Free-Wheeling, as Usual

Free-Wheeling, the book of poems from the Towe Auto Museum 2004 poetry contest about personal transportation, is out: order a copy from the museum (916-442-6802). And charge up your pencils and get started on next year's contest: deadline 11/10. Call the museum for contest guidelines. This contest was the brainchild of two of our active Sacramento poets who also volunteer at the museum, Elsie Whitlow Feliz and Don Feliz; what a creative way to bring poetry into the lives of a large, diverse group of "civilians"! Don has a recent littlesnake broadside out (Switchback Path), and Elsie's rattlechap, Tea With Bunya, will be released in September. Contest judges were also friends of the Snake, Ruth and Fred Harrison.

Patricia Wellingham-Jones and Ellaraine Lockie will be reading at Primopoets in Walnut Creek this Sunday, July 17, from 3-5pm. Both of these ladies have appeared in various Snake-venues, and both of them have too many credits to list, including a multitude of chaps, Pushcart nominations, workshop leading... the list is endless. Their reading is at 100 N. Wiget Lane, Walnut Creek (corner of Ygnacio Valley Rd. and Wiget). Info: 925-212-9447. Here is a sample from Ellaraine (see various issues of the Snake for more poems, and for her wonderful article on paper-making):


EDGE OF NIGHT

Black with blue swollen veins
He sits in stained denim
on the train station bench

Elbows on spread-eagled knees
Sparrow hands on head hung low
A plastic produce bag for a hat

pulled over his ears
Preserving the rising heat
The fragile lobes from frostbite

As winter eats its way
into the San Francisco Bay
with butcher knife teeth

(Previously published in Taproot Literary Review)

______________________________


THE WHIPPING WOMAN

The woman I hire to daughter my mother
makes bi-weekly visits to the dementia ward
Lies down beside the near-still waters

Accepts the mouth kisses wet with drool
From where gravelly words
dribble down washed-out gullies

Like a whipping boy she bears the brunt
of each face-to-face flagellation
that my rawhide flesh refuses

And for twenty dollars an hour I purchase
like the contraposition of a professional mourner
Substitution for services I can't supply

__________________________

And don't forget: Sac. Poetry Center sponsors a reading tonight by Mildred Hunt; 7:30 at HQ, 25th and R Streets. Go early for the Board meeting at 6, Hamburger Mary's (17th & J).

—Medusa