Inscape 04 FINAL - Pasadena City College

He took the coffee — by now as cool as she,
he imagined — and poured it out. Not into her
lap, but onto her plate. The crumbs floated to
the top, danced there as he poured and poured.
Down a cascade off the edge of the plate they
fell, swirled like detritus in a river of pale
murk that progressed down the table, only to
drop off it in an aromatic estuary — one stream
softly pattering the floor and another her
knees.
“You’ve dirtied my bathrobe,” she said,
for a few square inches of fabric now caught
slick and damp.
And so he had.
S TEPHANIE S OLIS
Against
Teeth scratched each other.
I wrung my moist, engorged hands, as though
Expecting to twist water out of them
Like a laundress
Until finally, in defeat,
Streams of sweat forced themselves
Out against the dams
Of skin
And logic.
J OSEPH M ATTSON
Slam Drunk Superstar
just remember when the sky folds
and the empty hand of god
palms your skull like a
basketball,
with orange lights fading off in some
far, familiar distance,
with the memory of hot flowers and
black sunshine in your heart,
if you’ve made up the bed of regret
like you’ve made up the bed after a
woman whose legs are the legs that
make hercules weep, slinky as the
lips of heaven and so tender to touch
laying out your mistakes like a
hand full of thirty-eyed jacks,
then heel to the hunger
& if you’re still alive
and full of any kind of laughter
brother that’s done, that’s strength
you have there the right to go chase
silver jackasses into music like
tiny skies over
guatemala
even an ocean of dirty bathwater can
claim a certain serenity with the face of
six hundred blooming seahorses.
INSCAPE • 24 INSCAPE • 25