THE EVOLVING CITY Japheth Brubaker   BEAUTY PAGEANT AT THE CAPITOL six months by the reflecting pool in a place where everything is clean Ruth has cancer I have found a need for words to splay themselves mercilessly against the back door of unpaved literature and break into tiny shards of disbelief; absorb it in our skin; it is the only cure for this madness of run-on sentences in our bloodstream this is where I saw the lack of passion in their eyes: their solid blank perfection     Japheth Brubaker holds a BA in English Literature with a concentration in Creative Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania. His poems have been published in The Pedestal Magazine, Literary Arts Magazine, The Penn Review Literary Magazine, and The Poet's Haven. He was an editor of the literary publications Aria and the "Poet’s Resource" on Inkspot.com.   Published in Volume 8, Number 4, Fall 2007.