Honorable mentions
Vie for distance, if approached

My first girlfriend lives next door.

Today she came to me for advice about women.

We’ve shared shits and showers and now walk freely naked in each other’s view,

and for these last few months she has been in love. Now is the decline of the once-
consuming interest and it was so predictable——even she and her girl saw it as horizon
and kept driving forward, kept clinging to the comfort as it stifled them. It was in
this way once that she and I fused to one concentration and then retracted full—force,
only now it is she who wishes for release,

she who parts with her love showing more guilt than confusion;

because, there are other girls, beckoning Muses that sing

“Help me to know the love of a woman, kind friend.”

And my advice to her is logical, if not admittedly strategic:

“Step lightly,” I say,

“But flirt hardcore.

“And never give away too much . . .

because then you've changed the game”

Last night the second the girl’s pinkie moved against mine and our fingers began to methodi-
cally curl and stroke, the screen flashed scenes of death and scary figures but I was safe

in the closeness, wet from the touch, reborn in that dark theater to feelings from a past life.
Later in the car I want to rest my thigh on her gearshift and lean into her

as she shivers, scans the streets, decides which Ani to

play and sings out loud like me.

At the drop—off I lag behind to pause and stumble over my words, to ask again about
Amoury and *

how far that Poly spreads . . .

and then she answers, pulls me back from hanging halfway out the door and I am stuck to
her, she is biting my lip and opening her mouth wide to Let me enter, and god! I could
bring her upstairs, bring her to climax,

so long as she didn’t ask for it.

But she wouldn’t and neither would I so we step lightly,

float in and out of each other like free spirits,

flirt hard and then disengage,

like two girls so afraid of confinement

it has a name, this fear disguised as disinterest.

My first girlfriend showed me what it feels like
when a woman is in love with you,

‘how the heat collects between two wombs,

how the fingers and belly and sex of one girl
can invoke the longing of another.
She taught me where to seek sweet abandon and I tell her now about
resistance, as if it were
Easy.
Kerry Slora
Burlington, VT

Fences
(From a Transsexual man to the men on the other side)

I have longed to roll and play with you for as long as I

can remember, watching from behind trellises and in the
shadows of peeling white picket fences I could smell you

and taste you but I could not build a bridge between. us but
only rage at the Gods for their determination to isolate

me. I have longed to dance with you the dance of something
that is not sex but more, that transcends orgasm into full
birth and commitment to the human race and bonds me to you
as we swing and sway, our hearts pounding in rhythm
together, drums in darkness driving out all fear. I come to
you with the longing of a lifetime lived behind crumbling
stone walls and cellar doors. I come here to touch you so
that I can feel myself. I come here to love you as brothers

so that I can come away from here and never have to hide
again. You are everything beautiful that I knew you were.

To live among you, to soothe my longing heart, to let go

my weapons, my armor, and sit unafraid . . . this is all I have
ever wanted, to come out from behind. barbed wire chain link
fences and cement pilings and just be with you. To be. VI/ith

you. —

Patrick Skater
Townshend, VT

April 2000 I Out in the Mountains

The Pig Scramble

I ask her to tell my favorite story.
To tell me how she would catch
that pig.

I-Ier dad said that cousin Paul

almost caught one 4

at the Addison County Fair.

Printing each letter with care, she slips her name into the
slot.

Certain to be slyer, smarter,

she leans over the steel gate, and waits.

What were you wearing? I ask,

already interrupting

so I can place myself within her story.

I become the neighborhood girl, looking on,
swinging my curiosity like long braids.

I collect details until I can picture her stance
determined and lean. Last year’s Levis,

oil stains and holes from when they were ]oel’s.
The three—quarter jersey, too tight, worn thin.
I can smell the onions, peppers, french fry shacks.
The manure, fresh and clean, she says

like fermented wheat.

Rehearsing her maneuvers,

she imagines the clang of a bell

and four young pigs dart into the pen,

a dozen kids, mostly farmers’ sons, close behind.
She would speed out, spectators cheering,

and slide knees first

toward that smooth pink swine,

grab its back legs as it squealed

like tires spinning in spring mud,

scrambling to her feet before the boys.

A respectable hero, she’d parade around the fair
with her prize,

bailing twine around the pigs neck.

A Vermont rodeo.

She tells Ere her uncle won a dirtbike
on the 4f ofjuly

because she said his name, Uncle Pete
UnclePeteUnclePeteUnclePete, until he won.
She begins repeating her name, fast
then slow

willing Mr. Morris to announce it
adding please God, please

even after I

the last name is called.

I stop her again, this time to ask how,
exactly,

did she plan to keep that pig

from wriggling away? She laughs

and, before I persist, I am pinned
between her forearm and chest.

She says my breasts are softer
than the backside of April's udder,

. her child hood cow. Years ago

drinking fly—strained milk

straight from the jug,

reading Laura Ingalls Wilder,

rigging lawnmower motors to go—carts
gave her life meaning.

In a Buffalo suburb, I sat cross—legged
eating Kraft cheese slices 4
from cellophane wrappers,
watching Romper Room on TV,
waiting for my name to be called
through the Magic Mirror.

Voice dry, with thepride

of a ten—year old tomboy, she says
I would have caught that pig.

I kissher forehead

and ask her to tell me her story
again.

Jen Matthews
Burlington, VT