Verse
McCartin, James T. & Sange, Sally Harris & Healy, Howard & Rubin, Larry
James T. McCartin Aunt Kale It was only in retrospect that I realized she was mad. As a child she was love surrogate mother who took us orphans uglied from neglect made us her own A raccoon...
...While nurses stare down into my canopy, on a laboring North Wing, one woman waits in open air drifting, alone, for life to follow birth.orth Wing, one woman waits in open air drifting, alone, for life to follow birth...
...Ike took the oath on the radio...
...I see it pulled over by the interstate, the hood up...
...Lately, I have been dreaming about it...
...The dream of life is sunk somewhere between maternity and nursery ward...
...We will mingle in our sweet decay And 1 will learn my origins at last, The roots I sought so desperately, the knobs I could not turn, though all my rent was paid...
...He's a free agent in his own bassinet...
...In it, he simply sleeps beside my bed...
...a white cloth flying...
...As a child she was love surrogate mother who took us orphans uglied from neglect made us her own A raccoon with her pups her ferocity a shield against a hostile world...
...I am worth the coming, the following through...
...I feel my life grow late...
...For those years we were pups in her nest, we were secure her encompassing warmth her caresses nurtured us...
...Her madness was our security, security the prudent, the officious, and the sane had all denied to us...
...My father is standing beside it as I drive by...
...It didn't matter we were vermin to the world...
...Howard Healy The 1948 Plymouth Big black beetle fenders, Cyclops eyes...
...If she raged at strangers who intruded on our dingy room we were comforted...
...the rent Is higher, but there are more rooms to play in...
...Sally Harris Sange The Intensive Care Nursery: From Maternity They made the sandbag fast about the foot then dropped him like a counterweight to hope into his tank...
...its bulb sprouts green knobs - I move into a better house...
...The Easter lily dies...
...Sally Harris Sange The Intensive Care Nursery: The Waiting That emptiness has content of regret in which womb colors dim and I just wait for her to come, just breathe, just incubate...
...We saw her rage knew no fear that our den was inviolate...
...What matter did it make if she avoided the day raided garbage cans, stealthily moving at night, avoiding dangerous mankind...
...His eyes tell me I cannot stop, I cannot stop...
...Larry Rubin Locked Out...
...I show them how I flare up and kick within my moorings...
...Before they set my thermostat...
...I don't know why...
...I lie to, heaving up my side of a deep dream...
...Step in behind the wheel to six cylinders of horses...
...But Only Temporar-ily The rain puddle mirrors the branches, the sky...
...True, this cleverly fashioned clay may finally Grow a mold, but that mold already Grows upon my father's fallen chest...
...The late shift make their rounds and separate the dying from the lost...
...1 left before they hooked him up with tubes stuck in veins and monitors that turn a deaf needle on a rotary drum or look at him with one deliberate blinking eye...
...I wish for her that she may soon forget the untaut belly, the empty bassinet beside her bed...
...my father listened, approved...
...My mother cried once in the front seat as we rode at night...
...He winced once then curled, pushed and aimless finger up to glass for slow, bewildered tracings of the light...
...A step-right-up rubber-covered running board...
Vol. 108 • December 1981 • No. 22
