LOCAL BARDS HAVE POETIC FEET ON ONCE-SHAKY GROUND.

Byline: Daily News

It was the '94 quake that inspired Richard Weekley's latest poetry magazine, a collection of works by artists and poets driven to express themselves once the earth stopped quivering.

The collection, titled ``Epicenter,'' will be presented in a poetry reading and art show at noon Sunday at the Yellow Door Cantina, 24721 Newhall Ave., Newhall. The event coincides with the publication of Vol. No. 23, a poetry magazine co-edited by Weekley.

The publication of the collection will be celebrated at Sunday's reading. Poets Marcia Cohee and Jerry Danielsen will read. Admission is $3.

Included in the collection is Weekley's terrifying recollection of the Northridge Quake:

4:30 a.m.

And I Heard Children Crying

for ME

from down the hall

Daddy Daddy Daddy

they agonize

their screaming tentacles pull

but the dark fits body bag tight

and I can't figure out why the

bedroom door won't budge

black suffocating everything

I'm blind but I think I'm OK

still for the longest time

I'd felt the bed being sucked

straight down

there it is again

DADDY DADDY DADDY

their pale screams burn now

becoming a kind of light in the

pitch dark

drawing me

I've

I've got to

I've got to help them

furrows of mind fire

mantra claws

utter unseeability

I still don't know if I yelled back

or shrieked 

I'll be right there

in panic who truly knows what we do

who knows what's heard

or remembered

the door

the damn door

the damn door won't budge

I couldn't figure out why

and

and I keep hearing these hysterical

wails in a distance I could not find

DADDY DADDY DADDY