Authors
Responding
 to Artists

Alena
Guest 

Don
Kirkpatrick

Emily
Inwood

Fauna
Perkins

Jewels
Marcus

Karen
Lewis

Marylyn
Motherbear
Scott

Maureen
Eppstein


Authors Writing 
for Artists

Alena
Deerwater

Chet
Boddy

Fran
Schwartz

Henri
Bensussen

Jan
Edwards

Janet
Ashford

Katherine
Heimann
Brown

Orah
Young

Henri Bensussen
"Dinner Date"

Leather covered booths, hushed
in candlelight, red velvet walls
plush out of town roadhouse--
a place to plan a heist, or worse.
He wore his new blue suit
asked for the wine list, ordered
steaks, rare, and a bottle of
Cabernet Sauvignon.

I’d survived high school French
knew how to pronounce the name
otherwise it was a puzzle
as he was, though I understood.
this dinner to be special--
cloth napkins, obsequious waiters,
their formal presentation of the bill.

Such tender fillets, not Mom’s
minute steaks hard and tough
the foreign wine
deep red with a promise of sweet
and sour cherries, like everything
like the red gold ring he gave me
and the blood that ran from our meat.

Joe DuVivier
"Awaiting an Answer"

click to enlarge