POETRY BY LEONARD KRESS
THE STAGES OF SIN
In the dust of the pick-your-own pumpkin patch,
the choice ones smashed, moldering flesh slit
open... In the delicious orchard, taking furtive
bites far from the counters' eyes and scales--
she lays-out her idea, supplying details
while their strapped-in kid dozes the long drive
home. For miles they do nothing but churn and sit,
sensing agreement budding, waiting to catch
in the other's fleet glance, in the sweet shell
of further words, which one of them might
do it first. What circumstance, what deed?
O Saint Augustine, will you intercede,
you for whom love and beauty and desire fight
God--and sanctify, just now, their hell.
Leonard
Kress, author of Sappho's Apples, HarrowGate
Press, has recent work in Beloit Poetry Journal, North American
Review, Crab Orchard Review and Massachusetts Review. He teaches
at Owen College in Ohio.
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