Four - A Portfolio

AT TWELVE

Jan Wroclaw

She bends her head

over her tablet, drawing

splendid maidens and silky

steeds that surely fly.

 

Outside the room

wars rise and fall again.

 

THE VERY LAST LILAC

Jan Wroclaw

There are all these gods,

these voices that went dead,

all these reasons why

we forget

 

some sons will rape

and some will kill,

and sons will weep

for what happens to the seed.

 

BARTONSVILLE IDYLL

Kenneth Oldmixon

Fire Is.

It fills the road with sun

striking cries of children, forging

fields to copper sung

with a clang of children.

 

Come brazen as the grain

banging your thighs and ring

your hair,

make me the liturgy of seed.

 

KETURAH CANDY (1858-1869)

Kenneth Oldmixon

Hello lover! How does it go

down there? All stone and leather?

Or settled to the mulch of our

best years. Do shards of lace

tease the tunnels of your bones?

I need to touch and thrill a rise

of skull to know if laughter

leaves a scar or tears erode

some way out, to trace

my maze of now become, a face,

although it hardly matters.

 

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These poems are from a portfolio printed in 1989 at AXIAL PRESS in Hublersburg, Pennsylvania, by Richard Rutkowski. Twenty-four sets were made. The portfolio was hand printed by Rutkowski using the silk-screen process. There were also four illustrations by E. M. Hollis. The poems and illustrations were all created by Rutkowski himself, and attribituted to the various imaginary authors. Richard Rutkowski died several years ago, and AXIAL PRESS is no longer in operation.

SG