Issue 12, October 1997
Dancing Bear - 3 Poems

She carves spirals in her tattering
Notebook with a ball-point pen
From a distance they look like 
Bullet holes,  coffee cup 
Stains form dingy half moons
Turned into manic smiley faces
"I [HEART] (a hundred
Scratched out names)" scribbled
In many different inks
Like a life’s work
She has a twitch or tic like
A wildness tugging her face
She tosses a smile that hits
Me like a drop from 
A water torture machine
Hungry flames licking the
backs of her eyes
I know that this is trouble
Even as my mouth 
Opens to introduction
Even as I burn my hand touching hers
I glance down at her notebook
Noticing she has crossed out the 
Last hearted name

I’ve run my finger over the grout of 
All these downtown brick facades
Till it bleeds
I’ve counted all the cracks in the 
Sidewalk while stepping on each 
Smiling a rhyme
I’ve watched my stranger’s reflection
In storefront glass as I drag my bloody
finger over

All these things I did saying your name
Hoping to bring you back, so I could yell at 
You, because I was too shocked to do so then

A chess piece slides 
Across a scratchy board
I stare at the sky
Thinking of earthquakes
It is like that sometimes
-Looking for that nameless 
Cloud-that shape
The one seen last time the
Ground pushed us around
It’s belly rumbling
Out the deeper reasons

Maybe the weight of a chess piece
Shifting across a board
Is all it takes
To change the weather