Snake-Zilla & the Dad-a-Thon

Tom Miner, Sacramento

ALONE IN THE MOUNTAINS
(for Michael Pease)
—Tom Miner, Sacramento

Sun loiters behind sugar pines,
tossing feathery stripes on the cabin
as one last grasshopper flits from the gravel
dragging its raspy whisper of winter
through the crisp air of dusk.

Inside, on the kitchen counter,
four narrow trout I landed
this morning from the bone-cold
Feather River lie ready for the grill.
A ragged stack of newly split oak
nestles beside the wood stove.

On the deck, nursing my first amber ale,
I tease splinters from my fingers
while overhead fat wasps pulse
against the shingles, drawn
by the pools of warmth
that linger under the eaves.

To the east, the moon pokes
its forehead over the crest of Bear Mountain,
a single cloud sweeping the darkening sky.

______________________

Thanks, Tom! Rattlesnake Press is proud to present a new chapbook by Sacramento Poet Tom Miner, entitled North of Everything. Tom will be featured at a reading at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, this coming Wednesday, June 20, at 7:30 PM. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's. Also featured that night will be a brand-new littlesnake broadside from Stocton Poet/Publisher David Humphreys, entitled Cominciare Adagio, and #3 in B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series, this one a conversation with Sacramento Poet Jane Blue. Not to mention, Rattlesnake Review #14! (Did I mention it was 72 pages long.....?!?)

Feed the Tiger!

Don't forget that Tiger's Eye: A Journal of Poetry is having a blog contest, and the deadline is June 30. This one is for formal poetry only. Send your sestinas, sonnets, villanelles, haibun, haiku—you choose the form, but no free verse. There will be three winners, each receiving the latest copy of Tiger's Eye. Send 3 poems e-mail only to: tigerseyetracks@yahoo.com/ The first place winner will also receive a surprise! Visit http://tigerseyepoet.blogspot.com/ for a sample of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry.


This weekend in NorCal poetry:

•••Tonight (Fri., 6/15), 7:30 pm: Writers of the New Sun/Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol presents Araceli Collazo. The multi-talented Araceli has performed in Northern California, in Texas and in Mexico. Through words and music, in both Spanish and English, her performance is intensely riveting, yet touched by humor and vulnerability, and accessible to all. La Raza Galeria Posada, 1022-1024 22nd Street, Midtown Sacramento, 916-446-5133 or call Graciela Ramirez, 916-456-5323. Los Escritores’ website is http://escritoresdelnuevosol.com/. Cost: $5 or as you can afford.

•••Also tonight, 7 PM: Our House Gallery and Framing presents "Visions and Views"—poetry, drama, musical improvisation with spoken word, featuring poets Susan and Joseph Finkleman, who will be joined by Sharon McCorkell on percussion and Francesca Reitano on flute. An open mic follows. There is no charge. Our House is located at 4510 Post St. in El Dorado Hills Town Center; from Sacramento, take the Latrobe exit south for a block and then turn left into the shopping center. The gallery is on the northern end. The Finklemans are the authors of SpiralChap #6, Poems in Two Voices, from Rattlesnake Press. Read more about them on their website: www.visionsandviews.com

•••Also tonight, 6:30 PM, 1078 Gallery in Chico: Ramekon O'Arwisters will read from his manuscript, In My Truth: Sugar on my Tail, a compilation of poems and autobiography about living in Kernersville, North Carolina in the 1960’s. Recent poems from the collection addressing a range of taboo topics will be included in the reading. O'Arwisters, a San Francisco artist, creates altered women's handbags that are stand-ins for racial, sexual, and political prejudice. His writing was featured in "The Hard Edge of Existence: A Black Gay Sex (& Love) Show" directed by Cedric Brown and performed at the Thick House in San Francisco. His work was published in Paper-Thin/Soul Deep: A Collection of Personal Letters and Journal Entries of African American Men, published by Vantage Press, New York in 2002, the James White Review in 1998, and You’re a Star at MECCA: Highlights of the Open Mic Reading Series at A Different Light Bookstore in San Francisco in 1999. His public readings include the Black Coalition on AIDS (BCA), Audre and Langston Salon in 2006, and Intersection For The Arts 40th Anniversary Block Party in 2005, both sponsored by Black Gay Letters and Arts Movement (B/LGAM). This is a vital additiion to Chico’s gay pride events.

•••Saturday (6/16), 2 PM: Kim Culbertson will be reading in Grass Valley from her new teen novel, Songs for a Teenage Nomad, which will be released this month from Hip Pocket Press. The reading/book signing/party will be held at the Off Center Stage behind the Center for the Arts, Grass Valley, and is sponsored by Literature Alive! Tickets are $10 at local book stores (and at the door, if available) and the proceeds will be used to keep Inkwell, the Grass Valley high school poetry program, up and running.

•••Also Saturday (6/16), 7-9 PM: Underground Poetry Series presents Glen Stovall & The Stovall Singers and Black Men Expressing Love poem tour, plus open mic. Underground Books, 2814 35th St., Sacramento (35th & Broadway). Info: www.terrymoore.info

•••Also Saturday (6/16) from 11 AM to 6 PM, don't miss the Juneteenth Talent Show at Sacramento's 6th Annual "Juneteenth in the Shade." Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, is an annual holiday in 14 of the United States. Celebrated on June 19, it commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas. This year, join the parade of exciting events taking place Saturday in William Land Park, located at 1401 Sutterville Road in Sacramento (across from Sacramento City College), including the Juneteenth Poetry Jam: Catch some of Northern California's BEST poets performing live Black History and inspirational pieces. This will be the biggest poetry jam explosion in years, if not ever, in Sacramento. Poets appear Saturday, 4-5 PM—ONE HOUR OF POWER!!!!! [See last Wednesday's post for more info.]


Dad-a-Thon Continues:

A big thank-you to those who have responded so far to Medusa's Dad Poem Giveaway. Send me poems about dads: wry, sentimental, disgusted, or otherwise, and I'll send you a rattlechap of your choosing. Send photos, too! Dad's Day is Sunday; let's give 'em a proper send-up. Send poems and whatever to kathykieth@hotmail.com by midnight on Saturday, June 16 (that's tomorrow!) or snail 'em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA. Don't forget: Medusa accepts previously-published poems and photos.

Here are some more Dad poems, this first one by Jane Blue. A conversation with Jane is featured in Rattlesnake Interview Series #3, which will premiere next Weds., June 20:


HOW I KNOW MY FATHER IN OBJECTS
—Jane Blue, Sacramento


1.

A paperweight on my desk, marbled stone
with veins of white running through gray

reminds me of my father, heavy egg, oh
how can I say the color: Blue-gray. Slate-gray.

In every document I’ve found of him, my father’s
eyes are a different color, gray or hazel or brown.

There must have been a time he was just a man
and not a stone egg to be cracked.

Turned and polished in a tumbler, to sit on my desk.
Balanced, as it wouldn’t be in nature.

As he never was, my cipher father, egg
of a father, imagined father.


2.

Among my mother’s things, I’ve found
my father’s spoon, his initials and the year of his birth.

Tucked in with it another spoon—
his mother’s, I guess, from the initials.

Each spoon with identical little dents in the bowl.
An Aladdin’s lamp floats, it seems, on a lily pad

elaborate in the handle, and other flowers, a silver
curtain pulled back from the monogram.

and rabbits, I think, and geese ...
it is so hard to see ... it is so hard to see.

(Previously published in Perihelion and The Persistence of Vision by Jane Blue, Poet's Corner Press, 2003)

_____________________

BOUQUET
—Patricia A. Pashby, Sacramento

as he enters
the hospital room
she can smell
the stale wine
hear the slurred greeting

she holds up
the wrinkled newborn
fifth baby
third in three years

when he leaves
she drops the flowers
on the sterile sheets
watered by her tears

______________________

ORION’S DAUGHTER
—Katy Brown, Davis

Against the claret sky,
in a branch of eucalyptus —
a torn scrap of mist —
lifted by the night wind.

This darkness sings with
crickets and mockingbirds.
Snapping dry leaves and twigs
release a medicinal scent.

I walk in shadows under a gibbous moon.
Betelgeuse winks between the branches:
the watchful star — marked
by my father, years ago,

on the shoulder of Orion.
I hold out my palm —
the weight of starlight
heavy as the years.

_____________________

Thanks, Jane, Pat and Katy!

Did I mention that RR14 (Snake-zilla) is 72 pages long? Bring your wheelbarrow to pick one up. Be sure to come to the reading next Weds. to get your copy (wheelbarrow or not) and find out:

•••What happened directly after Ewenice died;
•••Why Mary Mackey chose to study Russian;
•••What the heck is a Triversen Stanza;
•••What Josh Fernandez does when things get boring;
•••How Tom Goff and his wife courted the rash.

______________________

—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.)


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

Journals (free publications): Rattlesnake Review #13 is available at The Book Collector; RR #14 will be out June 20. Next deadline, for RR #15, is August 15. VYPER #6 (for youth 13-19) is in The Book Collector; next deadline is Nov. 1. Snakelets #10 (for kids 0-12) is now available at The Book Collector; next deadline is 10/1.

Books/broadsides: May's releases are Grass Valley Poet Ron Tranquilla’s Playing Favorites: Selected Poems, 1971-2006, plus a littlesnake broadside by Julie Valin (Still Life With Sun) and a Rattlesnake Interview Broadside (#2) featuring Khiry Malik Moore and B.L. Kennedy. All are now available at The Book Collector. Rattlechaps are $5; broadsides are free. Or contact kathykieth@hotmail.com or rattlesnakepress.com for ordering information.

Next rattle-read: Rattlesnake Press will present Sacramento Poet Tom Miner at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, on Wednesday, June 20 from 7:30-9 PM to celebrate the release of his new chapbook, North of Everything. Also featured that night will be a new littlesnake broadside (Cominciare Adagio) from Stockton Poet/Publisher David Humphreys, plus #3 in the Rattlesnake Interview Series by B.L. Kennedy, this one featuring Sacramento Poet Jane Blue. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's. More info: kathykieth@hotmail.com/ NOTE: For June, and for June only, our monthly Rattlesnake reading will be on the THIRD Weds. instead of the second one. And there will be no Snake readings/releases in July or August.