- Ar . . ii
Scarlet and mm photo by Rob Tow
by David Mura ‘
When you left the fragrance would not leave
It drifted about the room a bum
With no place to go

The hands were always open
And I could see the webs were empty

Well 1 left the door unlocked but
when I returned and got into bed.
I found it staring in the darkness
Between my feet

What could I do

I tried leaving the windows open
Hoping the wind would throw it out but
It rained and when I came back

It was still sitting there in the corner
Only the wind and the rain had thrown
A thousand stars at its feet

I tried using the vacuum on it

Hoping to capture it in a tiny bag

So that I could look it away

Or burn it or leave it in the alley

For some stranger but when I thought
I‘d had it I turned around

And found that the plug

Had been pulled and that we wem only
Sinking deeper in the dust at our feet

Finally I tried to leave myself

But everytime I thought I’d left I discovered
That I'd lorgotten something

The first time it was my shoes

The second time it was my shoes

The third time it was my shoes

The fourth time it was my blood

And each time I checked my bags carefully
And wondered what had happened

The last time it was fourteen years

And I could not remember Why I had left
Or how I’d ietumed

It didn’t seem to matter

Only I wonder now why my clothes are torn
And why I walk about the room

My hands open .

With empty webs

5mm and mm photo by Doug an.“

5mm um sink him“: by noui lulsey

by Scott Wellman
March 10, 1974

Str ge, but one has no idea
abo t that face which is unborn

like a reﬂection. Not in a mirror, not '

below the ice, below the snow.
The great stone that 1 heaved

to break through the surface of

the iced-over pond, just bounded and
recovered its own immoble sound.

I left it at that and tried again for

fun. Such gestures are known as turning

around. Here the far country begins.

At the close of winter when everything
is farther, I don’t think of going back.
The birds do; they roost together.

The flies don’t; they spontaneously

generate. Deeper the mud is heaving. It-

begins to rain, or rain is falling.
The ice changes. the great stone
sinks. Settled at the bottom

it is in no position to be

moved Strange, but the steady
surlace won't hear a reflection; yet
bulbs do not need to be planted
again. One has no idea about
before, like air pockets in magma.

THE GRINNELL SCARLET ANDBLACK, MAY 28, 1974, PAGE 3

Scarlet :ua'aick puma By C w No»:

by Chris Balk

The fossil breathes

there, by the swamp

nightmare, nightmare.

Wait you cry wait, wait

and they’ll creep out on you some day, too
Iirst the lizard steps on shore

his claws tickle your thigh

then birds track strange words in your skin
gingkos rub promises on yourchest

fern ﬁngers press and harden in your gut
gone, goner

Long you say long gone

but tish scales turned to shale still glimmer
the forgotten sea still slips with eels and snails
slide over your bones bare in the rain

they lumber by and step into your cheek
stone bones split when corals scream through horns
muscles clap and drozen earbones hear
huge insects flap towards your eyes

stop you say stop, stop

stumps ring their roots around your neck
because they’ve already crept out

and hordes of them harden the air

wait you cry wait, wait

turns you to mud and mud to coal

beneath the wait ,

beneath that stone, stone dream.

 

