The Torrid Zone
{An Umbrella Special Feature}


John Milbury-Steen

teaches English as a Second Language at Temple University, Philadelphia. He received a Master’s in Creative Writing from Indiana University, Bloomington, studying with Ruth Stone.

He served in the Peace Corps in Liberia, West Africa and has worked as an artificial intelligence programmer in Computer Based Education at the University of Delaware.

Among his publishing credits are The Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, Dark Horse, The Piedmont Literary Review and Shenandoah.


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License

We interrupted non-stop sex to link
our hands in marriage, though we liked to think
that couples always have a rubber inked
to stamp them married, city hall succinct,
beside which institutions pale and sink,
that marriage license, paper love, is bunk.

When we got back to bed, eager to test
combustibility of the married state,
what kindling from that paper, oh what heat!
with President and Courts to cry the right
of lips and finger to do this or that
and back them up with the Atlantic fleet.

If love had extra juice when it was all
sneaky unapproved, how much more thrill
it got with license of the elder smile!
He never married, but, had he, Saint Paul
could have pulled a thorn out of his paw
and thought a lot more highly of the law.



 
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