Volume 1, Number 3 -- October, 1996

Strange ironies

a collection of poems

by Sara Yates

little words

writing is nothing
a black void
which sucks and swallows
things like this
writing is a whore
executing power
through her cunt
through that little word
writing is a bomb
ticking and tocking
waiting to burst
and explode and destroy
writing is a crime
i should be arrested
for indifference
for putting words on the page
anyways

After the Fact
I fear truth
my own wrath
memories that rejoice
in a cacophony of pain.
It was a dream
I couldn't fathom
nor try to understand.
It was a sick belief in love
a strange betrayal of sex
in her
in me -
a naiveté
that makes us
separate.
They said,
"Nothing is more
fearsome than a woman
scorned."

Crank Call

In darkness, shadows lay moving with
the ascending dawn,
creating the nighttime ritual of
silence tiptoeing across the room,
joining the stagnant hour,
tightening the unconscious grip-
with bursting breath
reality rips open these eyelids
chomping these lungs,
this heart.
Picking up the static chaos
the line is open for debate
starting only with
hello.

After the Fact

Letter from the Dead
If this is published posthumously
it would mean that:
I lie here dead
in the passenger seat
with my eyes half-
closed, as if leaden with sleep.
You drive on
with deep discontent
touching my face sporadically
with a tenderness usually
starved from the suffering-
(the caged animal, our dying earth)
-I would repay you the caress
allowing you the rigor mortis kiss.
Since this is addressed to you, the driver,
my lover- my deathmonger-
I only hope I can say, only hope you will hear:
I want to go home...
Can you take me there?

Etc... Upon Reading too Much William Carlos Williams

remember the
heat
of your sun
burning
my skin
blisters
scars
are left
like welts
festering
that day
filled
with your
scorching heat
that sunset
turning into
night
into the next
day

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