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Issue # 8 September 2012
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

JB Mulligan


 

School Dance

Tsunamis of blood rise, exploding in foam
behind the ember eyes and the dull sunglasses.
Restless, feral, in jackets and ties, in frocks
their mothers helped pick out, behind the veils
of jokes and songs and languid conversations,
the nomads, the sweat-glazed packs,
small tribes settled in at ribboned tables,
all circle stealthily about the empty spaces,
caverns of dreams, hot breath, an isolation
polar-cold and-dark, and dense as stone.

"Animals," the teacher mutters, grinning,
tethered in age, his beastly urge
reduced to absently shifting his crotch with his hand.