The Future In Her Palm

She's been waiting all her life
for the shadows to lift
and someone to teach her how
to laugh at shades;
she's been hunting for the beauty
in a starless sky
with one hand held up to shield her
from the night,
wiping her fingers across her eyes
as lifelines run red
into her wrists.

Coffee Ceremonies

Hiroko slips across the kitchen floor on toes of ice
to where the coffee waits,
lights a Vantage, reads the paper
her breath a whisper while her husband sleeps.

Sitting in a zaisu she wonders who
she is, drinks another coffee,
does her face at the table while she watches cable TV
and
drinks another coffee.
"Today" is on;

today goes on and on,
ballet-jazz,
fast lunch with friends, tofu soup and
coffee,
English classes, swimming lessons,
does her face again,
goes shopping
and home to clean the house . . .

tatami ready for weekend guests
and Hiroko ready for . . .?

coffee.

I Have Lived

in places
where people turn on themselves
in rooms so small
the words rub raw
and pain
and whiskey smells seep
through the walls
where even lovers turn to stone
hurl their loneliness
come in screams
in rooms so small
they turn themselves
into a fetal curl.

^

Biography

Joy Hewitt Mann has been publishing in print in such literary journals as The Malahat Review, Whetstone and Amelia for ten years. Since January she has been an enthusiast of electronic magazines with fiction appearances in Manx Fiction, The 13th Story and TW3, and poetry in The Paumonok Review, Rose & Thorn and Poetry Now. She received the $5,000 Leacock Award in 1997 and this years Acorn-Rukeyser Chapbook Award. Her first chapbook "Voices From the Other Side of the Moon" was published by Bard Press Books, NY, USA, in 1998. Her first short story collection "Clinging to Water" was published this year by Boheme Press, Toronto, Canada. She lives in an old stone mill house in the tiny village of Spencerville, Ontario, Canada, with her husband and three children. When not writing she runs a large junkstore.