Issue Two - Hollice Danielle Wiles
kisses
god drinks
death-black martinis
tonight
the moon
is his only
ice cube
Drying of the Laundry
barren alleyways full of city laundry
like expressionless pieces of skin colored by the sunset
pristine and pinned in place
i am strung out like clothing wire between houses
here....where the evening day dyes
white towels into shades of red and purple
i watch an airplane disappear behind a pair of drying socks
a bird's flight seems to crash into a gathered parade of faded panties
my window is the window to the world
and the hanging laundry like the movie screen of our torrid lives
somewhere visions of you pressed hard against me dance
like french film clips across the neighbors' dangling bed sheets
so hard and ardent our love was
like wet memories rung out
and dripping into the streets below
i watch the color drip down from the ravels
onto the heads of little children playing ball below
they look up in disbelief and wonder
Our City
a train is chased by a storm into the dusk
and the city pulls her children in
like chicks beneath the scurry of a hen
thin and sweet...the voice of a women
raises above the clammer of traffic
whispering...."stay with me"
in a broken flat a man curls his body around a bottle
listens intently to the rain compete
with the train upon the tracks
the whole world is hushed though an open window
as a mother lulls her child to sleep
an old house still lives
tucked between sky scrapers
in the curve of his dreaming wife
a husband finds sudden comfort
woken from a childhood memory that he long forgot
the whole world revolves with the ceiling fan
the dream is yours and the lips are mine
the miracle ours:
how we still find each other in the night
Eggs and Bacon
last night: i (only) dreamed a dream of passion
like the seeded raw insides of red ripen fruit
today i make your breakfast....fading dreams in my faded pj's
sagging away with the dying elastic waistbands
i take such caring pleasure to hold up each cold
smooth white egg in the warmth of my half dreaming hands
my head in the clouds
like each fragile egg is brought down sharply
brained on the metal side of the bowl in a smack
scrambled and broken into the death black of a cast iron skillet
sometimes i relish that sudden cold meeting sudden hot
the sizzle of eggs in bacon grease
across the table as we eat
i tell you of my perfect dreams
you mumble back with food in your mouth
"you burnt the bacon again and got shell in the eggs"
sometimes i (guiltily) wish
you would choke on your bacon
but most times..... i just wished you'd say
thank you