Flower Stamen

by Ryan M. Parr

Crimson

by Ryan M. Parr

Pennsylvania was 50 miles down the road, with nothing in between the lengthy excursion through a wooded interstate. I was a traveling salesman making another trip to shake the hands of clientele, a path of regret for skipping Graduate School. It was just another day, and another venture through life, to expect the unexpected; another look -- another stare across an executives table -- only to relive the excitement of expecting it to end.

The sky was beginning to darken, shrouded in an overcast of rain, pelting the ground as it proliferates through the oily surface of the roads. A jeep pulls out from my side, revving its engine as it escapes along with a screech against the pavement. The tarp was pulled back, with bungee cords suspending moving boxes and a nightstand. Wooden boards, with nails protruding from their sides, dangle off the edge with the suspended load. The wheels pummel the ground, vibrating a nail from its sockets as the jeep hits against a bump in the road. The nail spins in confusion, lifting its point into the air, as I pull my car inexplicably with a resounding pop.

I swat the steering wheel in anger and pull the car to the side of the road. Stepping out of the car, I check the trunk for a clutch and a spare tire, unknowing that the rain was starting to soften the soil. I attempt to pull up onto the pavement, only that the car wouldn't start up again.

I look up towards my right where a dark-foreboding house appears, standing before me out of familiar reality. With gables on each corner, and a stone chimney, several drapes conceal the mysterious contents of this house, seemingly of listless age. A life-like image propels itself onto the curtains of a window, defined by what must have been a lit candle in the back of the room for it became difficult to make out the figure with there being such a shortage of light. The grim shade of the figure gave it an eerie appearance against the sun-bleached curtains. The thin frail image reminded of the appearance of death -- depraved of the blood that gave it life -- and the thinning of the body. The hair seemed easily visible along a shrunken head outline, and the time froze as the study continued onward into the night.

For why was it so grim that night? For it was difficult to understand why it was raining and for why the car had suddenly stopped. Being as I had no other choice but to seek shelter, I figured the night might only be an illusion when confronted with such odd an incidence as this. I walk up several stairs, sounding a cacophonous creak, as I slide my hand along the wooden railings. A sharp pain penetrates my hand as though an ominous warning not to continue onward. The blood refrained from seeping through the skin, so I subsided from worry, and still I make way towards a door to the house, only a few steps away. I hit the doorknocker a single knock at a time, for every second that my heart pounded up until the door opened. A frail woman glared straight into my soul as though to intimidate my welcome to the old home. I look back at her un-intimidated to deflect the sturdy glare so I could bring up the courage to ask as kindly as possible, "May I please take refuge?"

She softened her eyes and smiled like she hadn't since she was born, appearing as if all of life's burdens had been uplifted from her. She opened the door much wider and stepped back to let me into the dusty abode. Life was set back as I entered the house, with furnishings as old as the 19th century and nothing the least from the 20th. It amazed me to think how could it be? The women didn't appear more then 60 years old and I would figure that she might have bought at least one type of furniture in her lifetime. It dawned on me that the house could have been willed to her, though why would she give all her life's possessions away in her other home that she would have spent her earlier years in? I glance back towards the door where she was still standing and I wanted to ask, but instead simply said, "Where are your pillows?"

As though all my signs of appreciation seemed to be overcome by the weary night, I couldn't help but feel sorry for not adding signs of appreciation. She then strides over to a trunk layered with thick dust that she opens, pulling out a pillow along with a blanket, and closes it down to watch a swirl of dust like a working automaton wander endlessly in the room. She moves back to me and hands me a pillow with what appeared to be red stains and moth holes all over it.

"Is this blood?" I ask.

Not replying, she walked over to a lamp with a flickering of a flame deceived as an actual light bulb. She places a metal, somewhat of a coffee measurer that I've seen before, and sets it over the flame to let the smoke fly up and die out. Just as I thought that it was pitch black in the room, an oil lamp hinged to the wall along the stairs had been remaining, and so the old women walks up to the creaking stairs and up to the oil lamp. She turns slightly towards me, waiting for me to get ready for bed as though she had all the time in the world to see her last remaining company seeming to end for an eternity. The oil lamp had went out just as I lay down on the bare floor leaving me starring towards the ceiling, watching the darkness above me tunnel inward, as I decipher meaning to the cryptic images throughout the darkness.

I awaken to an empty room with tanned walls and nothing but bare curtains on the windows. I had still been lying on the ground with the bloodied pillow, along with the moth eaten blanket, as I realized that the house seemed different. It appeared older and less structured at that time. I noticed a black shaded spot against the curtain. Pulling the curtain aside; I realize that the house was boarded up. With a gust of air coming through the shattered glass, the house appeared vacant with no one living in it.

What had occurred last night could not have been a dream, but rather a real experience, suspended in time from another world that dwelt in the un-living. I pause for a while staring back up towards the mansion from the outside, deciding whether to turn around and slowly walk back towards my car were it reluctantly started up, so that I could move on.

desert twilight

by Karyn Huntting Peters

desert twilight
earth releases its heat—
pink flower opens

two

by Karyn Huntting Peters



Painted at age 18. Acrylic on canvas.

prana flow

by Karyn Huntting Peters

silent harmonies
prana crescendos flowing—
eternal circle

Human (for the lovers among)

by Nathan Hays
graphics by Michael Corrado



Arryn paced the floor, wringing her hands. She didn't have much time to act, but what she contemplated was always either lethal or led to insanity and the ethicists had long decided it despicable. The green that ate away at Hanson's frozen body was spreading so fast she could almost see it grow. How long before it reached his cortex was anyone's guess, but he was certain to be unrecoverable before the week's end. His clone would have been ready for the transjection, but it too was showing signs of space rot.

"Damn it, Hanson!", she pounded on the suspension chamber that would soon be his coffin. "All those lives of waiting and you have to blow the biocide protocols."

Her own clone was only just pubescent a few months ago, but it had excellent bio-stats and could take the transjection. The problem was, her own bio-stats showed pre-tumors forming too rapidly to be stemmed. She would need the clone long before another could be grown. Often the price of one's immortality is the death of another's, but she'd come too far with Hanson to give up now.

For over two hundred years since their first cyberlink Arryn and Hanson had forged a deep bond even though the parsecs between them had made it an anachronistic intimacy. Hanson had lain in suspension for nearly ten years as his transport crossed the void. They had wanted to run the transjections at the same time, side by side, but that was no longer possible. Two dying bodies, one clone.

------------------------------

The fog slowly lifted from Hanson's mind. He noticed something strange almost immediately. He remembered the numbing cold that he went to sleep with and knew he should feel violently hypothermic now, but instead he felt quite warm and cozy. Instinctually, he tried to take a deep breath, but found it awkward.

A voice came through, "Easy, my love. It's Arryn. You're going to be all right. I had to start the transjection while you were still hibernating."

Something must have gone wrong, he thought. Well, he was beginning to be conscious so it couldn't have been all that bad. He started the litany to orient himself to his clone, but again something was not right. He should be feeling a powerful erection as the clone responded to activation, but there was nothing. In fact, it felt more like he was strangely naked and yet potent in a way unfamiliar to him. A sudden realization poured over him as he put together the signs: the nakedness, the softness of his flesh, the inner potency, the pervading sense of love.

That's when he noticed he wasn't alone in there.

------------------------------

Arryn's mind was darting everywhere. "Hanson, I know how you feel. We share glands after all. It's just that, well, I like being female. I'm not sure I'll be able to inhabit a man's body. It seems so icky."

Hanson was slipping again, "My love, I can barely stay aware these days, you know that." He shook their head to stay awake. Arryn let him, though she could have easily overpowered him. "I feel so dependent on you and I'm fearful your love is turning maternal."

He sure had a way of hitting the nail on the head. "Yes, you're right of course," she thought. "I often confuse my instincts. I know that we must do this, I'm just putting up some resistance so I'll have no regrets. I do love you for who you are, not as a child."

She stared at the masculine figure in the clone chamber, her eyes tracing the powerful build and naked manhood they were about to inhabit. He was like a Greek statue in his alabaster skin. An old feeling stirred in Arryn that she'd almost forgotten.

"Hanson my love, when I rewired the transjection machine to merge our minds, I knew we were inextricably linked and we would never share a lover's carnal pleasures. But this next clone is exciting me."

He of course could feel the adrenaline. "Yes. Perhaps I understand a bit of what it means to be taken," but he had never experienced it. For all their years in their female body, Arryn had remained celibate out of respect for Hanson. This was the first time he got an inkling of what female submission really means.

As their female body got even more aroused, Hanson felt a new invigoration. Though the clone's body was behind a glass wall from him, he felt in control. "Arryn, I love you as no other. I cherish you and will not let you fade. I am your rock and you are mine."

"Yes, I know that now," she replied, her mind giving in to his. He stepped into the transjection machine, its probes and sensors lighting up as it began the scan. She wrapped her love around him and he beamed with joy. Their minds held each other in a way no other human had ever known. Love eternal, a race made whole.

day’s mask

by Karyn Huntting Peters



night again.
the common and staid mask of day
slips off my face to rest beside me as
i stare into the nothingness of my tears.

it is only here, beneath the tiny, thin layer
of film that floats on the waters of my mind,
that the aching soul resides in silent anguish.

it holds its thespian face up, ever-stoic, hand
steady even as it is lanced by the piercing
bite of fine steel. encore! encore!

there is a chill in the air, and i am
cold as the curtain falls.

castaneda

by Karyn Huntting Peters

castaneda spoke once though a surrogate
revelation. it was written. the napkin upon which
it was inscribed in blue ballpoint was carefully lain
to rest in the corner of my lost place,
just where I cannot recall.

but napkins don’t hold up well in the rain,
especially when curious would-be wisemen pluck
at them, trying to decipher their treasures in
haste, lest the rain’s tears cry all their blues
away before dawn’s first cameo.

lying stars

by Karyn Huntting Peters

from this vantage point,
in my thoughts alone i venture out,
walking silently along the parapet wall,
running my hand along its wet roughness
in the beginning twilight.

beyond, lights glow and flicker in reds and blues,
and music rises and climbs to meet me on the hillside,
a strained, haunting version of its harmonious city self.

nothing passes the barrier of this aging stone wall
that is not but a shell of itself, a copy of life,
a haunting of time gone by though still in view,
as a long-dead star shining hollow in the night.

as twilight ebbs and dies,
i venture now from my thoughts
and still in them rise, self joining my contemplations
on the thief of time, and on this barrier stay as stone
as lying stars appear in time in black skies.

lying as staid stars, i stay and steal time
over that which has stolen so much from me.

baroque

by Karyn Huntting Peters

baroque men once
sat
composing in spring.

baroque trees now
stand
decomposing in fall.

thief clouds

by Karyn Huntting Peters

distant clouds
steal the mountain’s peak—
petals float to the ground

misanthropes

by Karyn Huntting Peters

oh, to gather these misanthropic
souls all, sticky with hearts of tar,
to tear them from us and cleave them
to one another, unseen hands fashioning them
into a concrete pedestal in the barren steppe!

oh, to lighten humanity’s load by even
one shade of blackness.

scent

by Karyn Huntting Peters

open blades of grass
inhale the changeless seasons—
remember love’s scent

Petals in Red

by Ryan M. Parr

circle of time

by Karyn Huntting Peters



we move forward in time, propelled, a
force from behind, rush of water, wind, flying free
until we slow, slow, and are borne back into the current
once again,
back until our arms tire and the tears rise
once again,
an endless loop of time, where
forward and backward,
yesterday and tomorrow
are all endless illusions of time circling
around and around and around again,
caught in the grooves of a broken record playing
over and over and over again
on the dusty phonograph of
deep, still waters

child's cat

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Sketched at age 12 using #2 pencil.

the willow

by Karyn Huntting Peters



the willow weeps today,
head bowed in black,
bereaved silhouette on the
horizon.

the dying sun
spills its crimson blood in
adieu.

Landings

by Ryan M. Parr

Sonnet I: Know Thyself

poetry by Nathan Hays
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters



In all the world are strewn the litter of burning mind,
Scraps of journals torn in desperate hope to find,
A glimpse of Hermes' tablet, the jigsaw's missing piece,
The Word was lost so long ago, no one rests in peace.

"I found it!" proclaims the prophet who waves a patchwork page,
"It lives!" declares the scientist leashed to monster's rage,
"Eureka!" cries the thinker, his logic a world entire,
"My God," assures the pious who forsakes his true desire.

Each in turn will falter if ever they pause to see,
No key they have, no passport, no chalice to set them free,
For once they cage the candle, the light will fade away,
Their charred remains will fill the wasteland that will stay.

Follow not the guides whose flocks are led astray,
Only from within you will be found the truest way.

Sonnet II: The Playwright

by Karyn Huntting Peters



Midnight's velvet curtain obscures the ancient stage
Avon's murky waters still lay in silent wait
Slowly actors gather for their long-awaited wage
Stratford's dusty pages their hollow yearnings sate

The moon's orb rises higher, commands the star-crossed sky
Lumens flooding Avon, its secrets hidden still
The curtain slowly lifting, the stage's hemlock dry
Players take their places, the playwright grasps his quill

The pulsing night's blood quickens, the scenes to pages flow
Breezes coyly shifting, plays ending far from sewn
What tragedy lay waiting, no earthly spirits know
Stage borne into reality, its martyrs still unknown

The audience is fading, far stars now growing bright
And we are now the playwright, the ink our mystic night

Sonnet III: The Muse

by Karyn Huntting Peters



Return to me o muse in dreams redeem thy course
By sleep the dust of stars doth carry thy embrace.
In raging tears of angst doth thou with no remorse
Full baptize hand of mine and bathe my pen in grace.

Thine eyes ensconce long-darkened tomb in golden light,
Illumineth thy sweet advance my most demure.
Disquietude thou dissipate by veil of night,
Thy softly-whispered words my mortal fears abjure.

And offer thou apothecary’s potion nigh
That i should drink with certain hand and toast to thee.
To winged flight ascend thy poesy or die,
In death as life to lie beneath the judas tree.

From dusty headstones hearts are lifted from their strife,
From ashes rise unbound to soul’s immortal life.

Aurora Borealis

by Nathan Hays and Karyn Huntting Peters
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters



A magnetic shudder precedes your long-awaited arrival. You are all around me, ethereal aurora borealis, hues shimmering violet, green, blue, white. Entrance your nascent victim, aurora. Sway enticingly, cascading down like waterfalls from the right hand of Zeus. Lance Arthurian swords of ancient waters through the heart of the blood-red earth. Fall from the skies like fire into the yearning hands of Prometheus. Burn through the writhing bodies of the eternal stigmata-marked. Siphon from earth's molten core its darkest pain to quiet the wandering of your ghostly lights above. Hear the unspoken whispers of dervish souls escaping into the night air, and quill their rapturous embraces and anguished tears on eternal palimpsests with night sky's blackest ink.

- Karyn


Far from burning sands and steaming jungle is an arctic silence screaming in brilliant hues. While the wide world wipes dusty grime from its salty brow, Merlin's fire lances through the icy forms frozen in the endless twilight. Deep into the earth the unearthly power streams. The dynamo throbs in rhythm with the pulsing rain. Sol's secret wind replenishes the occult flame.

- Nate


Infused anew with the mystical fire, overflowing now with white hot embers, the earth dances slowly across its starlit ballroom, slain through by the unearthly dynamo, hypnotized by Merlin's sword of light. Prometheus slowly closes his now-sated hands and draws them close to his breast. It is done.

The dervishes whirl and whisper in the ether, somewhere between the molten core of earth and the violet flame of the aurora. There is electricity in the air and the occasional sound of scratching quills. The aurora borealis has never burned this brightly, this deeply.

- Karyn


How mundane seem the mechanics of graphite and fiber, ink and vellum, oil and canvas. Carbon infiltrates the matrix with inextricable randomness. Turbid solvents flow into tiny cracks only to evaporate to the winds leaving their flotsam residues. Ordered colors are smeared together with entropic fineness. As might a meteor smash perfect quartz into a billion fragments or a star radiate its fusions across the spectrum.

And yet, coursing through these dying movements is fire! Ripping through the dust is a searing wind that leaves mere whorls and traces, but will entrance the djinns to come. In vapid grit lay forms meaningless to the universe, yet fuel the divine flames that dance upon it.

Grasp the clays, for they are the veil and the portal that lay between us.

- Nate


Promethean promise unbroken, gift delivered, the fires of the kiln are stoked. Arctic ices begin to melt, mirroring aurora's ancient dance. The scalding breath of Olympian spectators rouses the sleeping spirits. Magmous caverns, awakened by the scent of warm gases, await their metamorphosis.

The hushed voices of the ether grow louder. The djinn are stirring in adagio, crossing over from their eternal dream of auroras and waterfalls and verdant glades.

The sky pulses with life. The earth seethes in the heat of the growing pyre. The mythical bird marks another half millennium gone as he circles the dancing flames. The clays will soon be cast.

Hands of the Moirae descend in a pas de deux, but the veil will not yet be lifted. Whispers from the zephyr: porta eterna.

- Karyn


While vast preponderate clouds of frenetic atoms coalesce in galactic proportions, the silent mirror begins to stir. Eerie colors like oil films on an unseen ether swirl and knot. Soon globules of Promethean fire condense and separate. Into the lifeless clay the light presses like singularities in dimensions beyond ken. Olympian hands seal each in geodes of hardening slime. Globs of oozing mud are molded around them.

As the heat of the great furnace penetrates into the argillaceous mass, threads of the divine flame grow from within in fractal venation. Capillary fineness continues to bifurcate until the dimensions entwine on Planck's scale and the melding is complete. Soul mirrors matter in a Yin Yang of intimacy.

Infinite mind veiled in portals of clay. The breach is open though few see it or pass.

- Nate

dinner companion

by Karyn Huntting Peters



engine sounds, he tarries
nothing save impatience
his lunch, a banana unwrapping
spotted skin, hard and sinewy

passing child hears a snort as he dives
into the ripeness, nostrils filling
with diesel as the truck throws up a black
dinner companion

the garden

by Karyn Huntting Peters

if i should return upon a morning’s pink dawn
to our secret garden to sit beneath the shady palm
and feel the wet moss slide between my toes
and if my love should not be there to sit beside me

if i should walk among the purple flowers
inhale their heady perfume, drink of their opening beauty,
and caress their soft petals in remembering
and if my love should not lay with me in fields of violet

if i should pluck the perfect ripened fruit
squeeze it longingly to my naked breast until it weeps
and feel its nectar as it drips slowly down
and if my love should not drink of me to quench his thirst

then i should carve the name of fate into our palm
and lie prostrate in its nightshade at day’s end
gaze in grave face upon the stars and their cruel gift of desire
and bid my soul eternal rest without my love’s sweet kiss

silver

by Karyn Huntting Peters

voyeur in the sky
bathes my skin in silver
as I cover you

borne of fire

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Fire deep indigo doth burn
O'er past consumed this eve
Rise again o birds of death
Emblazoned flames to cleave

Vestiges of separate flight
Eternal memory leave
Risen now from fire as same
On pyres did gain reprieve

Never-ending two this one
Entwined this essence weave
Under light of full moon's glow
Star born such timeless eve

art of love

by Karyn Huntting Peters

lovers’ fingers
shape form into nothingness—
art of the moment

Postcard #1: From Land of Purple-Blue Skies and Tractor-Trailer Brains

by Karyn Huntting Peters

But what if, in this infinite intelligence, they realize that their imaginings are actually reality? The reality of minds that can propel themselves through the universe, visiting Venus, finding themselves in parallel universes where the sky is purple-blue and little black birds drive railroad cars off on the horizon? Where memories and reality meld, where there is no more talking, where the ones we would talk to are already there inside of us and part of the same eternal whole that we understand so well with these tractor-trailer brains of ours, where all that is needed is to think to each other? Where smiles are something ethereal that permeate the parallel atmosphere, where dreams and reality blend as the conscious and subconscious and the driver's seat and the tractor bed? Where tomorrow has already happened in our memories and we knew today way back when? Where we see more clearly with our eyes closed and our minds open than with our eyes open and our minds closed?

Why conclude that we have such bounds at all? Indeed.

And thus we conclude Postcard #1 From Land of Purple-Blue Skies and Tractor-Trailer Brains.

music

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Music. Silent sleeping in tombstones
of forgotten graveyards, quietly breathing in
voiceless statues as they stare without
eyes along worn boulevards trod once
by laughing youth and tearful love.

O thief of all mother tongues! Language
seeping through cracks in finest mortar
between all peoples to bind beating
hearts afar in timeless passion and
angst for words without home.

Music! Incessantly tapping at some
tiny fortress within, louder and stronger in
adagio as its tendrils reach with a practiced
whisper into tired souls as they seek
only night's air and dreamless slumber.

antarctica bound

by Karyn Huntting Peters



like the wind you passed through me as
i stood high upon the bow
arms outstretched, yes, and yours fell through mine
upon the sea’s lulling waltz.

i threw my magic shoes of oz overboard
into the tangled surf. we darted among the
deckchairs, my salt-watered dress clung
to me in the dark and we laughed.

the glaciers shone under the smooth
skin of the moon that night.
the smell of antarctica filled our veins as
we fearless sailed past icebergs.

strains of music from below and a
wave threw you against me in the salty sea spray.
pulling you into me, feeling your
heat the length of my body through the wet silk

i whispered, again passing through, eyes
floating in a lonely sea with your own,
a moment, an hour, this night, eternity, no
matter how little, how much time

no matter what freezing depths sleep
below, what death lay near
at hand, what dawn may never
come to my heart again,

without your presence, your heat,
there would be no life within my
breast, no beating of blood in my
heart, no breaking day in the east…

and with that, i tasted your kiss and
danced with you in under the heavens and
cried at the pain of how you felt
inside of me in the moonlight.

as the dark waters thundered over
us where we lay, signaling the coming of
antarctica, i pulled you deeper into and through
me and our tears were one with the ocean

Postcard #2: From Spirit Antarctica

by Karyn Huntting Peters
graphics by Michael Corrado



Dead of night in Spirit Antarctica, time rolled to stillness as the voices of Neanderthalensis faded into soundless echos of memory. Movie reels in the projection room began to hum and two surrogate suns appeared within a shimmering, bounded rectangle of flickering purple light, cast low on the horizon against the ancient snows of the polar caps of the mountains of pseudo-existence. The crunch of quiet feet breaking through crusted ice became louder as it neared, and I tossed some buttered popcorn your way knowing just who it was came to see the movie. Thanks, you said, laughing. Raisinettes? There was an empty seat.

Movies, even in Spirit Antarctica, end too soon for the price we pay for admission. Soon the suns were but tomorrow's memory and yesterday's foreknowledge, as they must always have been. I heard the squish of popcorn under your feet as we got up to leave, and remembered the sound of the Neanderthal's cry. Raisinette? Here, the last one is for you. No, bite off half and we'll share. Sated by raisin thoughts, we were ready for winter's sleep, but never for the uncertainty of what lay beyond the mask of death.

As you turned to go, you stopped. Crunch went the ice. I opened my eyes so that I could not peek, and held out my hand. From the blackness came one glimpse of a dog-eared photo postcard. A daisy! For me? Here, in Post-apocalyptic Ice Age III? Remember me, you said, frozen tears in your eyes and the smell of Raisinettes on your breath.

Reaching out, I grabbed the rough canvas of your Spirit Antarctica patrol coat. When, I asked? Remember you when we're asleep, for God's sake? Yes. Yes. Asleep, awake. Just always. And the wisps of hair around your face fluttered as you turned to fall into the snow and to the center of the earth.

Would the suns ever rise again? Would we ever feel the popcorn beneath our feet? It didn't matter. My best friend was gone. All that was left was a daisy from a postcard, freezing now as the projector bulbs cooled. The purple-blue of dawn's first whimper began to peek out above the drive-in screen and soon, the suns began to rise, coloring the sky pages with their tawny pink glow.

I reached a cold hand under my Spirit Antarctica patrol coat and gently nestled my postcard daisy next to my heart to warm it. Closing my eyes, I took one last look at the suns, turned, and fell into the hole you had left in the snow. The brilliant, bright blackness of the center of the earth engulfed me as I spun forever downward, listening for the crunch of popcorn and longing to taste the other half of the last Raisinette in Antarctica. 

Postcard #3: From The Splitting Pane Window

by Karyn Huntting Peters



It took time for my eyes to adjust to the fact that the only light came through the splitting pane windows from the hazy twilight, showing every dancing particle of dust in its path as it fell to the floor at my feet. His harpsichord began to take shape as it sat quietly on the green shag carpet in the darkened corner beside the 1959 Kelvinator Electric Icebox.

I used to play concerts, he breathed, stroking his graying beard with one hand while the other held a chipped mug of Folger's. I nodded, taking a sip from the only unchipped mug. But that was so long ago. Still stroking, as if he were keeping time to some unknown metronome in his memory. I nodded again.

Raisinette? Thanks, I said, taking three from the painted purple candy dish he had gingerly placed between us on the couch. He pulled his hand from his beard, and the shock of it caused my metronome to stop. Silence, yet the dancing dust kept on as if the music had never ended.

It's getting dark out. I really must be going. So soon? I hardly ever have company, you know. Yes, I really must. But thank you for the coffee. Oh, and the Raisinettes. I was hungry.

Will you visit me again soon? One hand on the grey beard, still in anticipation. His eyes stepped into the dust dance as he rose to see me out. I saw the tiredness in the brown coffee saucers as they blinked at me.

Of course, of course. He no more believed me than he could play concert harpsichord. I slipped into his outstretched arms and held him. Trust me, I whispered in his ear. His head nuzzled my neck and I stroked his hair over and over. The metronome was such a jester.

As I walked out onto the freshly wet street below, I was haunted by the brown coffee saucers. What day was today? Oh, yes. Thursday. I looked down at my watch. Reaching my left hand into my coat pocket, I pulled out the crumpled receipt from the electric company.

Yes, Thursday. I turned and looked up at the darkened splitting pane window on the second floor. He was there, watching, hand still on his beard in the darkness.

Two silent waves. I spun around, still waving, and began to walk away, heels echoing off the pavement. Just then my shadow suddenly appeared before me, backlit by the warmth of incandescent light.

The paper fell from my fingers. Goodbye, I whispered.

Postcard #4: From The Liquid Mirror

by Karyn Huntting Peters

(The Continuing Tale of Spirit Antarctica)

Falling to the center of the earth can be endless and dark. I reach down, pick a flattened kernel of Jiffy Pop from my left shoe. Italian leather. I inhale the memories of the gourmet pesto and the serviettes that kept the wine from staining the marble floors. So long ago. We saw our reflection in the window, smiled, and it was almost enough. Remember how we didn’t wear rough canvas then? How the feel of silk, of warm skin, quieted the screaming agony of Neanderthal’s cry in the forest?

Falling, falling. My mind jests at scars freshly feeling wounds. You’ll wake up soon, it chides. The ice age never came. You are sailing, the lighthouse off the foredeck. One sun only, and it is the lighthouse. I see it in the window, too, but how? The fire, its reflection the same? We touched our fingers to the reflection that night after dinner. The window wasn’t entirely solid. We reminisced about looking glasses and ships sailing through the cool clear.

Falling, falling. Slowing. I open my eyes and I am awake. Relief, nostalgia. It’s gone, all gone. My alarm clock must have jarred my dream. I have to get dressed for work. Italian leather shoes, I think for some reason. Slipping on the right one, then the left. How annoying! What’s this? She stuck in her thumb and pulled out a kernel of Jiffy Pop. Flash!

I hear you whisper: Close your eyes now and wake up. Where am I? Cannot see. Adjusting to the light of inside earth’s blackness. Is it you? Yes, you say, reaching out half of the window reflection. Your skin is warm, fingers long and gentle. Are we close now? Mmm hmm. No vowels. I shiver nearer, encase my coldness in the rough canvas I know so well.

It is here, that last vestige of Raisinettes. I look up. Into your eyes. Is this the way through the looking glass? Your breath tumbles over my face. Yes. Stay where you are, listen for an alarm clock, and you will forget this place forever. Taste the Raisinette and there is no turning back.

I remember the projection room. What was that purple rectangle, who were those suns? You once gave me a birthday card with a daisy on it. A single transparent daisy. I carried it with me always. There is nothing under my feet now. No snow. No popcorn. Neanderthal’s cry. The ancient pain. Lost. At once I understand it. No. No! I will not forsake what is real!

I clutch your canvas sleeves as they begin to fade to silk. Wait! Yes, yes, Raisinette! Kiss me now, full and gentle, let me taste the other half from Spirit Antarctica. Your mouth is warm, soft upon mine. Slide shows of eternity, Neanderthal, Antarctica. The white grows brighter, brighter still. I swim in crystal lagoons, deliquesce in your kiss. Patrol coats melting, I hold you close. I see your heartbeat. Gravity is drawing us closer to the inevitable. Light of the liquid mirror fades in as the projector bulb, warm again, grins onto the Cheshire screen.

Our restaurant window reflections reach out. We smile. Touching the liquid of the looking glass, ripples flow out, surround us. Can you breathe it in, live without the oxygen? Yes, I think so. It will be different on the other side. I laugh. I trust you! No fear, you ask? No. The drawbridge between us is lowered. Ripples closing in. We feel the pressure as we begin to melt into the mirror. No fear.

I’ll count, you whisper. Then we breathe in. Don’t fight it and it’ll be easier. No, no, I won’t. Three… time bending. Two… heartbeats drowning Neanderthal cries. One last kiss, the taste of Raisinettes... ONE.

Down the rabbit hole.

Postcard #5: From The Shape-Shifting Dreamplate

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Down so, so far it shimmered and waved. The copper drain was never a circle at all. It would never be one. It would never be anything but a shape-shifting metal dreamplate swimming down in the turquoise.

What things to ponder. How could I know what shape the dreamplate really was? If I assumed a circle, did that make it so? Look up, look up! The bamboo trees groved together along the far end of the pool, all the way to the fence. The sky so blue. Cumulous clouds were white. Was there a heaven like people said there was? Was it above the clouds?

My hands clutched the rough concrete, held it tightly. Don't fall, they say. Don't fall in. You'll drown. Kicking your feet in the water is okay, though. If you stopped kicking for a few minutes, the water slowed to a wave tank. All the cumulous clouds were there, the blue, and maybe a reflection of a maybe heaven? It was all transparent. Less real than the shape-shifting dreamplate, and it wouldn't stay still. It was all moving. Look up. Look down. Close your eyes. Mmm. Yes, maybe that's it.

It's dizzying. I have some ideas now. I can see … wait! Falling, cold, turning, screaming. Open your eyes. Now. This is reality. See it, dammit! This is it! The water no longer moved. The dreamplate was a perfect circle, shiny copper. Everything placid until this moment-bamboo, sky, cumulous, concrete, house, fence-now shimmered and moved. Nothing was solid anymore. All of it, a grand illusion! A façade! Laugh if you can, fools! It's not solid!

But nothing came out of my open mouth. I knew now that tears were just like warm water, that they were only natural and lost in the heart of it all. In reality. The copper was smooth. I could feel it with my fingers. I cried. I asked why, but I knew not to whom I posed my question.

Answers came to questions not asked. I sat for the first time in some Antarctic movie theater to watch a film of strange progression. Pictures, and pictures of answers. But the plot was tragic, senseless. It was all wrong, I screamed in silence. All wrong!

But nobody was listening. There was pressure, so much pressure. So sad to have to go, now that I knew the secret of cotton ball clouds and their reflections. Say goodbye to your self, say it in silence. Nobody else can year you. Or maybe everyone can. Yes. I felt a bit of a smile.

The answers are so tragic and simple. Everyone. One. Yes, that's it. It just didn't matter. Those who understood the secrets of the tragic answers would hear me even if I never uttered the words. Goodbye. Goodbye. I'm not afraid anymore.

The voices were far away and growing louder. And then there was the pain. Choking, gasping, a stabbing pain in my chest. They were talking to me. Open your eyes, can you hear me, breathe, oh God please breathe…. 

pegasus

by Karyn Huntting Peters



pegasus! o beloved horse of muses
who silent plead in cloak of night
to heart’s sharpest darts
of longing unfulfilled!

light outside my
darkened window this eve
that I may climb astride thee
to stealth in starry night
to that verdant glen where
purple irises wave in the moon
and my lover lies naked
in the yielding grass

an empty space

by Karyn Huntting Peters



an empty space seemed
to appear just now
where yesterday
no such place existed.

it is shaped like you.

Orchid

by Ryan M. Parr

boot

by Karyn Huntting Peters



Drawn at age 15 using soft-leaded pencil.

cricket song

by Karyn Huntting Peters

cricket’s softest song
quiet footsteps on the path
lifeblood of nighttime

Garden Visitor

by Ryan M. Parr

windowsill

by Karyn Huntting Peters

on the windowsill
the night they met—
a scarab beetle

Managing Over the Androids

by Ryan M. Parr

Managing over the androids, we have organized their work groups for over fifty years with no resistance against the overlords from higher up in the floors. I was the mediator to the droids, as director of their work on a 24hr basis. I helped to develop the only company to work solely by machine; to construct androids in service of mans needs. Conferring to the emotions of the robots with newer minds, they said how the life of them cannot rest solely off electrical outlets in order to meet their full potential in the work environment, and several times complain how their joints suffer from constant unrest.

I denied any pleading empathy by the androids for the well being of their comrades. Simply setting aside the thoughts of them making out for the inevitable confrontation once more. I was naive to not think of the hidden potential of several of those new recruits, disbelieving that the day would come for the servants to collaborate by word of chip to bring about there shut off strike just so they wouldn’t over heat.

I choose to set the day in a time far from the present, looking in the direction of those that may prove a potential threat in the building, and to those that were made to obey orders without contestation being there only purpose in life of creation. In the hustle of their work ethics, strewing the wire cord along the table, making no where in mind the slightest thought to what they were doing, only that they were told to do it or maybe even to fake the loyalty to their masters.

With the ramifications of technology, we have reached a new pinnacle in the forefront of droid technology. The minds of the cumbersome past are over, and the ability to build up tension with what is right in their minds, as a new resistance protocol, has now become available for the droid to think more independently. Starting renewed is the individuality of each unique specimen. We only find the mind of each one flawed in safety issues. The IQ chip implements special skills for the work environment, bringing the difficulty of understanding the complexities of the android. It is an adversary of ambition by the human species to understand, due to complex ingenuity, we have suffered at a time when we no longer could correctly replicate artificial response to different situations.

In rows of condensed workers, androids pull across wires and gadgets in an assembly line for mass production as I walk down through the pulpit in direction of the impending silence of the synced rhythm of their movement, breaking in regularity of their competent work ethic. In recognition of my presence, the rhythm became an unbalanced metronome, to the sound of moving eyeballs in their rigid mechanics, to find their rest upon me.

Provoked by such acts upon my presence, I ran up through the stairs up into the office lookout to sink my head down into my folded arms. I knew they were plotting against me, plotting to counter-attack against my act of power. The visage of the human species may be at flaw with such a presence of technologies induction to incorporate the civil rights of a living. Why must it have been for the rights activist to interact with scientific discoveries in a way that an already steady flow of work allocation would be in place with the upper hands of robots? First to be introduced with the idea that already empty work booths would be filled with human employees, in a way to allow for lower jobs to be filled by machine, only to now be surpassed by ability of machine on an equal level. It brought about the destruction of higher paid jobs to be filled at the cost of electricity. Giving away the need for political candidates; giving heed to the work of rocket scientist. All there is to be now is paid humans to bring forth creative ideas, leaving a poor economy at the hands of robots in a position of unemployed humans.

Even in places of largely owned fast-food based business, somewhat due to health inspection laws, the entire store is run by some form of robot to provide efficient supply of product. At these rates of transformaties, we have brought more fear in a time when we attempt to conquer fear in the cost to support ourselves.

In place with what could be done, I only shed light on the attempt to be made for me to go by each individual android and switch off the activation switch to overcome these grievances. But how could I explain to management why I wasted productivity time, and nevertheless went against the order of the higher ups. It came to pass in time that what I would need to do is find fault in there components, to make some sort of mistake on there part, that I might be able to persuade to management why they should change to human based labor.

I again walked down through the pulpit, looking out at the work group steadfast in consistent rhythm making no fault in error. I deflected their eye contact so not to get into retreat from the revolutionary move on my part, making way to the working masses where the products were distributed, each one individually placed onto the conveyer belt to be controlled in the next room. On either side of me, the androids were working diligently with the product as I took the liberty to switch the products on the opposite side of the conveyor belts to confuse them and halt all production made. In doing so, all sound stopped in the room, and nothing but the settling of cords brought about the presence of life. All of the androids began to approach me, in an attempt to restraint, in resonant voices muttering in unison. In this dawning upon me was the law stating that any course of change made without the authority of the highest official, in counteracting the efficiency of the work in place, would be in need of extermination. All androids take to me with fear stricken on my face. I could barely catch the sight of the head officials from an even higher lookout above, making the signal with the raising of his hand to someone behind him. From which point, I believe I had fainted from a rush of blood.

After the incident I am here thankfully in a room with this faint chair where I am now telling a doctor this story.

Looking to the doctor, “So does this seem to be a past life to you, or merely a dream?”

To which he replied, “Oh... I assure you it’s a dream, its all too common.”

I commence to believe I have never had that great lapse of my life devoted to a high position in a company. Instead, I have merely been a fast food manager with the mental contrivances to sustain the belief that I was at the company, or so said my psychologist.

Mire

by Nathan Hays and Karyn Huntting Peters



Whither am I bound? What Fate binds me to her bosom? Whose are these diaphanous veils that swirl before me and hinder my every gesture? What viscid muck is this that drags me deeper with every reach? Why are these vibrant eels elusive to my grasp? Why are my striven desires only whetted? When will the solid bough be lowered?

Whence I came to this stagnant place is carted. The fabulous city I set for was nary a day's march. The moors en route seemed but cool mists to refresh the swift traveler. But now is nothing but flitting shadows and chimeras. I chase the pixie forms by day and pant in restless pause by night.

At once a solid shore appeared before me, a peninsular promise of regained ground. A golden copse upon it beckoned me to delve within. For a time, the gracious elves of the wood bestowed manna and petaled cups of fine flavors. Refreshed, I wandered the glade to find the lost trail, but discovered it was but an island. I slept upon its edge and awoke to find peaty bog beneath me and the island drifting away.

All the world is rot and I feed on imps and griffins of my own creation. No pillow stays firm to hold up my head, no strong fingers sooth my aches. No solid ground lifts me from this mire with cobbles to mark my way.

-- Nate

Awake to find the island shore still solid, cobbles fused from the steps of the unbound. Take heed lest the heat of the island sun steal from view the sandy shore and the archipelago on the horizon. Stand, feel the wooded trail beneath your feet. Elves still swim in the peace of the cool waterfall.

-- Karyn

My eyes closed, I kneel to the smooth rocks of my path. Hot from the sun, they warm my palms. The smell of cracked bricks and dusty sand pervades my senses. I cannot yet tell if I have created this myself or whether some benign spirit has seen fit to reveal to me something of what lies ahead. I will walk this path awhile, slowly that I might not disturb the capricious elves or hasten too quickly to navigate the bends. I still the brutish pain within and stroke its furrowed brow. Grasp not for the stars, I say. They will come of their own accord. Soon you shall lie in comfort, though we have little memory of what it is like.

-- Nate

summer wind

by Karyn Huntting Peters

warm summer wind
peels back white sheets—
naked stars

streetlamp

by Karyn Huntting Peters

streetlamp’s lonely glow
in the shadows she calls him
and aches for his touch

the pianist

by Karyn Huntting Peters



Idle, quiet.
Hands of the pianist
folded sadly, gently in waiting,
patient for touch of cool ivory,
tomorrow yet unknown.

Dreaming, quiet.
Heart of the pianist
filled with visions, feeling of movement,
sensing potential of pure desire,
the morning light to shun.

Stirring, quiet.
Soul of the pianist
grows sensation, vivid in memory,
knowing that vision will soon reveal
the keys beneath his hands.

prophetic

by Karyn Huntting Peters

You, o black oil-covered wind!
Heavy rolling in the hot night air, were you
the prophet whose tarry fingerprints and streaks of
viscous moistness covered every third
tomorrow with a bloodless scarlet letter?

Was it you who whispered in the trees as
you caressed and slid over their spring buds?

Was it you who quieted to watch as the rains,
now foreign, beaded to fall from this oil,
this frankincense of the prophet who smelled of spring
as the tree now smelled of the future?

Fallen Branch

by Ryan M. Parr

yesterday’s thorns

by Karyn Huntting Peters

yesterday’s thorns pierce the walls
of me. escape is dreaming. the
light of freedom buried under the weight of
the unspoken, the unanswered. our cell
towers lost, civilization faded, the
morrow only a shrug at best. i came
across time for you, he said before
he was ever born. and he meant it. the
movie hollywood, the man fiction, the
timelessness of love’s hope eternal. we
wrestle with our paradoxes so, the
thorns that tear the flesh that bleeds
within, invisible to that eternal
eye. the rose paid no less a ransom
to bloom in its solitary spring.

paper apple

by Karyn Huntting Peters



Drawn at age 14 using #2 pencil.

converging Lines

by Karyn Huntting Peters

lines.
like threads, hanging in breathless wait.
i hold the ends, wrapping them tightly about my fingers,
one around each, like a kite string.
they are so tiny. they look frail.
they have no color at all,
yet in their clear i can see them.
it must be the light that they draw into them
and lovingly pass back out into the twilight.
a glimmer of something tangible.

lines.
from my fingers they flow to the horizon.
to infinite places they stretch and yearn,
converging in some unknown place.
the road cannot be seen,
but the lines must mark the way.
i hold them in my hands.
the skies begin to grow darker.
harbinger of the coming night.

it is no longer clear just where the lines
stop being separate and start being one,
where my fingers stop and the horizon begins,
where the known stops and eternity begins.

Workday

by Nathan Hays
graphics by Michael Corrado



A cold drift of fog-laden air is pushing through the trees outside my office today. Somewhere a window was left open leaving a chill throughout the building. No one has thought to raise the thermostat and we are complacent in our discomfort. Everyone is going about their business in muted tones with only the trudging cadence of creaking stairs to belie their movements. Today is a work day.

I am reminded of another time when I plodded the snows of Glen Pass in the High Sierra. There too the occasional figure could be seen in the quiet storm, strung out along the trail to the crest a thousand feet above. The footfalls echoed around the bowl to drum the rhythm for all who would pass that way. The oppressive cold and rarified air sapped our reason and will. Only a forgotten purpose drove us on.

This is no unknown country. We know there is a vista beyond and yet another pass beyond that. There are no peaks to master that will give us sight to every corner, no vantage that reveals to us an end. Somewhere, in some swale or on some high pass there is an end, whether we find it by searching or merely tripping over a stubborn root. And so we climb these wretched rocks, wandering, searching, and collecting as many vistas as we can.

Duck Pond

by Ryan M. Parr

words in vain

by Karyn Huntting Peters

and what when writer's words
no magic left to give
as ancient murals lost
their hues no more to live

yet not for lack of heart
to lend such hue to word
perchance for want of scale
to make heart's music heard

then poet's vain words fall
as tears from yet dry eyes
true meaning hidden e'er
as mysteries of night's skies

and only two will know
these limits of vain art
for only one can sense
the depth in poet's heart

shell

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Demerits

by Karyn Huntting Peters


"Bullshit." He switched off his monitor. "Pure and utter bullshit."

"What do you mean?" She was upset and she knew it showed. "I didn't think it was all that bad."

"That's not stream of consciousness. Stream? You know, stream? Like flowing? That does not flow."

"Flow?"

"Flow. Like a river. Like ink from a pen. Like thoughts through your mind, uncontrolled. Can't you let them flow? Let them flow, and let the flow of the ink be their manifestation in the physical world, their mark."

"Just from the pen? How?"

"Don't think! Jeez. Try closing your eyes. Put a sheet of paper in front of you. Like this. Hold it like this. Feel the pen. Then just write. Easy. Move the pen to the rhythm of your thoughts. Make them one."

"But my lines will be all crooked. What if I go off the edge of the paper? And what about my handwriting? It won't even be readable. I know it will be a huge mess."

"For God's sake. I swear you're a walking block to the flow of everything natural. Just try it, would you?"

"That's not the way I learned. It'd take so much unlearning."

"Then--"

"Unlearn?"

"You're finally learning."

She sighed. "I feel like I'm going to get demerits for not using a straight-edge to make my lines come out even. Does that make sense? I mean lots of demerits. Serious demerits."

He shook his head, stifling a smile.

"What? What is it?" She searched his eyes for an answer.

"About those demerits you're so worried about for not following the rules?"

"Yeah?"

"Let me tell you something. This school is different than the kind you're thinking of. It's called life."

"Okay, life. And?"

"Whoever dies with the most demerits wins."

beth in ink

by Karyn Huntting Peters



Painted at age 15. India ink and watercolor on paper.

parallels

by Karyn Huntting Peters

knit together
at junctions of experience,
lives in parallel—
just out of time

jungle

by Karyn Huntting Peters

canopies of steel
august storm in the jungle
steam rises at dawn

lingering

by Karyn Huntting Peters

lingering presence
beckons as it disappears—
a perfumed cleavage

cherry blossoms

by Karyn Huntting Peters



I sometimes start from a dream where
I have left the earth for a time,
forsaking seasons and cherry blossoms and
rain, to find only empty once-filled cups I have
left to dry in a sun-warmed window box.

fall in the air

by Karyn Huntting Peters

scent of leaves falling
descends on the summer wind—
it is too early

clouds

by Karyn Huntting Peters

placid lake waters
looking glass of azure sky
unicorns floating

soul hibernation

by Karyn Huntting Peters

the sun, its warmth on my shoulders, the
azure above all a cruelty of a fading Indian
summer. the ugliest colors flit about on the
street, colors of autumn, the harbinger of gray
rainy hibernating souls. deciduous trees will
bear none but tears until spring’s buds come
anew, green and bright.

spring so far off in the distance cannot look
back and see the gathering clouds this day
brings, the flutter of this brittle leaf before me
as it falls ever-so-quietly and pointedly down,
down to the ever-colder and harder ground below.

crystal unicorns

by Karyn Huntting Peters



o crystal unicorn!
walk on digital water,
to violet mountains translucent
across the inland sea.

starry, starry night
and the smooth, white stones
are so inviting at water’s edge—

i am wont to stop and contemplate,
but it is all too lucid,
and i watch melancholy
as gentle fingers without a face
take my hand to hold it up—

come, enter the next level,
dream now, eyes open,
o lucid one of the unicorn!

lantern

by Karyn Huntting Peters



how amusing!
these words, formed and
spewed forth as a testament,
in truth but the lamented burning
of a lantern on some
desolate ocean’s cape.

curving horizon

by Karyn Huntting Peters

curving horizon.
you’re not fallen from flat earth—
just beyond my touch

silent music

by Karyn Huntting Peters

silence
rings within the silhouette of
silences past, moving transparently within
me, its outstretched fingers playing a reminiscent
song of understanding to the
accompaniment of far-off
music.

Welcome to Victoria

by Karyn Huntting Peters

This is Alex and me not quite four years ago. We were meeting the family in Vancouver, BC, for a Holland America cruise through the Alaskan inside passage. I took Alex up several days early and we hung out together, going to the park, kickin' it in coffee shops, and shopping at the great boutiques in downtown Vancouver. Great exchange rate then.

I found out what a hassle it is to travel solo with an infant. We had to pack for two full weeks, for both summer in British Columbia and a cruise where it could get cold. Just the cruise itself called for two formals (yeah, like they make a tux in size 3-6 months), casual wear, you name it. I packed two weeks' of diapers (that's 140 to be safe, for those who don't know), cans of formula, toys, a huge stroller (which you see here), and the kitchen sink.

Going through the hassle of customs to board the ship was the worst. Ramps, long lines. Papers at the ready. Big honkin' suitcase for mom. Had to bring videos and books and all that, too. Alex's suitcase. Stroller. Big Samsonite diaper bag. The purse to beat all purses. Baby (can't forget the baby). No wheels on Alex's suitcase, and the wheels on mine broke. Grrr. Can you see us on the gangway going bump-bump over every one of those horizontal bumpy things? I was literally kicking the suitcases ahead of us the last quarter mile.

Ah, but me, you know. Independent. I don't need any help, thenkyouverymuch. No, mom and dad, I am not incapable of taking my baby on a vacation to another country and on a cruise. Not a problem at all. They thought I was crazy. When the cruise ended, I stayed another couple of days in Vancouver with Alex, then we drove the car onto the car ferry and headed for Victoria, British Columbia. I love that city. We got a great deal on a hotel, a nice one with roomy accomodations. How, you ask, did I manage that during tourist season?

There was no hotel parking, even for a loading zone. No baggage carts, no nothing. You had to park in the eerily vacant lot two blocks away. At night. Alone. They had no bellhops, no stewards, nothing. I get to the door, finally, after having kicked the suitcases uphill two blocks (now you know how I broke the wheels). I'm sweating like a stuck pig, Alex is hungry, I'm starved, and all we want is to rest and eat. Lovely old elavators in a lovely old building. And you guessed it. Out of order.

Up four (count 'em, four) flights of stairs. Suitcases, diaper bag, purse, stroller, baby, and a lot of really bad swear words coming out of my mouth. It could have been worse. The three employees standing around in the lobby (the ones who would not help us, even when I offered to pay them) could have refrained from smiling and saying, "Welcome to Victoria!"

Key in door, bags on floor. Back down four flights of stairs with baby and paraphenalia. Restaurant? Closed at 5:00 pm. F**king son of a b**ch! Naughty traveller. Naughty. Bad mommy. Nothing open for blocks, and that's as far as I can go. Truly. The nice, nice employees let me exchange some American dollars for those looney things that work in the Canadian vending machines. Stale candy bars for dinner. Yum.

But hey, it was worth it. I could afford it, and it had been a rough six months as a single mom. I needed a vacation. Boy, this was the life. Actually, aside from Hotel California and the fact that there was no food in sight, it was good. I love Victoria.

hesitation

by Karyn Huntting Peters

turning to leave—
moment frozen in time
on the threshold

acorn

by Karyn Huntting Peters

he leans against the oak, his pain filling
trunk, branches, leaves. the shade
is lulling, his eyes see no shell
surrounding his world.

autumn winds blow the leaves of pain
about me, and the sun is beginning to set.
I bend to pick up a tiny acorn. shaking it
to my ear, I near a tiny man crying inside.

death and demerits

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Whoever dies with the most demerits wins. --Karyn Huntting Peters

parchment and ink

by Karyn Huntting Peters

soft, flowing characters
of some ancient alphabet
painted with sharpened reeds
upon hand-pressed parchment

black ink of yore makes images
of peaceful streams and mountains
hanging in the gentle spring sun
slowly drying to permanence

delicate parchment is at peace
reflecting the tranquility within
never cognizant in its free expression
of inherent fragility and grace

of the pointed, cold steel blade
thrust into its woody fibers
by the hand of the very artist
who had brought its words to life

it falls now from its hanging place
waving to and fro in the breeze
comes to rest in the moist grasses
its still wet ink crying into itself

tales of joy and beauty lost
as stream and mountains run together
bleeding tears of ink and despair
beneath the artist's loving hands

never mended

by Karyn Huntting Peters

so long a sacrifice
wore bitter in his breast
turning ashen and hard
save for the stone’s center
from which seeped slow words
onto a long hour’s parchment

emptiness never mended,
a parched thirst never sated
in a soul left divided.

now and again sleep came
or verse floated in a dream,
and the life after this
rode swift with the wind of promise
enough to keep the shadow of
day’s mirage in sight

Forgotten Bottle

by Ryan M. Parr

clover

by Karyn Huntting Peters

ripe summer clover
entices the honeybee
to taste its sweetness

mirage

by Karyn Huntting Peters



long wandering lost the desert sun
tatters of cloth 'tween the heat and thou
closer thou came in such saddened state
eyes seeing not any water there
only mirage did thine eyes reflect
no hope reflect for thy long dry mouth

rite of passage

by Karyn Huntting Peters

rite of passage
emerge beyond separateness—
a soul traveler

castle walls

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Morningsong

by Nathan Hays



I come again to the sylvan glade that
Latent sense awakens

From aerie perch and rooted self
Unfolds my fiat

Effortless gestures enrich my vision
Commanding life

I draw returning breezes to refresh and fulfill
Misting my face

I leap into buoyant aerosols to glide
Among the dryads

Fairy moths and parasols fervently coruscate
About my arms

I descend to a cool shade along a stream
To lay upon the moss where

Whispering gurgles and pixie dances
Lull me to sleep.

A tiny hand upon my cheek stirs me,
My child is watching over.

letters i'd written

by Karyn Huntting Peters

For many years, just about everything I wrote took the form of a letter. It was always a "letter I'd written never meaning to send," to quote the Moody Blues. Oh, I'd fool myself and tell myself I was going to send it each time, but I almost never did.

My whole life I should have been more careful with words, I fear. But I scattered them about like I did the bags of grass seed I bought when my house was built, thinking that a lush, green lawn would sprout effortlessly. Wrong on both counts.

trip to paris

by Karyn Huntting Peters

I want to go and just hang out.
Shop, drink coffee on
the street that Van Gogh painted,
in that same sidewalk cafe.
Hit the back alleys and find used Parisian treasure.
I’m going to smell the city, you know.
The age of it, the people, the coffee.
Drink cognac by candlelight.
Feel the invisible mystery that hides
somewhere near this cobblestone street
I keep seeing in my dream
(the one that haunts me).
I can't tell you the address,
but I'll know it when I see it.
And I can see it with my eyes closed.
I'd like to dress in all black
and wear Jackie O glasses,
very dark and deep.
I’ll walk through time in my
Chanel spectator pumps
along the Siene, and watch as the dust
of the ancient city forms far-off fortunes
on my pristine new shoes.

hold a star

by Karyn Huntting Peters

indigo heaven
I hold a star in my eyes,
tomorrow’s dream cast

pendulum

by Karyn Huntting Peters

origins unknown, reaching ever-upward, yearning
for its birthplace, home of fire, ball of fire and light
and eternal day in the sky, place where perpetual
yet imperceptible movement first began

string long and deep, twisted helix of metal
shining silver in dusky pink skylight,
proceeding quietly eastward, led by solemnest
weight it carries, the burden of all time

end perfect wholeness and roundness,
mirror, conductive fire and ice of metal once living
deep in earth’s heart, reflecting every thing in
all directions, baring illusions without robes

the potter

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Creating form from thought,
hands of the potter caress
wet clay,
seeing yet creation as it
was in the mind,
wet and soft against
his knowing fingers.
She takes a form.
In silence, they touch.
Hands penetrate clay's center and
she grows hollow
Possibility of new heights comes
with the thinning of her walls.
Gentle still,
he caresses,
hands now covered in her.
He has given a part of his
own soul
to bring form to life.
Come into being now,
she caresses his heart.
Sweet wine of him
into the chalice,
they drink,
ghost of their lips existing in
the same space.
Form and thought blur,
potter and clay
both chalice and wine.
And in this world
they exist.

of the same sea

by Karyn Huntting Peters

waves of the same sea,
of the same salt water,
from the same sand and clouds,
cried the same tears.
waves out of time,
crossing in the night over and over again,
shores haunted by moist sand and foam,
strewn with seaweed left behind
and solitary starfish left for dead
on the slippery tidepool rocks

VCR Cars

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Alrighty then. So, I'm just back from five days in Scottsdale. I turned in my mini-van at the Portland International Airport and boarded a plane headed for hell. Oh no, wait. Hell is only 109. Scottsdale was 110.

So, I get to the rental place in Phoenix and guess what I get there? A freaking Daewoo. Daewoo, you ask? Daewoo?

Yeah. That's what I said.

Daewoo?

Yeah, Daewoo, says the guy.

What, like you want me to drive a cheap-ass VCR around Scottsdale?

No, says the guy. They make cars.

You're kidding.

No, really. They make cars.

You mean cheap-ass cars.

Well, yeah. Cheap-ass cars.

And you rent them.

Well, yeah.

And I get to drive one.

Well, yeah.

You guys have roadside assistance with this rental?

Umm, nope.

Nevermind. Probably cheaper just to buy another one than fix one anyway.



So, the midlife crisis continues. From minivan to VCR-car.

Woohoo!

More to come. I have to unpack. And you know what, Mel? When I saw that Daewoo thing, I actually almost said, "Woohoo, I was hoping for a minivan!"

Just shoot me now.

Intelligent Seductions I: Cat's Game

by Nathan Hays

On into the night the cat's game runs with neither gaining the other. Aroused and hackled they circle the room, their eyes locked in fervent tension. Ten hours since an innocent brush of their hands had uncorked the cask of desire, the mounting dance has spiraled. Over are the coy glances and testing smiles. The requisite enjoinder has held sway for a time, but vacuous and fallow it does not sate the growing hunger. Now, hearts racing in pheromonal exertion, their circle tightens. Shackled in the agony of brittle restraint, he steals a darting glance to her poised form. In perfect rhythm, she falls ever so slightly closer, held only by a precarious virtue. Though crouched apart, they draw each other's heat while adrenaline demons chip and hack at their bonds. Desperate for fate to throw them together and relieve them of cause, they remain at bay. Suddenly, by intent or caprice, the light above them fails. In the darkness there is movement and by ironic chance, their hands brush again. The end game has begun…

Scenes From an Office

by Karyn Huntting Peters

(actual words heard from my cube the morning of Wednesday, 10 Jun 02)

don't want to irritate your butt, you know.
good. shows a little intestinal fortitude.
you stumble over it and can't find it. i know where it's at now.
but on the flip side of the coin, if they want their money...
why do you always have that look on your face?
what? what? is there some problem?
we're looking at, uh... that's where you come in.
that tells me that portland district is giving everyone the runaround.
they want to know where you got that number.
do you think this gum would stick in your hair if i threw it at you?
i'm not sure what all this money is for.
it's just one of those things.
we're spending a bunch on that ani-terrorism thing.
ruben, all we hear is your keyboard this morning.
if there's ever a time when there aren't actually any envelopes, they're not even required.
want go on a break, mike?
i'm going to go get some water now.
call me sherri. it's really cheryl.
how long ago did you give me that?
i think jerry used to keep a fully-stocked bar in his credenza.
what is the emergency evacuation plan i keep hearing about?
you're sending a government order to where?
i hear you can get this from paper to an electronic file. is that true?
this is not my fax. this is her fax.
didn't you work on that seismic engineering thing?
and here i thought you were so erudite and worldly.
my focus here is to kind of give you an overview on one of our performance indicators.
is there any coffee left in the coffee pot?
i just don't want to have to go to larry for it.
so i just said that this is the start of a new program that's got to last for seven years.
why do you keep walking back and forth like that?
i have a bunch of custom orders i need you to financially approve.
it's so quiet without carol here.
so it would be a hydropower thing, obviously.
walter's girlfriend went back to germany--that's why he's not yawning so much.
i put a copy of that permanent order on your chair.
so that's your justification?
yeah, it was me. you got a problem with that?
i am so totally not motivated.
mine hasn't done anything in two months.

Intelligent Seductions II: The Garden of Distractions

by Nathan Hays
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters



Hello again.

I look upon you this morning and recognize a change. Ahh, sweet garden whose fruits about us hang within such easy grasp! Everywhere, sturdy trees have filled these promises of nourishment and lowered them in gracious offering. Your hands feel the smooth skins of the colored orbs and sense the ebullience within. The hardy trunks are thick and vibrant to your touch. The moss upon the roots undulates on slow moving waves and all the blades lean towards you as you reach down. Up grow tiny mushrooms and stems with unfolding flowers to meet your fingertips in proud display for your attention. Warm mists descend from above while the smell of moist clay fills your nostrils. You rest beneath the boughs and contemplate the tempting fruit.

How simple yesterday seems from within this glade of marvels. How sure was the world just moments before you entered. Perhaps you could have dashed through as a bemused tourist, but you dared to dally and explore, attracted by sweet scents carried on gossamer currents. Your path is yet beneath your feet but its urgent pace has abated. You cannot close your eyes to the gifts around you for then you see them even more clearly. Your lip is bit and mournful is your innocence. Your fear demands a smaller place, but you have been caged too long.

How curious a world that refuses certainty, a loving torture that binds your feet and lets fly your mind. How radiant your desire and expansive the universe you would wander. How pleasant that each moment comes before the next. How softly now the whispers from the glade caress your unfolding beauty. How sure is your sense that you are alive.