In warm sleep did I approach,
for my feet and knees ached
in the night,
and other tides rose
with an urgency and lack,
never forgetting what I forgot,

what I forgot completely.
Yet the girl remembered.
She ran down streets in the night
with feet bare
at sixteen, seventeen, fire blazing
through her nose and eye sockets and

pure boys wanted only part of the girl,
but nicely, so nicely.
They came seeing candy and sugar,
soft white feathers masked a smoldering hole,
sucked them in at the edge,
dragged down to feed the dragon.

White doves were pulled in, too,
and girls as well, the prettiest of the sexes.
Yes, fire and brimstone, a devil with horns
eating cake, and iced confections, but also cigarettes
with long ashes, beer bottles and syringes,
and the paper these things were wrapped in.

Volume 1, Issue 2, 2007