Wilson, North Carolina

At slowed speed of light

hocking wads of wonder-bread toward

ducks on a manmade lake.

Only four neutral tones:

The convexity of a body doing limbo,

The softball kicked cross the bridge,

The grasses recede in distance as red,

The pickup speed gaged at zero

We continue flopping needle into shadow;

ways appear

at speeds approaching C,

scrunched up, and ungreen.







Are We There?

Beneath truck coverings
Lambs frisk and bleat
One to the other: thumbs upon skin
If the doctrine ills us we are coming
up on a super market of fireworks
Tomorrow is the first day of the year
Roofs angle against excessive sky
still the offenses
We continue: gas getting
Slipping only within
ourselves, which passages will pair,
let me have it: the deluge of frogs
A sure sign of any one thing, I long
For the neighbors' double-wide I covet
Their three crabbed month vacation








105
after Duchamp

Consider a word from all sides
Every barb has a name, made usual by its maker

A wheelbarrow drug through damp sand
before use, rolls like a tumbrel toward war

A glimmer of melody, if the overgrown thicket
obscured the road, routine distortion: LHOOQ

or she has a hot ass, would you imitate us in playing,
would you look back?








Gillette, Wyoming

Man in waiting beside girl
In green-- feeling their
nails are too long

For comfort the accordion segments
Of compressed caterpillars-- I shaved
My hair off to stop playing with

It, a summer with cicadas, I haven't
heard. A frame we call present
Is there any there? Hot wax

Muddling grass. How would the world look
From beside a beam of light?
A door yet

To open but not unique
Inextricably, mountain lions fall asleep
In the shovels of machinery at the mines








At A Red Light

Spider plants make more spider
Plants. I was surprised at your reaction
To the bug on your arm and that the tips

Of her red hairs were black some little
Girls have hair on their legs, some little girls have none
I wish the wind would wind, that

The tub would shriek about
All that's happened in it, the bathroom
Was papered with pages of Sears & Roebucks

Catalogs. She comes to town whenever she can
Like a circus, things get banned some places
And young girls buy sexy nighties thinking solely of their beauty.

Some kids roll their books to school. It is labor
day and cops in the Buckeye State patrol the highways
looking for clicked belts, speed, aggression

I have seen 5 groundhogs in this cusp of a place
In the last week one got clipped by a car and sidled
Right back where it came from








Bi

Paddling palms and pinching fingers

practiced smiles and high clearance

What smutched thy nose?

Nothing smutched thine rest

The steer, the heifer, the calf

Are called neat, or still chaste

The soul will live with

Bee boxes behind a billboard

Will you take eggs?

In place of what you have come for

Will the soul live well with

Wide loads, labeled as such, straddling two lanes

All yours in the garden, if you seek them.

Will you return the shells so they might feed

upon them. What is it to pursue every bent?




Susan Scarlata has recently discovered that pears are delicious! She lives in Denver where she enjoys standing on her head and leaving often for retreats into the mountains. She coordinates a writing program for kids and is currently a candidate for a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver. Her work can be found in recent issues of Fence and Conduit.






                       BACK