California State University (CSU): Open Journal Systems

Skinner, Brian

Okefenokee West 
slick with suntan oil, 
sipping screwdrivers with slow 
sharp lips, 
the guests of the Hollywood Palms 
Motel suck in 
the smog and wait. 
eyes like well-lubed 
engine bolts fix 
themselves on still flesh. 
the pool-cleaning man keeps 
a strong hand 
on his pole, and steps 
carefully around the comers. 
33 
Brian Skinner 


English

Okefenokee West

Schumacher, Rose

rose schumacher 
The houses perch on the hil l  
like roosters, with their roofs 
comb-red. 
The streamers, bright unnatural ribs, 
rake the buildings with their crisp 
precise arcs. 
Later, they're tattered and limp 
as drunks. 
The lazy mariachi beat 
unravels through 
the window. 
Fiesta 
1 1  


Fiesta

S. Marcus, A.

a. s. marcus 
Between acts 
they read books, 
salt snails, 
and shake their "Groove Things." 
I watch, wait 
and loathe. 
I swim in the background of 
countless Japanese movies. 
34 
Litany 


Litany

Ghiglia, Suzanne

Suzanne Ghiglia 
Pears 
They sat in their sack between us l ike miniature 
children on the bench seat. 
We didn't eat them 
or talk about them 
but instead pointed out rocks and rivers 
or drove and drove with no sound 
from Four Corners up to Grand J unction. 
We had seen them when we gassed up the buick. 
Gold, pink, cheerful, matronly, crowded in the cart 
we could practically taste them in the air 
it was cold October 
I'd never seen any like that. 
We had to have them. 
I was scared on the curves and on the long flat roads 
not of the confident, unchanging map. But of the horizon 
of your face. 
We were just empty space, whirling atoms 
sucked to the earth by gravity only 
but for those pears. 
Suzanne Ghiglia's " Pears" is the winner of the 1987 
Academy of American Poets contest. 
81 


Pears

Green, David

Friction, and the Archer\u27s Uncertain Aim

Spizman, Carol M.

Carol M. Spizman 
Women of Healthy Stock 
It is the unfortunate curve of hip 
moon-like roundness, radiant arc of thigh 
shape for which my grandmother paid 
dearly attracting men like locusts in Poland 
taking the crops. They took 
her bloom for years now spent, now skinny 
in indulgence of their flat, gray hands. 
And me, same glowing limbs, same 
solid curve, it's not unwillingly 
but sadly we come to expect a thresher 
come claiming only to harvest 
only to stop the gorgeous curve of enough, 
of plenty, of you who are too beautiful 
to be allowed to stay that way. 


Women of Healthy Stock

McHaddad, Kristina

Two Poems: "Another Body of Water" and "Buying Stones"

Scheibel, Patti

Patti Scheibel 
Accident Prone 
Today Mother cut her finger with a knife. She was carving 
lettuce. I am tired of blood. 
She comes out of the kitchen with a soaked potholder wrapped 
around her hand. She holds it limply like a small dead animal. Her 
mouth is pursed up into a tight line, but her eyes are big and white, 
like in a cartoon. Papa stands up fast, and his newspaper flutters to 
the floor. 
He says, "Cory, are you all right?" 
She nods yes, but the potholder slips, and her blood spurts on 
and off, on and off. She just stands there bleeding onto our new 
cream -colored carpeting. Papa and I watch her trying to stop it with 
the soggy potholder. 
He has to take her to the doctor. I want to come too, but they 
say no. They leave me here alone. I study the new stain. It is a 
picture, but it is not very clear. In school they would tell me what 
it is. 
Now Mama's finger is wrapped in white. 
"Four stitches," Papa says, almost proudly. 
Mama holds her hand away from her like it isn't really hers. 
She keeps scrubbing at the brown stain in the carpet. Every day I 
come home from school, she is scrubbing. I sit and eat animal 
crackers while she scrubs. At night I come downstairs, frightened 
from some nightmares, and she is still scrubbing. I tell her I dream 
of someone 's face on the body of a long, skinny insect. She keeps 
48 NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
scrubbing. 
Papa once cut his foot with an axe. He hurts himself with power 
tools but usually not badly. That time they had to sew on his big toe, 
but it was dead and it didn't take. He walks funny now. 
He buys Mama a throw rug to cover the stain. It is dark brown. 
I push it aside and look at the stain sometimes. It is lighter from all 
the scrubbing, but there is still a picture hidden there. 
At school Miss Lisa shows me how to make a clay dog. The 
clay looks 'like a big wet rock, but you squeeze it in your hand until 
it is warm and it wants to be something. The boy who sits next to 
me makes a horse, but it looks like a camel. It has a big lump on its 
back. My clay looks like something strange to me, but Miss Lisa 
says it looks like a dog. So I make it a dog. We can paint it any color, 
and I pick blue. Miss Lisa laughs and hugs me. I name my dog, but 
I can't remember what. I drop it walking home, so it doesn't matter 
what its name is. I pick up the pieces off the sidewalk. 
At home I show Mama the pieces. She rocks me in her lap like 
I am a little baby. She throws the pieces away and tells me to· tlraw 
her a blue dog instead. 
I don't. I draw Mama scrubbing at the stain. I don't show it to 
her though. She does not like it when I draw her. 
I put the knife down the garbage disposal. It makes huge 
grinding noises. Mama runs in, screaming at me. She doesn't tum 
it off, she just reaches in. I shut my eyes. 


Accident Prone

Dwiggins, Glenn

Sign Down

Comenas, Cathy

One Day Roy 
1 .  
One day 
Roy kissed a boy 
he came home one night and said 
mom, dad I love Danny. 
mom cried and said 
I knew it. 
dad threw him against the wall 
Roy thought of Danny's boy lips 
dad hit Roy in the eye 
locked him in the coat closet 
where Roy saw Danny's body 
float down from dark ceiling 
and lay on him 
a blanket of warm leaves 
just in from sunbathing 
2. 
One day 
Roy said 
I'm going to New York 
I didn't take acting in school 
for nothing you know. 
mom said 
If that's what you want. 
dad said 
You' l l  be right at home with 
al l  those fags 
dad's voice hot coals in Roy's ears 
and his fat hairy hands 
grew in Roy's pupils 
28 
Cathy Comenas 
3. 
One day i n  New York 
Roy d iscovered men's bars 
safe dark closets with l ight shows 
A man asked h i m  if he'd l i ke to be a star 
Of course Roy said 
That's why I came to New York. 
So Roy became very good at sex 
4 .  
O n e  day 
Roy was bad 
just l i ke when he told mom, dad 
I love Danny. 
he bought h i mself 
a leather jock strap with si lver spi kes 
and found a teacher in a leather mask 
who taught him that bei ng bad pays 
5 .  
One day 
Roy woke up crying 
he had a headache 
and cal led a friend 
who came to shoot a pain k i l ler 
through his virgin vein 
29 
Comenas!One Day Roy 
NORTHRIDGE REVIEW 
6. 
One day there was nothi ng to feel 
Roy made and spent lots of money 
he dreamt of swimm ing 
in a pool of the whitest sand 
and woke up to bleed ing bl isters 
that made his bed sheets red 
7.  
One day 
Roy became a skeleton 
doom hiding in his vei ns 
a black slug with a dog's head 
barking to be fed 
lack of cash beached him 
8. 
One day Roy's mom 
sent him a letter 
it came back 
no one could fi nd Roy 
somebody said 
He got so skinny he 
just d isappeared. 
but nobody knows that I saw Roy 
talking to himself 
i n  a bus going towards the Hudson 
a finger gun to his head 
he pul led the trigger a hundred times 
and then the bus driver said 
Hey boy, this bus don't 
go no fu rther. 
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