No Woman to Be Rollin

By Rudolph Lewis

She wasn’t there to say goodbye, when last

I was in her house on Lesseps—with Sohr

on several walls. It was a baroque room with

a ceiling fan, magazines, books, barber's chair

a dining room table, mantles, tall windows

& a long, long yard on the side. Hot as it

was July, we had comfort, purple chatter

at Lee’s “Winter Palace,” as Yevtushenko

called it, after he danced with Satchmo in

water puddles, snapped his camera, recited

his dedication. Then we rolled over Bywater. 

I’ll never walk that long hallway, a wall of

books, papers, three large rooms of couches

beds a sitting room with red ceiling, rafter-

filled mysteries you can’t find in an archive, library,

or museum. She had family in Texas, in Cajun

country. I keep telling myself, she's got two grown

sons a daughter & a son-in-law. She's  head start

on misery and loss, awash only in tears, healing

There’s no word.  The kitchen is it all gone

In that walk out back, that apartment will never

be a theater, again, there never another poem

will be heard. There is not but charts, digits

*   *   *   *   *

Rudy

By Joe Williams III

Rudy said he'll never write, again

So, I guess he will become god,

or the heart break kid

of a son of a Gunn catching

gaw dads on the bayou

with string and dead crab meat

or maybe rudy will be

a priest on elysian fields

or a mind reader

or maybe rudy will just

retire from life

and study jesus or bach

or spent some time

glazing at the half moon

rudy gonna retire

and get a young woman

whose body is poetry

without lyrics or meter

maybe rudy will do something

good in his life, now

like matthew, the tax collector,

maybe rudy has seen a vision

that make children run and play.

or maybe rudy will just

become his dream

posted 27 September 2005