by George Economou

Two by Georgios Arkadios
     I am occasionally visited by this halftavistic persona who has
     one foot set in the Hellenistic world and the other in our own.
     Though he knows he’ll never make it into The Greek
     Anthology, he can’t stop trying.

Count on “Air Charon,” your express carrier,
no matter how or where it happens to happen,
crushed like a bug in your high–speed car–smash,
breathing your last in your bed or under the knife,
it’s sure to honor the reservation
it made at your zero birth–hour sentence to life
on the solo one–class one–way flight from wherever
direct, non–stop to Hades forever.
                                   *
If one man’s poetry roll becomes another’s junk
in a rubbish mound at Oxyrhyncus,
then on to funerary wrappings for another,
with immortal lines napping on mummy cartonnage,
could it synch us to a new, elating Sappho?
Only if the artifex of fact who fuses paths
with long dead word–eating book worms,
his work not exactly up the same alley
as that of Mary Beard or Gregory Nagy,
can hear the distant giggles of laughter–loving Muses.

by George Economou

The Girl in the Gown
          for A. E. Stalling

What I learned at a prom, not in a class,
dancing in the dark, holding what I knew,
it’s the girl in the gown gives it its class.

I may have been callow, may have been crass,
but I never forgot, never outgrew
what I learned at that prom, before in class.

True content wears form like filling a glass,
content poured anew or as an old brew,
like the girl in the formal radiates class.

Though long gone’s the corsage and the band’s brass,
eye will testify, throat do and redo
what I learned at the prom, not in a class.

If asked to teach it you’ll never surpass
the best you can do that’s mere déjà–vu

of what’s learned at a prom for the whole class.

So take it right here and not for a pass,
that’s what to pursue, there’s nothing in lieu
of learning at a prom, not in a class,
that the girl in the gown gives it its class.

by Rochelle Owens

In this story
ripening on the vine   so to speak

In this story   a warhol–like
playfulness

a vinyl fruit of desire
teasing femme / homme

bringing millions to their knees

In a dream of a hermaphrodite
in silhouette

her / his body
elegant the fusion of human and bird

vertical   horizontal
l’amour impossible   l’amour possible

the physical poetic
iridescent her pelvis   his / her body

spiritual /carnal
inside a dark purple fruit

the core divided
In a dream of a boy warrior

with bright red lips
her skin   berries and apricots

diaphanous   floating
languid the tendrils of pubic hair

a flush of wet hot air burning
her neck and face

Sorcery of his female brain

In this story   a warhol–like
playfulness

teasing femme / homme
her teeth overlapping   licking

a clot of blood
A hunter gatherer   meat   nuts   fruit

his platinum blond curls
bringing millions to their knees

Love of the hermaphrodite
like a white swan

her hollow bones   sculpted   delicate
elegant the fusion

of human and bird
his hollow bones glowing under

a black light
magnetic her hollow bones

glowing in the dark
Meek sweetness the face the face

of the hermaphrodite   teasing femme / homme
Out of the hole of Baudelaire

emerging from the mists of Cumae
A long curved fingernail

tracing a circle   a cleft   tracing
the pink mauve folds
tracing the flower vulva

the mother misery   the father terror
a slit in the stalk   blood seeping

carnal /spiritual
green and pale the scrotal lily

In this story a   warhol–like
playfulness

a vinyl fruit of desire
teasing femme / homme

bringing millions to their knees