Look through time and find your rhyme


Don Van Vliet, Golden Birdies, 1988


Papa November
-- by Crystal Curry

The virgins guard
the emergency glass. Opal
is dying
in her basement house. The numbers station
croons to the spies: papa november,
papa november.

Opal: "alea
iacta est." The fate
of the empire rests on this. Gardenia,
Delphinium, Gentian, Mum
save their hula
for some
hangers-on.


Morning at the Elizabeth Arch
-- by Joe Weil

The winos rise as beautiful as deer.
Look how they stagger from their sleep
as if the morning were a river
against which they contend.

This is not a sentiment
filled with the disdain
of human pity.
They turn in the mind,
they turn
beyond the human order.

One scratches his head and yawns.
Another rakes a hand
through slick mats of thinning hair.
They blink and the street litter moves
its slow, liturgical way.
A third falls back
bracing himself on an arm.

At river’s edge, the deer stand poised.
One breaks the spell of his reflection with a hoof
and, struggling, begins to cross.


Japanese Pop Music Concert
-- by Richard Brautigan

Dont ever ever forget
the flowers
that were rejected, made
fools of.

A very shy girl gives the
budding boy pop star a bouquet
of beautiful
flowers

between songs. What courage
it took for her to walk up to
the stage and hand him the flowers.

He puts them garbage-like down
on the floor. They lie there.
She returns to her seat and watches
her flowers lying there.
Then she cant take it any longer.

She flees.
She is gone
but the music
plays on.

I promise.
You promise, too