previously he was a social planner.
Rhonda Manolis, mother of Chris and Andy, loves horeseback riding, Tai Chi Chaun,bicycling, hiking, and fishing. She reads Jungian
psychology, existential philosophy, and holistic medicine.
Adam Josiah Poree is a Student.
Kerry Poree is an electrician from New Orleans.
Bob Rainer is an Alabama redneck who lives in Metairie, Louisiana.
M.P. Sorrels lives in Slidell, where she works with the Live Poets Society.
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
Desire Street, October, 1995
Electronic Magazine of the New Orleans Poetry Forum
Listserv: DESIRE-ST@BOURBON-ST.COM
put SUBSCRIBE in topic field
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Desire Street, October, 1995, copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum.
17 poems for October, 1995. Message format: 21 messages for October, 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.