The nature of the muse
is blunt arousal
where pain hits
admission's crotchety
old fan and there
is a memorable mess
that traps poets
in its incumbancy.
Sucking eggs like
infants do nipples--
where spit milk shines
with a glory respected
but never owned.
Page vellum--
semen on wrinkled
sheet lives.
Millenniums hang
on a clothesline
strung between
north and south
and east and west.
Direction is an arrow
that won't stay still.
Wires tangle
in ways all those
zeros can't undo.
An erection of art
and conscience
making babies--
checking their lungs
for fluid and their
hearts for peace.
A puzzle to build.
Screw solve.
Just build.

Janet I. Buck



Janet I. Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her poetry and poetics have appeared in The Melic Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Kimera, 2River View, Tintern Abbey, Southern Ocean Review, The Horsethief's Journal and hundreds of journals world-wide. In 1998 and 1999, she has received numerous creative writing awards and been a featured poet for Seeker Magazine, Poetry Today Online, Vortex, Conspire,Poetry Cafe, Dead Letters, the storyteller, Poetry Heaven, Athens City Times, Poetik License, 3:00 AM e-zine, Poetry Super Highway, and Carved in Sand. Her poem "Mistaking Snow for Sugar Bowls" recently took 1st place in a contest sponsored by Orpheus Fiction and Poetry Cafe. On December 1st, Newton's Baby Press will release Buck's first print collection entitled Calamity's Quilt. Janet is one of ten artists to be featured at the "One Heart, One World" Exhibit at the United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City in April, 2000. The tour will travel to France, Australia, Vietnam and Japan.