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Farewell to the Moa, Patricia Howitt
Stazja Mc Fadden; Washington, USA


Happy hour

While the sun baked vacationers quench their thirsts
at boardwalk cafes and beachfront bars
I swim
a silent distance north
of high rise hotels
and the public pier

Undulating swells of tide
dazzle with blinding chips of diamond sunlight
In liquid jade I float face down
in idle search of suicidal fish who send
unwitting signals to sea birds
diving like kamakaze pilots around me
feasting on their catches of the day
How do they know, these birds
where to hit the drink for morsels?

A squalling entourage of seagulls
swirls above the gluttonous terns and pelicans
One breaks formation
touching down to body surf beside me
He's eavesdropped on my thoughts
and with an aviators condescending air he squawks
"To find what you are looking for, you have to hunger"
Then flies off to bother a pelicans shoulder

I memorize the moment
late into the night
I repeat the seagulls lesson
like a litany
A film of dried sand and sea
sweetened with coconut Coppertone
stings the skin across my back
It feels good
I lick my palms and suck my fingers
craving the taste
of beach salt
and freedom

Copyright Stazja Mc Fadden 1999



Thomas Downing; Pittsburg, PA, USA

August Ponds

I suppose like everything else,
          eyes and ears and bone,
a man's desire for a woman
          begins in August ponds.

There is no other beginning,
          no other truth than the womb,
no other mammel possibility-
          no other explanation, but

Before breath we rock-a-bye
          inside her- inside a lullaby-
for all we know- we're loved,
          sung to and desired.


Copyright  Thomas Downing 2001



James Dunlap; Iowa, USA


Tracking a will 'o' the wisp through the shadowed canyons of your mind


A sharp frisson of premonition
notes perturbations in the air,
like someone has just finished speaking,
yet hollow emptiness is there...
A turbulence where echoes echo
The faintest whispers in your ear;
Shivers rushing down spine,
like frozen fire, burn and sear.
Eyelids clogged with teardrops, leaking,
Blink phosphorescent trails of light--
Multi-hued, sharp incandescence
transcends the dusk of velvet night...
First sunlight's blasting effervescence
enervates your startled gaze--
You struggle to accept its premise:
Nature feels not need for praise.


Copyright James Dunlap

Troubles in early infancy , Christina Conrad
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David Markey, Australia


Small Deaths (sorry Emily, I have used your voice to end my poem)

Birds sing in these trees
Autumn leaves fall crisp in death

Cleaners bring their bags, sweep paths
carted away to incinerators

Smoke spirals filter through the trees
The sun makes it seen

the birds choke

Down the road
a steeple tolls.  An organist
entices the grieved to sing

Leaves, and laden solitude
inhabit orphanages of the restful
Infer the wider distance
to immorality.


Memo to Emily Dickinson

Oh, to read hieroglyphics, and
Cleopatra's love letters. Dear
Emily,
I disapprove:

your long black dress.

Copyright David Markey 2001


Thomas Downing, Pittsburg PA, USA


So this is rage

so this is rage...
after Holstein kicked,
a finger smashed, a deep thigh bruise,
or a rib cracked to ache a lifetime.

It occurs and he becomes
wild like a palsied man.
His face goes red, his body shakes,
his head spins, his fists...

Obscenities arise, grandfather taught,
twenty goddamns, thirty hyphenations,
fifty stupids, two there is no god,
a hundred references to mothers and cows.

So this is rage...and because he is old,
he repeats himself, and because they're cows,
they remind him who they are, no longer
civilized and regressing themselves.

Copyright Thomas Downing


Handsen Chikowore, Zimbabwe, Africa


Cry African Girl


Up in the Azure sky
Shoots the sun's rays
Rise to meet another day
Another promise
to me it's not yet any hope
As each day brings more problems
Which trouble a thirteen year old girl

Setting alight fire early morning
Sweeping the sheets of dust and dirt early morning
A beast of burden for fire wood so I am bound
All those long distances I have to walk
A throbbing pain to my foot
with the baby clinging on my yonder back

Thorn infested forests
The meandering long walks to bore holes and wells
The back breaking dreary buckets full of water
Its so tiresome my body sweats
Its so punishing my body cannot endure

All african girls
cry for your rights
The rape, torture and victimisation
Our life an eerie furnace of denied paradise
a sad song of denied education
I am so weary
a breath for fresh air cometh not
Don't fall African girls
Up and Fight
Yearn another life
Another era.


Editors note: Handsen Chikowore is a young man of 23 years, studing to be a journalist. His aspirations for the Nation of Zimbabwe and it's people shine through in his poetry.
Blackmail Press are proud to call him a friend and have published 2 articles and 6 poems of his in "Echoes of Africa" an e-chapbook.  Please email DAJWPoole@zfree.co.nz to order free your copy. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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