PERJURY AND PENANCE
by John Bennett

There've been trying times and toxic times and time-bomb times, quirky quivers in the sagging flesh, failing fingers on an age-spot hand, trembling blindly down the ridges of the wart-infested face of doom; fiendish times, frenzied times -- the stiletto handshake, the fey-smile back stab, joshing for position in a better world to come, not too far ahead now, just around the bend on the far side of commercial break.

Queens humping horses, a seventy-year-old Marquis de Sade fucking a fish monger's daughter, a president getting blow jobs in an oval office, a country in an uproar of what it thinks is indignation -- lack-lust imaginations chained and sodomized in a short attention span.

Perjury and penance. America ready to shoot herself in the head because her president doesn't need Viagra to achieve erection. Hypocrisy slurping the hot cunt of stupid. Take a walk on the wild side, America. Sidle up to some hot Cuban pussy. Slide it in and out. Tell me it doesn't feel good, say it doesn't feel right as rain, swear it under oath.

Washington and Ben Franklin both had filthy mouths. Jefferson fucked his slaves. We all know about the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Billie-Jean King and Elton John, Tammy Baker and a random Catholic priest or two, the Princess Di, as American as apple pie, the bulimic girl who transcended life itself.

Take a look around you America, home of the free and depraved, at your prisons, your pharmacies, your covert operations, your stock-market scams, your yellow ribbons and your yellow wars, your garter-belt judges and your secret-service heroes, your cartoon face in the mirror.

Every child is Moses in a basket made of reeds. We bulldoze them by the millions to make room for urban sprawl. Fly me to the moon, the new national anthem. There's no turning back. We're off to make a new beginning. Off to Mars on our bicycle built for two, off to where no man has gone before, off to build a better world. All men are created equal, some more so than others.

Mr. President, is this your cum stain on Miss Lewinsky's dress? Mr. President, did you suck her tits? Mr. President, did you wear her tie the day she spilled the beans? Mr. President, did you dress in drag and let her sit on your face? Mr. President, will you resign and write a book for an undisclosed sum? Show up on the Jerry Springer Show to get your face punched by some fag from Cleveland? Mr. President, Harold Stern is waiting in the Blue Room. Shame and fortune are waiting in the wings. Mr. President, you're the talk of the town.

Our town. Two kids sitting on a ledge, a boy and a girl with white holes for eyes, untouched by anything, kicking their feet in a world where the clocks have stopped ticking, dreaming the impossible dream, waiting for good things to happen.

THE TROLL NEAR THE RIVER
by Susanne Bowers

wanted to be more than a troll,
had gotten tired of living
his life under a bridge,
staying mostly out of sight,
so he studied the great books
of medicine and studied and
studied until he became a
wizard, and all of the
village came to him for
help with their pain and
illness and paid him money,
goats, fish, and even baby
lambs until he grew fat
and lazy with a large farm
and an aquarium, and,
believing he knew all the
answers to everything,
he grew arrogant as well
as fat and strutted through
the cobblestone streets
in the evenings, touching
the children on their
heads and dining in the
best cafes, drinking
wine. Once, he went to
an opera in a neighboring
village. He was proud.
Soon, a shy, young girl
went to the troll for help
with a problem in her
brain, and, being lonely,
became attached to him as
a father as well as a
wizard, and for years
she saw him almost every
day, until, with his
remedies and her new trust,
she got up the courage to
ask to see and touch one
of his goats. The wizard
raged! He came apart.
Happy being her god, he
was frightened by her
bravery and curiosity
and, feeling threatened,
refused to speak to her
anymore. She begged and
cried and tried to reason,
and even stamped her feet,
but he stood firmly on his
newly sodded ground and
stared at her in silence.
She began to hate the wizard,
his arrogance and cruelty,
but she was still attached.
Finally, half-crazy, she
STOLE the goat, late at
night when the wizard was asleep,
and took it away,
with her anger, to another
land. When he awoke, the
wizard roared so loud, he
scared the people of the
village, who, seeing
his dark side, stopped
coming to him for help.
He pretended not to care,
and pretended not to
care, until, eventually,
he hardened and turned
to stone. The girl
returned with the goat,
found the stone, and
threw it under the
bridge, out of sight,
near the river.