Kev's Picks For The Best Of The Best Of Issue Two

 Kev's Picks For The Best OF The Best For Issue Two

     I truly believe we had a great issue, and all of the work within was good, but there were some pieces that I really like. I wanted to share them with you. Here they are:

WHITMAN

Good Old Walt Whitman,
He Brought Oranges
To The Freshly Bleeding Boys
Just Off The Battlefields
Of Northern Virginia.

He Put Cold Washclothes
On Their Foreheads,
And Listened Endlessly,
To Their Stories
Of Mother And-
The Corn Coming In
(this while the sepsis and gangrene set in)

Yup,
Good Old Whitman,
He Was Always Holding
America's Hand.

He Saw It All;
From California,
To Alaska,
To The Man
On the Moon,
His Poetry Had Us,
In It's Wide Open Arms

Now, It's A Truism,
That The Undeserved
Are Overly Rewarded
In This Life
(with the converse holding naturally)

So, It's No Wonder,
That Walter Passed Away
All By Himself,
In A little Room,
Of Camden, New Jersey.

There Was No Nice Husband There,
To Hold His Hand
When His Breath Went
Out On The Wind

Good Old Walt Whitman,
We Wish He Was Here To Thank
In The Flesh,

~Dan Gross~


Innocent Little Girl



Innocent Little Girl
So naive and so young
Didn't know her misery had begun
When a stranger changed her life one day
While he thought, 'well, this is going to be fun'
Innocent Little Girl
So sweet but so stupid
Met a boy as naive and young as she
But little did she know
A demon in disguise was he
Innocent Little Girl
So pure but inexperienced
What she wanted was love
What he wanted was fun
And before she knew it
The Deed was done
Innocent Little Girl
So broken and hurt
Suddenly saw her heart in the dirt
Where the boy had left it for all to see
She wanted to be loved but didn't know her soul was the fee
Innocent Little Girl
So angry and full of hate
She went out to find him and end his fate
Bound, gagged and tied up real good
Was thrown in the basement without water or food
I screamed,
Innocent Little Girl
Have you lost your head?!
By early morning's light, he will surely be dead!
She smiled quite wide as she look to the floor
"I guess I'm not that innocent anymore."


~Fiorella Arrunategui~

The Fetish

I want the world to go away. She dances under my bedroom window every night. Some nights she’s more roused than others. I know that others can see her, and I want the rest of the world to go away. I want her to dance only for me, but I realize that’s impossible. Yet I find some comfort in the fact that they love her in a pure, non-carnal way. Unlike myself, you see. I love her so impurely that it borders on obscene. Some would say it is obscene...this love I have for her. Sadly, they would say it’s obscene only because of who I am, and what she is.


There must have been a full moon the night it first began, although I’m not certain. Lying in bed, enduring yet another sleepless night, I found it odd that my bedroom was so illuminated, it seemed as if fifty invisible candles were burning.


Tossing and turning, thinking and hoping. Hoping to just close my eyes and fall asleep. My memories taking me back to when I was a small child. I was such a peaceful sleeper that I would awake in the morning in the same position that I fell asleep in. Nine or ten hours of undisturbed sleep later, I would rise, with a smile on my face and full recollection of my dreams. Wonderful, colorful dreams of running through blossom-studded fields and then spreading my arms and soaring ten feet off the ground. And then there were the trees. I always dreamt of trees as a child. Climbing and more climbing. The trees of my dreams surged one hundred feet or more into the sky, and I scaled them with ease, feeling every inch of the rough bark on my bare soles. I would sometimes awaken with tiny cuts on the bottom of my feet, but I would convince myself they were caused from walking around the yard barefoot.


All I was left with now were sleepless nights and yearnings. I yearned, yet did not know for what. That’s the thing that tortured me the most. For how could I fulfill my desire when I did not know what I desired? The answer came to me that freezing, end of March-night. I desired her. It was a yearning that I had to fulfill.


There she was. She spoke to me without words. Danced for me without music. Reached for me without arms. Right there outside my bedroom window. The light of the moon frolicked on her limbs. Every reflected beam was like a wink across a room intended for a soon-to-be lover. The dance she danced was so slight yet so sensual. Barely moving yet it was a wild dance. She danced only for me, it seemed. Surely many other men had been attracted to her before me, I presumed. Yet in my mind, I and I alone deserved her. They all had their normal, sleep-filled lives. Perhaps most were married, in love, had children. They did not need her or want her the way I did. Therefore, she had to be mine.


In the realization of my fetish, I felt so sick and abnormal. How could I lust after her? Although I had read nothing describing my adoration of her as a fetish, I wanted to wear this branding...this badge of having a fetish, around my neck for the rest of my life. Like a pyromaniac or a pedophile, I justified it. The yearning was so strong that I had to give in. I justified it by thinking that I wasn’t hurting anyone. For in my lust for her, she would not be hurt. She could feel no physical or psychological pain, you see.


So there I lay. Every shimmy and quiver she made compelled the moonlight to blink off my window. I could hear the wind whispering, but it sounded as if she was moaning. I wished it were true, and therefore, it was. One thing I knew for sure was that the yearning was mutual. In my mind, at least, she wanted me just as much as I wanted her.


I didn’t fall asleep that night until the sun began to rise and night turned into day. Once the sun began to twinkle onto her limbs, she seemed like a child to me. Off-limits to my sick fetish. I would not, and could not, subject her to my compulsion in the daylight. She would have to be my night lover only, for my desire waned once the sun ascended into the sky.


A few evenings later, and hours before our imminent consummation, my breathing became deep and almost guttural. Pacing around, and long, ice-cold showers that numbed my fingertips and toes could not put an end to my arousal. Nightfall could not come fast enough. If given the option, I would have gladly forsaken the sun forever, if only the twilight would arrive immediately.


Mother nature was my cohort that night. Although according to the calendar, spring officially began days before, it was a bitterly cold end of March evening that entered the record books. This hopefully ensured virtually empty sidewalks and streets. I wore a dark-blue cashmere pullover with nothing underneath, and a pair of overly-worn, soft as felt, button-fly jeans. My fingers quivered so much that it took me more than ten minutes to fasten all the buttons. I theorized that this was the least amount of clothing I could get away with, given the temperature, without seeming downright loony if spotted on the street by a passerby.


Making my way down the corridor of my building toward the door leading outside at 3:15 A.M., I didn’t even know what I would do, exactly, once I got to her. Like a mother reaching out to hold her newborn baby, still covered in greasy vernix, or a fly committing suicide in a bowl of scrumptious syrup, I just knew that my actions would come naturally. Without thought, planning or consequence, and definitely with the promise of pure bliss.


Once outside, I immediately spotted her.

Her long, naked branches resembled the limbs of an unusually lanky, angelic looking young girl, undoubtedly destined to become a fashion model. I took a quick glance upwards and to my right to look at my bedroom window. Until then, I had only pined over her through that glass pane, thirty feet above. A quick roll of my eyes, left, then right, established the fact that the sidewalk was devoid of people. As I approached, a short and frigid burst of wind bent one of her lower limbs downward and I was instantly overwhelmed with desire, as it was apparent that she was eagerly reaching down towards me.


I rubbed the back of my right hand gently across the lower part of her trunk. Her bark was gorgeously caramel-colored and rough. How on earth, I asked myself, could any man, including myself, ever have been turned on by moist, smooth flesh, or warm, wet kisses? At this second, a human woman’s warm, soft flesh seemed as repulsive as the bloody side of a freshly stripped piece of animal skin, and human female lips, like two plump, pink maggots.


Her dark, hard roughness added a welcome sensation to my mushy cold skin. In one smooth downward motion, my hand turned around so that my palm was now caressing her. After several seconds, my left hand came up and wrapped around her waist, which was slim and couldn’t have been more than seventy centimeters around. Holding on tight, I pulled myself close to her and pressed my chest into her lovely brown bark. The delicate fibers of the cashmere locked into the jagged furrows of her body. I could not detach myself from her even if I wanted to, it seemed, for each and every minuscule curl of goat wool had latched itself onto her tiny jutted bark imperfections.


In my newly twisted psyche, she was a warm-blooded, breathing, panting being. I turned my head and pressed my left cheek into her. Like a child making bark rubbings with tracing paper and pencil, I pressed long and hard until I was sure an impression was made onto my flesh. Our embrace lasted five to six minutes and it was enough to seal our love.


My lover is a Honey Locust. Deciduous by nature, our affair began that cold, end of March night, when she was still in her bare stage. As I made my way back to the entrance of my building that night, I became quite giddy with the thought of what striking beauty she would present to me in the warmth of spring, when her light green buds would burst forth and tease me with every night-time rustle, seemingly whispering my name. I was sure it would be— and it was—intoxicating.


~Gina Delorenzo~

This is something that both Brian and I agree is one of the best of the best!


Me


On the runway of life
when I’m shaken me off balance,
I want to be embraced
by the loving arms of a man
who won’t ask me to be
what he needs,
he lets me exist as I am,

The free spirit of a lioness,
a tempting seductress,
a passionate artist
with an unquenchable exuberance
for living life to the fullest.

Will reality and imagination
combine into a jigsaw puzzle
of unmatched pieces?
Or, will the vivid pictures
in his mind spur the tranquility
of this reality?

One thing’s for sure,
this you will see,
as I strut down life’s runway
I’ve got to be me!

Bonnie Martha Moret