Featured Poet Elizabeth R. Curry Clytemnestra at 5 a.m. My head is wet with your tears my pelvic bones sore the sheets are like glue This is always the way the world begins Absence There is an empty stage where a short time ago leaves danced, evergreens pushed new needles forth, and flowers grew on forest floors. The singers have made their last curtain call, the loudspeakers in the lobby recording the fading sounds of once thunderous applause. * I go back to the prairie where oak leaves, shrivelled as with bone disease, rattle, very old with curved spines. I have made three bundles of pine needles, tied them with cattail reeds --They are the color of indeterminate spices of lacquer on ancient boxes, of glue on the backs of photos, of shrunken heads. * It is a season where life is still remembered: cicadas and tree frogs, feathers, furs: the time when we need a birth. Later when the oak leaves fall, when memory fails, Later there will be no need to recall life. And I will lie beside Absence, one with sleep. Blind Weaver Some tapestry, Tabriz or not, is woven in reverse of the weaver. She must see creation through mirrors, yet is confined to darkness, laboring at the birth of irony, tying forty thousand colored knots invisible, of fresh dark blood and air-blue clouds, of flesh like vellum cream and roselight quartz: there she tangles thoughts, deep in the body's night, and listens closely to the breath of stars and sounds of beating hearts. Eyes of Flesh When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the eyes of the spirit are open. --Willa Cather, O Pioneers! So she says. In my experience, the eyes of the flesh weep red tears, suppurate, create a seal for the spirit, that it may flicker, die in the heat of pain. I dreamed you shot up five times a day with help from your wife, making plans on paper, architect of your fate. as to what you were going to do with your fantasies, who would buy them, who would follow the maps you designed-- the tracks on your arms, each sore a city. These are the things you have done and I have seen. The eyes of the flesh are the only ones. Willow someone cried willow and the woman on the couch turned in her sleep dreaming of twenty years ago when the oak tree was first out in, a few rose-colored leaves and the sun was silver and the gold of the in-love where unicorns brushed flowers and pranced into seaform someone cried willow and the man with the smooth face and burning eyes stopped her mouth with a well-groomed hand, filled her body with the future they cried willow willow as the oak tree grew and in this final year old winter himself tattered like leaves lies down as she sees in the distance the blue of indeterminante forms willow dancing Assyrian lions hauling the lumber of oak, haunches flecked with foam and the jewls of willow leaves, topaz, lime green, and citron. Green Fuse, No. 19, Fall/Winter, 1993-94, 23.

Dr. Elizabeth R. Curry is a professor of creative writing and literature at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. She serves as faculty advisor for the University's literary magazine, Ginger Hill, which is currently celebrating its jubilee anniversary. The online version of Ginger Hill is located at Ginder Hill Since her first poetry publication at age 14, Dr. Curry's work has appeared in scores of publications such as Gaia, Taproot, The Widener Review, Oxford Magazine and international magazines such as Psychopoetica and Krax (U.K.). She has received numerous awards for her poetry, some of which include the Judges' Award for Poetry, Eve of St. Agnes Contest (honorable mention), Cloverdale (finalist) and first place for the Poets' Pen of California. Dr. Curry gives the following personal view regarding her poetry: Most of my poetry seems to be songs. _Not_ confessional. I prefer a certain control over emotions so that they may confront the reader but not overwhelm. Loveliness lies beside sadness.