Feature The Caravan (Feature Contributors) ©2001 Anne Spliedt George Dickerson The Bones of Heaven The Book of the Dead Paul Espel Last of the Nabateans Charles Fishman Sharav Aliyah In Dilmun, the Crows Ruth-Miriam Garnett Correlates for Persephone (Proserpina) Sheri Fresonke Harper Georgia O'Keeffe: Red Tree, Yellow Sky Bitter Campari Orange Poster Patrick Henry Timbuktu Nimrod Enigma Maureen Holm Gila Feathers Vicki Hudspith Forgiving the Desert James Ragan The Mayor Boils a Speck of Dust Sam Rasnake My Last Door Thomas Stein Mojave Miles ~ . ~. ~ The Bones of Heaven George Dickerson When children of the desert are starving, They crave far more than wafers of sand. Their bellies are crypts where war's gargoyles howl. No fish swim the fonts of their fly-gummed eyes When hunger's thistles stitch them shut. Their husks of voices are shucked-off choirs. Their fingers are harps for the empty wind. They will eat anything. They will eat tomorrow. For them, the sky's a scoured bowl. Oh, God, my indifferent God, Witness how cold, how far, the stars Are flung from their scavenged dreams! The bones of heaven are long sucked clean. ~ . The Book of the Dead George Dickerson How like Cleopatra she sailed down Sixth-- But without a barge or a burnished throne-- As regal as she could artfully be, Carrying an armful of groceries-- Startled, as if I might be a grizzled Caesar, popping up unconscionably Around the corner of a New York street, Unwelcome phantom of an ancient tryst. She said my name as a convert might speak The forbidden name of a toppled god, With a slight derision and some regret. I gave her a wink. She offered a nod. We chattered like palms in a desert breeze, Uttering some putative pleasantries: "The Sphinx lost his nose." "Claudius is dead." "Whatever happened to that awful Fred?" She seemed to tremble as I pondered how I'd slipped the sandals from her suntanned feet, Then ringed my fingers though her cloistered hair To wed the ineffable sweetness there. We'd dreamt of forever with flesh on fire-- I still remember with a vague desire The quickened tightening of kindled thighs, The descant of her diminishing sighs. Her slender hand flagged my thoughts away. Pretending to forget her nudity, Well sheltered now in her autumnal coat, I studied the past in her amber eyes. Fumbling with gloves that were suddenly tight, I remembered how, in the civilized Forum of our marital rooms, We fought ferociously, just to be right. Curious strangers to our former selves, With wistful smiles and the hesitant dread Of a past long-conquered, we parted again At the raucous corner of Sixth and Tenth, All rancor gone in the mercy of time, Not emperor or an Egyptian queen, She with her groceries, I with my cane, A wicker woman and a rattan man. Crotchety ghosts of our youthful sorrows, Weathered wrecks of the lost tomorrows-- The little murders of our marriage bed, Encrypted here in the Book of the Dead. ~ . ~ Last of the Nabateans Paul Espel Petra, desert capital of the Nabateans, was a center of the caravan trade. Lost for centuries, it was rediscovered by a Swiss explorer in 1812. The truck you hitch a ride on stops in the middle of nowhere. August in the Arabian desert-- even the children look old. Sandstone canyons guard a hidden entrance as you head down that narrow pass in a stunning heat, then gawk at temples, tombs and houses cut deep in the rose-rock walls. It's empty as the desert sun till a one-eyed Bedouin kid appears, "Coca Cola, mis-ter?" Shifting foothills lead you off in the dusty mountains. You're worn out, sunburned, lost. A few likely exits dead-end and your canteen is dry when you curl up under a ledge that's like a stuck out tongue. The shadow you wake to is a bearded old man who looks like Moses, says only, "Mai?" the local word for water. He beckons you to a private cave; inside is a faded red soda-pop cooler, 1950's vintage, American standard. Its peeling stencil sells The Pause That Refreshes. And he tries but you're not buying. So he brings out a jug of wine that's free and clear. It's almost dark when you stumble back to the lost city. Thanks to Moses--who's beginning to look more like Columbus. © 1991 Paul Espel (Paul Espel's poetry and various prose appear frequently in the magazine. His "Groovin' in Palm Springs" appears in this month's Fiction/Short Prose section.) ~ . ~ Sharav Aliyah Charles Fishman All night the wind was howling Sand the color of Jerusalem sailed with the storm and grew darker until it took on the hue of ripened wheat the granular texture of unrefined flour All night it flew: a swirling heat that scoured the Negev and encrusted the Judean hills with the silt of dream and memory       The wind's quick tongue licked each brick and left it gold then coated each pane and tile with seething dust       At last, the sun went dark under yellow drifts and you slept deeply and long The world you knew had been vanquished       and a gold flag flapped a crescent of hammered gold scythed through the air: the scimitar wind had entered you and borne you far: this was Arabia and you were wrapped in a chador of gold        Your tongue was still in your mouth       but it had forgotten how to form syllables       and your eyes were lowered       weighed down by an old misery       your braceleted wrists were too pale for one who lives with the sun and your bejewelled fingers were empty, for you held nothing but your place and your tenuous beauty       The hot wind the Hamsin       had lifted and changed you. ~ . In Dilmun, the Crows Charles Fishman In Dilmun, the crow screams not, the dar bird cries not dar-dar, the lion kills not. (--an ancient text) Nor do the dates weigh down the palms that have kept their silences for centuries Water will not burble through the desert's yellow sand       nor will gazelles leap gracefully into the cooking fires at twilight In Dilmun, fish cry not in the gulf of the pure spirit       nor do they fill the sea with abundance       with a swift and rhapsodic beauty       Not copper but salt wind edged with tincture of plutonium        Not bronze but slivers of singed glass        And the wolf licks the pelt of the lamb Once, this was a thrice-blessed land where crows sighed instead of cawing where the lion languished in her den and pearls grew plump as dates. Why was this Eden abandoned? Did its gods abscond with the rain? Did the aging priests and temple deities hear the dar bird singing? Did the burial mounds bleed with coppery greed? Or did the fish-eyes of pearls peer too inquisitively into the future? In Dilmun, the graveyard prospers the journey towards death screams with the blackness of crows       Water weeps not in the scorched silence of desert gazelles leap not       And lions kill (Charles Fishman has published several pieces in the magazine this year.) ~ . ~ Correlates for Persephone (Proserpina) Ruth-Miriam Garnett There is a man somewhere, intruding upon light; a streak of silhouette across a moonlit path. He may be cold or hot, the season of his blood courses steady and slow against his veins (Imagine a waterfall sealed within a cave.) This man holds something; a piece of pomegranate. He sucks the seeds and the crisp tart sap. What a man eats, he knows (beforehand). What the tongue savors, it always (afterwards) tells. This man sucking the seeds of the pomegranate could talk to you of hearing water and looking for its source. Of a sky, unfailingly blue. Of the harvested tempos of his youth. Of the bread in our mouths. I have eaten the same fruit, so am bound to the soil and the fragile seasons in the center of myself. I am owned by a thing that erupts, a being whose language splatters curses. I fix on all upheavals surely coming, smile wan at killing, casual love. Infer all ritual to be either a hard bargain or a doubt. Air sucks my raging. I accept that there is little to do, that the hours come numbering the same; that the repeated fall of night promises nothing; that calling a name a thousand times makes but slight wind against these shadows; that you lose everything, then you begin. The man who eats the fruit is no confidant, but a traveler in my imaginings; a desperate pledging to the sanity I seek. He is walking the night for me along some road under sparse trees, his clothing mottled by the moonlight falling through the leaves. He will steer my thoughts, he will chisel the world and the decades looming against us both. I am told there are forests beneath us, there is water. There are ancestors' bones that will soften and harvest. There are words sunk deep in rivulets to bolster memory. There is life ballooning, breaking beyond silence. Can we, any of us, break away in our straightening, in our waking; can we touch the sky? (Ruth-Miriam Garnett is the author of A Move Further South (1987, Third World Press, Chicago) and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts (1992) and the Missouri Arts Council (1980). Poems have appeared in Black Scholar, Callaloo, Essence, New Rain, Pivot, River Styx, Steppingstones, and her credits also include critical articles and book reviews. She is the former Assistant Editor of Proud Magazine, a St. Louis-based quarterly covering urban issues, and in 1993 launched the Harlem Arts Journal. She has taught creative writing, directed workshops, and/or produced major events in New York (City College; Scarab Poets Workshop), Missouri and Oklahoma. Ms. Garnett earned a B.A. from Harvard and is now doing work in Cultural Anthropology at Columbia. This is her first appearance on the magazine.) ~ . ~ Georgia O'Keeffe: Red Tree, Yellow Sky Sheri Fresonke Harper You're broken, maybe already dead. But poised there, at the center of your soul's desire. Shade blankets your rooting, the unbleached pool of uncontrollable want, a thirst unsated by water. All parched and salt sundered. All beaten and purified by blind angelic brilliance. You can hear a grain of sand shift but nothing breathes. Here, at your desert, where the apparition of temptation meets you. Emboldened, you reach for the devil of your desire. You reach, but are broken off, before heaven. Your lifeless limbs keen in a tuneless wind. You are frozen in a timeless ghost dance in which no shame plays your sin's hollow voice. The sin of wanting beyond life. You've reached eternity, where only will can withstand the punishment of heaven. ~ . Bitter Campari Orange Poster Sheri Fresonke Harper Wonder into which morning the pale ghostlike fog of Homer has arisen. Hear his indistinct mutterings through chapped lips that chomp and lick. Sleep-crusted eyes blink to free him back to today along an unlit path closing behind. His candle near burnt out. His cup holding a blaze of bitter campari orange. At late hours his step creaks bared wood floors, disturbed in passing by his ungainly belly. All breath closed in by nestling cold. Homer, the grizzled and gray-bearded steals to prevent tomorrows from slipping as away as warmth, long john reds buttoned except to gape at throat. His mischievous and momentary gleam about to softshoe it. Take from him his tottering pride, slash it like an orange, peel cut it in spiraling dangles and leave Homer's passing carmelized and sugarized and easy to slosh down. The condensation that is left, all bitter campari orange, is a stylized poster to hang in a portrait hall, a place of winter and alone. He's been put to bed, except for his haunting tread. (Sheri Fresonke Harper was recently awarded a certificate from the University of Washington's extension program in Poetry. Publications elsewhere include West Wind Review, Heliotrope, and Jeopardy. A native of Renton, she is currently working on a science fiction novel. This is her first appearance in the magazine.) ~ . ~ Timbuktu Patrick Henry The harsh desert wind blowing in today But welcome after the heat of yesterday, A cooling fan after that gong-beating fire Now settles its dust to cover the grey city That might disappear as if it has never been: Only another dune lost in the vastness To answer the question, Does it really exist? If we need any city, then why not this Straggle of mud, sand and timber adrift: Dust threatening to roll up its name in legend Like a magic carpet wiped clean of its pattern Back to unprinted yarns blank as the desert, Its trade, learning and character gone forever. Even now many think it has never been at all. ~ . Nimrod Enigma Patrick Henry Dark folds of history cover steep, icy slopes Trudged up to this summit where a monarch commanded built Figures believed being powers before Bible times Changed this land but for this peak that ye have climbed To shiver exposed to bare harshness of cold earth From time poised on a knife-edge in cruel climates then. Now gloom shrinks and dawn light spreads on shoulders of giants Looming fierce: but the gods have lost their heads In earthquake long since, heads rolled on hard ground, Detached to stare stonily at land they ruled, Now claimed by no-one: a no-man's land to pause in And hope no thunder strikes now in this eerie spot There grey light gives away to blood-red of the sun Grasping guilt-stained fingers up the highest rocks We stand on, firmly knowing this most solid fact: Creeds of man are frail layers seismic force can crack Easily as it shattered these gods now feared no more: Forbidding stares cut in stone and rounded eyes Mirroring mine bewildered at their downfall in this place; Once strong but became the weak point in the earth's crust, Splitting to plunge lives down infernos scriptures warned Will overtake wrong ways as cities seen bombed and besieged: Cathedrals and homes crushed, people in fear laid to waste: A reminder here of our planet's fragile course. ~ . ~ Gila Feathers Maureen Holm Like any habit, he repeats himself, forsaking me in nightmares, making love to me in dreams, eyelids closing upside down, locust in his teeth, he weeps, for the gila's vision of his feathers splayed across the desert's memory of green. ~ . ~ Forgiving the Desert Vicki Hudspith If only I could spend an afternoon on my back Summer in my lungs If only I could rebuild my city Under a canopy of trees Instead of listening to the horns of war And bagpipes blowing for the fallen This autumn has seen days beautiful as ball gowns Hang in shreds If only I could have emptied my pockets And admitted that the idea of cranberry sauce Fills me with fear and weakness If I could have grabbed at false salutations While you stood by broken hearted Perhaps I could have held the face of worry While you slept In a heap of bountiful isolation Residing behind the curtain of your eyes Which is gone when you look my way Were the russet moments of autumn Merely an agitation toward something incomplete Or an arrow pointing At the abundant lips and fingers of seasons I couldn't give I am no longer able to speak my native language And use only the barbarous invectives of "polite society" Rendering my heart the size of a prune To shrink upon the density of itself This seed of love Oh if I could open the sky The desert sand would fly in feverish turns And we would eat again Crouched comfortably behind sighs And it would be so simple to know you Weapons thrown down Eyes pushing back dry heat Forgiving the desert for its lack of trees I live among the lace remains of metal and glass And carry particles of emptied air From every cloudy day into the sun I'll never be Gandhi But maybe one of these days I'll stop being petty and become Mother Teresa Then I'll heal the world, cure myself And pinch a camel's ass To make it back kick madness from an Afghani moon Shaking harshness from the clouds If only rocks of sugar Could sweeten the bitter sea ~ . ~ The Mayor Boils a Speck of Dust James Ragan for the "You know" generation One day we are walking in the desert, the next, entrancing on a verb. The mayor asks us for a speck of dust to boil. The rain has moved to Eastern earth. We had never missed the water, reason being absent in the West. North and South our hands had mimed a language for the tongues we mottled in our mouths. But while the words are thinner, and sentences are worse; the subjects, once agreeable, now disagree on course. Syntax bows to "you know," and simile to "like." And while the mayor boils dust to gain a speck of water, we will talk, you know, our verse, and dust will fill a fossil for the law Pascal our mayor quotes, that while the pressure in a fluid spreads equidistant to every border, dust will be rationed coast to coast. ~ . ~ My Last Door Sam Rasnake Very green out the window A most perfect mountain And light on the river is particular in its leaving The world is still but somewhere, a persistent mockingbird… I have come to the end of something (Adapted from Georgia O'Keeffe's letters.) Lie down on this table and life is believable Stars are easy Deep curls of limbs ready a night so tall the world stands on its head _______________ Your tongue is warm Your words intent on defining the motion that isn't needed when blue is enough and your fingers are hidden _______________ My mouth is a leaf My hair drifts to sea but I leave the words of a fool on the bank of this book's dark folds _______________ I try to stay away from the flowers but the deep hints of your red won't let me go After an hour of watching I melt and pool against the hard floor then you daub me to your brush so the fine hairs can work me into shadow _______________ The hot sky goes on-- past every limit You walk from here _______________ A dark fall waters the arroyo-- black bolt--cuts the earth down to my toes I feel the shaking (Sam Rasnake's poetry has appeared in various journals such as Literal Lattè, Poem, Portland Review, Defined Providence, and Switched-on Gutenberg. The author of two collections, Necessary Motions (Sow's Ear Press) and Religions of the Blood (Pudding House), he edits the online poetry journal, Blue Fifth Review. This is his first appearance on the magazine. He lives in Tennessee.) ~ . ~ Mojave Miles Thomas Stein listening to miles davis's jack johnson tribute & driving wild horse canyon road after a day desert hiking mojave's hole in the wall trail jazz documentaries get miles wrong lame decades-old film clips of junkies nodding & smoking in the 5 spot village gate vanguard birdland anonymous blacks riding night els through harlem cliché images supposedly explaining miles's unique themes & moods no miles's music is here way out here in the mojave sun time's wild intensity is his theme moods of snow-capped volcanic peaks singing sand dunes barrel and cholla cactus glowing like phosphorous with spring's tropical blood somnolent snakes slowing stirring within winter's sharp sleep mountain lion ghosts caressing time & dreams thermaling song of winged gods haunting limestone walls wind-carved temples of unknown yesternow myths listening to jack johnson & driving mojave's roads jazz documentaries get miles wrong his ideas & emotions aren't symbolized by corny archival photos of extinct nyc neighborhoods & pompous self-serving comments of critics dj's & academics miles would swing on & deck no miles's music is signs of night creatures solar flares sand storms nocturnal dens tracks howls spirits & stars miles plays life wild natural & free through his mysterious horn his sound is gentle as raptor's shadows sliding across silica-seared petroglyphs violent as eternity shattered ancient stone spires lying newborn & naked beneath chaotic infinity (This is Thomas Stein's first appearance on the magazine. He lives in Bismarck, North Dakota.) ~ . ~ . ~