hold me like alcohol


Kurt Schwitters, The Proposal, 1942

to jim lowel's goldfish
-- by d.a. levy

there is little or nothing
of the minds nightwork
so there is pretending & amusement
a goldfish in a toilet bowl
a piece of the captured sun
the heart of a melons wisdom
if of the Spanish marauders
a ripping up of alabaster by its iron roots
carries this treasure off to store in a
galleon that is to die young

instead, i anchor him with old memories
and change his water by day
he thinks it is the tide

O-Jazz-O
-- by Bob Kaufman

Where the string
At
some point,
Was umbilical jazz,
Or perhaps,
In memory,
A long lost bloody cross,
Buried in some steel cavalry.
In what time
For whom do we bleed,
Lost notes, from some jazzman's
Broken needle.
Musical tears from lost
Eyes.
Broken drumsticks, why?
Pitter patter, boom dropping
Bombs in the middle
Of my emotions
My father's sound
My mother's sound,
Is love,
Is life.

Foxy's Den
-- by Maggie Jaffe

Inside, cool forced air of Hotel
Casa del Zorro's cozy bar.
Outside, an alien tamarisk tree sips H20
insatiably as a golfcourse, and toxic
oleanders hedge the pool where a sunburned
boy with orange flippers and a gold watch
swims in circles. The Anza Borrego desert
begins at the edge, secretive as a side?winder,
unforgiving by June's end. The piano
player sneezes and adjusts his synthesizer.
Long?nosed, intellectual seeming and badly
bent with arthritis, when he plays something
sad from the 50s, even Yuppie cowboys
feel the ache. Freshly showered, newly prozaced,
I step to the bar. At 49, I have the best-
looking tits in this womanless, over-priced saloon.
Hunched over his pitcher of Margaritas,
is that son-of-a-bitch who broke
my heart? So what. The piano
player takes a spin on the stool next
to mine, and though he's upbeat,
waving his hands over his crystal
goblet of Armagnac, he says, let's walk
into the desert and never come back.