ISSUE 7
Last Updated: 15 April 2005

Poems from REAL
Stephen Ratcliffe

11.18
Red-orange flower on far side of green passion
vine-covered fence, the green tree frog backed
into triangular wedge of the grey rock leaning
against window.  Man in the green shirt's dream
of pulling the bedcovers all the way back, woman
putting new blue and green pictures on the wall
above the sink.  Bold red lips and teased hair
of woman deciding outcome of Florida election,
silver-haired man in hooded green sweatshirt
who's heard she used to be a chicken dancer.
Man in grey turtleneck looking down at red
orange circle on the dark blue sea where a white
shark has hit a seal, the man in a black sweater
feeling his pants wetting.  Pair of still purple
thistles to the left of man in the red jacket's
blue jeans, breeze coming up on still wet back
of neck.
 
 
11.19
Bowl of less than half moon in pale blue of sky
adjacent to a long thin pale white cloud, sound
of jet black crow flapping above cypress branch
below it.  The man with a barrel chest dropping
in on a long board, leaving charcoal self-
portrait on piece of driftwood leaning up
against the silver-haired man's green pack.
Vice President Gore in white shirt and blue-
striped tie delivering presidential-sounding
sound byte, George W. Bush behind the blacked-
out windows of an SUV arriving at gate of state
house in Austin.  Blond woman's dream of the man
in the corner facing her, other man telling him
not to go back.  Swell dropping at Point Arena
to 5 feet at 20 seconds, the grey-striped cat
stopping in a patch of sunlight on its way
across the still wet bricks.
 
 
11.20
Short parallel strokes of grey cloud in the sky
perpendicular to line of the ridge, which begin
to turn pink and white as sky changes from blue-
grey to blue then bluer.  The blond woman forced
to take time off after eight cases of pneumonia
in a year and a half, thinking back to the man
in the red jacket bailing out a flooded house
with a bucket.  The painter on the telephone
wanting to get an effect of light he cannot
actually explain, something about the illusion
of light on pair of tracks curving to the left
of a massive corrugated metal wall.  The short-
haired girl boarding a train for Manhattan at 2
AM, not getting back home to Brooklyn until 4.
'X' of jet trails crossing in pale blue sky,
buff tones of the apparently vertical cliff
reflected in motion of opaque plane below it.