prev | contents | next
main


                                                                                           
                           _________________________________

Cheryl Snell
Cheryl Snell's work has appeared in many print journals, including Antietam Review, Petroglyph, Comstock Review, Washington Review and River Oak Review, as well as in e-zines such as 2River, Stirring and threecandles. Her novel, Shiva's Arms, won an honorable mention from the Dana Literary Awards and was a finalist for the Omaha Prize. Her chapbook of poetry, Flower Half Blown, was published in 2002 by Finishing Line Press and was nominated for the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry.






    YOUR NAME HERE
    by Cheryl Snell

                   _________________________________


How to keep up appearances
in a crumbled down world?

You hide or are hidden from;
the meaning is obtuse. The scene
alters in its perception.

(Behind a drywall façade
villagers cringed in Dresden dust,
garbed piecemeal in ash and mica.)

It helps to believe in adage:
behind every great man is a woman
prone or supine; the object of desire
rolling through the looking glass
in endless iteration.

You with your red pencil, sharpened—
where can I find your secret clause?
I could open you with erotic cliché,
walk up & down your back in ambiguous
stilettos, pretend to forget that we all
begin in crinolines and corrective shoes.
We dance our little dance, we watch
mother's ballerina dreams dive
behind pupils drawing to a close.

We are none of us the butterflies we might have been