Erren Kelly


Musical Story…after the drawing by Irena Siwek

instead of roses
he tried calla lillies
roses would've been pushing it
even if her hair was red
she merely smiled
reading elizabeth barrett browning didn't work
either
she found a way to make
the cello sound like
a summer night
sometimes, it sounded
like the human voice
or even rain
depending on how she plucked
the strings
he then simply told her
her cello playing
felt like the hollow
in his heart

she replied "sometimes,
just asking for
what you want works
best...


Cheryl

is the grace notes
at the end of a john coltrane solo
is the song sonny rollins practiced
on williamburg bridge
when trane's shadow eclipsed him
is the muse joshua redman calls
when sonny rollis has stopped
giving him inspiration
she is the poem joshua redman plays
that i listen to when i can't
articulate our friendship

Richard Dragan


The Imaginary Travelers


They could never agree on which city was the best place for their vacation, and they ended up not traveling that year. So they abandoned cities for their imaginary itineraries and instead visited rugged places: mountains, deserts, lakes, geological formations, outcroppings of jagged rocks, strange craters, impenetrable (almost) jungles, ruins of ancient non-Western civilizations, solitary obelisks, desecrated pyramids, one-time war zones, peninsulas, isthmuses, collapsed canyons, volcanic rims, archipelagoes, wildlife refuges, underwater reefs, atolls, fault lines, oceanic trenches, glaciers, pristine mountain lakes, ridge lines, the high country, buttes, mesas, oblivious uninhabitable plains, ghost towns, abandoned mines, flooded caves, meteorite craters, untamed savannas, veldts, steppes with half-frozen tundra, Machu Picchu, and Venezuela, and to top it off, birdwatching (of whole penguin families) in King George Island, Antarctica.