Dear Mr. Logan:
I am submitting the following five poems for consideration in your interesting on-line journal:

The Bottom Sheet
The Pathological Liar's Support
Belle Litters
Pieta
Inca Trilogy

The inspiration for my poetry is my own experience--travels, relationships, the stuff that happens in a day and over a life. I enjoy word play. I've been writing poetry for many years but have only just recently started sending material off. I have a piece awaiting publication in the September issue of Ojo del Lago. Currently I reside summers in Mexico and winters in Tallahassee, Florida.

Margaret Van Every

THE BOTTOM SHEET

is averse to corners,
rounds three, balks at four.
Each year it resists the more,
strengthens as I decline.
One day I shall lose the match,
lay me down on mattress
ticking, tick time.

THE PATHOLOGICAL LIAR’S SUPPORT

His stories clung
like sprung underpants
afraid to fall,
suspended in part
by our credulity
to spare us
embarrassment and hurt.
But gravity’s no fool
and took its toll.
When he lost his cover
we lost ours.

BELLE LITTERS

The poem is an unstrung sphere,
oh, waiting to be flung.
These are my pearls

and this the litter,
front to runt,
snoot to root.

Don’t pitch to sties?
Who then will eat the words
that were my eyes?

Hark now, I think I hear
the belly-shaking
pleasure grunt:
oinkoink, oink, oink, oink.

PIETA
soulfled
Christ crucified

lifeless lies
in motherlap

limp limbs
draping motherlegs

INCA TRILOGY
I. Sack

This sanguine sack
weavework of Inca
prefall
will never bulge
with amaranth or maize,
its fibers inflated fullform
with remembrance.

II. Nazca Lines

Pictures writ large
baffle ground level,
cater to condors
like our messages
missed eye to eye
(which is not where
it is), apparent only
when we fly.

III. Redrawing the Lines

That spiral-tailed rock ape
ages in the sand
could be
surgically transanimated—
head, limbs lopped—
scorpionwise,
high-riding tail a maze,
arrogant, death doling.
We moderns lust
to lose ourselves
in the coils of
its wicked prick.