K.A. Thomas has appeared in i.e.magazine, Tintern Abbey, and The Texas Review. Her work placed in The Houston Press 1999 Poetry Contest and she was featured on ABCnews.com's National Poetry Month site in 1998 and 1999. She lives in Houston with poet M. Alexander and her son Tristan. Dark Planet is designed and edited by Lucy A. Snyder. If you spot any errors, or if you have any comments, please contact her at lusnyde@cyberus.ca. All materials copyright 1996-2000 by their respective creators. No stories, articles, poems or images from this webzine may be posted or published without the written consent of their creator(s).

Highway Side: Five Minutes to Midnight by K.A. Thomas     We ride the road to the City of the Dead, mouths full & spitting Chewing John's juice, ears pierced by Wolf's howl: We gonna pitch a wang-dang doodle.... All night long down Highway 61, Blues Alley, you can run -- you can run from Memphis to Clarksdale, past Smitty's Red Top & Sarah's Kitchen, past a now collapsed & wholly moldering Riverside Hotel on Sunflower Street where Bessie Smith came to grips with the ultimate epistemology of the Blues. You can run on through, past Rosedale -- you can run till you come to U.S. 49. Never mind the Fuel Mart & Church's Fried Chicken, never mind Delta Donuts & Abe's Bar-B-Q.     Robert Johnson, tell us, if you know what waits in that place outside the borders of town, in that place where two roads cross at right angles, where Mercury dimes dipped in Van Van, dusted with ashes, & wrapped in red flannel might still due your bill in some juke joint where a drink of whiskey's always a risk for a man with the mojo. Hands down, your good-girl wasn't there.... Old man, if you're on this road tonight, thumb stuck out, bootheels clocking 12 beats to the nearest bar, come on. We'll turn our strings to open tunings, roll our bones past Morgan City We won't stop at Three Forks Store, we won't sleep at Mount Zion.     We got to keep on moving     -- keep on moving....