Yellow Mama E zine

CENTERFOLD

 

by Barry Ergang

 

 

The telephone’s forgotten at tableside,

his cigarette, newly lit, ignored. Her face

in the silver frame, latest in the line

behind that glass, indulgently smiles at his

neglect.

              

               With rude desire he regards the goddess

Opened, importunate, across his knees,

Glossy Cinderella sans slippers, sans all

but the fixed and brittle allure he sculpts

with his eyes. Languorously sprawled on a satin

spread, newsstand coquette ageless on the page,

her juncture of thighs and half-smile entice:

Cleopatra’s fingers barging to the delta,

Helen’s lips conferring perpetuity.

To be clenched hard in her embrace, he thinks.

 

Cigarette a snake of ash dead in the tray,

he folds her back into her paper shrine,

darts a guilty glance at the face in the frame.

His hand finds the phone, withdraws, and he sighs.

He’s waged the war of wanting for too long.

The getting would only get in the way.

 

 

 

         Barry Ergang's work--fiction, poetry, and nonfiction--has appeared in numerous publications, among them Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine, King's River Life Magazine, Apollo's Lyre, and The Cortland Review. The Short Mystery Fiction Society presented him with the Derringer Award for the best flash fiction story of 2006.

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          Bernice Holtzman’s paintings and collages have appeared in shows at various venues in Manhattan, including the Back Fence in Greenwich Village, the Producer’s Club, the Black Door Gallery on W. 26th St., and one other place she can’t remember, but it was in a basement, and she was well received. She is the Assistant Art Director for Yellow Mama.