Carrie was one of the first contributors to my little White Wings Project, and I'm pleased as punch to have received another offering from this talented lady. Happy are they who have landed smack-dab in the middle of these two gems from Carrie Berry! The following two pages house a poem and a brand new play.

       Sweet, sensuous, mystical and revelatory: this is how I would describe Carrie's poem ''healing.'' It's long been a favorite of mine, ever since it first appeared on the doorstep of chansuchin on AOL. Unforgettable.

She says of her poem:

       ''The Chinese have a custom of giving gifts of money in red envelopes printed in gold with symbols of luck and other good wishes. Hence the soft kisses in red paper.''

       Carrie's new piece is a highly polished short play in one act. The characters - Id, Ego and Superego - are the Freudian elements of consciousness and subconsciousness personified. Join them on the stage and enjoy their quirky attempts to relate to each other! The result is an intellectual treat with generous doses of humor throughout.

       I'm extremely flattered that Carrie put so much thought and effort into this submission. The formatting of the play in HTML presented challenges of its own. She writes:

       "This is probably the most difficult HTML job I have ever done. When I wrote the play, I had a hard time deciding how to show the difference between character parts and the stage directions, so I used tables in word and colored fonts. It worked fine, but it wasn't so easy to convert to the same idea in HTML. I probably could have done it using Word's HTML, but I am being stubborn about it. I don't like some of the ways it does things, but when it comes down to it I guess I just like being able to say 'I did it myself'. My original was all in Tempus Sans ITC and I started doing the whole thing that way, but I decided it was a bit easier to read without it. So I left the trace bits on the title for sentimental reasons."

       Well, I love the play, the formatting, and the fonts. My hat goes off to anybody who insists on writing their own code, rather than settle for the tangled drivel produced by Word's lame "Save as HTML" feature. Way to go, Carrie!

       So, gentle readers, click on and enjoy:

Carrie's White Wings Pages

These pages, coded by The Silkstress, are not to be confused with Carrie's own, very impressive HTML creations:

• Carrie's lovely personal website, freefall: electronic poetry chapbook of Carrie Berry, and
• Bonfire - an excellent website for writers edited by both Carrie and Jim Maddocks.

Bonfire features a collection of outstanding poetry and essays from guests, along with a treasure trove of resources and a great little message board for giving and receiving feedback. The board is a pleasant place to receive kind and constructive critique on poetry and fiction - and give it!

Index

• healing (poem)

• an egg in a scarlet ribbon (play)