Potato
Photo by Jane Blue, Sacramento
THE POTATO
—Jane Blue, Sacramento
It is a rough oval pocked with shadows.
At one end pale tentacles poke out.
The potato itself is dense but the shoots
are different; if you should break one with a thumb
it would snap, making a shy sound, like a cry
one hopes is not heard. Potatoes are humble.
They keep in a pantry or cellar for a very long time.
But in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland
they rotted in the fields and the storehouses,
in the winter, when they were needed most.
The grief of emigration is in my bones.
I am cold with it. The potato warms me,
it retains heat like coal. Potatoes sit in the dark
and observe with their friable eyes.
They remind me of nuns. Irish nuns wed
to America sight unseen. They came young
and died old, never traveling back to that beloved
green isle. They sang their quavering songs:
"On Galway Bay" and "The Wearing of the Green."
A particular fat nun who taught high school French
had so many folds of flesh under her black habit
I could only think of her body as a field
of potatoes in black earth. It was not until
graduation that she embraced me,
folding me into her loam.
(Previously appeared in The Hurricane Review)
________________________
Thanks, Jane! Jane BLUE and Katy BROWN (our two color-ladies) are two of the main contributors of photographs to Rattlesnake Review; pick up the new Snake (Lucky 13!) at The Book Collector and check out their photos (plus others), or wait for it in the mail if you're a contributor or subscriber. About her work today, Jane says: I have an Irish poem. I don't have any pics of shamrocks, but I've got... a potato, which I tried to make look like a Kevin German shot (Sacramento Bee photographer) with a ragged border. I'm reading a novel by Edna O'Brien, who is an Irish writer who makes me think of Virginia Woolf. Jane will be reading at the McClatchy Library on April 21 at 2 PM; more about that later.
Addendum to today's calendar:
•••Sat. (3/17), 7-9 PM: Underground Poetry Series presents a CD/release party for Terry Moore at Underground Books, 2814 35th St., Sac. (35th & Broadway). $3, open mic. Terry's new spoken word CD, Validated, also features Poet He Spit Fire; vocalists Yardley Griffin, Mae Gee, Calvin Lymos; rapper Izreal.
_______________________
David Humphreys writes: I have a sonnet poem for you written in honor of Lene Hau, who actually just stopped light! You can find her via Google.
STOPPING LIGHT
—David Humphreys, Stockton
This is not just a drawing of drapes or slipping
on sunglasses against the glare of blinding sunlight.
Glancing off cresting wave tops at the salt briny
beach stops spectral light dead in its very tracks on
its eight second downhill Klammer run from the sun
spot hot babe surface. This is essentially about what
this youngster wizard, Lene Hau, has done a mere nine
years further along than Mozart on his fever racked
deathbed, something that for me is more than stunning,
actual mirror reflection of Marie Curie's Nobel triumph
of 1903, application of course always key to all things
practical and patent but fiber optic sequence coding
seems so well suited to entwine our future in swirling bliss,
figurative suspension of a frozen subatomic cipher tryst.
________________________
Thanks, David! Stopping light. Wow—it's all I can do to stop anything, let alone light itself...
_______________________
LABASHEEDY (The Silken Bed)
—Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
I'd make a bed for you
in Labasheedy
in the tall grass
under the wrestling trees
where your skin
would be silk upon sillk
in the darkness
when the moths are coming down.
Skin which glistens
shining over your limbs
like milk being poured
from jugs at dinnertime;
your hair is a herd of goats
moving over rolling hills,
hills that have high cliffs
and two ravines.
And your damp lips
would be as sweet as sugar
at evening and we walking
by the riverside
with honeyed breezes
blowing over the Shannon
and the fuchsias bowing down to you
one by one.
The fuchsias bending low
their solemn heads
in obeisance to the beauty
in front of them,
I would pick a pair of flowers
as pendant earrings
to adorn you
like a bride in shining clothes.
O I'd make a bed for you
in Labasheedy,
in the twilight hour
with evening falling slow
and what a pleasure it would be
to have our limbs entwine
wrestling
while the moths are coming down.
________________________
—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.)
—Jane Blue, Sacramento
It is a rough oval pocked with shadows.
At one end pale tentacles poke out.
The potato itself is dense but the shoots
are different; if you should break one with a thumb
it would snap, making a shy sound, like a cry
one hopes is not heard. Potatoes are humble.
They keep in a pantry or cellar for a very long time.
But in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland
they rotted in the fields and the storehouses,
in the winter, when they were needed most.
The grief of emigration is in my bones.
I am cold with it. The potato warms me,
it retains heat like coal. Potatoes sit in the dark
and observe with their friable eyes.
They remind me of nuns. Irish nuns wed
to America sight unseen. They came young
and died old, never traveling back to that beloved
green isle. They sang their quavering songs:
"On Galway Bay" and "The Wearing of the Green."
A particular fat nun who taught high school French
had so many folds of flesh under her black habit
I could only think of her body as a field
of potatoes in black earth. It was not until
graduation that she embraced me,
folding me into her loam.
(Previously appeared in The Hurricane Review)
________________________
Thanks, Jane! Jane BLUE and Katy BROWN (our two color-ladies) are two of the main contributors of photographs to Rattlesnake Review; pick up the new Snake (Lucky 13!) at The Book Collector and check out their photos (plus others), or wait for it in the mail if you're a contributor or subscriber. About her work today, Jane says: I have an Irish poem. I don't have any pics of shamrocks, but I've got... a potato, which I tried to make look like a Kevin German shot (Sacramento Bee photographer) with a ragged border. I'm reading a novel by Edna O'Brien, who is an Irish writer who makes me think of Virginia Woolf. Jane will be reading at the McClatchy Library on April 21 at 2 PM; more about that later.
Addendum to today's calendar:
•••Sat. (3/17), 7-9 PM: Underground Poetry Series presents a CD/release party for Terry Moore at Underground Books, 2814 35th St., Sac. (35th & Broadway). $3, open mic. Terry's new spoken word CD, Validated, also features Poet He Spit Fire; vocalists Yardley Griffin, Mae Gee, Calvin Lymos; rapper Izreal.
_______________________
David Humphreys writes: I have a sonnet poem for you written in honor of Lene Hau, who actually just stopped light! You can find her via Google.
STOPPING LIGHT
—David Humphreys, Stockton
This is not just a drawing of drapes or slipping
on sunglasses against the glare of blinding sunlight.
Glancing off cresting wave tops at the salt briny
beach stops spectral light dead in its very tracks on
its eight second downhill Klammer run from the sun
spot hot babe surface. This is essentially about what
this youngster wizard, Lene Hau, has done a mere nine
years further along than Mozart on his fever racked
deathbed, something that for me is more than stunning,
actual mirror reflection of Marie Curie's Nobel triumph
of 1903, application of course always key to all things
practical and patent but fiber optic sequence coding
seems so well suited to entwine our future in swirling bliss,
figurative suspension of a frozen subatomic cipher tryst.
________________________
Thanks, David! Stopping light. Wow—it's all I can do to stop anything, let alone light itself...
_______________________
LABASHEEDY (The Silken Bed)
—Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
I'd make a bed for you
in Labasheedy
in the tall grass
under the wrestling trees
where your skin
would be silk upon sillk
in the darkness
when the moths are coming down.
Skin which glistens
shining over your limbs
like milk being poured
from jugs at dinnertime;
your hair is a herd of goats
moving over rolling hills,
hills that have high cliffs
and two ravines.
And your damp lips
would be as sweet as sugar
at evening and we walking
by the riverside
with honeyed breezes
blowing over the Shannon
and the fuchsias bowing down to you
one by one.
The fuchsias bending low
their solemn heads
in obeisance to the beauty
in front of them,
I would pick a pair of flowers
as pendant earrings
to adorn you
like a bride in shining clothes.
O I'd make a bed for you
in Labasheedy,
in the twilight hour
with evening falling slow
and what a pleasure it would be
to have our limbs entwine
wrestling
while the moths are coming down.
________________________
—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.)
