Long raven hair like Spanish 
moss grabs a runaway slave 
in a Louisiana swamp--
bound fast to the mast for 
his siren song, like a horn 
through the fog of a bayou bog 
where Morgan Le Fay rises 
again from the mist of 
his boyhood dreams.
                                    
Somehow he pulls free but 
his head is shorn--
like a nameless prison inmate
or a tonsured monk reborn 
with a safer and holy name.
In the numinous light 
of the piney woods,
nel mezzo del cammin 
(as he understood)  
he follows the trail, 
like a well-bred hound,
of the sanguinous scent drifting 
toward the ground.
 
When he gets to the crossroads
he tosses his bones 
and to no one’s surprise
those single point dice 
stare up at him like the Siamese eyes 
that called him out with a smoky smile--
“Some go that way and some go this.”  
He tastes her again when he bites his lip.
 
He had laughed years before at a bright-eyed man 
who pulled his coat with a trembling hand 
and rolled out a story of the horrible toll 
of a triple Scorpio who stole his soul.
The broken man had sighed and let 
his calling card reply—Blake’s etching 
of hell and an experienced verse: 
the road of excess (may first make things worse 
but it) leads to the palace of wisdom.                                                                                     
 
Stare at the sun.
Stare at a woman 
who knows what she’s done 
and hasn’t a single regret.
Reach behind your back
for something to throw 
through those black mirrored eyes.                            
Hear the blood rush in your ears.
Feel your feet tingle. 
Feel your arms shake.
Scream ‘til the rafters 
threaten to break.
 
Breathe.
Breathe again.
Open your hands.
Laugh at yourself.                                  
Begin.
 
AUTHOR
James Hannon is a psychotherapist in Massachusetts.  His poems have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Soundings East, Zetetic and other journals and in Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets.  His collection, The Year I Learned The Backstroke, was published by Aldrich Press.

That’s where she was from.
Down near the Rio Grande, the Mexican border.
Poorest place on earth, she told me.
She had the window seat of the bus.
I rode shotgun in the aisle.
She was a stranger who talked and listened.
And I was a traveler who did the same.
 
She was her way to Dallas 
in the heat of summer
to see a friend.
I was passing through 
on my way to Florida.
 
Through the glass,
I could see the shimmer of 
everyone of those hundred plus degrees.
She shrugged her shoulders, said
“You get used to it.”
 
Her accent drawled
as plain as the plains we crossed.
But her face was fetching
even if her mouth took up more of her jaw
that I was used to.
Her eyes were where
I mostly took her measure.
They were a pale but expressive green 
like the little that grew thereabouts.
 
She gave me the inside dope
on roping steers.
I told her what it was like
to sit in a room half the day
and write.
We had nothing in common
but for a willingness
to talk up our differences.                                      
 
She was shapely
but in a modest way.
And wiry.
For all my writer’s wrist workout,
she’d have had me easy in an arm wrestle.
But we didn’t touch,
at least no more than bus riders do
when jerked sideways around a corner.
 
But there was a connection there.
forced by circumstance perhaps
but the underlying humanity in people
has this flair for finding itself in others,
even if she’d never been inside a theater
and I hadn’t once stood at the base of an oil derrick.
 
We talked for hours 
as that vehicle rolled across Texas.
Her tongue gift-wrapped her life story.
Mine was easily as honest.
We ate together 
in a cheap but filling bus stop restaurant then parted.  
She gave me a number to call
if I was ever in Brownsville.
 
I never did go there
but I looked the place up in a book once.
I still must have that number somewhere.
Like I have everything that’s happened to me somewhere.
Maybe it’s with Portland, Maine
and Ann Arbor, Michigan 
and a one-horse town in New Mexico.
 
I recall that every one of those places
sent their envoy to greet me on my travels
and they were, in each case, female.
Brownsville wore her hair brown,
like the city’s name.
And long, like how long ago it’s been.
 
AUTHOR
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in
That, Muse, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming
in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review and the Dunes
Review. 

/ flowers are arrangements like music / and the convent approved my work / conventional morality and living like a body made up of closed boxes or rooms/ i wasn’t allowed to repeat 
the same music / devoid and defloration / the bass and the treble clef and middle c / 
/ so we stopped to dive into the shore / for my body has crossed over / there were eggs in warm sand / and when the summer was over / and the wind lifted and the shift of the sand / i played so my virginity / and my body a river like smoke curls when i blow out the candle / relocate its path when i hook it with my little finger / but when my shadow man comes / i notice he’s not dialing a phone / there is just the palm of my hand / so i reached out for the latch behind him / jammed my hand until it bled / there is a door and then there is love like a rosarium / and i pushed my body against him and he opened it /
/ when my mother came to my wedding / the bride and groom / the bridal march would not play and the singer could barely sing / toy soldiers and how we can never walk away from war / my father / my god / his brass band and our drum / 
/ so i didn’t let her take my rugs from under me / hand-knotted the persian rug my own way / for   if the hunter took out her heart / sown her snow right under her toes / 
/ fleshy petals / warm as bodies / hothouse / virginity in the convent / like a florist and exorbitantly priced / it should be beautiful / but i can barely walk through / so many clocks stop working in antique shops / for i have felt a body and a spirit / warm vapor / pour of salt from my father / and how he taught me to kneel down and close my eyes / if i should die before i wake / i pray the lord my soul to take 1/
/ when i think of her / of how i barely knew her / if she ever stood a chance in hell / it’s easier to say my mind is sick /  
/subtle smell of a cemetery / the convent always smelt disinfected / where i used to pray because that was what my mother wanted / festal days / taking up the offertory like a bunch of flowers / and i led the procession / because my parents died in marriage / her wooden spanking spoon and my father’s spoon was made out of bone /
/ my mother’s arm and hand / limbs of thought / turn over the crank of its body / spider black / they ate of me / my navel / their curricular dish / husbands whose bodies are made up of his own bones and how she understands circular economy / then she will bear her children and for her tear / off their own back /                                                                              / take back their skin /
 
 
AUTHOR

Annie Blake enjoys semiotics and exploring the surreal and phantasmagorical nature of unconscious material. Her work is best understood when interpreting them like dreams. She is a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne.