JANET I. BUCK
Frozen Sonnets

Gray bands of smoke are still alive.
CNN revisits ash. I don't resist
the black remote that
whispered waking in my ear.
Picnic benches near the towers
are shards of limbs.
Steel we thought we were we weren't.
First waters of old liberties
see seaweed strangling a pearl.

Cranes are ticking dinosaurs
reminding me to shave
thick stubble of the hate
before that final coat of rust.
Ellis Island grows a layer of winter ice.
The harbor hiccups with a ship.
Every plane that passes in the autumn sky
leaves bootprints on a nervous floor.

Res gestae digs up poles for flags.
I didn't know these palettes well.
A songstress slumbering in streets
between the stoplights stuck on red.
Death rattles and we sing a hymn
the best we can with thwarted lungs.
Grief is always smelling salts,
mace in eyes of apathy,
seasoning on cantaloupe.

"They struck first," a chant that hangs
like gnats on going bowls of fruit.
We have trees of pears to pick.
The missing call me from my sleep.
The lives, the kisses, sugar cane,
frozen sonnets of an iris
bees will never bother with.
Each ovary, each ivory moon,
a stranger under lids of frost.
Lovers they will never have
become a ghost in vapor
of November's fog.

JIM DUNLAP
A Griffin Profile of Bare-Breasted Women

To decipher emotions doesn't take a machine,
Though emotional roller coasters might leave you green.
The mathematics are simply so far from immutable -
It's not easy at all to "unscrew the inscrutable". *
Wild women warriors sweep through the night,
Riding the storm like the Norns in their flight;
Great jagged bolts of lightning flash by
Silhouetting a goddess athwart the dark sky.
Bold brigands of battle riposte sword to sword
In bright, blazing lights that illumine the horde;
Clouds rent and tattered show glittering stars
As red as the War God who calls himself Mars.
Like Valkyries soaring on carpets of sound,
Fluctuations and differences wildly abound.
Windbursts through the treetops whistle and hiss -
As strong as the arc of a goddess' kiss.
Through tumult and turbulence, warrior-maids sail,
Dark Queens of Inferno who ride on the gale.
Wild wingbeats flutter and soar through a mist,
Dodging and weaving with each turn and twist.
Lesser beings that cower in cellar and cave
Can postpone many years their descent to the grave;
But the shame of it all is the guilt that they feel
In denying that anyone thought it was real.

* Robert Heinlein in "Time Enough For Love."