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'In The Light
of Liquid Dreams' by Alwyn
Scott
Turner
The
bangled beauty of Baghdad
danced naked beneath five thin layers of blue
Indian silk.
'Glide upon these breasts with a gentle kiss," she
sighed
into his ear, a morning mist in the calm of her
blue green eyes.
Soft ivory flesh, pointed maiden breasts warm as
mother's milk,
full with fresh promises, damsel flies upon a lily
pad.
A sleeping child at rest in the magic of her
dream.
Her body washed in rose water, perfumed with sweet
fragrances,
powdered with camphor dust, annointed with warm
palm oil;
The scent of summer flowers and burning sandalwood
in the air,
curving around the soft contours of her neck, into
fertile soil,
pungent smoke saturating the thick waves of her
auburn hair.
In brilliant illumination of a deep dream, her
spirit was enhanced.
"I'll love you forever," she promised.
Bird feathers from the green rain forest, bright
red radiant plumes,
braided rainbow ribbons, woven with transparent
spider laces,
silver bracelets jangling on her ankles and arms,
pearl necklaces.
Golden rings in her pierced ears, sparkling like
reflected moonlight
on prisms of coloured glass; camel bells jingling
in sand dunes,
raw umber, burnt sienna, yellow ochres, pale blue
and pure white.
In her dream, visions glistened as stars in the
crystal night.
In the light of liquid dreams, her spirit floated
upward, a shadow
moving in darkness, a wooden flute breathing in her
ear;
Sailed out through the eye of her mind, a feather
on windless air
over pristine white clouds above an endless blue
sea, beyond
boundaries that capture the soul, a place thoughts
never go.
The dream formed, disintegrated, and reformed again
in her mind.
"I'll take
you
with
me, wherever I go," he whispered.
'Letter
From America' by Sandra
Claire
Foushée
Sunday,
June 20th, l999
To: Freda Wilkinson , Babeny Farm, Dartmoor
Hello Freda!
I send summer memories to you and Clarence and cat
Pushkin too. It was poetry visiting there that year
long ago...
Out
beyond the thatched cottage in Devonshire,
time filled the ancient land, and its mystery
ignited words like a new language intense
with possibility. We would hike the interior,
knapsacks on our backs, to feel Dartmoor's
expanse
spread out with tensile attention, a misted
beauty
weather swings across unencumbered.
On a day at Grimspound, changes were numbered
in minutes, from sun to wind, then a squall would
shake
hail down, and then sun again, as we climbed base
to brim,
returning through mists thick with presence at
each
rocky outcrop. Beyond the granite Tors, trim
boundary lines of tenement farms with fields
awake
for centuries, as far as my eyes could
stretch.
I
trace my way again around Babeny Farm
to the beehive-hut, to step inside jeweled
green
walls, faceted by lichen. Sunlight strikes
crisp
edges of the iridescent circle, and in-between
worlds my vision leaps over time to transform
the glow. Tales of Excalibur. The magic
persists.
Held within its spell, my veiled being
shimmers like light on a crystal surface,
seeing
through a prism, ringing a pure tone. My flight
careens at a raven's croak from the far meadow.
Over the purple moor grass dragonflies sweep,
hover - lapus lazuli blue - and a mellow
wind flows through asphodel. At the old mill
site
I cross a bridge into thoughts that burned
deep.
Listening
closely I hear from a previous existence
rolling grain carts arrive, the
burr-burr-burrrrr
as the millstone grinds a cadence of worry
in the pungent air with unmistakable
insistence.
Around me whirls the ghost of the grain, a
flurry
of floured mystery - tell me, what did
occur
in fields of southern Britain while we
slumbered?
Enormous crop circles appeared, and we wondered
at the way grain stalks swooned in the dark
interim,
lying down in swirled patterns. Fields with
speech
as symbols, intelligent designs that articulate
thought. Perhaps Archimedes, from an island
beach
has been arranging Euclid in the sand, a
hymn
in a celestial language from a cosmic
lake.
Or
Pythagoras is at work with the Golden Mean,
the humming of the spheres, and gravity's
purist
form in musical intervals. When the warm
land thrusts into life the first yellow fist
of crocus, Earth's deeper truths remain unseen.
At times, in shadows of night I awake from a
storm
above Dartmoor's ancient stone circles, feeling
the mystic spirit of Earth's natural healing.
I dance through cotton grass into a furrow
where seeded words take root with oaks to keep
the secret music of the moor. Flute notes at
twilight
bend across the heather. And old songs sleep
at Babeny, the timeless mysteries for tomorrow
revealing a way in the black lustre of
midnight.
For
these moments in time,
Sandra
Claire
'A Character In
Her Own Right' by Phyllis
Amsberry
The author
was writing a love story. He wanted the heroine to be
like Alice, his late first wife, who had been a lovely
and appealing blonde. He plotted The Meeting.
The author wrote the opening paragraph on his word
processor:
Wally was actually beginning to think of Marriage. At
thirty-five he felt secure in his job and considered
himself a fairly decent person. He was sure to meet the
right girl soon. He looked up as a well-built brunette
sat down beside him at the bar. "Hi," she said, grinning
at him. "Wanta dance?"
The author punched'delete,' cancelling the opening. She
wasn't supposed to be an aggressive barfly. She's demure
and soft-spoken. Blonde, not a brash brunette. He swore
and started again, wanting to place Wally firmly at Aunt
Sally's where he would be introduced to Alice, his ideal
girl.
Instead the author wrote:
The well-built brunette fascinated Wally. She danced
sexily around the bar stool, pressing her body against
him. "I'm Olive," the woman breathed in his ear. "I'm a
nymphomaniac. Also a dipsomaniac. And sometimes even a
kleptomaniac." Wally laughed. This was intriguing.
As he punched 'delete'again, the author's parrot,
Max, who got very excited whenever the computer was
working, started flying around and around the room. He
landed on the author's shoulder and shrieked, "Author
author author."
"O.K. Max, I'll have to get you out of here." He stuck
Max in his cage, carried the cage out on the deck and
hung it on a hook.
He got back to his desk and stared at the blank screen.
He wanted to tell about Wally's first conversation with
Alice, how they talked for hours, had so much in
common.
But the author wrote:
In the
beginning, Wally thought that Olive was a lot of fun. She
was always joking around, laughing and singing. And the
sex was very good. But her dark side began to come out.
She would lie and steal things. She drank. She
chain-smoked Camel cigarettes. She was jealous of Max.
Wally found out all too soon she was not what he thought
she was.
The author pushed
aside the keyboard in disgust. He stuffed some tobacco in
his pipe and walked outside. The clear night, bright with
stars and a full moon, might clear this Olive out of his
mind so he could get on with his story. He paced the
deck, trying to think.
Then he pounded his
fist against his forehead. Realizing the problem, he said
out loud, "Olive, I know you. You're really Jackie, my
second wife." He stopped abruptly and stared down. The
birdcage was smashed to pieces on the steps. Beside it
lay a Camel cigarette stub.
Max was
gone.
'Getting
There' by Anne
Splane
Phillips
He
lays the track before him section
by section, looks around, are there any
buffalo out there?
No, so he lays another section, any Indians
coming? -- sees them ahead -- decides he'd
better build a little station house
and stay right there for a while;
she sees a track from there to San Francisco,
starts off, flying off the end of the unlaid
way somewhere in the desert, or maybe,
Walnut Creek, flying like the moon over
the mountains, coming down at night,
alighting from the slab of the goal she rode,
and is alone;
and they wonder why they didn't connect, stay
parallel together, clickety clack, clickety
clack,
and how they arrived at such different depots
from a destination they believed they
shared.
From: 'Stages'
by Avenue
Campala
Tom had reached
over and placed his hand casually on my back, but quickly
lifted it as if surprised. He said something like "Hey,
where'd your baby softness go? You're growing up,
eh?"
His hand landed on
my back again and with ease managed to slip under my
t-shirt. Up and down my back his fingers ran, over ribs
and ridges, spine and new swooping curve. His eyes
focused straight ahead on the TV, just like Leah's, just
like mine, except I was conscious of his jawline, his
chest.
A "v". He made
mention of my "v" shaped back. Leah did a double take.
"Tom!" His hand froze momentarily and a strange sense of
power came over me. But I played dumb, as if I noticed
nothing, as if his stroke didn't please me, as if my
sensuousness didn't please him. His hand finished its
downward stroke and Tom defended himself by saying he was
just "patting" his youngest daughter's back, that a pat
on the back was well deserved.
That was the first
moment I ever felt sexually
attractive.
POETRY &
PROSE ANNUAL is an annual literary journal publishing
poetry,
prose, fiction, non-fiction and creative non-fiction,
graphics, and photographs
by new and established writers and artists.
© Copyright by POETRY & PROSE ANNUAL All rights
reserved.
All original material published in this journal remains
under the copyright protection
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retains reprint rights and material
may be published in the Poetry & Prose Annual
website.
Published in the United States of America by GOLDEN MEAN,
Publishers.
Printed in the USA. ISSN: 1091-4625
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