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INTO THE OPENING
What metrics for this poem
someone asks
in more decades
than I imagine-
but from where
my body's very sound
through tongue
and move of mouth?
In rooms
I sit
while the curtains move
sounds do not touch like words.
Uttering the scratch of graphite
do I hear my voice
or yours?
J. Peters

MANIFEST

TOM'S TAVERN
There is a place.
I sneak around its dank corners,
peer at the cracked window.
Were the pane any thinner,
I should fall through and
end up on a slave ship to China.
We have all heard the stories
and the mere thought of impressment
shivers my already cold backbone.
Man, this is spooky.
Why is it we never see people entering, leaving?
The things that must go on
behind that ramshackle door:
to dare think of it,
the warts crawl on our skin.
I shall throw open the door, one day,
reveal the lewd scene within,
and my friends will praise me
until I walk as tall as the telephone poles.
Just now, they linger anxious on getaway bikes.

MANIFESTO i

The poet feuds
and his hands shake
the word-letters
of afternoon
and morning
are weakest here
the reading,
the gathering of disciples
is enough
Such sharp black pencillings
are small fare
for that convulsing
snap back
to moments of completeness.
J. Peters

All the invisible extensior
of the musician
and the tight fit
of his guitar.
the camera gives
head and hands
in his labor
where we join.
is such activity
strong defense
for the body
enlarging
our presence?
is command
of floor
and its cornices
on this page?

THE ROADHOUSE OF OUR LIFE
Some women are like roadhouses,
familiar and ugly by day.
In the dark, while the traffic signals
dance across their faded barnwood,
they pulsate with the truckers, electric jukes.
In the roadhouse of my life
I am tracing your varicose veins.
They bulge with the honky tonk,
turn deep blue like queen's blood.
You are resting at a booth.
Food comes and we eat the dead night.
I shoot the pinball for what seems
a million points: the board explodes-
like firecrackers-in victory.
It is August fourth
and stillness hangs like a bad sermon.
I have won you, a free game;
and the townies cheer my triumph.
We victory dance across formica counters,
my hands on the lumber walls,
your discolored skin.
We turn. and whirl as Isadora.



Next week we will be back-
the drama unfolds.
We'll rendezvous at Tom's Tavern
where the vices of the world
are warmed by a coal stove
on floor boards as rotten
as the scenario we visualize.

Ron Brasch

V.

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Ron Brasch

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