Winter 2000, Volume 4, Number 1

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Winter, 2000
Volume 4, Number 1

Please post a message on our community bulletin board, or send email to editor@serpentinia.com to let us know what you think about a poem or story in this issue,and we'll pass your message along to the author.

About our contributors ...

I, Emmanuelle

by David Ritchie

An Epic Poem

A woman yearns for freedom and beauty after confronting the harsh realities of the city.

I, Emmanuelle, was born and lived in beauty.
I roamed upon white sands, and breathed white air.
I existed in a sterile world,
confused by the red flames
of other life.
There came a day when I saw
life passing swiftly
over this endless place, and
I could hear the voice of human beings,
but never knew its meaning.
I lived apart, with anchored thoughts
in a sad, dispassionate sea;
and mountains rose
like crowded, passive things.
They were splendid walls imposed
which kept me in this place.

(more ...)

Salome Dancing For Herod

If I was in the great hall
Of the palace
Watching Salome dancing
For Herod
I too would marvel
At movements
So erotic and executed
With animal precision

Her heaving breasts
Swaying pelvis
The white waves of her skin
Moving in soft undulations
Across her abdomen
And I smile knowing
That the king and I
Are both drunk with dance

And the beat of the music
The rhythmic flashing
Of bare thighs
Naked belly
Awaken the pagan in me
Who knows that lust is to love
What poetry is to prose
A sensual awakening of sight and smell
And sound and taste

And I would swear too
At that moment that the bounce
In each breast
Was worth the heads
Of a hundred prophets
And is more moving to me
Than the words
Of all the holy men in Judea

by Doug Tanoury

Strike

by John Horváth Jr.

An Epic Trio of Poems

The struggles of the working class as described around the turn of the 20th century eerily echo the intensity of the hi-tech workplace of today.

Lovers of loneliness in dark barrooms pester
bored barmaids, pretend it is after shift
as if the mill and foundry machines still
clog the eardrums and sweat ripens on muscle,
drink with dull recall of work and workplace,
beautiful Millgate Inn -- family heritage -- a remedy
against the poisons a hundredfold immigrants,
their sons and their fathers and the fathers
before them, drank -- now they drink to forget
the shame that they came to escape slavers,
found the serf's day-after-day unholidayed
time, enslaved to the master timeclock, its time
guzzled, time belched, and all their time defeated.
God, it's time your hosts smote Sodom,
modern Gomorrah full of machine bent
people reliable as gears clamped tight;
Oh Savior, pillar of fire, now lead us
out from our bosses, out of the wilderness
of our fathers, from temptation do lead us.

(more ...)

In Sleep

While once was I hot
as the often doffed candle topper
I am simple gray and grandfatherly
and measured up like the rail worn conductor
in overalls and cap and pocket watch
I now, in sleep, sculpt men of glossen ice
to stand by
my window
and look lovingly back at me and the hands
which wrung children from hard times
as tears dropping on a red parlor carpet
that when wet looks as blood would on white carpet instead
or maybe sheets under which my dearest wife of late
had ripped from her seeds of men
of glass
and long since my sons have gone, it is, yet in
my sleep I sculpt men
and their mother

by Dominick James Parris

Men in My Life

by Vasilis Afxentiou

A Short Story

A woman recounts the lovers in her life as she comforts and guides one of her teenage students who runs away from home to seek her help.

I was a scorned Maureen O'Hara. Dripping, with umbrella under arm, I sloshed out of the elevator. The flush on my cheeks must have palled my rusty mop. I doffed the plastic hood and marched across to my apartment door, fumbled at first, but managed to insert the key in the lock and turn it. Then I caught a glimps of motion from farther down the hallway.
       Drenched, with black hair pasted on forehead, he stood, looking at me. I saw indecision in the eyes so, before he scrammed, I justled the door open.
       I held my breath, and beckoned him inside.
       He approached like a wet pup, entered, looked at the wet trailings behind, and up at me.
       "Don't worry." I exhaled and helped him out of the dripping windbreaker. "Dry yourself, in there," I pointed to the toilet. I hustled to the bedroom for a robe. The tempest in me was giving way to anxiety.
       The antiquated clock on the plastic, coffee table began to chime when I returned. It was midnight. I hung the terry cloth robe on the handle of the bathroom door and I plopped on the sofa drained from this day.
       His mother will be worried out of her mind, I fretted. I'd have to get Stavro home tonight. Somehow.

(more ...)