Give me another glass - who do the speaking -
I've look'd for Secret Rites from zone to zone;
High grades and orders answer to my seeking,
But there's no Warrant and Diploma
Which bears the incense sweetness and aroma
Of Runymede's - my first, my very own!

......from Ode to Welcome by A.E. Waite















Here am I - my name is Waite,
Rosicrucian up to date,
One hot night I had a dream,
Dreamt I swam in Malted Cream.

G.S. Beeching (1907)

Felicia Florine Campbell

The Blind Cab Driver

I hate it when they make me ride with the blind cab driver.

Jafra and Rahman pinch me and call me a coward. I cry, and mother gets that look around the mouth that means I am a great disappointment to the family.

Because I am the oldest, I can remember when most of the worktypes could see. The few who escaped the blinding were mostly trusted pets who had been with families for a long time. They trained the blinded ones afterwards.

Mother gets angry when I say that I hate the blinding, because I am supposed to understand that we would have lost all the worktypes if we hadn't found a way to make them need us back. She said that they thought they were tired of taking care of us, so we had to find a kind way of making them stay.

The blinding didn't hurt the worktypes. They just looked at a bright light for a few seconds and then they couldn't see. After that they didn't want to run away any more. Mother says that they don't mind being blind, that they don't have real feelings.

I don't believe her. The cab driver used to smile and wink at me.

He is so handsome that I used to dream of making him my prince; now he doesn't smile and won't answer when I speak to him.

I hate it when they make me ride with the blind cab driver.

...Felicia Florine Campbell is Professor of English at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She is also Executive Director of the Far West Popular and American Culture Associations and edits The Popular Culture Review. In addition to her contributions to Danse Macabre 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, and 14, Dr. Campbell is also working on an authoritative edition of popular culture scholarship in an undisclosed location. A Wisconsin native, she now lives in Blue Diamond, NV, just around the corner from Minderbender, from where she writes.

Justin Irrizary

Tetragrammaton

The stars

Have already been

Used,

And still we ebb

Like distance.

From where

We

Were,

Growing

Like dandelions

In granite,

The clouds

Looked as if

Made

of bone.

but

only

Silence

is certain.

If It

Were my

Question

I would

answer

It

with a question.

...Justin Irrizary writes from beautiful downtown Denton, Republic of Texas, where he is working on an MA at one of the local joints. Danse Macabre welcomes his double-space to our pages.

Taylor Collier

Hearsay

My Aunt's
husband's cousin's
sister's friend,
whose boyfriend lost
his left arm in Iraq,
told me her friend's
second cousin's uncle

from the other side
(the one she slept with
at that family reunion)
knew a guy who
had been working
at the psych ward
in Glendale back
in ninety-six,

and his friend,
the one who usually
worked the night shift,
was the first person
to find the former host
of the game show,
Family Feud,
in his closet,

broke in early June,
with a bed-sheet
noose strapped
taught around his neck.
Said he never
told a lie.

...Taylor Collier is a recent graduate of Texas Tech University. His poetry has appeared in The Oklahoma Review, Big Tex[t], AntiMuse, and SNReview, while his fiction can be seen in Bewildering Stories, Cherry Bleeds, Zygote in My Coffee, and Main Street Rag. Born in Lubbock, Taylor now lives in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex.

J. M. Bauge

Generations
After Terrence Hayes


I come from a long line of women who collapse into self
who know of potato peels and black shoes.
The eldest daughter born into distance, frailty
and the shape made by a thumb and forefinger before the pinch.
I come from random acts of isolation and carnival tunes;
from a woman who wrung chickens’ necks
and placed hot bricks in beds of cold sheets, told
her granddaughter, zimno, cold, before climbing in.
I believe in the vaulted ceiling of nothingness and a bedroom
full of woe where harborless winds dwell and a vortical
memory feeds. One summer I used a ladder to escape
that room. I battled the jaws of that house,
climbed through the skin of a window and descended
into night air painted by the smells of chlorine and beer.
I took the ladder and carry it forward in search
of fire, redolent of pine and rising. I come from pignuts gathered
by my own hands, broken locks and gypsy moths
chewing their way through earth, as determined as any
to get across, get done, get reborn. I come from hands
held high in ecstasy and a mother obsessed
with the white lengths of cloth that roll
from heaven, from winter, from God. Tell me what she said
about the glacier stuck in her eye. I will not find myself there.
I will not hammer the edge of infinity to extend it
another inch. It is everywhere and I am a bit of nothing
lodged in matter. I come from nothing and to nothing I want to go.

...hailing from Massachusetts, J.M. Bauge received her Bachelor's at Lesley University, Cambridge MA. Danse Macabre welcomes her to our pages.

Robert David Michael Cerello

At long last...

my own power has worked on me
What this world's mights combin'd could not
effect--
A change profound. So clearly have I seen,
I utterly abhor now and pacify
The lure of any compromising (with
Such forces as afflict my liberty).
I will not take one second's time as gift
From those whose symbolisms made
long years to me
A bitter sentence, an enduring care.
Nor will I feel ambivalence, nor record,
Nor seek accomodation, nor fraught,
Nor think to surrender to Earth's closely-read men--
Postmodernism's tsars. I stand self-wrought:
One horseman--but Time's eternal recorder!

...Robert David Michael Cerello is an Objectivist philosopher, author and sonneteer presently dividing time between San Diego, CA, US and Budapest. He writes voluminously on movies, economics, theater, psychology, ancient history, and enjoys creating new songs, perfecting new recipes, reading, walking, world travel, not to mention guaranteeing his placement on NSA watch-lists with his irredentist views. He's pretty much been in every issue of Danse Macabre.

Elizabeth I. Riseden

Go Down, Moses

ITEM: 30 Aug 2005 New Orleans Times-Picayune reports levee-strengthening funds diverted to Iraq War.

A man’s body face-down, bloat
attacks his mocha skin
a trumpet gripped in his clawed
left hand.
Particolored timber shreds like
pickup sticks hold him
in twisted embrace.
The saints march out
by thousands,
hundreds of thousands
to lesser places or
Glory.
Who
sends them off?

A Wild Mouse car,
blown from Ponchartrain Park, lodges
rear first in the roof
of an ersatz plantation house
skewed ninety degrees
on its foundation,
skinny columns twisted toothpicks.
Live oak branches stripped of leaves
push two dogs’ carcasses against the upper
floor’s blank-eyed window frames.
Calliope from the River Queen
shrills this once-Southern Comfort
steam piping raucous
comic scream.

The mind’s eye reconstructs another August
day on Ponchartrain’s limpid
banks of St. Augustine.
The black limo driver, arrow lean, soldier
correct, dignifying his starched white coat
serves sixtyish
girls martinis on an arty etched silver tray,
their white hair lacquered to cotton
candy sculptures, pale dimity dresses
stiffened against humidity.
It’s nine a.m.
Grand time to play bridge,
notice gas flares
burn off excess energy, coo over friends’
passing sail boats, gliding
Old, old tune,
flat notes still sung.

Bature
Bayou
Tranoss
Channel
Canal
Locks
River
Levee
Prairie
Swamp
Moss
Lake

smudged together, distinctions wrecked.

Rampart Street?
Look down in the foul flood at St.
Roc Market’s
snakes, coons, possums, gators
drowned, twisted,
in their cages.
These ghosts scream mute world’s
passing, where any damn thing makes tasty
gumbo or etoufet
keeps ribs covered in the Big Easy.
Go Down Moses
Go Down to Egypt Land
Tell Ol’ Pharaoh---
where should your people go?

Irish Channel?
Starving feral dogs, cats
motley rags clog a tenement’s flanks, tell tales---
somebody appearing like somebody’s ghost
to somebody.

A one year old’s body
white as a carp’s belly
stares, irises clouded, Mama
gone. Water laps, not a tide
too laden
with shit, soil feeding this diseased orchid.
A Peruvian flute’s wail
child puking
lukewarm water’s sough,
too crap filled to splash.

Visions of French Market Coffee au lait,
beignet with powdered sugar
shimmer behind eyes too teared out.
Enraged.
Looting fills emptiness. Barter.
Yearning for muffaletta
crabs on newspaper, thick
jambalaya of coot
smothering pecan rice,
stuffed artichokes, plain oysters
on the half shell---never mind Rockefeller or Bienville
just simple, on po boy loaves
with a little garlic in the butter.
Such visions drive the abandoned to distractions.
Remembrance of odors
stymied by filth.

Putrid, mutant the exploding
bacteria soup, virus stew
culture late August’s fecundity.
Strangling excrescent
heaviness at this End.
Petrochemical soufflé
nourishes organisms,
mega-slurry
mad alchemist’s ecological experiment
wrecked drinking water long ago.
Moog-synthesized eulogy.
Vibes for lazy Heaven, fulgent with ferment.
Ravenous.

Neglect seemed
easy.
Payoffs usual
Big
Easy
ultimate semitropical
daily bread
laid back
now revealing
screaming despair.

...Elizabeth I. Riseden is a Nevada native and third generation resident of Ely, Nevada. One of the fine Ash Canyon poets, Liz has recently completed an eastern Nevada-centered memoir. Her poetry has recently appeared in Tattoo Highway as well as Danse Macabre 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, and 14. Now semiretired, she laughs often, cries little, and enjoys her Carson City home with its Sierra panorama, alpine meadow and plentiful wildlife; her family, and exotic travel. One of the fine Ash Canyon poets, Liz has recently completed an eastern Nevada-centered memoir.