Featured Poet: Judson Hamilton
Two Poems by Judson Hamilton
CELEBRITY SLUMBER (12)
The old fishing town was ill-lit with a lot of
Bauhausian architecture gone to rot; soot-stained
cubes with sickly yellow lit interiors. I saw her –
tall and lanky, step her way into a jazz club (for
which there were two entrances) I went around to the
other one and stooped to peep through a barred street
– level window, the interior bespoke warm summer
nights; honey-hued tabletops and tarnished candelabra;
diffused lighting. I didn’t see her. I backtracked
and peered through the other grating also to no avail,
I would have to enter, and did, to find her, Uma, in a
gauze-like yellow summer dress billowing as of its own
accord; flashes of hip bone, ribs and a goblin mask
atop all that. Grotesque but not without appeal.
CELEBRITY SLUMBER (13)
I was traveling across Europe and met up with some
others doing likewise. We decided to take a frolic in
the nearby woods. We settled around the campfire and
were just beginning the night’s celebrations when a
ring of soldiers appeared from the woods, enclosing
us. We were spared the cattle cars, but transported
to Stalin’s summer camp. We were held loosely captive
(his iron fist having grown limp with time) our
greatest deprivation was having no access to beer,
computers or self-help magazines.
Red propaganda blared from speakers but none of us
could understand it anyway and you soon got used to
it. But after a couple of months I began to resent
this pseudo-communist hippy camp; the bribing of the
guards with baseball signals, the casual sex in the
bunk-bed barracks, the nausea brought on by a constant
smell of pecuilli and reckless youth. I bribed my way
out one night and found my way to a computer nestled
in a hollowed out oak tree. From there I wrote my
mother all about Uncle Joe.
That night I was seated next to him during our
communal dinner on a long wooden bench. He sat
impassively throughout the dinner, and afterwards,
while the others were all doing vodka body shots.
Suddenly he lashed out – putting me in a headlock. His
grip tightened slowly. The others laughed and the
festive atmosphere continued as his grip
tightened...slowly, I looked into his eyes – there was
nothing jovial about them.
Fall 2007 Poetry
.ETCETERA by Ron Miraflores
Featured Poet: Judson Hamilton
Editor’s Choice: Michael Ogletree
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING by Patricia
Fillingham
PAMONA HILLS by Daniel Wilcox
YOU AND LANGSTON HUGHES by Rosemary
Pennington
QUIET ASYLUM by Candy Tothill
THE TRAVELER AWAKES. HER TRAIN AWAKES
by Nick Courtright
DYING ALONE by Helen Peterson
THE LIE by Daniel S. Irwin
NEWSPAPER PHOTOS OF THE BROKEN WORLD by
Donna Munro
OCCUPIED TILL I DIE by J. Alan Nelson
BECAUSE LOVE IS LIKE THE SHORTEST DAY by
Dave Migman
YOUR EYES ARE by Jennifer Bowles
OF BEAUTIFUL SOULS by David McLean
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