by Philip Dacey

The female pianist’s long blonde lock
of hair swings down before her face
as she is playing fugal Bach.
The female pianist’s long blonde lock
tries unsuccessfully to block
Herr Bach, whose wigged hair stayed in place.
The female pianist’s long blonde lock
keeps perfect time before her face.

by Philip Dacey

     “My mother never let me wear black;
    now I wear black all the time.”
                                            Overheard remark

Some people dream in color,
others in black–and–white.
I dream in black;
I want to be a night sky without stars.
Each of my senses can apprehend blackness.

If black is the absence of all color
and white the presence of all color,
I want to be drained of the rainbow.
The void is black, and reigns.
If black were a tongue, it would say

in an instant, like a bolt of black lightning,
everything that is.    Those in exile,
either distantly or within
themselves, wear black
because the heart does.

A candle in the darkness
profanes your truest self.
Blow it out.    You’re a tunnel
with no light at either end,
and color’s a sentimentality, a lie.

The connoisseur of black
knows it comes in shades —
black, blacker, blackest.
Give back everything
to black.

by Pippa Little

fits in a palm
or snug in an eggcup.

Cool, undimpled shades
of lukewarm milk, magnolia emulsion,

plain and neat as clouds
on an indeterminate day.

A thing
either is or isn’t.

Crack.

Around wet suns
galaxies drift, that thing dances

on the head of a pin,
brain–stem, cortex, spine

uncoil then fuse. Consider crucibles:
who makes the Maker?

For world within worlds
look no further.

by Pippa Little

warmed from within
you thin
as I hold you up to light,

slow as aromatic malt
swirl you
to my mouth

so all my
vowels melt,
leggy silhouettes

that swell in your sweet
engorging —
whole estates

forested continents
ooze me
out of dry wordlessness,

my dreams of extinction
drop by drop —
I lap the grief

out of you
we meet
where the wound

seeps, where
want burns clean,
its own remedy.