| Henry Quince |
Ireneread by henry quince I knew of infamous Irene before we met — Her lusty appetites, her rages too. With total scorn for etiquette, To every passing impulse she was true. In love lascivious, in temper dire: The tongue that teased could lacerate in turn; Yet to her hypnotizing fire One flew, while knowing one would burn. Explosive passion and proportioned pain, The randy woman and the scream machine: I'd do it, have it all again — Mad, bad, ironically named Irene!  © Alan Bezanson No Movies of Meread by henry quince Think of the movie stars that were — their heydays brimming with hormones, then the relentless public ageing: a bloated Brando, a withered Bacall, a Groucho shifting his dentures in a shriveled mouth, a crumbling, leathered Moore, a doddery Hope, no hope left, gazing into the distance, or the past. How lucky there are no movies of me on my Road to Anywhere, or Nowhere: no home Super-8 replays of someone lost, fresh-featured, lithe and limber, acting the fool forever in a ski-sweater of Norwegian style, splashing water at the camera lens, or taking a loving glance for granted. Or maybe just one. Somewhere in a tin trunk stashed in the lumber-room of a childhood friend's father, now no more, there may survive a short trick sequence: thirty grainy seconds of me at ten or eleven scrambling from the same cardboard box again and again, before fading out.  © Anja Papenfuss Henry Quince dabbles in this and that while cultivating an outsize moustache and trying to take himself more seriously. He's been published here and there but is too modest to mention the Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations. He has a website at http://www.quince.netpublish.net, where he means to redo the old, substandard recordings and add some newer poems. He lives in Australia. |