Cover: Pan Dulce by Alex Rubio
Cover photograph by Kathy Vargas

©1996 Ben Tremillo
Cover Photo by Ben Tremillo
The Palm PressP.O. Box 281
San Antonio, Texas 78291

(opening page)

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lights: the Forest.
broken and untender, shrinking
beside beneath behind
the low cast shadow -
limbs bent to transpose the finite action
of, less or more, simply wind
cutting into another day, another rise
fall opening of nighttime by light.
incomplete as love, deft fingers lose
an outline, a crossed out word or
muttering, lips mumbling (murmuring) breathed
exclamations to a point, a rise fall in
the known advantages of speaking when
not being spoken to - lips still moving
to a silent script unwritten unhinged
understood to a point, a point,
a distance not yet reached. the
lights, city-forest bent, almost broken,
soft to see and kiss, catastrophe when
lips (flushed, quivering - still) beckon the
ear, the side of the mouth, the lower neck
and move to reach with passion,
upward
toward the brink of reaching