Desire Street May, 1995 cyberspace chapbook of The New Orleans Poetry Forum established 1971 Desire, Cemeteries, Elysium Listserv: DESIRE-ST@SOUBELLE.JAXX.COM Email: Robert Menuet, Publisher robmenuet@aol.com Mail: Andrea Saunders Gereighty, President New Orleans Poetry Forum 257 Bonnabel Blvd. Metairie, La 70005 Programmer: Kevin Johnson Copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum (21 Messages for May, 1995) 3 whiteman jazz band (Cafe Lautrec, 18th St., NW, Washington, DC - '94) by Kevin Johnson so we're talkin' SHIT in that HUSH between sets when 'bOOM-bOO-bOO-BOOM,bOOM-bOO-bOO-BOOM...' & the former line-backer, now hardware store manager, knows hes got the UP on just doin' his WEEKEND-THING, bald globe gleamin' as if ANY other middle-age exertions for chumps, bass lines BOOMIN' like his HEART after a TACKLE So we're MOUTH TO EAR yellin' punchlines & SHIT 'bAM-bA-bA-bAM-bAM-bAM-SPLASH, bAM-bA-bA-bAM-bAM-bAM-SPLASH...' & the buddhist/mathematicians doin' the Taoist 1000 stroke method, workin' SO GOOD the kit SWEATS, face makin' caricatures of AGONY/ECSTASY So, like a LIGHT rain after THUNDERIN'&LIGHTNIN', we're swillin' & clappin' & SHIT 'tWING-tWING-tWING-tWAAANG-TWAAANG, tWING-tWING-TWAAANG...' & the hippie-come-stockbrockers pickin' strings like a MONKEY ON SPEED, TRIPPIN' on blue-chip chords, fillin' the air with the SMELL of cold cash so, our last OVER-PRICED drinks are GONE and we don't have money to put in thier HAT, but we're really talkin' SHIT now, to their PACKIN', TIP-TAPPIN' with arms full o' wires, boxes and big black luggage & SHIT through us HYPED-UP fashionables through a SLAMMIN' door 'SEE YA! TOO HOT! LATER MAN! YOU GOT IT! OWW. YEAH, ALRIGHT! NOW SEE HERE I GOT A GIG COMIN UP AND...' & ha! even their leavins got a BEAT, a RHYTHM, keepin' us from FADIN' OUT into silence & SHIT... Desire by Obra Melancon Ask to be cool and warm in the morning-- sun and summer breeze through the bedroom window add extra sparkle to the afterglow Then we love again-- slowly fingertips move through curls as our lips brush together like leaves limbs tremble in fear of this moment having to end as our trunks mesh Then we love again-- roots intertwine sap squirts, streaming down the branches of a bloomy oak. Double Vision II Reality by Bonnie Crumley-Fastring I Wolf is awake in me. I am suspicious of all that reeks of man. Instinct leads. Trust nothing of tradition. I squirt my urine in every corner of my house, tear chunks of meat out of life. Blood dripping from my jaws, No longer on my haunches, I howl. II My mouth bites into the round globe-like fruit. The golden sweetened juices drip down my chin, onto my fingers. They are so sticky. I dare not touch the furniture. I bite straight through the bitter peel, not bothering with a knife this morning. I need to feel the sun-kist fruit with all my senses, would like to rub it over my naked body. Yesterday, I sat in the chair across from my principal's desk, while we examined the red crisp apples of our mutual problem. She told me, sweetly, apples were oranges. In long descriptive sentences, always smiling gently, she encouraged me to see the orangeness, only becoming slightly irritated when I could not. "It's your mind, it's closed," she told me. That evening I did each paper according to her prescribed definition, writing it down first, so I could double-think apples into oranges. However, a blackness rose inside me, like a deadly mold after a bad freeze. When you arrived home, looking different, beard and mustache cut off, I did not know you, doubted my own sight, vomited black moldy rotted fruit on you. I'm sorry. The Fool speaks true by Robert Menuet Before the turn I look back. I hear: "Who got turned into a pillar of salt?" I turn round, roll past a Fool, one I've seen before. Old sailor he seems, with duffel and sock cap, perched on the floodwall. I circle back and stop. "Lot." "Wrong, Lot's Wife." An old trick. I pedal on. What will I say to him on the way back? He must want to talk. It would be a kindness. What did he mean? Perhaps it was my lot to be the wife: at the corner I looked back , saw only traffic; it hid the city. His eye was on eternity. But what to say to the old salt, Now I'm back ? Suddenly I know: speak like a madman to make a friend for pity's sake. "Your thoughts cannot turn me into salt: this column is flesh." I point to my leg. "You cannot kill me with your mind, for see I have returned, and I will not turn my back on this city; no, I will not turn my back on this city, or on you; I will return again here with you." He cringes, and his eyes turn red. Then his face. "It wasn't me that did it, It was Him." He points to heaven. His eyes stay fixed on the sky, as tears roll down his cheeks. Next time he will look away; I'll walk past, say nothing. El Higado by Athena O. Kildegaard In Batopilas, a Canadian walked out in the damp early light and found some men butchering a cow. They used machetes. The blood ran into the mayor's yard. The Canadian asked for the liver, el higado, and they handed it to him, though they thought it strange. He held out his two soft hands, hands that played a tenor sax the night before under a canopy. A couple danced in the rain, their clothes so wet they had become naked. He held out his hands and a man placed the liver into the bowl of his palms. It sought the open windows of his fingers, and he carried it back to his lover, thus: the deep wound of the cow spreading before him. House Painter by Kerry Poree I was the house painter in that universal painter's uniform undershirt white pants bandanna for a cap spotted shoes a rag (back pocket). You? A professor woman. I couldn't do binary numbers but I knew what a Beaufort scale was what leeks are good for what flat top cypress wish for and how to tint red, till she kissed back. She liked that I still call her Miss I have spotted shoes. I KNEW by Barbara Lamont The last time I held you in my arms I knew it was the end and savored each touch each smell, each small and tender sound what's going to happen to us i asked, you answered it's already happened. Kentucky Derby, 1994: When the Big Horse Won (Strodes Creek) by Andrea Saunders Gereighty Alto Cumulus clouds trail plumes like Bessemer, Alabama smokestacks The same yellow and gun-metal grey Eddie Delahoussaye wears Astride What a ride on a track the color, consistency of Mississippi mud Too thin to plow, too thick to drink "Yielding" the announcer calls it. And the rain pelts us, the jockeys, the horses, ladies' spring bonnets, Jones of N.Y. suits Sweat, bratwurst. Rain drives; hail from Hades repeating, repeating like a villanelle Go for Gin digs in the far turn Hydroplanes the stretch Eddie gives Strodes Creek the whip brushes withers in feather-duster motion blue electricity: forward, back When he does that, horse, man and rain connect. So my horse, ny number five in the Eighth (I'd bet him across the board) I bet him to win, I bet him to place, I bet him to show He waltzes in second as the crowd, freezing, roars, rises and belts out "My Old Kentucky Home." Laid Waste by Stan Bemis Ezra pounded a manuscript that had been placed in his possession. No one looks objectively to his or her own creation but Ezra had no such attachments. He could pound it up and down to the right and to the left. He could take a forest and make it into a wasteland. He could do it for the Elliot of it. The writer, T.S. genuflected in gratitude, took the whittled pages, stepping over the discarded ones, for all of him they were leaves upon the floor, not betrayed and neglected, abandoned children of his own imagination. "Thank you, Mr. Pound," T.S. said. "Think nothing of it," Ezra said, careful to lock his blue-nosed pencil in a drawer despite the fact it'd been worn down to a stub. Ezra had, critics were to say, taken out the sense but not the rhythm. "It means," the original writer said, "what you wand it to mean." Then he chewed the ass off a critic who found it full of homosexuality, tried to pound him through the courts. "Tell us what it means, then," the hungry public cried but T.S. demurred. he didn't want to admit he'd forgotten to ask his editor -- he only knew what he'd originally intended. The Phantom of Camp Lori by Andrea Saunders Gereighty The state constitution of Louisiana limits any new construction over coastal waterways. Tired of it all, the sun Turns its burned-out back On the camp's charred skeleton. Only pilings left, scorched by a different fire. Lake Pontchartrain covers the Camp's remains, a fish-grey water skirt Sewn with barnacles, in a sand-dollar print. See for yourself: cross Hayne Boulevard (Up the levee where joggers run) over The railroad tracks. People once danced the lindy A juke box played on the camp's verandah. Grizzled Gentilly residents Hang out for beer at the Bacchus now. As children, some vied at checkers on the camp's floor, where the game was painted. It wasn't the sea that rotted the place. I mean she didn't go one piece at a time. She burned one of those winters, Rare in New Orleans, when the Pipes freeze and crack. A norther bellowed flames, finished her fast. Something more than the egret lives, I imagine from Gris-Gris, the camp east I don't know it's her spirit, but I hear Laughter in the acid-washed Little Woods evening fog. THE SAME TALL TALE (New Orleans) by Byron Clement An old mule halting a tourist carriage closes his ears and yawns: His secret tongue swings wide from a parabolic curve of teeth like a comet in its orbit stubbornly crossing our world's path with another way of being at Ursulines & Dauphine. A Sentence About One Fucking Subatomic Particle by Bob Rainer It was late and I was tired But I felt that one certain neutrino That crossed my brow and fled down my cheek With such staggering momentum But so devoid of mass That the soul-altering effects of its Blind Passage was all that was necessary To send me off again into a dimension of thought With feelings so sensitive of the paths Taken, and the Fool's choices made, and That tiny neutrino was but a ripple in The fabric of time which around me I wrapped for comfort and glory. Solo by Obra Melancon Speedy eyelids racing mind reality contaminates the dream-- plays a song a fake harmony me (rebel rebel) you and I (a beautiful lie) A woman-child brings my numb flesh to life leaves my soul buried in values, a religion a God to look-up-to-- I lose my eyes in the clouds of my song singing and singing to the rhythm of my own heartbeat into the darkness of my song. Stroke the Cat by Bob Rainer She told me to love her Like I was a nun stroking a cat, Instead of like a baby shaking a rattle. I was supposed to find the warmest parts and tickle her fur. Smooth her back until her legs were straight and her claws extended. When her eyes closed and her head was poised at the end of her beckoning neck, Roll her over, Rub her stomach -- both ways. Ruffle the fur, Smooth the fur, Ruffle the fur, Smooth the fur, Loin to belly to chest to neck, Ruffle the fur, Smooth the fur -- In a slow easy rhythm Like a prayer for forgiveness. She paid me back as would a cat. When she left, I was confused. Was I still the nun, or had she just become one? Super-Fund Site by Kevin Johnson bugs dying oh, magnolia, does the landfill topsoil burn? under dripping water ache like unborn children inside dead mothers one-way mirror sky, colored like new eyes, who sees us laughing murdering caressing courageously involuntary, amock in our somewhat green playground? Mrs. Whipple, closing her writing book, watches as Tawna, Malcolm, and Kenyata leave these school grounds forever. She thinks about the only profession she's ever known. Two Kings Over Danish by Stan Bemis Jesus had a chance encounter w/ Elvis at a 24 hr convenience store They bumped into ea other at the bread rack Although late at night they were both wearing sun glasses Despite their incognito disguises they recognized ea other immediately. Elvis was a bit apologetic "Lord," he said, "I didn't mean to come back I'm afraid the public's made me into a god of sorts the public sure has been hard on me I thought it would end at death but popular demand has brought me back It's had me traveling around so much it's made me dizzy 'Lo, here is Elvis, Lo, there is Elvis' & since I no longer exist I'm at their whim." "Come on," Jesus said, "Let's go have a cup of coffee at Shoney's." "My popularity," Jesus said over danish "Has always been a marginal thing. Everybody acclaims me 'Lord' this & 'Lord' that but nobody wants me. The Beatles were right they were more popular than Me but they were almost lynched for pointing it out. and Humperdink could have said the same thing... I hang out w/ pimps & prostitutes homeless and AIDS patients and census takers Religion is & always has been my greatest enemy. First Judaism & now Christianity God! The things that are done in my name." He sighed and sipped his coffee. "Because I do believe in freedom Freedom of choice & individuals ability to find me I let it continue at least for now but the pope, Billy Graham, etc. et al have no idea how much they piss me off - You, I always liked, Elvis in all your insanity you tried to find me through the haze of your own notoriety... You didn't ask to be King & said there was only one King & that was me but they didn't listen to Me I wonder if they actually would have liked me any better if I could sing." The waitress making her rounds couldn't have cared less who they were two men in sun glasses at 3:00 A.M. She told one that Shoney's would not make him a fried banana sandwich but, yes, to the other's request for broiled fish. to both she said, "More coffee?" Unintentional Predator by Cedelas Hall I have loneliness enough to swallow Los Angeles. It breeds deep in my soul and cries out for a kindred spirit. It comes from being different and there are no kindred spirits. So I cry out to you but you don't hear my heart. You hear the natives' drums, the sound of the hunt. You smell the bait in the snare. But I have no snare. I fear the hunters as much as you. You fear loss of freedom, Count hours, minutes, balanced against your inner freedom clock. Time, your talisman, is insignificant. It is the essence you withhold that the black hole of need inside of me craves. My facade fools the best of those who pigeonhole and define. I look grown up, secure... benign. But in the late night hours when the hunger comes I could suck everything out of you in ten minutes and leave you an empty, dry husk lying on the floor... if ever I let the loneliness have full rein. THE POETS OF DESIRE STREET Stan Bemis, originally from California, is an artist & writer. He is a frequent visitor to the Maple Leaf Bar's Sunday poetry readings. He is currently working on a book of religious poetry atempting to, in the words of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "speak of God in a secular fashion." He has been a member of the New Orleans Poetry Forum for some years. Bonnie Fastring is a poet and teacher from New Orleans. Byron Clement is a Bywater resident who walks through the Quarter taking notes frequently. Andrea Saunders Gereighty owns and manages New Orleans Field Services Associates, a public opinion polls business and is currently the president of the New Orleans Poetry Forum. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, as well as in her book, ILLUSIONS AND OTHER REALITIES. Cedelas Hall has returned to poetry writing after a 20 year hiatus. Her works range in subject matter from nostalgia to sex. Kevin Johnson, Piscean, enjoys Tequila under the stars and writes about the physiology of nothingness. Athena O. Kildegaard is a freelancer writer and mother and makes time between for writing poetry. Barbara Lamont writes about fear. Robert Menuet is a psychotherapist, marital therapist, and clinical supervisor. Previously he was a social planner. Obra Melancon does social work with the Office of Family Support and has taught English at Xavier University. Kerry Poree is an electrician from New Orleans. Mary Riley is a semi-retired 30-plus-years social worker/child care worker finally taking the time to write full time. Her current project in addition to her poetry is a non-fiction book "A Year in New Orleans" dealing with the paradoxes--the delights--the deaths she has met in her five years there. Bob Rainer is an Alabama redneck who lives in Metairie, Louisiana. Christine Trimbo lives in a house that once neighbored Degas' house. She has two bicycles but no cats. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Desire Street, May, 1995, copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum. 17 poems for May, 1995. Message format: 21 messages for May, 1995. Various file formats. Desire Street is a monthly electronic publication of the New Orleans Poetry Forum. All poems published have been presented at weekly meetings of the New Orleans Poetry Forum by members of the Forum. The New Orleans Poetry Forum encourages widespread electronic reproduction and distribution of its monthly magazine without cost, subject to the few limitations described below. 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