Verse
Ritty, Joan & Walsh, Joan & Healy, Christine Kaczynski & Henderson, Jock
Joan Walsh In Trust I saw my mother's back, a bow, To which I owed the labor of my birth, From out whose spine, my cradle, I headed toward the land. I saw her bend and root her hands, Break...
...It brought me pain the length of my arm...
...Eve, I need you badly...
...My darling goddess, Eurydice...
...I have heard the same quiet question in other places...
...When Orpheus looks back into your face, He will be torn limb from limb By blood lechers at the discotheque of lesbos...
...One or both, you may if you will...
...Then terror told me what it would do It lodged in my heart and with me it grew...
...The streets really were gold when it needed to shine...
...After we have met and lingered, You will know the cusp of your third eye opening...
...Orpheus and Adam are lost to the inquisitors...
...Nobody then could warm the winters there (except by sinews and bones born strong...
...Bite into the core, and its meat Will teach you the secret of the asp In violation of your right to paradise...
...But here Here was everything...
...But no one then had fire in the walls to warm like love neither did water jump like an eager dog...
...Some cables in the brain never connected one conception to another and died again on the way to the heart...
...When Adam eats out of your hand...
...Beware of my flippant tongue and my forked nose Why don't you fall out of your tree And walk down the garden path towards me...
...I hold the apple to your lips...
...She screamed, I cried, and when she turned Her fasted face (oh yes oh yes) she looked foi Something to amuse...
...Offer me your foot, and my spine will Twine around your ankles And drag you to the underworld...
...as if words were excuses for silence...
...I have heard the same quiet question in other places.e morning isn't dear...
...I saw her bend and root her hands, Break back her nails on stones so deep She could not rid them of their earth...
...He will be thrown down from Eden And detained as a junkie in outer space...
...I lie in wait among the grassy roots...
...Though a lesbian couple, Your myths can be celebrated by man...
...She sought to throw up rocks to God Who put her in these widow's weeds...
...I threw, I threw but it stayed in my hand, My fist doubled over, slipped under my nail...
...Joan Ritty Excuses Once, in San Diego, a trollop answered, and the bald professor she slept with pretended to be deaf, What the dove asks in the gray gauze morning isn't dear...
...Jock Henderson Eurydice or Eve Let me be the snake in the grass or the garden, And you can be Eurydice or Eve...
...You can share me as equals, I, faithful to your demands...
...I do not hear the cat walk, I do not warn the dove...
...She could have been borne here by cables of pen by cables of ship...
...Inflate the raft which saves my life...
...She searched, and found a pennyweight For me to practice on...
...Eve, my sweetmeat of lamb...
...Christine Kaczynski Healy An Abortion Certainly she is dead but it was done well Winter poured snow like salt into her blood until it caught up in her throat and won...
...You can live through the myth of the fallen woman Hurry up, Eurydice...
...I will strike Venusian venom into your foot or Offer you destiny in a poisoned apple as you pass...
...Or at any event, hears my last gasp Deep, deep In the seashell hollows of your ears...
Vol. 108 • April 1981 • No. 8
