Page 6 The Clarion Literary Supplement Tuesday, April 26, 1983 Three Strikes and You’re Out I stood behind the plate as the screwball hit the catcher’s mitt—SMACK Strike one. Palms sweaty, I waited for the second pitch, A fast ball- high and outside. I swung, made contact—CRACK Foul to right field. Strike two. One more chance. My pulse is racing. I step back from the batter’s box. Watch him—his eyes. What will come next? The game is in my hands. A curve. Take the chance. A hit, a big hit. Home run. My heart is lost. The game is won. Cheri Chester 35,000 Feet A roar and a sharp tug at the shoulders. Blood fills the ears — uptilt and strain. Rooftops shrink by, hills slide away, familiarities mottle into small panic. The glint of dissolving cars belies motionless ground, windless mirrors. Roads stretch out like veins, cunning around pitchfork lakes, a park of buses schooled like kernels of yellow corn, the ribbed fan of a drive-in theater. At 35,000 feet the notch of volt towers through a quadrilateral farm graphs our sense of boundary — a nuclear hourglass, the blue inlaid stamp of swimming pools, a button card of oil tanks. New wheat lines up against fallow. But geometric constraints lift to surprise: an armada of pillows steams across an Antarctic plain, their distant, turbulent wakes dissolving above the time zones and the weight of anchored dreams. Ken Chamlee y i A Fatal Experiment Linocut by Stephen Witte Circularring (To my mother) PTK CONTEST WINNER Golden graduation tangibility transcends time To rest upon active fingers which deliver Messages much as you must have rhymed While searching all of Pennsylvania to discover The young moments which experience kissed, Vigorous energies caused to slide What tense nerves made to twist. But now that spirit exists at my side That I may understand the infinite unity Which genetically, materially, and intangibly Passes lovingly from you to me. I’m trapped here in my leaden prison, A tangled cobweb of oppressed emotions Upset without delay but not destroyed. Vehemently I search for an escape I find a door and can almost see the light With bright and hopeful heart I open it — There is no light. Yet I tread through the door — It closes with a Venus flytrap calm. I’m in another leaden prison cell More bleak, more tight, and still I don’t give up Although my head’s an overcharged balloon And I discover more new doors...and prisons. I open yet another door — there’s light! My energy returns like sap in spring. I see a stream and take off my shoes and socks The coolness of the water calms my soul. I look in the diredtion the stream flows And see its moving toward a great river. When stream water is mixed with river water It is transformed and grows more vast. The river does not run like the small stream There are no leaden rocks that block its path But even if there were they would not stop it I look back toward the stream which fights the rocks And notice that the rocks provide its form A stream with rocks works harder and grows stronger. Leaden rocks are much like leaden prisons. Regina Wortnian Jane Roberts