Come With Me

NEW YEAR’S EVE IN THE WAITING ROOM
—Taylor Graham, Somerset

The doctor’s an hour behind schedule.
Does this cause midnight to come
sooner, or later?

A nurse calls numbers, and people disappear
behind the door — are they entering
a new year, or locked into the old?

Rain smudges the window.
Beyond our dark, I imagine
stars shifting patterns

for a swing from one number
to the next, loose
in thin air between the years.

______________________

COME WITH ME

through the gate of late December woods.
Hairy-gray lichen stubbles the branches
of every twisted oak. One dried leaf;
then a dozen drift down-spiral in the wind
with whirligig-wings of pine-seed,
a flying-school of the dead and unborn.
They settle in these somber woods
like songless birds. But look, here’s
willow-ochre, rust- and umber-weed
dull as brass, wild-grape gone sapless,
brittle; every color stained with earth.

Come with me. We’ll walk
until we find a tarnished shaft
of sunlight, some misty token
of the long night’s frost.
We’ll search out a shadow of cloud
on the stream before it too
disappears down-sluicing these last
hours, count-down days of a year
not quite frozen to its past.

—Taylor Graham

_______________________

Thanks, TG! Taylor Graham and Peggy Hill (below) have taken the bait and writing about portals/openings/gates to kick off the new year with Medusa. Send your poems and/or photos and artwork about openings to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 by midnight next Weds. (Jan. 2) and I'll send you a copy of Pat D'Alessandro's new SnakeRings SpiralChap, Metamorphic Intervals from the Insanity of Life, or any other Snake product of your choosing (see rattlesnakepress.com). Remember: previously-published work is fine for Medusa (but not for Rattlesnake Review).


This week in NorCal poetry:

•••Friday (1/4), 7:30-9 PM: The Other Voice presents the dynamic husband and wife team, Susan and Joseph Finkleman, giving us their unique two voice poems with music to accompany them featuring flautist, Francesca Reitano, and percussionist, Mark Halverson. It’s a brand new year, so come and party in the library of the Davis Unitarian Universalist Church, 27074 Patwin Road, Davis. Refreshments and Open Mike follow the reading, so bring along a poem or two to share. Susan says, We've got 8 brand new poems for you, as well as a few old favorites. Susan and Joe have a SnakeRings SpiralChap, Poems in Two Voices, available, as well as CDs of their work. Check out their website: www.visionsandviews.com/. They can also be reached at josephfinkleman@yahoo.com/.

Joseph Finkleman was born in Hollywood, CA. He has a BFA and an MFA from the S.F. Art Institute, was a professional photographer for 20 years and taught photography and animation. He recently completed the libretto of an opera that will be performed at Sac State.

Susan Finkleman began her writing career at age 10 as a struggling novelist in Detroit, Michigan, then as a poet at the age of 13. Recent work has been published in Susurrus, Rattlesnake Review and The Yolo Crow. She now works as the office manager of the Davis Cemetery.

Francesca Reitano studies and performs with Mary Youngblood. She has been a singer/songwriter since the '60’s and her study of the Native American Flute began in 2003. For Francesca, making sound has become a path of communication, expression and healing.

Mark Halverson started playing drums in local surf, rock, soul and blues bands in the '60’s and '70’s while taking lessons from Stanley Lunetta. Currently, he performs with Lucy’s Bones and the Blues Gurus.

•••Saturday (1/5), 8 PM: Special reading: Songs for Maya, featuring Litany with Miles Maniaci, Mario Ellis Hill, Vincent Cobalt, Robert Lozano and others. Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Info: 916-441-3931. Hosted by B.L. Kennedy.

_____________________

RULES
—Margaret Ellis Hill, Wilton

Haskell Free Public Library straddles
the marked international border.

Their patrons park their cars in Quebec,
walk through the front door in Vermont.

The main desk sits on a Canadian rug,
sofas or chairs sit on American turf.

(Informal exemption from border restriction
may change as authorities consider

crackdowns on illegal aliens passing
through unguarded streets.)

Under new rules and regulations
Canadians would have to detour

through special ports of entry
to borrow a book or two.

_____________________

BEFORE THE GATE
—Margaret Ellis Hill

The flock of sheep stand still before the gate
until a latch is raised. They know the sound—
and with the creak of hinge, won't hesitate
to go. A shepherd leads them out around
the edge of ponds and brooks to find a place
where oats grow high and rye tastes sweet and good
and clover covered hills and fields, a space
to eat their fill and more. No likelihood
until a latch is raised. They know the sound.
The shepherd keeps his charges close at hand
as skies become the covers the surround.
Old oaks will whisper with the wind to plan
some leafy beds. Both day and night the air
stays cool and kind, the weather mostly fair.
He know his role. The shepherd smile his fate—
the flock of sheep stand still before the gate.

(A sonnetelle, published in Poet's Forum Magazine, Autumn, 2003)

_____________________

Thanks, Peggy!

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:

Rattlesnake Review: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

Coming in February: The Snake has crawled into winter hibernation for the rest of December and for all of January: no readings, no books, no broadsides. (Medusa is always awake, however, and will keep posting through most of that time. Send stuff.) Then, on February 13, Rattlesnake Press will roar to life again with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Janus-time

ALMANAC
—Carl Sandburg

Scrutinize the Scorpion constellation
and see where a hook of stars
ends with a lonely star.

Go to the grey sea horizon
and ask for a message
and listen and wait.

See whether the conundrums
of a heavy land fog
either sing or talk.

Let only a small cry come
in behalf of a clean sunrise:
the sun performs so often.

Speak ot the branches of spring
and the surprise of blossoms:
they too hope for a good year.

Search the first winter snowstorm
for a symphonic arrangement:
it is always there.

Take an alphabet of gold or mud and spell
as you wish any words: kiss me, kill me,
love, hate, ice, thought, victory.

Read the numbers on your wrist watch
and ask: is being born, being loved,
being dead, nothing but numbers?

______________________

Is the first of the year nothing but numbers? Or is it a new door, a chance to start again/clean up your act/re-write yourself? "Take an alphabet of gold or mud and spell as you wish" some poems about this new door/gate/portal/opportunity. A gate, like Janus, looks both ways, yes? What about the opportunities of an unlocked door, and the lack of same (or the very different kind of opportunities) of a prison gate. The "gated" community, floodgates, the door of a birdcage, the fox burrow that has as many as ten entrances/exits...

And those keys!—Big shiny gold ones, rusty old iron ones, or the new kind that have pictures and colors on them. The pivotal key to The Secret Garden (and Robin who "points" it out). The jailor with his iron ring full of jangling ones, or the tiny, hidden key to a music box, or...

Anyway, send your poems and/or photos and artwork about openings to Medusa (kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) by midnight next Weds. (Jan. 2) and I'll send you a copy of Pat D'Alessandro's new SnakeRings SpiralChap, Metamorphic Intervals from the Insanity of Life, or any other Snake product of your choosing (see rattlesnakepress.com).

Here are some more "portal poems" to stir your Muse:

PAPER DOOR
—Shinkichi Takahashi

The shoji blocks the winter sun.
As fallen leaves shift, scattering,
So goes history: the eye and its subject fused.

The eyes, turned sardines, are broiling
On the grill. The torn shoji flaps in the wind.
Like the universe, its frames are fading.

The drinker is silhouetted on the shoji,
And there's tea's subtle odor:
Tea whisked, like cares, into a froth.

______________________

THE GATE
—Czeslaw Milosz

Later dense hops will cover it completely.
As for now, it has the color
That lily pads have in very deep water
When you pluck them in the light of a summer evening.

The pickets are painted white at the top.
White and sharp, like tiny flames.
Strange that this never bothered the birds.
Even a wild pigeon once perched there.

The handle is of wood worn smooth over time,
Polished by the touch of many hands.
Nettles like to steal under the handle
And a yellow jasmine here is a tiny lantern.

______________________

A PORTAL
—Czeslaw Milosz

Before a sculpted stone portal,
In the sun, at the border of light and shade,
Almost serene. Thinking with relief: this will remain
When the frail body fades and presto, nobody.
Touching a grainy wall. Surprised
That I accept so easily my waning away,
Though I should not. Earth, what have I to do with thee?
With your meadows where dumb beasts
Grazed before the deluge without lifting their heads?
What have I to do with your implacable births?
So why this gracious melancholia?
Is it because anger is no use?

_____________________

NEW YEAR SNOW
—Frances Horovitz

For three days we waited,
a bowl of dull quartz for sky.
At night the valley dreamed of snow,
lost Christmas angels with dark-white wings
flailing the hills.
I dreamed a poem, perfect
as the first five-pointed flake,
that melted at dawn:
a Janus-time
to peer back at guttering dark days,
trajectories of the spent year.
And then snow fell.
Within an hour, a world immaculate
as January's new-hung page.
We breathe the radiant air like men new-born.
The children rush before us.
As in a dream of snow
we track through crystal fields
to the green horizon
and the sun's reflected rose.

______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

Dreaming of Foxes

A DREAM OF FOXES
—Lucille Clifton

in the dream of foxes
there is a field
and a procession of women
clean as good children
no hollow in the world
surrounded by dogs
no fur clumped bloody
on the ground
only a lovely time
of honest women stepping
without fear or guilt or shame
safe through the generous fields.

______________________

Here in Pollock Pines we are visited every night by a grey fox—or is it two? This is not his/her photo, I don't think, but foxes are the only members of the dog family who can climb trees. I believe it. S/he jumps up onto the narrow deck railing and walks along like a cat.

S/he also likes to eat tofu-dogs. You know—those hot dogs made out of soy?


THE THOUGHT-FOX
—Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near

Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.

_____________________

Two submission opportunities:

1. Cleo Fellers Kocol of Roseville writes: If you have a short—15 lines or less—love poem, send it to me by Jan. 15 for inclusion in my Feb. Sacramento Bee column. Those not in the column will be published on line. Send them to cburll@hotmail.com/.

2. Russell Salamon writes: Now is a good time to submit poems for the California State Poetry Society journal, California Quarterly. Send three or four poems, preferably one page long; two pages okay. Send with SASE to: Russell Salamon, P.O. Box 7126, Orange, CA 92863.

We (the California State Poetry Society) are also accepting poems for our MONTHLY CONTESTS (OPEN TO ALL POETS). Topics for 2008 include:

January: Create a poem from words: deaf, cloak, miser, silver, baton
February: Romance, Love, War & Peace
March: Any Subject
April: "Found poem" (with poem, mention venue of finding)
May: Sonnet, Blank Verse
June: Any Subject
July: Haiku, Tanka
August: Humor, Satire, Joy of Life
September: Any Subject
October: Experimental Poem (get creative and let go!)
November: Family, Friendship, Human Condition
December: Best of Your Best (winning or published poem;
indicate name of publication and issue date/year)

Eligibility: ALL POETS, US AND FOREIGN. Poems must be in English and not published, except for December (remember to indicate venue and date).

Deadline: Postmarked by last day of each contest month. Mark your calendar and plan ahead to send in your poem for each month.

Entry Fee: $3.00 entry fee for first and second poem. Third poem and so on is $1.50 each. Example: 1 to 2 poems= $3.00; add a poem, $4.50, etc. No limit on number of poems. Checks payable to CSPS, US funds only. PLEASE NOTE: each haiku or tanka is $1.50, no groups in this topic.

Prizes: First place winner receives 1/2 of prize pool, but not to exceed $100. If pool reaches $100, then second prize get $10 and third $5. All winners announced in CSPS Newsbriefs newsletter.

Submission: Separate checks and envelopes per month. No names on poems. Include cover sheet with identification, entry listing, and theme. Please sign check to indicate contest on note line. Typed or printed poems only. NO handwriting, no art work, except for Experimental Poem category. NOTE: Keep copies, none are returned.

Notification & Judging: Winning poets receive a certificate and prize money, if awarded according to rules stated above. Include a SASE with sufficient postage for winner's list. Qualified, blind, judging. Judge's decisions, contest rules are final.

Publishing: The California State Poetry Society may publish monthly winning poems in the Poetry Letter & Literary Review. If you wish your winning poem(s) to be considered for the PL&LR, please give your permission on each month's cover sheet. Placing does not guarantee publication in the Poetry Letter. CSPS is not responsible for change of mind or misstated permission to publish.

____________________

FOXES IN WINTER
—Mary Oliver

Every night in the moonlight the foxes come down the hill
to gnaw on the bones of birds. I never said
nature wasn't cruel. Once, in a city as hot as these woods
are cold, I met a boy with a broken face. To stay
alive, he was a beggar. Also, in the night, a thief.
And there are birds in his country that look like rainbows—
if he could have caught them, he would have
torn off their feathers and put their bodies into
his own. The foxes are hungry, who could blame them
for what they do! I never said
we weren't sunk in glittering nature, until we are able
to become something else. As for the boy; it's simple.
He had nothing, not even a bird. All night the pines
are so cold their branches crack. All night the snow falls
softly down. Then it shines like a field
of white flowers. Then it tightens.

______________________

FOX
—Mary Oliver

You don't ever know where
a sentence will take you, depending
on its roll and fold. I was walking
over the dunes when I saw
the red fox asleep under the green
branches of the pine. It flared up
in the sweet order of its being,
the tail that was over the muzzle
lifting in airy amazement
and the fire of the eyes followed
and the pricked ears and the thin
barrel body and the four
athletic legs in their black stockings and it
came to me how the polish of the world changes
everything, I was hot I was cold I was almost
dead of delight. Of course the mind keeps
cool in its hidden palace—yes, the mind takes
a long time, is otherwise occupied than by
happiness, and deep breathing. Still,
at last, it comes too, running
like a wild thing, to be taken
with its twin sister, breath. So I stood
on the pale, peach-colored sand, waching the fox
as it opened like a flower, and I began
softly, to pick among the vast assortment of words
that it should run again and again across the page
that you again and again should shiver with praise.



______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:

Rattlesnake Review: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. The last of contributors' and subscribers' copies went into the mail last week. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

Coming in February: The Snake has crawled into winter hibernation for the rest of December and for all of January: no readings, no books, no broadsides. (Medusa is always awake, however, and will keep posting through most of that time. Send stuff.) Then, on February 13, Rattlesnake Press will roar to life again with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

The Disappearing Snake

Photo courtesy of Stephani Schaefer

HOW DO I GRIEVE
—Stephani Schaefer, Los Molinos

wait it out
on the splintery chair
at the sunbleached table

in the clean winter yard
of swept clay

wait it out

the broom leans on the fence
you can watch its shadow move

water won't flow
from that cracked green hose
pipes burst from the cold yesterday

and in today's sun
there is no promise of thaw

the kettle
could be singing in the kitchen

maybe later

when the sky turns black
and icy stars move
over the frozen hills

later
light the kettle
cry at the kitchen table
rocking

the moon a white face
at the window

____________________

Thanks, Steph! Stephani Schaefer writes: I wrote this the morning after my father died (stepfather, but father to me nevertheless). This week is the anniversary of his death 17 years ago and I still miss him, especially at this time. Your moon poems were timely for me [see yesterday's post]...

____________________

Speaking of frozen hills, we got 2-3 inches of snow up here last night.

THE ONSET
—Robert Frost

Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun.

Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured against maple, birch and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of a slender April rill
That flashes tail through last year's withered brake
And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.
Nothing will be left white but here a birch,
And there a clump of houses with a church.

_____________________

THE SNOW IS DEEP ON THE GROUND
—Kenneth Patchen

The snow is deep on the ground.
Always the light falls
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd.

This is a good world.
The war has failed.
God shall not forget us.
Who made the snow waits where love is.

Only a few go mad.
The sky moves in its whiteness
Like the withered hand of an old king.
God shall not forget us.
Who made the sky knows of our love.

The snow is beautiful on the ground.
And always the lights of heaven glow
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd.

_____________________

YESTERDAY, SNOW
—Raymond Carver

Yestday, snow was falling and all was chaos.
I don't dream, but in the night I dreamed
a man offered me some of his whiskey.
I wiped the mouth of the bottle
and raised it to my lips.
It was like one of those dreams of falling
where, they say, if you don't wake up
before you hit the ground,
you'll die. I woke up! Sweating.
Outside, the snow had quit.
But, my God, it looked cold. Fearsome.
The windows were ice to the touch
when I touched them. I got back
in bed and lay there the rest of the night,
afraid I'd sleep again. And find
myself back in tht dream...
The bottle rising to my lips.
The indifferent man
waiting for me to drink and pass it on again.
A skewed moon hangs on until morning,
and a brilliant sun.
Before now, I never knew what it meant
to "spring out of bed."
All day snow flopping off roofs.
They crunch of tires and footsteps.
Next door, there's an old fellow shoveling.
Every so often he stops and leans
on his shovel, and rests, letting
his thoughts go where they may.
Staying his heart.
Then he nods and grips his shovel.
Goes on, yes. Goes on.

_____________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:

Rattlesnake Review: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. The last of contributors' and subscribers' copies went into the mail last week. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

Coming in February: The Snake has crawled into winter hibernation for the rest of December and for all of January: no readings, no books, no broadsides. (Medusa is always awake, however, and will keep posting through most of that time. Send stuff.) Then, on February 13, Rattlesnake Press will roar to life again with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

To The Moon

Sunset at the North Pole
with the moon at its closest point

WITH HOW SAD STEPS, O MOON
—Sir Philip Sidney

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What, may it be that even in heav'nly place
that busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case.
I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace,
To me that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, ev'n of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

_____________________

TO THE MOON
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

_____________________

WHEN I HEARD THE LEARNED ASTRONOMER
—Walt Whitman

When I heard the learned astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with

much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.

_____________________

HAPPINESS
—Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

____________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:

Rattlesnake Review: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. The last of contributors' and subscribers' copies went into the mail last week. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

Coming in February: The Snake has crawled into winter hibernation for the rest of December and for all of January: no readings, no books, no broadsides. (Medusa is always awake, however, and will keep posting through most of that time. Send stuff.) Then, on February 13, Rattlesnake Press will roar to life again with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

December Again

Sam and Kathy Kieth on their wedding day
December 26, 1982
Sacramento, CA

LOVE
—Czeslaw Milosz

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.

______________________

Today Sam and Kathy Kieth have been married 25 years. And yes, a good marriage does indeed heal the heart of various ills...

David Humphreys sends this "For Judy [Taylor Graham] being tired of cats" [see last Saturday's post]:

ON MY WALK THIS MORNING

frozen white frost.
A cat jumped out in front of
dog Shiloh, hissing like a frying pan.
Some things cannot be made different.
Isreal will not negotiate with Hamas
until they recognize Isreal.
I continue walking, bundled
warm against the cold thinking simply:
oh, God bless this beautiful shabby world.

—David Humphreys, Stockton

______________________

Thanks, David!

22 — DECEMBER — 2007
—William S. Gainer, Grass Valley

Keep warm baby,
wrap it all up—
tight,
put on your
fluffy slippers,
heat the coffee
and sit down
with Oprah—
Winter is here...

_____________________

WINTER CONFUSION
—William S. Gainer

Winter salsas, solace,
or solstice—
whichever one involves
staying inside
and keeping
warm, dry and close—
I’m good with.

_____________________

Thanks, Bill!

No Singing Whale:

Lisa Espenmiller writes: I have decided to no longer pursue the Singing with the Whale poetry project. Thank you for posting about it on your blog, but it would probably be good to take down the "calls for submission" info from your site. Happy Holidays. May the new year be filled with poetry for you.

_____________________

IT’S DECEMBER AGAIN
(for Annie M.)

In our front yard
a few stubborn leaves cling
to liquid amber branches
in a chill wind.

Across Sugar Pine Drive
two gray squirrels
play grab-ass, racing
up, down and around
a tall, stoic cedar

until one makes a soaring
leap to a sister tree
and scrambles out of sight.

A Steller’s Jay scolds
from a safe distance.

Before dark I’ll set out
cat chow for a skittish,
stray feline and pray

for a dear friend
who desperately needs
an angel’s healing touch.

—Phil Weidman, Pollock Pines

_____________________

Thanks, Phil!

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:

Rattlesnake Review: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. The last of contributors' and subscribers' copies went into the mail last week. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

Coming in February: The Snake has crawled into winter hibernation for the rest of December and for all of January: no readings, no books, no broadsides. (Medusa is always awake, however, and will keep posting through most of that time. Send stuff.) Then, on February 13, Rattlesnake Press will roar to life again with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

In Your Self You Discover...

From Our House to Yours...
Photo of the Kieths' mailbox (with snow) by Kathy Kieth, Pollock Pines

DECEMBER 24, 1971
(for v.s.)

When it's Christmas we're all of us magi.
At the grocers' all slipping and pushing.
Where a tin of halvah, coffee-flavored,
is the cause of a human assault-wave
by a crowd heavy-laden with parcels:
each one has his own kind, his own camel.

Nylon bags, carrier bags, paper cones,
caps and neckties all twisted up sideways.
Reek of vodka and resin and cod,
orange mandarins, cinnamon, apples.
Floods of faces, no sign of a pathway
toward Bethlehem, shut off by blizzard.

And the bearers of moderate gifts
leap on buses and jam all the doorways,
disappear into courtyards that gape,
though they know that there's nothing inside there:
not a beast, not a crib, nor yet her,
round whose head gleams a nimbus of gold.

Emptiness. But the mere thought of that
brings forth lights as if out of nowhere.
Herod reigns but the stronger he is,
the more sure, the more certain the wonder.
In the constancy of this relation
is the basic mechanics of Christmas.

That's what they celebrate everywhere,
for its coming push tables together.
No demand for a star for a while,
but a sort of good will touched with grace
can be seen in all men from afar,
and the shepherds have kindled their fires.

Snow is falling: not smoking but sounding
chimney pots on the roof, every face like a stain.
Herod drinks. Every wife hides her child.
He who comes is a mystery: features
are not know beforehand, men's hearts may
not be quick to distinguish the stranger.

But when drafts through the doorway disperse
the thick mist of the hours of darkness
and a shape in a shawl stands revealed,
both a newborn and Spirit that's Holy
in your self you discover; you stare
skyward, and it's right there:

a star.

—Joseph Brodsky
(Translated from the Russian by Alan Myers with the author)

_____________________

—Medusa

Fallen Angels

Photo by Stephani Schaefer

Don't be afraid to love people

they are only fallen angels
clumsy in bodies that don't fit them
with an unclear memory of home

they don't admit this to anyone
because they're afraid to love people

—Stephani Schaefer, Los Molinos

_____________________

—Medusa

After All, Why Not?

Can you see the angel?
Photo by Mike Valeri, New Bedford Standard-Times

ON ANGELS
—Czeslaw Milosz

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.

Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at the close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for humans invented themselves as well.

The voice—no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightning.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draws near
another one
do what you can.

_______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

The Darkest Evening

STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
—Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

_____________________

ON WINTER'S MARGIN
—Mary Oliver

On winter's margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe's broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;
By time snow's down, the birds amassed will sing
Like children for their sire to walk abroad!
But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk
Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;
And what I dream of are the patient deer
Who stand on legs like reeds and drink the wind;—

They are what saves the world: who choose to grow
Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

____________________

Good news/bad news:

First, the good news: Rae Gourirand writes: I'm stunned to announce that the funding for the writing workshop series at Cache Creek Nature Preserve has been not just renewed but increased substantially over last year's grant—which means that we can look forward to a season of new workshops that will continue to bring area writers into contact with one another—as well as with one of the most special land sites in the greater Sacramento area. Hoorah! I'm already planning our first workshop (which I believe will be called Poetry & The Big Questions), and thinking about directions in which we might continue to stretch the program this year. Look forward to receiving more details after the new year.

Then the bad: Cynthia Bryant writes: I will be shutting down Poet’s Lane and the Literary List the beginning of January 2008. My husband and I are relocating to Kansas in the early spring for his job and a place to finally own a home. He has been offered a General Manager position at his company and I the position of Poet Laureate. How could we refuse? I want to take this moment to thank all of the writers and poets who made Poet’s Lane such an interesting place to visit. I have enjoyed your feedback and poetry, your bios and pictures and yes, your friendship.

As for the Gift of Words—Poems for the Iraqi People project, it is officially defunct. And perhaps the most important part of it did come to pass; we the poets got to express our cares and frustrations for people who have been on the receiving end of a super-power that wants what they possess. I hope and believe the process helped us be more thoughtful and aware.

Fortunate as it is for Cynthia and her husband, this is an unfortunate turn of events for NorCal poetry. For several years, Cynthia has provided a much-needed forum for people of all poetry persuasions to advertise their events and their poetry to the world of cyberspace. Medusa, for example, regularly re-posts events that were found out about through Cynthia's Poet's Lane list. Darn. This will be quite a loss.

On a completely different note, Taylor Graham writes: OK, enough of this cat-&-Xmas-tree business on Medusa (wonderful poems tho they are)—it's time to give the dog her due. (This was published in Brevities a couple of years back:)

DOG GIFTS
—Taylor Graham, Somerset

The dog has caught tinsel
in her tail, jubilant silver-wag
flinging reflected light
to every corner of the room.

_____________________

Thanks, TG! We cat-people will concede that cats do NOT have the corner on mayhem... Now back to musing about the shortest day(s) of the year:


IN WINTER SOMETHING INSIDE ME RETURNS AS TO A DARK GOD
—Kate Gleason

I love his scent of must,
so all-encompassing:
smoke in flannel, cloves
in mulled wine, love how
his breath on the night window
makes a shivery pattern
like a salt-fed, unlockable sea,
love how he dances me
in the crook of his arm.

I love how he is what
was missing from the light
and grateful dance
in the combed summer fields,
love the power he unleashes in me,
how I feel it, like a woman,
in my lower center
of gravity, the compressed deep
of an imploded star
that pulls into itself now.

I love how the pomegranate spills
its dark Milky Way
until I lose all train of thought
and am past any point
of return. I love his loneliness,
his ache for words, love
how he needs my mouth,
how he is everything
my mother warned me about.
Only more.

_____________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:

Rattlesnake Review: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. The last of contributors' and subscribers' copies went into the mail this week. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in December! Rattlesnake Press is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro, and Notes From The Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Sacramento's Ann Wehrman. And while you're down at The Book Collector, pick up a few poetic Christmas presents, including any of a number of wonderful books and chapbooks, Rattlesnake and otherwise—not to mention A Poet's Book of Days, our first perpetual calendar, featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown.

Coming in February: The Snake has crawled into winter hibernation for the rest of December and for all of January: no readings, no books, no broadsides. (Medusa is always awake, however, and will keep posting through most of that time. Send stuff.) Then, on February 13, Rattlesnake Press will roar to life again with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Cartridge in a Pear Tree?

FOG-WRAPPED BEFORE RAIN
—David Humphreys, Stockton

Sunday, you take your walk in thick fog
before light so you will have enough time
to make it to the soccer tournament. Fog
keeps all sound close as a whisper in your ear
like a down comforter against December cold.
You have wondered recently if there was any-
thing more you might have to say before you
pass through to the next level, whatever that
might be, perhaps manifesting as some dusty
saguaro thorn rimmed arroyo border crossing
through which no one has ever passed to return
in any familiar form, next intoxicating world
of innumerable Gila venom studded apparition
possibilities. Perhaps instead, you will awaken
on the once frozen lava glowing shore of a mercury
liquid slippery sea alone and thoughtless as an
empty husk of walnut shell. Your walk progresses
into another day and you see that the fog has
turned to sizzling rain.

_______________________

Thanks, David!


This weekend in NorCal poetry:

•••Friday (12/21), 7 PM: Our House Poetry Reading features Gene Altshuler and Wendy Patrice Williams. Note: new, temporary (December only) location: Event Center at Raley's in El Dorado Hills, 3935 Park Dr. An open mike follows. There is no charge.

•••Sat. (12/22), 7-9 PM: "The Show" poetry series features R&B vocalist Marcia Lewis plus slam champion He Spit Fire, plus NY poet Tantra (www.tantrasmasterwordplay.com). $5, Open mic. The Guild Theater, 2828 35th St., Sacramento. Info: 916-208-POET.

•••There will be no Sacramento Poetry Center reading this coming Monday, Dec. 24.


More seasonal poems; keep 'em coming:

CHRISTMAS CATS
—Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Tehama

The cats eye the Christmas decorations
bat at glass icicles on the tree
sniff with suspicious noses the red-ribboned
cedar spray on the door
They paw the poinsettia on the Welsh dresser
knock down for the hundredth time
your sly 'cartridge in a bare tree'
They gobble the dry kibble they've eaten for years
don't expect presents

_____________________

MY WINTER ORANGES
—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

Around Christmas a tree delivers to my family
its fruit that tastes like a Spring sun
that we all long for in short, cold days
like the season-defying daffodils growing nearby
A balance between tartness and sweet
reminding both of struggles and pleasure
coming together in a ball to peel or slice
If there was such a thing as a "giving tree"
it has gifted with these little delights

_____________________

DAWN AFTER RAIN
—David Humphreys, Stockton

Storm clouds move off to the east as
the sky clears to the west. Doves are
the first birds you see and hear with
their distinctive flight and call. Finches
shake the night’s showers from beaded
feathers, all things new and clean to start
a sun-shining day’s bright light. This has
been the place you have occasionally had
time to consider unresolved issues, past
and present, such as Kierkegaard’s Fear
and Loathing or Tolstoy’s analysis of
Napoleon. The arguments of political
candidates have also occupied this early
respite. Now however, you face the very
real elemental, essential and primal God
dialogue centering on the angelic and entirely
perfect lovely softness of her body, thighs to
drive a man entirely insane to father these
eventually seething raucous horrible yet
somehow lovely teenage children.

______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:

Rattlesnake Review: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. The last of contributors' and subscribers' copies went into the mail this week. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in December! Rattlesnake Press is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro, and Notes From The Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Sacramento's Ann Wehrman. And while you're down at The Book Collector, pick up a few poetic Christmas presents, including any of a number of wonderful books and chapbooks, Rattlesnake and otherwise—not to mention A Poet's Book of Days, our first perpetual calendar, featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown.

Coming in February: The Snake has crawled into winter hibernation for the rest of December and for all of January: no readings, no books, no broadsides. (Medusa is always awake, however, and will keep posting through most of that time. Send stuff.) Then, on February 13, Rattlesnake Press will roar to life again with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

I Hope I Am Good Health To YOU

Photo by Stephani Schaefer, Los Molinos

I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE-OAK GROWING
—Walt Whitman

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
all alone stood it
and the moss hung down from the branches,
without any companion it grew there
uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
and its look, rude, unbending, lusty,
made me think of myself,
but I wondered how it could utter joyous leaves
standing alone there
without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
and I broke off a twig
with a certain number of leaves upon it,
and twined around it a little moss,
and brought it away,
and I have placed it in sight in my room,
it it not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(for I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
yet it remains to me a curious token,
it makes me think of manly love;
for all that,
and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana
solitary in a wide flat space,
uttering joyous leaves all its life
without a friend or lover near,
I know very well I could not.

_____________________

Thanks, Steph, for the photo, inspired by this week's talk of cranes, paper and otherwise.

And thanks, Walt, for your live-oak poem. I am very grateful for my friends, though I certainly can't express it like Walt Whitman. Burn-out lurks at the edges of all small-press endeavors, intense as they are, and it's people who help us snuff out those fires before they rip through the whole enterprise. Thanks for all your cards and letters and holiday well-wishing! It does not go unnoticed, even by the stone-cold Medusa.

_____________________

21

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of me.

I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.

Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

Press close bare-bosom'd night—press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds—night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset—earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbow'd earth—rich apple-blossom'd earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.

Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable passionate love.

—Walt Whitman
(from Song of Myself)

______________________

17

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are
not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is.
This the common air that bathes the globe.

—Walt Whitman
(from Song of Myself)

______________________

52

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my
gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

—Walt Whitman
(from Song of Myself)

_____________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:

Rattlesnake Review: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. The last of contributors' and subscribers' copies go into the mail this week. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in December! Rattlesnake Press is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro, and Notes From The Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Sacramento's Ann Wehrman. And while you're down at The Book Collector, pick up a few poetic Christmas presents, including any of a number of wonderful books and chapbooks, Rattlesnake and otherwise—not to mention A Poet's Book of Days, our first perpetual calendar, featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown.

Coming in February: The Snake has crawled into winter hibernation for the rest of December and for all of January: no readings, no books, no broadsides. (Medusa is always awake, however, and will keep posting through most of that time. Send stuff.) Then, on February 13, Rattlesnake Press will roar to life again with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Truffles & Angel Feathers

Photo by Jessica Fillingim

CAT’S CHRISTMAS
—Carlene Wike, Elk Grove

“Pad with heightened, lightened tread
down the hall while they’re in bed.
Crouch behind a far settee
gaze intently . . . at a tree!
A tree indeed! I didn’t know
trees grew inside—big ones that glow
and grow strange fruit of varied hue.
I’ll move in for a better view.”

So mused the cat and then moved slow
to where the strange thing seemed to grow.
He slapped once at the lowest ball
and was amazed to see it fall.
He batted it across the floor
then moved in fast for two balls more.
A tinsel tango after that
and lo—a decorated cat!
Garland followed tinsel down.
He caught it then he wrapped it round
piano leg—and then he stopped . . .
. . . and gazed at angel on the top—
upon her birdlike wings, her hair,
upon her, poised and waiting there.

“A sitting duck for agile cat—
I’ll climb the tree and capture that
rare bird.” So thought the cat
as he moved slowly, silently,
away to get a run at tree.
He crouched low near the fireplace
and painted HUNTER on his face
‘til sight of silent seraph in
that treetop was too much for him.
He sprang and caught a middle bough
and clung to sticky bark somehow
while tree, on impact, swayed and bent
and one by one, shed ornament.

Then our cat began his climb
to angel there on highest limb.
Inch by inch he made his way
up the trunk in spite of sway
‘til he had almost reached the prize
that danced and had him mesmerized.
He was oblivious, it seems,
to hurried footsteps, varied screams
of family, who’d come down the hall
in time to catch the awful fall.

Cat, embarrassed, headed South—
angel feathers in his mouth.

______________________

Thanks, Carlena! Watch for a littlesnake broadside, Going the Distance, from Carlene Wike in February.

More seasonal fare, this from Tom Goff:

TRUFFLE
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

A ribbony tiny box
from the dean unparcels:
one morsel—a truffle,
not a morel—or shittake-cousin
truffle snooted from soil,
but a vanilla-nipple breast
of the dark best, chocolate
liqueur at the core.
Who’s an epicure but
a treble nibbler pro-
longing the gobble?
So I snuff this truffle
from trufa from tuber
for swelling. Ah, tumid
sweetmeat. The label reads
“tiramisu,” pleads Japanese
—a cacao tsunami, until
I reflect: it’s Italian
for “lift me up.” That “tira,”
though, wants to shout “Fire!”
Bitten, this confection’s
caffeinish trajectory arcs me
afar, as has the semester.
After the long
kerfuffle, this far
more than
trifle.

_____________________

Thanks, Tom! And finally, four more morsels from Song Kowbell. Find out more about Song on the rattlechappers' page of rattlesnakepress.com/.

THE DELI GUY
—Song Kowbell, Penn Valley

He said i was a poet
like he knew me
or something.
Said i was one of "them".
I didn't ask who "them" was,
thinking that the fantasy
is so often better
than reality

______________________

KINDER TIMES
—Song Kowbell

i thought about taking you apart
one button hole at a time...
emotions are
like waves.......
and i wanted
to feel them wash
over me,
bathe in memory of kinder times
when a look from you didn't burn me,
and a line from a poem
left me wanting more of you
instead of less...

_______________________

FRUIT FOR DINNER
—Song Kowbell

you came to mind tonight
as I slipped the ripe Santa Rosa plum
into my mouth.
Its firm smoothness reminds me
of you at full attention
when your skin barely held
inside that which was ready to burst.

_____________________

MARRIED MAN
—Song Kowbell

You were moving towards me
smiling at your wife.
Our eyes locked and my hunger
escalated
And I couldn't deny
I missed you
your mouth
wanting mine

Memories of our story flash back—
your eyes teasing me
begging for more
as we feasted

Tonight in a quiet moment
you will think of me,
of our glance
and slowly your hand
will travel to the hard cock
and press ever so slightly
against the desire
for something not on your menu.

_______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).

SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:

Rattlesnake Review: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. The last of contributors' and subscribers' copies go into the mail this week. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in December! Rattlesnake Press is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro, and Notes From The Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Sacramento's Ann Wehrman. And while you're down at The Book Collector, pick up a few poetic Christmas presents, including any of a number of wonderful books and chapbooks, Rattlesnake and otherwise—not to mention A Poet's Book of Days, our first perpetual calendar, featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown.

Coming in February: The Snake has crawled into winter hibernation for the rest of December and for all of January: no readings, no books, no broadsides. (Medusa is always awake, however, and will keep posting through most of that time. Send stuff.) Then, on February 13, Rattlesnake Press will roar to life again with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.