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"Web"
by Pris Campbell

Each evening I knit him back to you.
He says you are the screech
of an angry jaybird, a fingernail
raking along a thousand chalkboards.
You sleep in a nun's bed.
Yet, he crawls that dark yarn
home nightly, unraveling me in my
semen-soaked bed of biblical sin.

I think he lies.

I see his once flaccid penis,
swollen taut from my weave,
now take aim at you.
Nun's garb shed, dark breasts
set free, your hips pillowed over
silken sheets, decadent bedspread,
his buttocks, pale as the moon,
rise and fall against you.
Your screech isn't anger;
rather one born of delight.
His back is your chalkboard;
your nails dig in.
New patterns for me to knit
are drawn and redrawn by his tongue
onto the rise of your clitoris.

Dawn calls.
His sweetness now a stench,
I break my needles and toss them.
My yarn covers the front lawn.

* Line 1 is from Ancient Weaving: The Mistress to the Wife, by Rebecca McClanahan

Among other journals and poetry publications, Pris Campbell's poetry has been published in MiPo publications (print/digital/radio/OCHO), Boxcar Poetry Review, Tears in the Fence, Poems Niederngasse, The Dead Mule, Verse Libre, MEAT and several anthologies. Her chapbook, Abrasions, was published by Rank Stranger Press and her chapbook with Tammy Trendle, Interchangeable Goddesses, was published by Rose of Sharon Press. Pris lives in hurricane alley, otherwise known as South Florida, with her husband, one crazy dog and one even crazier cat. Formerly a clinical psychologist, she has been sidelined by CFIDS for 17 years.

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"In the Wild Hours"
by Seb N.

I got a God fearin' woman
one that I can easily afford.
She can do the Georgia crawl,
she can walk in the spirit of the Lord...
-Bob Dylan

I want to fuck you
in the wild hours
after midnight,
underneath a ceiling fan
slowly circling
through the dead air
with mosquitos
biting at our flesh.
To hear the gasping,
smell our sweating
and the creaking
of that old cast iron bed.

I want to fuck you
with the tide high
in the moonlight
in the dunes behind the cape.
Sliver, shining
rips the water,
waves are tumbling.
Hear the nightbirds flap and cry.
Kiss the sea salt
from your shoulders,
feel the ocean
as it rolls inside of you.

I want to fuck you
in the morning
as yellow sunlight
bathes a room with a garden view,
after watching you sleeping
still and peaceful
and recalling
that mad and blazing night before--
so cruel, so tender
and ask no questions
if I never see you
again, we had that night.

I want to fuck you
in a strange room
filled with strangers
and the ghosts of travelers past.
Filled with objects,
filled with fiction
under a false name.
We could say we're man and wife
while your husband
thinks you're shopping,
or out sitting
with a sickly relative.

I want to fuck you
in a rowboat
on a river
with a slow and lazy grind
use the water
the gentle rocking
people walking
on the bank wonder "what're they don'?"
Throw your head back,
throes of rapture
hold your breasts out
for me to, panting, bite and kiss.

I want to fuck you
as a woman
filled with longing
for a man to sense her soul
and the fire
and sweet, dark fire
that within her
has been stifled for too long.
I want to watch you
come alive with me
in that midnight,
once more wild and once more free.

Seb N. hails from San Jose, California, and he quite likes it there. Despite the handicap of a public education in Baltimore, he both holds a job and speaks reasonable English. He is a big, happy drunk and a rather hit and miss poet. Seb drives a Pepper Green 1970 GTO.

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"Rail Riders, a Memory"
by Jill Raydean Egesdal

Across the fields and down past the warehouses filled with brown boxes,
I hear the crash and metal scrape as coal cars mate with cargo carriers
coupled in arranged marriage,
consummated in the whistling wail of the diesel engine,
and I am reminded of summer Sundays at my grandmother's house
when the rail riders would see her garden
with pole beans towering over lush red tomatoes
and the smell of her soda biscuits baking
next to a fat roast whose wafting fingers beckoned in meaty invitation.
They would jump wide of their boxy beds into the tall weeds,
land in a cloud of pollen and fluffy headed seeds, and
amble up the sloping half acre from the tracks that ran through the backyard,
knocking meekly upon the door, hollow eyes hopeful through the screen
clutching cap in hand and gazing downcast
to the holes in their dusty shoes and patched dungarees,
asking if ma'am had any work to do
that might earn them a plate of those fresh beans.
And I, in pigtails that hung the length of my back,
would sit on the back porch with them, my chin cupped in my hands
listening with rapt attention to the stories as long as the rails themselves.
And harmonica songs always followed,
accompanied in perfect tempo
by the sound of their forks scraping their plates.

Jill Raydean Egesdal is a lifelong poet and writer of short stories who escaped the treadmill of the rat race and for the past 10 years has spent her life working for the greater good of humanity, primarily for non-profits, schools and churches. Her poetry can be seen at www.myspace.com/my1gracespace. (This is Jill's first published poem.)