In The Gallery

She sits
on the cool brown leather bench,
touching the colors
Watteau dreamed,
feeling the lace that runs
like cream
across her skin, smelling
the flowered swings,
the faint perfume
of far off gardens,
hearing the laughter . . .
hands on her stomach as it growls,
she's fighting hunger
until
closing time.

The Hood

It all started so gentle
with a corner store selling everything --
a chaw or frills for the ladies, a barrel
of pickles to dip into while one
dipped into conversation and kids
sucked on hoarhounds as they raised the dust
from the plank floor
just like another store a mile down the rutted road
selling the same, smelling the same, looking
the same gentle look at the world, both
soon surrounded by houses that grew and gabled
and gingerbreaded into a
town
birthing foul carbon-spitting factories, bleak-faced
mills that rumbled like mean thunder on hot summer days,
disgorged silent slack-faced workers into a
city
crackling with neon at night, shouting
ROOMS . . . NAKED GIRLS . . . XXX
frills hanging off the bodies of bitter-mouthed
women hanging on the arms of men who would rather
use their fists than their tongues and won't
remember the sights, the sounds, the smells
in the morning
and down the dingy half lit streets
under the eyes of sad
gable and gingerbread, the children
are wandering away
you can buy <anything >
at the corner store.

It's A War Out There

I give my change to the street kid (barely a child)
clad in Salvation Army handouts,
her life a burlap bag of memories and worn blankets.
Her shy back hugs the hotel wall, thin shoulders
edge away from touching.
Sad kitten eyes will not play my game (no thanks/no pity)
they see this day and no more,
the coins and I exist as seconds of near past, near
enough to have no surface of pain attached.
I walk away quickly, my body pulling free
from armed invasions of other soldiers of misfortune,
my mind expanding out to touch her reasons
for choosing this life of begging change by day and
begging life by night (over what?)
. . .the unwanted civilian casualty of the what that came before
. . .a battle bruised the tissues of her lies
. . .force marched to the beatings of a different drummer
(no food for thought in that Mess)
And now (the Uncle Sams) the pimps, the pushers, the beggars,
the children who bear their pain in togetherness,
want <her.>

The Mouth of Darkness

The wind breathes chill tonight
and leaden clouds
suck in the belly of the sky --
but Rose dreams of summer dresses
pink
and pin-prick points
of diamond sky
orchids
and sunsets
all colored
like the bruises
on her arms.

Zombie

They're giving me the fish eye
as I come in the fusty dump
too white-tongued thirsty
to give a damn
and the old man at the door --
name's Mojo or something --
whispers who I am.
A morgue would be happy
with
this
silence.

Joy Hewitt Mann has been publishing for several years in the print media, in such magazines as Amelia, Cosmic Unicorn, Bardic Runes and On Spec. She published a story in Jackhammer in March and in 13thStory in April, and had a fantasy posted at Storyteller UK. This is all such a kick for her. She loves the speed, even of rejection. When not writing she runs a junk store. Box 168, Spencerville, Ont., K0E-1X0 Canada

Email: Joy Hewitt Mann

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