~~~~~~SHELBY SUMMERS Subject: Re: missed you at the party. did you catch my email and call? Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 01:15:04 -0700 From: "Shelby Hertlein Summers" To: Here are a couple of my poems that were already typed. I am unable to transfer them with italics and underlines. so it goes Summer Harvest I feel the sun dragging its burning claws across my neck as it makes its daily rounds across the vacant sky. There is not a cloud to give me a moment of peace in its shadow. Only when the stars are real does the sweat cease to drip from my brow. Then I sleep through the night with the tail of a dolphin pressed between my legs hoping to relieve my fears of the bright morning which waits outside my door. The fields refuse go up in flame and leave me to my own desires. The wind only gusts through the day to tease me with the dust that collects into mud on my sweat glistened skin. I mean more to myself than the wage I earn. I mean less to the gaffer than the boots upon my feet. Each day is a brief moment in the same way that it is eternal. There will be no one to wait for me when the eastern sun falls to the western mound. The signal for the close of another page in the book that I no longer even bother to write. African Dust In the heat of the African serenity A woman gaspingly breathes She brings a child not into a land of divinity But one of hunger and disease The woman wails and screams and cries As the baby withers before her eyes And as this child’s life comes and goes The woman is once again taken by those Those who feel sexual pleasure Is all that remains But all that is seen is the birth Of another death Out on the African plains Narcissus in Glass The crystalline shards of glass Glistening in the morning light Catching reflections going past Show myself in reflective height Myself all rounded around In more reflections than I see So at last is come to found The one true lover of only me The harem of my reflections Has now begun to undress And open all the sections That toy with tenderness 100 Hands caress my skin And rub me softly hard Once I look I find I’m in One delicate glass shard The Box Do I dare open the wooden box on your yellow chest. I hear you in the kitchen splashing water over your face. Each drop washing away the kisses from last night. It is a small box that is neither new nor old. It sits timeless with brass hinges. I met her yesterday during the small time between day and night. She was sitting alone on the worn wooden bench beside the lake. The box is locked, but the key with its designed metal handle points towards me. She asked me about ducks. I told her that the drakes had turquoise heads. She laughed and said they looked as if they wore bright green hoods. I rise from your bed and walk over to the yellow chest. I run my fingers over the soft edges of the box. I can hear cups tinkling in the kitchen. We followed the stars back to her house. I told her that she had a red door. We arrived at the stoop. She had a maroon door, so she allowed me to enter. It was a lucky guess. I felt good. I turn the key and an audible click echoes inside the box. I lift the lid as you walk into the room with two cups of steaming tea and a biscuit cut in half. Valley of the Tiger in the valley where the tiger smiles children draw stormclouds in the sand beside a blue river of rain. damp winds pull outward from the mouth of a horizon painted with bamboo brush. Seasons the cackle of a gaggle of geese exploring the northern terrain signifies the seasonal change an Ice Princess dances on a frosty-thin white lake Offspring the pear tree drops her plump children to the ground where they roll and laugh between her grassy green toes The Weight of Rain The river moves turning back to breast and back again. The current pulls a blue velvet string of stories. Heroes and thieves glimmer in voices. Words whispering between the rocks. The sun reflects eyes in the foam as shy fish push tails against the flowing mirror. Spring paints the mountains green, and the river groans with the strain of its hands full of rain. M. Butterfly The opera sounds so sweet. She is who is a he becomes a she to sing with a woman’s voice. A fan brushes eyelashes onto her eyes. Blood taints the lips, and yet her pale white face reflects the man in her hands. Will she touch her red lips to his? Do his lips know that her lips are a his? Transformation of a butterfly. Limp green legs become painted wings and the further she flies the further he falls. Love wears a lady’s mask in a world where kisses taste sweeter than the voice, but only when illusion permits. When the mask falls beauty transforms into horror as the butterfly creeps back into her cocoon. White lips circle a red face begging blood to paint wings on the floor. The floor where her once delicate feet did dance beneath the tremor of what was once a woman’s voice.