POETRYrepairshop v06.07:084

a femme watches a butch cry by MARIE CARTIER

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MARIE CARTIER a femme watches a butch cry "Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. And you cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore." -Cesar E. Chavez your face the desert canyon wild vegetation resistant to growth fraught with possibility of sudden fire that chance cigarette and a tumbleweed some would say abandoned but small animals live here although it remains immune to cartography and then your eyes the irises flung with ghosts frozen in negative silver light splintering the frame in complicated dance steps choreographed like ice after a hard step bursts into stars and then your tears a rush of forbidden salt mined by outlaw children forced to work too early the headlamps bobbing along the dark tunnels and then your face folds in on itself water slopping over a black hole cut in ice white as ghosts or salt a city falling as fast as fire a fallen city your face that complex like Atlantis or Avalon the route in and out sketched only in legend Copyright 2006, all rights retained by the poet

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Appalachee Twister by John Horvath Jr

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JOHN HORVATH JR Appalachee Twister On an all-day-rainy Sunday afternoon In a bland, flat country under skies Repeating shades of gray to horizons The thin blue line of morning became A sulfur-yellow wall under a purple Thatched roof spewing swirling whips That sparked when snapping treetops. Under calm, bleached clouds, someday Soon, I will drive west to the raw Sawtooth forest that fought the wind And lost but sucked rain up root And trunk to make new leaves. I will collect branches to build Fires under the winter hearth and, In the cackling light, I will tell My grandchildren of the day that I survived. Copyright 2006, all rights retained by the poet; reviously published in Antigonish Review

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ENDNOTE often

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ENDNOTE J Horvath, Editor Months after Katrina-Rita devastated the Midsouth region, people are rebuilding. It seems they will never grow again those whole cities and towns wiped off Mississippi's Gulf coast. A 'tourist' drive along I-10 from Jacksonville, Florida, to New Orleans is a journey between two worlds - America as industrial and agricultural giant gives way to the third world landscape Katrina-Rita Left behind. The landscape some thirty miles inland from the coast is horrendously damaged. Wrought by Gulf waters' storm surge, inland thirty to one hundred miles or more trees have fallen, limbs torn from their sides, some standing after lightening struck, will not fall of their own weight. In Jackson, Mississippi, Katrina hit as a category one hurricane. Not as dramatic as the coast's suffering, not as tragic. We spent a week in the darkness of no electricity. We cleared trees and limbs and other debris off our roofs. Five buildings immediately west of us (and we too) lost roofs or parts of roofs. Hurricane Katrina size one let the deluge damage all electrical circuitry - and that includes all the files for PoetryRepairShop [ www.poetryrepairs.com ]. The world figures that a poet not publishing is dead or has quit the game when not heard or seen. But there are times in Midamerica - hurricanes and tornadoes, mostly - when silence seems right. Often I was asked, 'did you get good poetry out of it?" The answer is 'not yet'. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of so many dead in the Twin Towers, say one dead there for each tree fallen here? It would not be enough for a healthy metaphor of some kind. Americans have short memories; history is what came before age 13; and, 'ancient' national or global history does begins only after they are born. Children ask their parents incongruous questions: 'Dad what what did you and Mom do during World War II:' and the response is something like 'we were born after the war.' So it is with that question: did you get any good poetry out of it. In a very real sense, 'I wasn't born yet'. The poetic cauldron takes its time 'hewing' great events. Some trees do not yield quickly to paper: The Twin Towers, the Tsunami of '04, The Alaskan earthquake, or the crushing of the Hungarian revolution. Some trees command the poet to carve words into its bark. Those words last briefly, only as long as pith and sap allow. Once gone the words are no more than a mere footnote at the bottom of the page. Copyright 2006, all rights retained by the poet

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