FROM 
MASAICOS

BY

LUCIA FOX

ILLUSTRATIONS

CARLOS PAZ

TRANSLATIONS


The walnut tree is a point of reference, 
the nut one analogy less.

That room was the dimension 
of his heroism.

He had wrinkled the aluminum foil 
and was unable to make it look 
the way it was.

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red cedar review poster


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spring 74 
contributors

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Gene Stotts graduated from Kendall School of Design, has worked 
as an illustrator in New York, and presently tends bar at Lizard's 
in East Lansing.

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John Konopa just left MSU with an MFA in Graphic Design. He 
now lives and works on the shore of Lake Michigan at St. Joseph. 
Some of his woodcuts are presently on display at the Benjamin 
Gallery in Chicago.

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Lucia Fox is an Associate Professor at the Romance Languages 
Department at MSU. She is also the author of several volumes of 
poetry including Preludios Intimos (Peru), La Odisea del Pajaro 
(Argentina), and Multiples (East Lansing).

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Will Roberts is completing an MFA in drawing and printmaking 
at MSU. He is Assistant Director of the MSU Art Bank, and is 
presently working out the details of a Rotary International Fellowship 
to study in Nigeria next year.

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Floyd Butler has been painting and drawing for over forty years. 
He studied at the Art Students' League in New York and the 
Meinsinger School of Art in Detroit during the 1940's. For the 
last thirty years he has lived and worked in Lansing.

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David Kirkpatrick teaches drawing at Lansing Community College, 
works as a free lance designer and illustrator, and is beginning work 
on an MFA at Michigan State.

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Richard Thomas teaches American Thought and Language at 
Michigan State. He has been published in several small magazines 
and has completed a book of poems entitled Fat Grass. He is also 
the editor of an East Lansing mag called Centering.

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John O'Brien will be graduating from MSU with a BA in English 
this June. The poem in this issue is among those which won first 
prize in the Creative Writing Contest last spring at Michigan State.

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Deb Casey recently graduated from MSU with a BA in English. Her 
work has appeared in Assembling Four (New York), and won third 
prize for poetry in last year's Creative Writing Contest at Michigan 
State.

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Hugh McPeck attended Kendall School of Design and received a 
BFA from Michigan State with an emphasis in drawing. He has 
studied at the Art Students' League in New York and recently 
spent eight months traveling and living in Alaska.

Steve Crowe is working on an MFA at Bowling Green State University, 
teaching English, and editing The Penny Dreadful.

Wilton David is a friendly, beautiful, crazed artist who lives down 
in Alexandria, Louisiana. H is work has appeared in many small 
mags as well as several books.

Harley Elliott lives, writes, and paints in Salina, Kansas. H is latest 
book, All Beautiful And Foolish Souls, was published last summer 
from The Crossing Press.

Charles Hartman has lived in Iowa, Texas, New York, St. Louis, and 
East Lansing. He is presently finishing a Masters in English at Washington 
University in St. Louis.

Carlos Paz is a Peruvian artist whose illustrations to Mosiacos won 
the "Contest for the Best Illustrations to Poetry," organized at the 
National University, Federico Villarreal, in Lima, Peru.


The Bone

It stuck tall and rigid in the ground. 
When he breasted bushes into the clearing 
it clapped him with weather-whiteness 
and a flat glint at the round-knobbed top. 
Grass curled at the base, 
like hairs round a walrus tusk.

The clearing was soft and green 
with the hard white at its center.

Bones lie. It stood, staked, 
and the earth turned round it in his eye.

He shuffled back, but the bushes clutched. 
He let the thing take up slack

crept up and stared. This close, 
hairline cracks laced its shaft.

No meat clung. The forest nodded on; 
a light wind delighted in his clothes. 
Behind, away, small brooks wound questions. 
The bone marked an exclamation 
without a sentence.

No scattered footprints gave it away.

No titter in the bushes gave it away.

No fresh-turned earth, no 
lashed-on crosspiece 
for a handle.

A heap of ribs came back to connect— 
the wind in twigs. A thing 
hulking out of the forest to claim it. 
Clouds dimming the grass.

Himself, digging for what remains?

He must rise and turn himself 
back into the forest, resume. 
Through bushes 
the bone stares at his back.

Charles 0. Hartman


red cedar review poster / drawing by Gene Stotts
red cedar review poster / drawing by Gene Stotts



Lee Ann

Lee Ann, 
your black humming 
hair 
and wine slick 
face; young 
sponge breasts 
I plied between two fingers; 
lisping eyes,

grenadine 
on the green moon leather carseat, 
where are you? 
we are old.

Ah, Lee Ann, 
when my wife splits 
or dies, 
and the kids are gone to school forever, 
I'll swim to you 
through stars and comets 
to South Carolina or California, 
and we'll melt 
our skins around, burn 
old time 
on the ghost-green leather, 
O Lee Ann, Lee Ann Shafer- 
Scheffer?

I never remember.

F. Richard Thomas
F. Richard Thomas


red cedar review poster / drawing by Hugh McPeck


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Sleep

for C.G. Jung

1.

Upon getting into bed 
i feel the covers close 
around me

and i watch the dark 
open in patterns

i ask myself if i 
want to do this

2.

Sleep buoys up my body 
like a boat at a dock 
when the waves rise

melting ridges of 
the unconscious

i ask myself if i 
want to do this

3.

For sleep may be death 
not knowing herself 
each night a child 
of death

the sinking

when the dock 
the dream disappears

and even the sails 
know the touch of 
the waters

John F. O'Brien

red cedar review poster / woodcut by John Konopa
red cedar review poster / woodcut by John Konopa



red cedar review poster / drawing by Will Roberts
red cedar review poster / drawing by Will Roberts


Remaking Chant

for the Cherokee

I am clean and dancing. 
Today, the first in a lifetime,

I leave a rattlesnake's voice 
in the rocks, I frighten no one.

But I still have fangs, 
poisonous or not, and an urge 
to feel the warm ball of a field mouse 
dissolving inside me 

the vibrations of rain drumming 
across dry hills, the stretch of moist 
sunlight along my body.

I will coil into a short nap, 

consider this spirit I am leaving, 
and maybe then I can abandon my brothers.

Steve Crowe


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One Way of Disposing 
of Rotten Fruit 
InWinter

The apples we were storing on the porch 
spoiled when winter warmed too much, 
so I strewed the whole boxful 
into the ridge of snow over the flowerbed 
alongside the fence. The apples 
sank in white dusty tunnels 
into the drift down to an older, 
settled storm. Now it's colder again, 
and the rotten juice and mushy flesh 
have stiffened and lie in the round 
caves of the hard, shrivelled skins. 
More snow blows over the mound; 
sun and cold nights will give them 
jackets of glaze, slowly they will descend 
onto the earth, all winter the browning 
apples will pulse in the snow.

H.H. Nelson

red cedar review poster / drawing by David Kirkpatrick


Psychopathia 
Sexualis

My god I said 
but this is strange.

My garter belt was up 
around my neck 
and my wig had fallen off;

my handkerchief collection lay 
like sleeping birds 
around the room

as I read on page 164 
of sudden genitals in dense 
park shrubbery.

The mirrors were all steamed up. 
Farther on young gentlemen 
were loving up black boots 
and penetrating unsuspecting bustles 
on the thoroughfare.

My god I said this seems to be 
the story of my life

and right away I was ashamed 
of all the little oddities I kept around 
and lept up on my wife.

Sex I said I want some sex right now 
I said and give it to me straight 
I think I love you more 
than you will ever know

and I tore my garter belt 
to shreds. But she just laid there 
naked in her bobby sox

and blew pink bubbles in my ear. 
Her freckles burned like acid 
and the braces on her teeth were 
shining cruelly in the dark.

Harley Elliott
Harley Elliott


red cedar review poster / drawing by Harley Elliott


red cedar review poster

drawings by floyd butler
drawings by floyd butler