Frogs & Turtles & Medusa's Kinky Place...!

Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a marketing whiz: see Peggy Hill's interview of her in Snake 3. PWJ is an expert at finding niches for her poetry. Today she writes:

I'm sending you a poem which will be in my Palo Cedro East Valley Times poetry column in July, but you can have it first—and I hope you do put it in Medusa's kinky place. The Frog Exhibit it refers to at Redding's Turtle Bay Museum (where I also sent the poem) is utterly fantastic! And it's open through October—not to mention the Butterfly House into the Fall, and a good art exhibit and much much more, including that gorgeous Sundial Bridge across the Sacramento River (and the new botanic garden). It would pay you southern-valley folks to come up here and visit.

Here’s the Turtle Bay Website: http://www.turtlebay.org/museum/museum.shtml


CHINA FROG
(At the Turtle Bay Museum,
Redding, California, 2005)
—Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Tehama, California

We’re fooled
by the chunk of slick porcelain
dipped in a blue-green glaze
that hunches on a limb
in the Chinese Gliding Frog display.

The head rolls around,
huge eyes blink, stare at ours.
A live frog stretches
behind the glass
to the branch near our faces.

He spreads toes tipped
with impossible blue-painted nails,
places sticky footpads with care,
swings his whole body
over to crouch before
our wide eyes.

_____________________

Thanks, Patricia! Her press, PWJ Publishing, is an active enterprise, and she herself has many publications out, including Rattlechap #3 (Voices on the Land) and littlesnake broadside #10 (Mill Race Cafe), both from Rattlesnake Press. PWJ was very supportive of the Snake Way Back When, sending many contributors our way—some of whom have had poetry in every single Rattlesnake Review. Patricia and another Snake-buddy, Ellaraine Lockie, will be reading in Walnut Creek in July; more about that later.

—Medusa