Lead Us Not Into Temptation

"In order to play, one needs magic and.....": Carla Harryman


By Elisabeth Workman
"City Plan F"

ergo a brief encounter with geraniums in a courtyard, both public and difficult to find, offering its rumors selectively, where first thoughts flash collectively across static surfaces -- a crooked rearview mirror, a pond with fat fish, an orange smelling tabletop. Two kisses left before your time runs out, tiger face. Not for the faint-of-heart, flattery here is indentured to the wine that exudes a raunchy musk. Must we. Always. Boy flickers into man, makes fractions of fathoms, takes tulips from ottomans, puts everything fertile out front. Like it or the city. A conversation between light and fractures, till fresh taste be taken from that clearness. Here, both fantasy and forgetting are soluble in the book of the unsaid. My favorite monk with ruby lips said so. My dear, it's true -- let's frolic in the mulch, fuck in fuchsia, then sing finnish songs of blood in the cloud in the cake, those sad songs that so turn me on so that every word is somehow filial

By Harryette Mullen

"Any Lit"

You are a ukulele beyond my microphone

You are a Yukon beyond my Micronesia

You are a union beyond my meiosis

You are a unicycle beyond my migration

You are a universe beyond my mitochondria

You are a Eucharist beyond my Miles Davis

You are a euphony beyond my myocardiogram

You are a unicorn beyond my Minotaur

You are a eureka beyond my maitai

You are a Yuletide beyond my minesweeper

You are a euphemism beyond my myna bird

You are a unit beyond my mileage

You are a Yugoslavia beyond my mind’s eye

You are a yoo-hoo beyond my minor key

You are a Euripides beyond my mime troupe

You are a Utah beyond my microcosm

You are a Uranus beyond my Miami

You are a youth beyond my mylar

You are a euphoria beyond my myalgia

You are a Ukrainian beyond my Maimonides

You are a Euclid beyond my miter box

You are a Univac beyond my minus sign

You are a Eurydice beyond my maestro

You are a eugenics beyond my Mayan

You are a U-boat beyond my mind control

You are a euthanasia beyond my miasma

You are a urethra beyond my Mysore

You are a Euterpe beyond my Mighty Sparrow

You are a ubiquity beyond my minority

You are a eunuch beyond my migraine

You are a Eurodollar beyond my miserliness

You are a urinal beyond my Midol

You are a uselessness beyond my myopia

By C.D. Wright

"Poem from Deepstep Come Shining"

Everyone in their car needs love. Car love. Meat love. Money
love. Pass with care.

Deepstep, Baby. Deepstep.

The boneman said he would take the blinded driver to the river. With
a mirror. And then what.

The boneman said he would take the blinded into a darkened
room. And put a hot-herb poultice on their sightless face.

Mellein for this mullein for that. We called it flannel.

Then leave them there.

The baby sister of the color photographer had a baby girl in the
hills. Born with scooped-out sockets in the head. Born near the
tracks they sprayed with Agent Orange. The railroad's denials,
ditto the army's.

They would have been blue. The eyes. She did not have. Blue
as the chicory in yonder ditch.

We see a little further now and a little further still

She said her lights would be on and they were

Groping around the sleeping house in our gowns

Peeping into the unseen

Beautiful things fill every vacancy







These poets and their poemz may complicate my old pleasures.............