AUDREY JOSEPHINE

Let me see your toes
With salty hints of the shore,
Sticky between your sweet
Brown sugar baked skin.
Let me taste the eased motion
Of your flesh,
Your sovereign eyes that dictate
Each musical note.
My little melody and earthen-home,
Walk with me on foreign lands,
Your hand pressed in mine,
Your fingers slow,
Rubbing and gentle for the life
That will not end with the Sun.

Swim with me in our ravished spirits —
They are oceans with white-foamed waves
Crashing on heaven and holy,
Molding beaches to embrace
Our words and children.
Bare your body,
The mystic temple of winds,
Loves, stirring sands, and time,
And move your illuminating cheeks
Outward and closer,
Those lanterns of bronze light.

I want to kiss
The seas in your palaces,
The rare,
The lost,
Without bounds
For tangled bodies.
Wade with me through piles
Of leaves and life,
To the volcanic source
In God’s hidden rainforest,
And slumber with me.

Rest your little citadel
Of feminine might
Against my chest,
Breathe out and back in,
And curl your lips
For a savage smile
Heavy and released,
With your hair tickling
The first bit
Of exposed grace
In the night.

Grayson Brice

MYKONOS 1973

It was a maiden voyage, an impoverished visit
To an unfamiliar island named Mykonos
Those without the bulging purse,
Those with hair length unbecoming their gender
Were directed across the steep stony paths
To the beach gulags prophetically labeled “Paradise” and “Super Paradise”
A new discourse awaited
Its syntax in the making
Body language was crucial
And clothing seemed to get in the way
The initiates slowly mimed the rituals
Shyly shedding swimtrunks
A vestige of pre-baptismal modesty
As I, the erstwhile male Venus
Emerged from the sea
Clutching the abandoned fig leaf in one hand
Attempting a new age sign of nonchalance with the other.

And as the first sunset called the initiated homeward
Collectively to preordained campsites
I, lone and decisively unhip traveler,
Set about digging in, bunker like
With a road weary sleeping bag
My only company
Dinner of ripe red tomato
Furry skinned peach
And crusty Greek bread
Unnoticed by the already entrenched,
They of the higher status beach caves,
Confident Bohemians who belonged to the exotic
Truly nonchalanced while I still clung
To an unwanted innocence, full of chalance
Yet trying to convince myself
Of the significance of this moment
The truth of my place in this scene
A collectable memory
Almost too heavy to bear
Wanting to be the bearded hipster
Sipping his ouzo under the beachside canopy
Studying his Borges, drawing on his Gauloise
Taking a solitary break
From his rightful place
In the commune of the arrived-and-here-to-stay.

I remained in open-beached solitary
For two days
Vicarious participant in the alternative pageant
And taking leave from the tourist harbor
Dark night conversations on the waiting room dock
“Are you going to party with us on the boat deck tonight?”
asked the bearded hipster
“I worked two jobs for two years
to save up money for this trip
so that I wouldn’t have to sleep on boat decks”
replied the liberated sorority queen
While the guitarless minstrel
Entertained the hangers on
With tales of his latest conquest
Back behind the abandoned yacht
He’ll be staying on for more
I left not sure of what I’d learned.

Brian K. Lynch (BebopPoet)

REQUIEM FOR A DEAD SPARROW

Forgive me all the hours
spent watching television
or not delivering all the words
of gratitude never said
to teachers or parents.

Your tiny pasta-like legs
are curled like bars
on sheet music; the feminine
tail feathers, the intense yellow
coloring of your chest.

Your bill is yellow-brown
like the sorrow of a single mother
whose daughter elopes
with an untalented musician.

The small blackened tuft of your head
is a mourning cap. How still you lay
on the wrought iron chair, unmoving.

I am standing on the patio
looking at your fallen body and there
is so much to do. There are no other
witnesses and there is so much to do:
the solitude, the rain, the roads.

Forgive me,
your friendless death.

Tim J. Brennan (68degrees)