~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                            Desire Street
                            March, 1996 


                       cyberspace chapbook of 

                     The New Orleans Poetry Forum 
                           established 1971 


                    Desire, Cemeteries, Elysium 


      Listserv:      DESIRE-Request@Sstar.Com 

         Email:    Robert Menuet, Publisher
                   robmenuet@aol.com

          Mail:    Andrea S. Gereighty, President 
                   New Orleans Poetry Forum 
                   257 Bonnabel Blvd. 
                   Metairie, La 70005 

          Programmer:   Kevin R. Johnson

          Copyright 1996, The New Orleans Poety Forum 
                   (10 poems for March, 1996)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   Contents:

Variations on a Haiku By Basho
The Courthouse in Gretna
Great Grandma Kocejve
Untitled Movement
Familiar Streets
Seascape
More Shades
It Was You
Twin Sky Studios
I Wear White to  Your Funeral


--------------------------------------------
Variations on a Haiku by Basho 
 
   by Athena O. Kildegaard 
 
 
1. after Robert Frost 
 
Something there is that loves a frog 
that wants to jump with it 
into the green water of the dark pond. 
 
2. after Lewis Carroll 
 
Twas brillig and a beamish frog 
jumped in the tulgey pond 
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! 
 
3. after T.S. Eliot 
 
Here is no rock but only water 
No rock and one frog jumping 
Jumping Shantih Shantih Shantih 
 
4. after Allen Ginsberg 
 
I saw the best frog among the whole universe of speckled, torpid, 
   cold-water frogs 
leap incautious as stoned bums on the tracks of the El 
into the one pond, the universal sprawling incantation of unholy murk. 
 
5. after e.e. cummings 
 
Frog (old pond 
stil green) 
jumps (plash) 
 
6. after William Blake 
 
The age of the pond is the permanence of God 
the leap of the frog is the joy of God 
the sound of the water is the echo of God 
 
7. after my 2-year-old 
 
Mama! Frog 
jump in pond-- 
Splash! 
 
8. after my Uncle Jack 
 
This old pond here 
where the frogs jump 
it's always noisy 
 
9. after William Carlos Williams 
 
Not the idea 
but the frog 
jumping into the greeny pond. 


--------------------------------------------
The Courthouse in Gretna 
 
   by Barbara Lamont 
 
 
They brought them in 
shackled one onto another 
in grimy crewcuts, dirty jerseys 
dark, shiny pressed skin 
only twelve and thirteen 
without lawyers or any other tools. 
 
They sat them down 
arms rising over their heads 
like a ballet 
in chorus they 
adjusted their chain 
onto their laps. 
 
Possession with intent 
stolen property 
cocaine, LSD and crack 
said the judge 
five years hard labor 
sign here. 
 
He stalked in alone 
tall, blonde,  
unmatched linen jacket, 
followed by two high priced 
Counselors wearing matching headbands  
and black wool suits. 
 
Put him First on the docket 
fine seventy-five hundred  
six hundred a month 
no driving for 90 days 
don't forget 
the volunteer Velocity clinic. 
 
Yes your honor 
he waives a jury trial 
sentence three years probation 
and calls Mom in Peoria, 
gasping big breaths of sunshine 
and freedom. 
 
 

--------------------------------------------
Great Grandma Kocejve 
 
   by Ray MacNiece 
 
 
Great Grandma seamstress, pianist, went mad. 
At night the unlocked double-doors float open 
and she glides down the sanitarium hallways 
hands held before her, all fingers rippling 
like water poured into a porcelain basin. 
Her backless white gown flutters glowing 
as her footfalls descend fragile arpeggios 
of a nocturne played on a glass harpsichord. 
 
She's been told repeatedly to keep her hands 
busy -- she rubs fingertips pinpricked 
by years of stitching, cooling their crookedness 
on the bones of keys stroked like holy relics. 
The notes pattern silence into a golden cage 
from which she flies every morning, f-tha, f-tha, 
splayed against the dirty windowpanes 
where orderlies find her, the sun pouring through 
rusty bars, her hands still sending this music. 


--------------------------------------------
Untitled Movement  
  
                   by  kevin R. johnson  
  
  
 To be  
   with you  
    (in the shadow  
      of a hidden abacus)  
        is a business of kissing  
          in silence with a mouth  
           full of words (the tongue is a  
             langauge) of untangling clothes  
               from memories of sheets, (eyes the  
                imperfect mirrors) of ages spent sculpting  
                  flesh into memory (infinite curves, the hips,  
                   the back) of faded fingerprints on  
                 photographs stealing more  
               of our meat every time, but  
             we will never look (less  
           to forget) just slip in  
         more under clear  
       plastic & call it  
     even (all  
   for love)  


--------------------------------------------
Familiar Streets 
 
   by Joshua Corey 
 
 
Oak, I swear to God. I lived on Oak Street. 
Maple, Maple too, and Willow and Pine. 
On the new Oak Street there are just saplings 
In the sidewalk, stripped bare and scarred 
By the lash of autumn, a cold wind from 
Canada. (Toronto Street. There is no 
Toronto Street. No New York Avenue. 
No Rue de la San Francisco.) Do you 
Remember the old Oak? Is the veil made 
Of penetrable stuff? Then: Halloween. 
Stunned by Daylight Savings, the little kids 
Straggled from house to house dressed like zombies 
In the near black of six o' clock. No ghosts 
At that hour, but later, while the zombies slept, 
The moon rose and shone on the grid of hills 
And gravel valleys--rusting jungle gyms, 
Swing sets groaning in the wind, and dust devils 
Skittering across the schoolyard (dust: any 
Old matter: barn, dried blood, a spray of stones.) 
The dead leaves were crusted with silver, like 
Tissues discarded by angels, and the 
Dead grass ran yellow in the wind like a fire. 
 
From my window I saw, and imagined you 
Alive and lost, walking barefoot into 
November, blue nightgown flapping around 
Your ankles, having gained a witch's hour 
In the change of time to walk and brood 
In the old neighborhood where you became 
A mother. You walked backwards, cramming me 
Back into an egg--strode through your marriage, 
Stepped over your old job with the government, 
Past your Brooklyn childhood--all the way back 
To the resettlement camp in the Berlin 
Suburbs--to the day your father, twenty-six, 
Hustled home to the tiny flat with a 
Carton of cigarettes under his arm 
From the football game and exclaimed, "Tomorrow 
We are leaving for America!" in 
Perfect Yiddish. In the subsequent rack 
Of joy, you crept unnoticed to the yard 
Below, where the German autumn was in 
Full swing and the other children were shouting 
"America! America!" America 
Is the boulevard intersecting streets 
Named after General Eisenhower 
And President Roosevelt, shooting straight 
As an arrow towards the Aleksanderplatz. 
You don't know America. You don't know 
Your Brooklyn stepmother, your abortion, your 
Summer of love, or me. You are a child 
In a white dress turning slowly on your heel 
Like the ghost of a planet revolving 
Into cosmic dust. You run upstairs past your 
Parents, making love, to the flat of Frau 
Herschel--she lost six children and would welcome 
A seventh, you're certain. You knock on the door 
And wait, a bullet of hope in your heart. 
Please, you pray, take me in. Take me away. 
Take me home. But home 
                                      is the cratered 
Esplanade in Budapest. Home is the 
European streets of Brooklyn. Home is 
The Lincoln Tunnel and the road to Plainfield. 
Home is an endless stretch of grass and oaks 
And snow falling softly in the high fields 
Of New Jersey. But when the door opens, 
Finally, you forget all of this. You see 
Only dark eyes. Can l stay with you? Yes. 
It's November, and it's cold. Stay.  Please, stay. 
 


--------------------------------------------
Seascape 
 
   by Cedelas Hall  
 
 
With the strength 
of the moon 
pulling tides 
to the seashore, 
 
I long to pull  
you to me, 
let you wash over me, 
warm, foamy, 
salty seawater. 
 
But I lack the strength  
of the moon. 
Your love is not 
free flowing like the tide. 
More like the sand... 
stiff, slow moving 
withholding  
gritty comfort. 


--------------------------------------------
More Shades

   by Robert Menuet
 
 
Shrove Tuesday  
  
Subjects raise up greedy cries   
for plastic girl and boyment;  
a rain will come.  
 
 
Lent 
  
It's purple shrouds again,   
and clappers;  
He'll ransom captive Israel.  
 
  
Ash Wednesday  
  
Mumbling priest smudges   
wrinkled faces  
wearing the weight of palm cinders.  
 
  
Palm Sunday  
  
Last year's fronds lie still in cars,   
brown,   
forgotten like the One they honored.


--------------------------------------------
It Was You 
 
   by Patrice Elizabeth Natteel 
	murdered  February, 1996 
		age 16 
 
 
	Perhaps if we weren't far apart 
I could follow desire that burns in my heart 
I meant to say, "I love you," 
But said "Good-bye."  I hung up; 
You couldn't hear me cry. 
	I wanted to tell you 
What you meant to me 
Instead I let love die 
and friendship be. 
I tried to convince myself 
It was best,  
But my love, 
Just wouldn't rest. 
	I wish I were here 
to see you once more, 
To tell you it was you 
that I adored.


--------------------------------------------
Twin Sky Studios 
 
   by Duane K. Williams 
 
 
The soft color of butter melts onto canvas. 
Some days I squeeze out the orange of citrus sadness. 
My wrinkled tubes give birth to worms of color. 
The  slime of pasty paint makes the sky through my eyes  
more tangible; a cotton candy grasp into the stickiness of clouds. 
Finger painting the facade of this silver city, 
my tin hands are callous and mechanical. 
Underneath my fingernails the compact grittiness feels suffocating. 
 
Makes me want to clean myself of this town. 
 
 
Sweat sells; I'm the working inertia of a speeding rock. 
Sometimes I try to talk it out of shattering 
the targeted mirror. I wish there was a less damaging way to break through. 
 
 
The animated shadow's grey glide becomes still..... 
her silhouette a fixed pattern on the beige wall. 
My auburn-haired lover showers in the morning light of the 
naked studio window. As she peers down over the forty-eighth story view, 
the tips of her peach nipples press against the frigid glass. 
C H I L L S, like telephone lines of a current in motion running 
throughout her electrical emotions are calling, waking every nerve 
sleeping in the textured curves of her supple city. 
 
"What do you see?" I say, 
"I see rooftops and smoke pipes, a messy maze of fast forward 
ant-like lights," she rhythmically replies. 
 
Her baby lotioned body embracing me is a blanket of silent warmth. 
White feelings dive into pinkish hues when a heated breath mixes 
and mingles with lipstick rouge, when milky skin of her cheeks 
blush from caressing her into a smiling mood. 
In these moments I forget the cold, steel jaws of the city below us. 
 
 
Unfinished paintings wait around the spacious studio. 
The pregnant tubes of varied color birth are scattered among  
gallons of paint cans dripping prismed rays; 
from the brown tones of my skin, to the sun reflecting brightness of chrome. 
The morning movement of coughing cars breaks the purity of our 
healthy silence like the scuttle-butting of rainbow brushes 
muddle-puddling the clearness of turpentine.


--------------------------------------------
I wear white to your funeral 
 
   by Christine Trimbo 
 
 
I wear white to your funeral 
something satin like the cream lining your coffin 
lying smooth and cold against your starched arms. 
 
I waltz through black dress women, 
a dancing debutante whose coming-out-party 
came and went. 
 
The white-collared priest whirls me 
past a row of three somber women, 
legs crossed tight, 
a neat line of mourning chorus dancers. 
 
They have earned the right to wear black. 
Their cries rise above the drone of whimpers 
resurrecting the ghost of your living limbs. 
 
I luminate the pale light of an arctic sun 
casting a shadow, 
cooling your body, 
a shade to stain your blanched face soot. 
 
 
I wear my white alone. 
 
 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE POETS OF DESIRE STREET 
 

     Joshua Corey 

 
     Cedelas Hall is from Brookhaven, Mississippi.  Her chapbook
Before They Paved the Road recounts her experiences in that state. 
A writer/actress, she appeared as "M'Lynn" in "Steel Magnolias" at
LePetit Theatre du Vieux Carre. 
 
 
     Kevin Johnson, Piscean, enjoys Tequila under the stars and
writes  about the physiology of nothingness. 
 
 
     Barbara Lamont writes about fear. 

 
     Athena O. Kildegaard is a freelancer writer and mother and
makes time between for writing poetry. 
 
 
     Robert Menuet is a psychotherapist, marital therapist, and
clinical supervisor.  He is a former social planner. 

 
     Ray  McNiece 

 
     Patrice Elizabeth Natteel was a student. 
 

     Christine Trimbo lives in a house that once neighbored Degas' 
house. She has two bicycles but no cats. 
 

      Duane K. Williams is a 21 year old artist from New Orleans. 
Besides creating colorful images on canvas, he enjoys caressing 
kitty-cats and beating on drums;  he is most inspired when soaked 
in a musical sanctuary of candle-lit ambience. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ABOUT THE NEW ORLEANS POETRY FORUM



     The New Orleans Poetry Forum, a non-profit organization, was 
founded in 1971 to provide a structure for organized readings and 
workshops.  Poets meet weekly in a pleasant atmosphere to 
critique works presented for the purpose of improving the writing 
skills of the presenters.  From its inception, the Forum has 
sponsored public readings, guest teaching in local schools, and 
poetry workshops in prisons. For many  years the Forum  
sponsored the publication of the New Laurel Review, underwritten 
by foundation and government grants.

     Meetings are open to the public, and guest presenters are 
welcome.  The meetings generally average ten to 15 participants, 
with a core of regulars.  A format is followed which assures 
support  for what is good in each poem, as well as suggestions 
for improvement. In many  cases it is possible to trace a poet's 
developing skill from works presented over time.  The group is 
varied in age ranges, ethnic and cultural background, and styles 
of writing and experience levels of participants.  This diversity 
provides a continuing liveliness and energy in each workshop 
session.

     Many current and past participants are  published poets and 
experienced readers at universities and coffeehouses  worldwide.  
One member, Yusef Komunyakaa, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize  
for Poetry for 1994.  Members have won other distinguished 
prizes and have taken advanced degrees in creative writing at 
local and national universities.

    Beginning in 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum has 
published  a monthly electronic magazine, Desire Street, for 
distribution on the Internet and computer bulletin boards.  It is 
believed that Desire Street is  the first e-zine published by an 
established group of poets.  Our cyberspace chapbook contains 
poems that have been presented at the weekly workshop 
meetings, All poems presented at Forum meetings may be 
published in their original form unless permisssion is specifically 
withheld by the poet. Revisions are accepted until the publication 
deadline of Desire Street. Publication is in both message and file 
formats in various locations in cyberspace.

     Workshops are held every Wednesday from 8:00 PM until 
10:30 at the Broadmoor Branch of the New Orleans Public 
Library,  4300 South Broad, at Napoleon.  Annual dues of $10.00 
include admission to Forum events and a one-year subscription to 
the Forum newsletter, Lend Us An Ear.  To present, contact us 
for details and bring 15 copies of your poem to the workshop.  


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

COPYRIGHT NOTICE 

     Desire Street,  March,1996  Copyright 1996, The New Orleans 
Poetry Forum.  10 poems for March, 1996.  Message format:  14 
messages for March, 1996.  Various file formats.  

    Desire Street is a monthly electronic publication of the New 
Orleans Poetry Forum. All poems published have been presented 
at weekly meetings of the New Orleans Poetry Forum by 
members of the Forum.  

     The New Orleans Poetry Forum encourages widespread 
electronic reproduction and distribution of its monthly magazine 
without cost, subject to the few limitations described below.  A 
request is made to electronic publishers and bulletin board 
system operators that  they notify us by email when the 
publication is converted to executable, text, or compressed file 
formats, or otherwise stored for retrieval and download.  This is 
not a requirement for publication, but we would like to know who is  
reading us and where we are being distributed. Email:  
robmenuet@aol.com (Robert Menuet). We also publish this 
magazine in various file formats and in several locations in 
cyberspace.

    Copyright of individual poems is owned by the writer of each 
poem. In addition, the monthly edition of  Desire Street is 
copyright by the New Orleans Poetry Forum.  Individual copyright 
owners and the New Orleans Poetry Forum hereby permit the 
reproduction of this publication subject to the following limitations:

    The entire monthly edition, consisting of the number of 
poems and/or messages stated above  for the current month, also 
shown above, may be reproduced electronically in either message 
or file format  for distribution by computer bulletin boards, file 
transfer protocol, other methods of file transfer, and in public 
conferences and newsgroups. The entire monthly edition may be 
converted to executable, text,  or compressed file formats, and 
from one file format to another, for the purpose of distribution.  
Reproduction of this publication must  be whole and intact, 
including this notice, the masthead, table of  contents, and other 
parts as originally published.   Portions (i.e., individual poems) 
of this edition may not be excerpted and reproduced except 
for the  personal use of an individual.

    Individual poems may be reproduced electronically only by 
express paper-written permission of the author(s). To obtain 
express permission, contact the publisher for details.  Neither 
Desire Street nor the individual poems may be reproduced on
CD-ROM without the express permission of The New Orleans 
Poetry Forum and the individual copyright owners. Email 
robmenuet@aol.com (Robert Menuet) for details.

    Hardcopy printouts are permitted for the personal use of a 
single individual.   Distribution of hardcopy printouts will be 
permitted for educational purposes only, by express permission of 
the publisher; such distribution must be of the entire contents of 
the edition in question of Desire Street.  This publication may not 
be sold in either hardcopy or electronic forms without the express 
paper-written permission of  the copyright owners.



 FIN *********************************************** FIN

