Bruce W. Niedt
is a family man from the shadows of the greater Philadelphia area who had
a "personal renaissance" about 18 months ago and hasn't stopped writing
since. He finds time to write when not engaged in raising teenage sons
and toiling in the cubicles of a government job. His work has appeared
in several publications, including the e-zines Stirring, Samsara,
Wings
and Lovewords, and the print magazines Waterways and
Blind
Man's Rainbow. He won third prize for poetry in the Seedhouse Magazine
Summer Writing 2000 Contest, and was a winner of the Millennium Portals
Poetry Contest, sponsored by the Camden County NJ Cultural and Heritage
Foundation. He has had the honor to have read his works on WXPN-FM in Philadelphia,
and he is an administrator for the poetry
website Pathetic.org.
E-mail
Bruce W. Niedt.
How to Peel an Orange
by Bruce W. Niedt
Hold it loosely, like a yellow
baseball.
Rub the leathery hide.
Punch a fingernail through
the nippled top.
Push through to the hollow
below.
Rip, pull out and down gently.
Watch the spray of oil in
the air.
Inhale the pungent citrus.
Disregard the orange-white
meat beneath your nails.
Disrobe this fruit completely.
Pick off the gangly strings
of useless pulp.
Regard the naked segments,
and with both thumbs,
separate the hemispheres.
Tear through the meridian.
See the droplets weep through
the membranes.
Strip the translucent skin.
Reveal the clustered buds
of juice like teardrops.
Peel off one tender crescent.
Bring it to your lover's
lips, so as to
suck it, nibble it, bite
it
bursting the tiny juice pockets,
licking your fingertips.
Repeat.
Raga, 1970
by Bruce W. Niedt
She comes to his dorm room
-
after talking awhile, they
decide to make love.
As she takes off her shirt,
he goes to the stereo and
changes the record.
Shankar drops from spindle
to platter,
atop some psychedelic rock.
The needle bobbles into
the groove.
The music begins -
distinctive keen of sitar,
slow sinuous harmonics,
vibratoed, arpeggioed strings.
She sits astride him
as he lies back;
his hands appreciate her
breasts.
She moves across him,
like the unwinding muscle
of music,
the snake of her skin
he caresses in time.
Mouths explore in counterpoint,
arms and legs begin the
dance
as the tabla joins in -
a stretched percussive beat
that punctuates the cry
of strings,
crescendo, accelerando,
snatched up by their bodies,
undulating, sweat breaking,
lips begin to part -
Then suddenly, they break
off
in the middle of the fevered
raga.
Something doesn't quite
connect.
They lie side by side, unsmiling,
while the music climaxes
without them.
He still desires her, but
he's not the only one.
She still desires him, but
he's not the only one.
This is just the first of
many
miscalculated nights,
when strings and skins
would collide and part.
Tangent: The
Ocean
by Bruce W. Niedt
"Summer is for animals / the ocean is erotic."
--William Meredith,
"Rhode Island"
Summer is for animals, the
ocean is erotic.
the bivalves play,
open, shut, a vaginal display,
sea cucumbers throb,
starfish dance and intertwine,
crabs skitter about,
looking for mates in the
sand,
dolphins suggest a sensual
array
of two in the dunes,
suits discarded,
making sand angels,
splaying, rolling,
chasing little mollusks
back to the surf.
Summer is for animals, the
ocean is erotic.
Your mouth is like sea salt.
Your seaweed hair tangles
me
like a little striped fish.
I am caught in your green
net.
Mouths collide in primal
struggle
tongues fighting for dominance.
Your hips suggest the ebb
and flow,
and waves of shuddering
desire
grab us, pull us together
like tides.
We are the two-backed beast
of the beach
returning to our ancestors
for a moment or two.
We are the animals of the
sea,
washed in the sun,
washed in the water,
salted and sanded, caked
with our sex,
as we lie side by side,
after,
letting the foam wash over
us,
letting the tide take us
out
to a summer secret place
where we are the shells,
the fish, the kelp,
the whole biocycle,
in one, or two.
"How
to Peel an Orange", "Raga 1970" and "Tangent: The Ocean" Copyright ©
2001 Bruce W. Niedt. All rights reserved. |