Pearl River Community College's award winning literary magazine

Special Edition—Spring-Summer 1998

Poetry Section

Michael McAndrew

Repentance in Licorice and Navy
 

In the lonely dried out morning
She claws herself awake
Gasping, choking for her existence
She dreams that she is still asleep.
She is awake in her nightmare and
She sees him in the closet,
Behind the bed,
Under the covers.
She recalls the long, slow flinch.
The searing hot smell of the coffee
Burning her chest and eyeballs; flung
From his hurling hand
With absentminded rage. His love
For her knew no bounds, he had said
From the cornered, caged, and
Beaten existence of their marriage.
His demons said otherwise.
 

Speakeasy
 

How cold the sound was
As it spasmed forth from his lips
Harsh, chill voice strangling
Killing it as it pitched headlong
In a trailing death shriek
Down to the frozen driveway
Exploding its icy entrails of tone and timing

The moment was immortalized
On the walls of the fortress that was his heart;
But his words sliced with deadly precision hers,
Vulnerable in its cage.

Her mouth drew back into an anguished grimace
And her eyes slumped to the ground.

But as both stood motionless
As both stood bleeding
She from her heart
He from his mouth
A tear
Escaped her eye.

His fortress was washed away
Like sand in the tide.
 

The Search for a Scapegoat
 

Broken ice slides jarringly
In frozen splinters ripping
Silently my lungs, Tearing
My swift, sharpened tongue down
To pierce my tender soul:
Goring my heart with my own words.

She bit her trembling
Lip tightly, embarrassed by her pain.
The dim light shimmered in her
Puddled eyes and tears began
To bleed down her quivering cheeks,
Flowing slowly into my beating wound and
Burning out my shallowness.

And I am ashamed.

I think, "Her smile is intoxicating
And I've had too much to drink."