The Stranger
by Janet Hanna
As you stepped from the train,
your dress billowed out
in the underdraft
Your arms were bare
and white
against the dark
background of the coach
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Falling Off the Cliff
by Janet Hanna
In the evenings,
on alternate Tuesdays,
in neat, even rows,
Old Mike would arrange the chairs,
borrowed from Greenlawn Arms,
and the townspeople would come
to watch her fall off the cliff.
Each Tuesday she would wear
a different color scarf
as a kind of cape.
But the black jumpsuit
and the ballet slippers
were always the same.
The Pomegranate
by Janet Hanna
Demeter could be demanding
In her sloe-eyed witchcraft ways,
Always threatening to dry up the spring rains
Or divert Zephirus’ warm breath.
You never knew from one year to the next
If she could be trusted to give the pomegranates juice
Or make the sap in the fig trees run.
But then her belly grew ripe
Like the oval melons she nourished,
And all the islanders wondered
What horny Olympian or rough farmer
Had placed his hands on her thighs.
There were wagers, of course.
Siphnos’ patriarchs put their entire fields of grain
Against Crete’s annual venison run
That she’d been coupled by Apollo.
On Santorini they whispered dirty jokes
And the Athenians sent an envoy to Delphi
To seek the ancient wisdom of the old woman
With dried milk on her breasts who sat chewing
Juniper berries in her steamy rock.
Odysseus' Arrival
by Janet Hanna
The jewelled grotto sparkles
Where clear, icy waters spray
The deep green ferns and
Thick, spongy mosses.
Overhead a shaft of warm sunlight
Falls willingly on sweet, purple grapes
That hang in clusters
from their strong vines.
Calypso's Defiance
by Janet Hanna
I sang the eternal song of desire
And made him rich with my gift.
I sweetened his days with crumbcakes and wine.
At night, I made him forget
His barren, rock-strewn Ithaca.
Who breaks the Jungian code of silence is punished.
My head is shaved,
My man torn from me,
My mantle, which you willed me, shredded and cursed.
I pay for your maleness, Zeus, with my womb.
Grace
by Alma Johnson
Read: 2 Corinthians 12:9
“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
The Dying Child E-Mail Scam
In the last week alone I’ve been sent no less than five pleas in e-mail from a dying child. These messages don’t come from the dying child directly, they come forwarded from some of my best and closest friends. These friends are well educated (one is a PhD at a major New York university), another is rich and savvy (a CEO of an international corporation), while another is online smart (works for an internet PR firm).
Hoax On Your Heart
The problem with these well-intentioned friends of mine is that they are being duped into a hoax and a scam. The hoax is perpetrated upon the goodness of their hearts. The scam comes when they quickly give over personal information for the sake of a dying child when they would never give that data to a complete stranger who asked them directly.
It’s funny that I never get “help this dying child” messages from my cranky, unkind, crabby-ass online friends — only the sweethearts get drawn in — and that’s a big loss, because their good hearts have been tested and tainted by the ill wind of bad intentions and that’s the greatest death of all. I mourn the inevitable cynicalization of their goodwill.
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