YVONNE MORRIS

'Blonde'

She was a dandelion puff as a girl
a yellow-sweater dreamy
in a weather-beaten way
lost and found and lost again
in terrible, grassy springs
that blew gales of seeds 
into bare-breasted summers--
but, finding no place to land,
she flitted and fluttered 
into ageless winter

and now smiles with the teeth of a lion

copyright 2003 YVONNE MORRIS

comment/contact YVONNE MORRIS

JOHN HORVATH Jr

Healing Process of Love Encountered Haphazardly

We had met in a bar,
the perfection of opportunity stubborn
against chances where her hand
over my shoulder sought to quench a dire thirst
forced a kiss from my conversation upon her little wrist
scarred like herringbone, that I thought somewhat sad and
a lucky happening because I had come to drink and to talk
to this stranger about inconsequential things we shared
like the failure of traffic lights to acknowledge when
lovers need more time, the invisibility of the law
as such needs arose to have life so ordered
and the judge who had fined me for
hurried love. It was the ball above the dance floor
lighting her wrist or so I had convinced
myself though I had been drinking heavily
 so that my words strung out heavily like an anthem
played in dirge time or the last second before
an accident when you knew unquestioningly that
upon waking there would be a nurse and a white room,
perhaps doctors exchanging golf tips 
over the chasm of your open chest, heart exposed.

Then she touched it.

Blood dripped from her fingers like a head
of suds overflowing its public cup, the glass
taking on a sparkling startled
look as it hit the floor and I said here,
I'll buy you another when she smiled. 
Then I took her wrist and kissed it. Long.
As a man several years deprived of woman. 
As a dog to its long away master.

I kissed it.

copyright 2003 JOHN HORVATH Jr