December, 2000 Volume 3, Issue 3 Past Issues About dis/content Editorial Collective Contributors Contact Us Submissions Links Home   Poem by Melissa Tennyson Silence speaking in the pauses, not of     (“splendor of the hills” or     “realms of gold”) themes from poets anthologized, memorialized in bourgeois homes with high-backed chairs deep pillows clean sheets food –  no simile for death   synonym for dirt. Only the silence of a Jewish woman, kneeling at the edge of a   mass grave         before a German soldier her image frozen in the ink of the poem: in the moment before the bullet, her eyes speak no words. No words. Twenty-three –  my age. At the pace of maggots among the dead her silence consuming my words, eating them speaking where I cannot. Table of Contents