Editorial Board
George Wallace / Patti Tana / R B Weber

You almost please, the pail
smothered the way sand
still expects a small red flame
and human sacrifice

-it's old tradition, the shovel
held so one arm reaches slowly
to another though the dunes
have no trees left, are weighted down

by sunlight on this half-finished wall
-for more leverage you inhale
empty the Earth by patting the mound
till it crumbles stone by stone

already dried-out rain, evening's
half driftwood, half on fire
from your lips, your eyes,
your hands and even now your breath.

The boards of the blue Ford's truck bed
Have splintered, split and rotted.
Loading bushel baskets of peaches,
I watch rows of pickers at work,
Blending with branches, reaching through leaves
From the rungs of their weathered wood ladders.
Arms curl between peach boughs,
Hands pull and pluck at ripe fruit,
Rolling them into the mouths
Of their soiled white shoulder sacks;
Others bruised or holed by honeybees,
Drop spinning to earth, lie
Brown-speckled like large quail eggs
Nested in thick blades of grass.
I sit on the back of the blue Ford;
Smell the peaches, touching them...
Soft in their yellow-pink fuzz.
I hold one round in my palm
Warm as a young bird's belly
Bulged beneath thin skin and down.

I almost listen for a heartbeat,
Wishing peaches made some sound.

It was all thunder and shower. A summer of pears,
chameleons and melaleuca unraveled in the heat. They 
met in that cafe, talked about the South. Someone
with a white guitar sang from a chair near a window.
The old school stood beyond the wet lawn and in the
rain a woman hailed a car. The storm blew by the open
door, papers flipped, spray hissed in the gray streets.
It was a moment when everything touched some great
anatomy; the world of physical gods. Algebra spilled
from her voice while fire spun from her earring. Back
at the cottage, male cats tore up the yard, the scent
rising from places they intimately knew, howled like
troubled saints. Everywhere the smell of smoke. The
lights went out in the cafe when clouds clapped so loud
they shook the wooden chairs on the terrazzo floor.
He grasped her naked ankle and laughed. Streaks of
water trickled down panes of glass. Thinking back,
the man knew this was the day he waited for. He found
his breath in the shuddering storm. She leaned toward
him and perfume became biography. Found herself among
clamoring cups and plates, chatter of strangers, the slow
motion summer storm that jolted the lights.
Afternoon drummed on and that evening they slept as
everything behind them slowly disappeared.

This morning glory's elegant twining
twists like a lie elaborating itself;
heart-shaped tongues of slick green leaves
droop from the fuzzy-throated shoot
that can't tell a tool handle from a tree.

This compulsion to convolution
must be in the genes, the seeds
of a quick & daily ritual of dying
that wilts, shrivels, & folds the blossoms
till morning comes & the liar rises again,
proud of its loud & scarlet trumpeters.

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