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 Pris Campbell
Among other Journals and Poetry Collections, Pris Campbell's free verse poetry has been published in
Poems Niederngasse, MiPo Publications (print/digital/radio), Boxcar Poetry Review (her poem in the May 2007 issue won the issue's peer award), The Cliffs: Soundings, Empowerment4Women, The Dead Mule: An Anthology of Southern Literature, In The Fray, Tears in the Fence, and Thunder Sandwich. She has two chapbooks, Abrasions and Interchangeable Goddesses, the latter with Tammy Trendle. Pris also has a strong interest in haiga/haiku, publishing those in a number of journals.
Raised in the Carolinas, she has lived in the midwest, Hawaii, and New England, and now lives in the greater West Palm Beach, Florida area with her husband, a spoiled dog, and a cat who sleeps on her rough poetry drafts. She lived in a commune for 3 years while still in Boston, moving to Florida by way of a six month meandering trip in a 22-foot sailboat. On that trip she visited such places as Nantucket, Long Island Sound, and the Chesapeake Bay, and passed a scowling wild goat perched on a thin strip of land in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. A storm off the Jersey Coast was almost enough to make her give up sailing... but not quite. Later, she and her husband crossed to the Bahamas in their 26-foot sailboat, experiencing a slice of life and beauty not seen by Cruise Ships.
Formerly a Clinical Psychologist specializing in developing and running treatment units for people with chronic mental illnesses, she has been sidelined with CFIDS since 1990. For more information about the profound impact CFIDS has had on her life, read her 'about me' page on her website at http://www.poeticinspire.com/aboutme.html. Information about purchasing her chapbook, Abrasions, can be found on the homepage of that website.
 Artwork by Escha van den Bogerd
Celibate for longer than
Rip Van Winkle's nap,
Sara dreams in technicolor,
breasts firm like freshly scooped ice-cream,
and go-on-forever legs wrapped around
some sexy man's waist.
Sean Connery maybe, or
Denzel Washington.
She wonders if sex works like
heartbeats in animals, if
she used up her quota in her
too many men too little time
communal days.
She remembers when her face
blazed a fire in men's hearts.
Between their legs, too.
Now she's forgotten what an orgasm
feels like with a man still inside her.
She climbs out of bed, puts on her
Give Bush a Blow Job PLEASE sweatshirt,
joins other graying ex-hippie
women who wander the streets
and coffee shops after midnight,
minds still alert and longing,
bodies fading like ghosts
between every streetlight. The above poem was previously published in MEAT, a semi-regular broadside by S.A. Griffin, co-editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
Promises Promises Inside a Black Hole,
this ectoplastic projection
of the skylight from Oz,
I sit with the Wizard.
 Artwork by Escha van den Bogerd
on what Dorothy did
with the Tin Man,
a pair of strapless red heels
(size nine narrow),
and one gold brick
(at least) for my
well-hid account
in Switzerland.
He chants first,
eats bean curd, then
asks to be spanked
before zipping the Hole closed,
his old man's hand
on my breast, and
not so much as a rabbit's foot
for my trouble My Diamonds and Rust Lover
These uncountable years later,
he calls and I'm trying to remember
before time turned so brittle,
when the sky wasn't so easily bruised
by thunderstorms, when dogs didn't
stand on their haunches and howl
near my window, come midnight.
 Artwork by Escha van den Bogerd
into that closet of dead days,
barred tight the door,
tossed the key, but
his call reminds me our passion
once was a wild thing,
a tree flattening hurricane,
an earthquake leaving fault lines
leading from heart down to groin,
now splitting wide to his voice. Afterbirth Told she would die of
this lump growing in
side her--
go karmic
go spirit
go angels singing
from the realms of glory--
she buys a low
cut red shimmy shammy dress,
seduces the Jamaican lawn boy,
mails her husband's mistress
faked records;
Mr. Jonas: herpes advanced stage!!
Oh, so official.
She withdraws their savings in ten
dollar bills, spends weeks
hiding each bill separately
in the gardenias
the A/C duct
under the carpets
inside every bra, dress, shoe, and book
she still owns.
The lump,
this lump, now
her baby
come full term,
implodes,
a whoooooosh
of after
birth taking her with it,
 Artwork by Escha van den Bogerd
away from this strict
overplushed house
away from her faux-porcelain
mouthed husband,
only
that wrinkled
hand-clenched
desperate red dress
marking her shrunken
sad space on the bed. Above poem previously published in Poems Niederngasse
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