Pushcart Nominee Lisa Galloway

Lisa's poem orginally appeared in our 13th issue. It is the final installment of the six pieces we've nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Prize. We hope you have enjoyed the encore presentation of these excellent works. Our thanks, again, to the writers.


     She Was a Chagall

     I was the Hulk, not green
     but ugly and muscles, a transformation.
     That night, I drank something nasty,
     Jagermeister and Coke,
     she called it sassafras, it was brown yuck
     in a squat rocks glass. My face contorted,
     and it slid to a clinking crash while
     pretzel-like she showed me a yoga pose
     called something I can't remember
     but it looked to me like kama-sutra.
     We brushed hands and torsos, trading turns
     to the kitchen for more drinks.
     I mocked her multi-vitamins, one-a-day,
     her freezer filled with ginger root
     and bagged kumquats.
     When she laughed, she squinted and clapped.
     I was a slave to her smile, tried to impress, I preyed on her
     entertainment, my life a calendar marking days,
     waiting for her legs, dancer-like to scissor open ooh—
     and then after that night
     for her paintings to include flying cows or chickens,
     for her watercolor to bleed
     goldenrod to raspberry. She always wore
     black socks and sandals, but it was somehow okay
     because she could peel an orange
     into the trash can and make it sexy.


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