Guest Editor for June-July Edition

Featured Poet: April 1999

                                       The founder of Athens Avenue Poetry Circle and  Funky Dog Publishing, Doug Tanoury grew up in Detroit and still lives in the area with his wife and  three children.
                                       
    Doug has been published  by The Pittsburgh  Quarterly, Eclectica, Poetry Magazine.com,  Agnieszka Dowry, Savoy Magazine, Zuzu's Petals, Pif, The Blockhead Journal, Swagazine, Kimera and others.  Doug is exclusively an Internet poet  with the majority of his work never leaving  electronic form. He has recently published two online collections of poetry: Detroit Poems and St. Mary's Cloister.
                                        
      The greatest influence on Doug's work was the 7th  grade poetry anthology used in Sister Debra's English class: Reflections On A Gift Of Watermelon Pickle And Other Modern Verse, Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders and Hugh Smith, (c)1966 by Scott Foresman & Company

Athens Avenue Poetry Circle:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6915/

Salome Dancing For Herod

If I was in the great hall
Of the palace
Watching Salome dancing
For Herod
I too would marvel
At movements
So erotic and executed
With animal precision

Her heaving breasts
Swaying pelvis
The white waves of her skin
Moving in soft undulations
Across her abdomen
And I'd smile knowing
That the king and I
Were both drunk with dance

And the beat of the music
The rhythmic flashing
Of bare thighs
Naked belly
Awaken the pagan in me
Who knows that lust is to love
What poetry is to prose
A sensual awakening of sight and smell
And sound and taste

And I would swear too
At that moment that the bounce
In each breast
Was worth the heads
Of a hundred prophets
And is more moving to me
Than the words
Of all the holy men in Judea

Downtown Indianapolis

Downtown Indianapolis is largely
Empty and uninspiring as a cornfield
In late November and I am here
As a witness to the wind rattling a reed
In the wilderness a trembling sound
That seems to find a way
To my ears alone

The parking lots are empty in evenings
Like Spring fields plowed with
Rows of furrows and I am here
As a testament to marble and bronze
Statues that stand still and mute
Like scarecrows in cool brightness
On April mornings

The government buildings are capped
Like domed silos that rise above
Asphalt and brick below and I am here
To document the dim dullness
And dark dumbness of a wind
That winds down Illinois Avenue
Lifting dust from the furrows
In a cornfield with lights

Her Touch

And I would have thought too
That somehow it was annoying
To me and a bother

To bear her touch
In such a fashion
The journey of her hand

Lazy and slow
Fingers striding in small cat paw steps
And spider walk

With many legs
Across my shoulder
Toward the naked nape of my neck

But her movements on me
Refresh and awaken
Like drizzle on dry earth

Weightless as a sparrow
That walks with toothpick legs
And splinter feet

The shadow of movement
A feather brush of substance
A rustle and tickling flutter

And bathes bird-like
In the warmth of bare skin
Where neck and shoulder meet

And much later I feel its absence
The smallness gone like a sparrow's
Silent and unseen fall from sky