An Easy Riff

Along with JFK which, although I was only just past my first birthday, I do remember...there's the Bob Cranes, the Don Bolles and now, the Rob Reiner's I remember.

Not because of their fame or importance
to me but because of the violence.
The carnage of Sabra and Shatilla,
the blue faced bodies of Halabja,
Elie Hobeika before he reached
the Hague, the car that lodged
above the mezzenine
of the St. George Hotel, warnings
one and all, blatant and yet
some still blame the religions
when in truth, it is their absence.

Fiction Section

"Just now the reader of the letter

Tells of the writer's swift descent

fron wealth to want."

- Edgar Lee Masters, Arabel

When the only benefit inverts,

the thrift store is lending

jewelry and pots and pans and books,

the still dead lie freezing in December

a stone's throw away in plots

called Memory Gardens

amok wid weeds and dreadfully faded

artificial flowers, broken dollarstore vases,

the pattern of shoes and always,

one man standing too far away

to see who he is, the books

were merely old gossip

and seldom worth the paper,

on the so-what number of pages.