€/i Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/ivyleaves1995unse Table of Contents Drawing 2 Drawing 3 But Towards Morning 4 Lilac Evening (for Jack Kerouac) 5 Photograph 6 Cuda Ambition, 1991 7 Grandmother's Home 8 Collage 9 Don Q 10 Drawing 15 To Myra 16 Separation 17 Sylvia's Fig Tree 18 Photograph 20 Painting 21 The Observer (or, a Nature Poem for Heather) 22 Photograph 23 Cheryl Harring Black & White Conte Crayon *.a;1i<^j j.'-« WM-:*'^. Brent Smith MixedMedia Drawing But Towards Morning The sunset drowns into the liquid sky, wetting the tops of the trees and extinguishing smoke on the horizon. For a moment it lights the distance with pinks, purples, and oranges then it fades into blues and blacks and bathes another day before putting it softly to bed. Such beauty wakes the wicked like the sanctity of a child when first fallen to evening slumber. With a rising and falling with each breath. Like the sun which barely sets. The night rests on. . . . Does it rise in east or in the west? Does it matter that it rises at all? Wake softly, child and tread the waters of a fitful, restless sun for it will drown as all the rest have done as it leaves with a breathless bow. — Teri Smith . Lilac Evening (forJack Kerouac) As darkness overcomes the eye that earlier watched the smoke crawl and curl from the last lingering cigarette; strange and ragged like the Prophet the sandman comes. . . . At lilac evening he slips through the damp which hangs thick and wet outside the window where the lights of 27th and Welton blink patterns of stop and go. . . . The beat of the last nightsong twists and fades like a kiss from the mouth of some painted angel with no name and a witch-doctor face of no nature. . . . into a cobwebby dream is heard the last breath of evening heavy with liquor and language that seems to rise and fall in sighs drunk with laughter. . . . The last scream is heard "Don't die and go to heaven, start in on Doctor Pepper and end up on whisky!" Then the sandman takes over bringing slumber from a tin-can or pouring it from a bottle like halcyon floating on nightwind on the senseless nightmare road . . — Teri Smith Angle Martin Photograph — ^Cuda Ambition, 1991 — And Gary sold the 'Cuda bought A yellow Porsche. guess he wants I To get a girlfriend now instead Of Mopar cars. On Friday nights. He goes to Whispers, drinking slow — And watching women women love Him, always have. He doesn't talk To Bent or Wesley anymore. Not since the wreck 12 years ago. I guess he wants a girlfriend since — The limp is almost gone not quite. He lives at home with his mom still. — That car the 'Cuda, not the Porsche Was great. Maroon with leather seats. . . . — Anna Whalen —— — Grandmother's Home (Dedicated to Mary Ellen Tysinger) I went there yesterday to the place that you loved so well. It was still pretty. The sunlight filtered through the trees dappled the clear water with gold, cut through the translucent liquid that spilled over the boulders before tumbling into the shallow pool below. The water flowed on, unchecked now by the dam we had built. The rocks lay scattered along the creekbed. The fortified wall now crumbled debris. I told the others that we would have to rebuild what the storm destroyed. They didn't seem to care. Unfamiliar children's laughter bounced off the rocks, and insects scurried to hide. I trudged back to the house stopping to relieve the overflowing mailbox of it's load 729 Rocky Bottom Rd. Sunset, S.C. the envelopes all read. The address permanently engraved in my mind never could remember I it until now. - Mary Nell Tysinger