Teri Ellen Cross   A PIECE OF TAIL from their apartment's balcony my girlfriends and I could see their pale skins hear the clipped accents the soldiers were British and drunk with money flowing the Kenyan women became willing every stare every intoxicating their tore shirts, teased skirts revealed panties gyrated and taunted those English boys who'd never seen chocolate breasts nipples tipped almost ebony hips that rounded to such a swelling you needed two hands to grab it all but they'd heard how wild black cats can be scratching backs lusty animals in a vaguely human skin it brought me back to Ohio University's frat row drunk white faces leering and eager to believe emboldened voices calling out and I became afraid I was that exotic again kin to these Kenyan women and we were all dancing on bar table tops for dollars or pounds whatever brown bodies go for these days   EVERY DARK NECK THAT CHOKED A BRAIDED ROPE Adorning the bookcase, its shelves overflowing with cookbooks was the one picture, iron wrought frame, sepia toned photograph of a slight man, in uniform. Dagmar told me of her father his title, rank in the Austro-Hungarian army. Then more of her native Austria, her voice trembling, excited to have a hungry ear. How she was only 16 when Hitler came to power, of her family's distinguished life in Vienna. "Hitler wanted us to see where our food came from..." So she and other city students lived with farmers worked the fields under the earnest idealism of a new leader. For six months she was witness to the way calluses steady a rough hand; to dirt's unwieldy and stubborn stain. It was there she learned the breading for schnitzel, the right parts vinegar for a proper kraut the way to preserve the sweet tart in apricots. In the dayroom of her Delaware home her words flooded the lines between history books and history, reaching under the beds of my absolutes making me wonder if one lie can breathe what other truths are stifled under the black and the white if history becomes flesh   Richard Dana Within and Without Mixed media on paper; 7x10"; 2003 see more work by Richard Dana   PASSOVER teenage suicide female bomber delivering death camouflaged vagina cervix sewn holing 6 pounds of dynamite tight COMPLECTED What the fine rain does not hide and cannot wash away are coal fingers shrugging slicker strings together, protecting just straightened hair. The humidity is deadly to this delicate process, and can nap the nape along the kitchen instantly, reverting to the natural curl she dreads. The girl beside her wears no slicker but has a ponytail like Barbie's and is just as fair. The pubescent boys stare. She's an urban Venus, impossibly waiting for the same bus. The hooded girl is not Venus. Dark brown is not beauty-- darker still a death sentence if you are young, waiting for a bus, a long appreciative glance, even catcalls, "hey redbone"--love. The hooded girl hopes the Korean store up the street will have a sale soon on fading cream and human hair, because beauty here is serious business.   HAINT ...........................(based on a CNN.com newsbrief) science tells me you are still whispering inside my bones that years from now cut me to the marrow and microscopes will read the rings of your insistent story no matter the inconvenient coupling of timing and desire no amount of dilation and suction hemorrhaging and fever could've erased you nor the pulp of your carved initials made with the solid grasp of a still forming hand even now when the bloody show disappoints our sharpening hunger do you still cling or are you willing to let another call my womb home?   KNELL The needles lie unused, my hand grips the table. I shudder to expel what I long to keep--the pain sweetens to cleanse in long steady strokes. The nurse tightens her grip. Soft suctioned skull holds the warm spot, size of a fingernail. The pain keeps me still. Fill the silver pan ringing now silent now still. Cramps for your epitaph, your gravestone--this bloody spot. Haunt this empty space if you will. Come again, dancing bringing life and death to suffocate this pain and hide its blooms. Come again baby and consume me whole, I will keep your life, hang mine in chance for death to birth you and be life and death blooming.   CHARTING mating my thighs have found a new language for softness stirring a new sound for need not the moist sap of him leaving me the sudden cold and vacancy but need like dry running wheels with no oil need that makes the finely-honed rhythm of moon, tide and woman have purpose in me need that grows stronger in each touch waiting to consume us whole cycle 3 (chart 5) the pencils the thermometer the finger dipped in juices (does it stretch more than three inches, is it crumbly and white?) my grandmother says, "I didn't know you can plan these things" but without plans what are we? elderly fathers, adolescent mothers how else do we explain tectonic shifts, thermal currents sunspots? without planning, the yawning chaos swallows us and darkness stretches like Arizona sky, and we discover ourselves to be small and meaningless do we not plan when we think our god will welcome us in heaven?     Teri Ellen Cross was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She moved to Washington, DC in 1998 and quickly fell in love with the warmth and openness of DC's writing community. She has a Bachelor of Science in Journalism, and a Masters in International Affairs from Ohio University. She will be graduating in May of 2004 with a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Poetry from American University. She is an alumnus of Cave Canem, a week-long workshop/summer retreat for African American poets and her work has appeared in Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Anthology, and four Cave Canem Anthologies. She currently produces The Kojo Nnamdi Show, a two-hour public talk radio show on WAMU 88.5 FM. She resides in Silver Spring, MD with her husband, poet Hayes Davis, and their Jack Russell Terrier, Id. Published in Volume 5, Number 3, Summer 2004.   To read more by this author: Teri Ellen Cross: Intro to The Evolving City issue, Vol. 8, No. 4, Fall 2007. Teri Ellen Cross: Split This Rock Issue Teri Ellen Cross: Tenth Anniversary Issue