PURE FRANCIS

Doomed!

by Brian Wilkins

At Thomas Paine Elementary the teachers’ desks
buckle beneath illegal letter-pressed pamphlets
and every ten minutes a child mounts a chair
to declare the rights of man. Detention
and suspension fail—they tried that at Nathan Hale
and the fourth grade, jumping one by one from the slide,
cried, “I regret I have but one life to give for my classmates.”
“Who named these schools” the Vice-Principal riddles
at Sam Adams Middle where the spitballs hide rocks
& the students sport glued temporary tattoos
of the liberty tree. It’s a mystery, even to
the history teacher at George Santayana High
who spends second period discussing the first
and so on and so on, until it all repeats again
& revolution is whispered locker to locker each fall.


Brian Wilkins is 1/2 the genius that created Scarab.

After

by Chuck Augello

No one remembered why
only where, and how it felt
when the roadside box
grew wings of smoke
and metal rain pierced the sky.
 
Survivors crawled
beneath an amber fog,
seeking vengeance,
forgiveness,
and something to buy,
 
but they found only bones,
bodies ripped,
the dead stacked like firewood
in a city without fire.
 
Orphans dashed between the trees
clutching food scraps and rags
while actors in greasepaint
and red rubber noses
staged passion plays
for the dazed and blind,
 
and the quiet guy
from St. Mary’s on Tenth
grabbed the Good News
and stumbled down Mercy Street
his breath choked with ash
and bitter I-told-you-so’s,
 
and no one remembered why. 


Chuck Augello considers revolution a halfway decent idea.

Personals

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

I sing like a bird.
Let’s meet at the post office.
I’ll be flying a kite that says
“Nobody but me.”

***

I know what’s real.
I smell like apricots.
Send me a picture.

***

The children are married.
The parrot flew away.
I have a little dog now
Named Gus.
If you are dead
I wish you’d let me know.


Buff Whitman-Bradley has been to jail for justice.

Cobalt Blues

by Kelsey Wollin

     She played her hot-pink flute on sticky summer Sunday nights at a club on Riverside, as background music for open-mic poets who sweated beneath five impotent ceiling fans, and every time she strolled out on a break to the water’s edge, barefoot in her corduroy pants and Leave It To Beaver t-shirt with a picture of Wally stretched across her breasts, she invariably stepped in seagull crap.

     But on Monday nights she stayed home listening to Jimmy Buffet music on her second-story 3-season porch (dubbed by friends the “Carmen Miranda veranda” after they had shared some remarkably inspiring marijuana one night in May just as the moon was becoming full and the margarita pitchers had all gone empty) and painted her toenails chartreuse, alternately sipping her Fuzzy Navel and tossing fresh pineapple slices, Frisbee-style, to her pet macaque, Chip.

     She was a vegetarian of late who sang along to Cheeseburger in Paradise so loudly that anyone listening knew she was not fully past a desperate craving and was in approximately the same stage of denial on that matter as she was the recent departure of her ex-lover, known locally simply as “that really crazy mother-fucker.”

     If the Monday night in question was any date remotely close to the 27th day of the month, she generally went a little heavy on the peach schnapps and woke on Tuesday to not only an unpleasant throbbing in her head but also to the equally unpleasant sensation of Chip’s nimble monkey fingers diligently trying to peel away the chartreuse nail polish she had slathered onto her bare groin in an attempt to cover the tiny tattoo of a cobalt blue electric guitar that the aforementioned mother-fucker had chosen for her because he believed that all people have a strong connection to a certain element on the Periodic Table and that in spite of her flute-playing and fondness for pink, she was really much more “heavy metal” of the blue variety.  Element #27, Cobalt, of course.

     Chip’s efforts were especially painful because of the fruit juice residue beneath his nails and his hugely misguided determination to complete the task which was probably partially the result of his headache brought on by total pineapple overindulgence.

     But when she took the recyclables to the curb on the most recent of such Tuesday mornings she accidentally met the pick-up man with his name neatly embroidered over the left pocket of his blue work shirt.  A 6-letter, real name, not some ridiculous 27 letter-long name like “that really crazy mother-fucker.”  They agreed to meet for coffee on Thursday and she hummed a little song to herself as she poured the rest of the schnapps down the drain and scratched “pineapple” off the grocery list and replaced it with “raisins.”  Chip couldn’t read, but recognizing the tune as “I Feel Pretty” somehow filled his tiny monkey heart with dread.

Kelsey Wollin says Brett can ride her tractor any day.