Smack in the Center of It All

Long-time Northern California publisher (and heckuva poet) Crawdad Nelson has published a book for Eskimo Pie Girl Rebecca Morrison. The book is called The Cook Inlet Poems, a series of poems about growing up in Alaska. Copies can be ordered for $5 from Crawdad (Flyway Press) at crawdiddlydad@yahoo.com. The book includes a couple of photos, plus a beautiful drawing of Mt. Redoubt by Crawdad. Rebecca's poetry will also be seen in Snake 8, and click on the link to her Eskimo Pie e-journal to the right of this. Here is a sample of Rebecca's fine work:


THE CENTER OF IT ALL
—Rebecca Morrison, Sacramento

In the center of the house
was a clean white space
on the braided green rug
where I sat by the fire
in my clean soft pajamas.
White light came through
the many windows from
the sunlit forest.
The clean and the warm
came from my mother
in her freshly ironed
bright-flowered dress
standing in the kitchen,
humming and washing
and baking.
She always said,
You must have good light.
And I grew in that
bright circle,
twirling in her gaze
beside the old fold-up
phonograph, crisp piano
notes falling like
perfect snowflakes
as I choreographed
the enchanted forest,
lying on the clean
spotless rug,
reading my story
book aloud to
her in that perfect
light in the
center of it all.

____________________

Thanks, Rebecca! Check The Book Collector for collections of Crawdad's poetry, too.

And don’t forget: Bill Gainer’s RattleRead is NEXT Wednesday at The Book Collector, not tonight. Dec. 14, not the 7th.


CONSUMMATION OF GRIEF
—Charles Bukowski

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and all the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines...

it matters little

very little love is not so bad
or very little life

what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this

I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

___________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)