A long time ago, in the ugliest strip mall in America, an earnest young man stormed out of the bookstore in which he worked, flung open the door to the record store down the way, and demanded of the bewildered owner to know why said owner had sold a good, if uptight, bookstore customer a certain compact disc which made reference, in one song, to anal sex. After all, the upright bookstore clerk had directed this customer directly toward the man's shop!

Well, some of us take a little longer than others to outgrow our high horses. Needless to say, the good clerk got over himself and found that he'd berated, but not offended, one of the finest, and most easygoing, specimens of humankind available. (Actually, "berated" might be too strong - Perry says I was very proper. I usually am.) And from such...odd beginnings, a fine friendship has arisen. And that offending CD? By Leonard Cohen, if you can imagine. Never, ever underestimate the power of uninformed vigor.

And so here we are with the second installment of the poetry contest funded by that little record store, now moved to much prettier digs in Key West - Rainy Day Records. I'd never considered running a contest through Gravity until Perry mentioned it, but the response last year was just short of overwhelming, and picking the winners almost impossible. This year, I'm lucky enough to have another friend, CK Tower of Conspire, as contest judge.

What, you just wanna know about the money, right? Oh, fine...;)

Top prize - $500
Second prize - $200
Third prize - $100
Send up to five poems (works previously published in Gravity and simultaneous submissions are ineligible, anything else ok) to submit@newtonsbaby.com with "Contest submission" as the subject - I will violently strip them of anything that might identify the author and forward them to CK. The deadline is September 1, 1999, and the winners will be published in the September/October issue.