summer rogers Summer Rogers' goal has been to transfer her imagination and energy into activities, events, and discussions with generations X, Y, Z. Besides passing along wisdom from the beat and beat up generations, she is a community organizer, youth mentor, and substitute teacher in Chicago. Summer is a Loyola University New Orleans graduate and former intern of the New Orleans Review and New Orleans' OffBeat Magazine. her work has appeared in Bad Girl Magazine; Wrapped Around My Neck, and Hunger: December, 1997, The Maroon: Women Seen as Weaker Sex by Society: April 1999, WREC Magazine; Iris May Tango Near You: June 1999, OffBeat Magazine; The Revealers: More Than Reggae: June 1999. stuckonwritersblock@msn.com   Jane Doe   The world is comprised of grids Shaded regions separate half   The silver lining whose gleam is too bright for metal Eyes is accused of shining beams Where darkness is meant to fall   Wrap her in cloth; package her in a box Put her on a shelf and only think of her   litmus test   Life as real as TV broadcasts pleonasm Trendy narcissism speaks louder than quiet thrift store scrutiny   For what initially seemed empowering, naive followers multiplied And trailed after goods that advertised the millennium   Believing the other side was green Reality was blown into little pieces   Walking the soul, like the dog Gentrifying the neighborhood the same   Puffed smoke from their cigarettes between channels Routing their threaded profile towards achievements   With billboard poise, wife beater tee shows muscle Sweatshop grief mutely endures   Capped-tooth smiles disguise two-piece vanity in show tune happiness through Psychic sex phone cords, installing that lost kindergarten confidence in the receiver   Greened pupils watch love ignite orgasms as Duty merely genuflects   Reggae twists lock into peepholes of ecstasy Holding open their orifices   As silver-plated rings gleam turning fingers Into malignant sticks doused in stardust   Painted spirit is peeling at the ends of moral weight Hidden between sheets of acidity     bilingual   nine stories high. nine generations deep. nine strands outside of my head.   hummed questions and quiet response information station and murmured details   invisible dedication and blind amour leather paper and glass steel   hot, back-browning sun fading into artificial air endless fields turning into a closed wall   fluorescent eyes glimmer like light peeking through slanted horizontal blinds   blinking people display or expose   me, I. self black, period. running my ancestor black, period. running   I would like to thank capitalism, Europe, I haven't forgotten about you.   "manage the intelligentsia"

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