Photo by Lorrie McClanahanDELUSIONS OF THE FALL
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
Under her spreading chestnut cloud
each sycamore still believes.
These auburn burns, these red-gold shrouds,
will soon hold rain in sieves.
Dead ones aground or dangling high
keep graves—two levels like bunks.
The parched-out litter dismays clean eyes:
blank vellums, let slip by monks.
Green holdout oaks declaim unbowed,
It’s August—who’s not deceived?
____________________
Thanks, Tom, for sending us what he calls a bit of "tomfoolery". :-) The leaves in the photo aren't chestnut, but oh well...
This weekend in NorCal poetry:
•••Friday (10/5), 7:30 PM: The Other Voice, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, presents two poets, JoAnn Anglin and Carlena Wike. The free reading is in the library of the church at 27074 Patwin Road. Open mic, follows so bring a poem to share. Info: 530-753-2634 or 530-753-1432.
•••Sat. (10/6), 10 AM: Monthly writing meeting and potluck of Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol at La Raza Galeria Posada, 1024 22nd St., Midtown Sacramento. Info: Graciela Ramirez (916-456-5323) or website: www.escritoresdelnuevosol.com/ Note the time change from 11 AM to 10 AM; Monday's Medusa had the wrong time.
•••Monday (10/8), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center at HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento presents Nina Lindsay and Helen Wickes. Open mic to follow. Nina Lindsay was born and raised in Oakland, California, and lives and works there today as a librarian at the Children's Room of the Oakland Public Library. She has published poems in many journals, including Shenandoah, Green Mountains Review, Northwest Review, Rattle, Pool, and Gastronomica. Today’s Special Dish [Sixteen Rivers Press] is her first book of poetry. Nina will be joined by another talented poet and Rockridge resident, Helen Wickes, who lives in Oakland, California, where for many years she worked as a psychotherapist. She has a Ph.D. in psychology and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she was the recipient of the Jane Kenyon scholarship. Her poems have appeared in Zyzzyva, Runes, Santa Clara Review, 5 a.m, Pleiades, and other journals. In Search of Landscape [Sixteen Rivers Press] is her first book of poetry. Join the SPC folks before the reading for the SPC Board of Directors meeting at 6 PM; all "interested parties" or members are invited to attend.
Viola comes to town a week from Monday!
•••Monday (10/15), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center at HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento presents Sacramento Poet Laureate Emeritus (2000-2002) Viola Weinberg, celebrating the release of her new book, Letters to Pablo Neruda. Joining her will be Chad Sweeney, author of The Mirror That Shattered the Hammer. Sacramento will be delighted with the return of our friend who moved away from us! Be there!
______________________
David Humphreys of Stockton writes:
Hi Kathy, I have something different for you here, four poems by our [Poets' Corner] chapbook contest winners. If you would please give a link to http://www.poetscornerpress.com/press2.html, I will love you forever.
—David
HEGEL FOR DUMMIES
—Dion Farquhar, Santa Cruz
Freedom’s just another word
for nothing left to lose.
—Janis Joplin
working by day, school at night
(though more cafeteria than class)
I didn't know had not seen
“choice” taxidermied into trophy—
our wild dreams, cascades of complaints
(male chauvinist pigs, bourgeois privilege,
TV-watching pathetic parents)
heady delusional, talk of revolution
—we read Baldwin Ginsberg Malcolm Che
Millett Leary Laing and Plath—
the sparkle of the not-yet
beckoned big: if it exists, it stinks
years morphed into decades
scrambling codes, perfect night rides
windows down, wind in our hair
car lapping up the road
carapace of community
living in the center, Manhattan downtown
round-the-clock friends, sex, music, drugs
demonstrations, midnight feasts in Chinatown
after double bills of French film
evenings of art —Met or LaMama—
leaning over the spiral balcony
at the Guggenheim (giant flower pot)
listening to Charlotte Moorman
play cello (topless) while someone read Artaud
when what was really happening...
___________________
AS IF I WERE
—Nancy Tupper Ling, Massachusetts
a thin clipped nail, a stray eyelash,
a speck of ash over Pompei,
yesterday’s newspaper, replaced and worn,
torn pages from The Sound and
the Fury, a brown, muddy
milkweed pod, a dandelion puff
blowing east over dry, heathered fields
where a common feather has fallen,
where a black snake passes
cloaked in evening’s grass,
vanished like Brueghel’s Icarus
in waves of midnight blue . . .
______________________
ARS POETICA
—Andrew Fader, New Jersey
One must have a mind that shines
like headlights onto a fog in the slough
he senses is beside the road
and eyes that stare so deeply
into the haze surrounding those lights
that they droop
as he studies each plume of the light
to find just which line will lead him
safely around the bend to the next exit
and onto the straightaway where the lines
are new but familiar and the road
continues into fog, but closer to home.
____________________
POND
—Holly Guran, Massachusetts
When death comes, and I am naked,
I tell myself it will matter that I loved,
watching the deep blue water dance inside the pond,
once the white ring of snow has landed.
Now the snow covers all paths in a thin layer,
and the gray clouds congregate like tribes
growing heavy with what they will lose.
I remember you
in the deep blue waves dancing,
in the string of lamps along the path,
in the circle of snow
so white against the water.
____________________
Thanks, David, and thanks to the wonderful poets who won your contest. But forever is a very, very long time...
—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.) 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:
Journals: The latest issue of Rattlesnake Review (#15) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. Next deadline is November 15. The two journals for young people, Snakelets and Vyper, are on hiatus; no deadlines this Fall.
Coming for October: Rattlesnake Press celebrates Sacramento Poetry Month on Wednesday, Oct. 10 (at The Book Collector, Home of the Snake, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM) with the release of Spiral, a rattlechap by Kate Wells; Autumn on My Mind, a littlesnake broadside by Mary Field; and #5 in the Rattlesnake Interview Series by B.L. Kennedy, this one featuring Sacramento Poet Laureate Julia Connor. Also released that night will be Conversations, Volume One of the Rattlesnake Interview Anthology Series (a collection of B.L.'s conversations with eleven Sacramento poets)—plus other surprises (and cake!). Be there!
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
Under her spreading chestnut cloud
each sycamore still believes.
These auburn burns, these red-gold shrouds,
will soon hold rain in sieves.
Dead ones aground or dangling high
keep graves—two levels like bunks.
The parched-out litter dismays clean eyes:
blank vellums, let slip by monks.
Green holdout oaks declaim unbowed,
It’s August—who’s not deceived?
____________________
Thanks, Tom, for sending us what he calls a bit of "tomfoolery". :-) The leaves in the photo aren't chestnut, but oh well...
This weekend in NorCal poetry:
•••Friday (10/5), 7:30 PM: The Other Voice, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, presents two poets, JoAnn Anglin and Carlena Wike. The free reading is in the library of the church at 27074 Patwin Road. Open mic, follows so bring a poem to share. Info: 530-753-2634 or 530-753-1432.
•••Sat. (10/6), 10 AM: Monthly writing meeting and potluck of Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol at La Raza Galeria Posada, 1024 22nd St., Midtown Sacramento. Info: Graciela Ramirez (916-456-5323) or website: www.escritoresdelnuevosol.com/ Note the time change from 11 AM to 10 AM; Monday's Medusa had the wrong time.
•••Monday (10/8), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center at HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento presents Nina Lindsay and Helen Wickes. Open mic to follow. Nina Lindsay was born and raised in Oakland, California, and lives and works there today as a librarian at the Children's Room of the Oakland Public Library. She has published poems in many journals, including Shenandoah, Green Mountains Review, Northwest Review, Rattle, Pool, and Gastronomica. Today’s Special Dish [Sixteen Rivers Press] is her first book of poetry. Nina will be joined by another talented poet and Rockridge resident, Helen Wickes, who lives in Oakland, California, where for many years she worked as a psychotherapist. She has a Ph.D. in psychology and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she was the recipient of the Jane Kenyon scholarship. Her poems have appeared in Zyzzyva, Runes, Santa Clara Review, 5 a.m, Pleiades, and other journals. In Search of Landscape [Sixteen Rivers Press] is her first book of poetry. Join the SPC folks before the reading for the SPC Board of Directors meeting at 6 PM; all "interested parties" or members are invited to attend.
Viola comes to town a week from Monday!
•••Monday (10/15), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center at HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento presents Sacramento Poet Laureate Emeritus (2000-2002) Viola Weinberg, celebrating the release of her new book, Letters to Pablo Neruda. Joining her will be Chad Sweeney, author of The Mirror That Shattered the Hammer. Sacramento will be delighted with the return of our friend who moved away from us! Be there!
______________________
David Humphreys of Stockton writes:
Hi Kathy, I have something different for you here, four poems by our [Poets' Corner] chapbook contest winners. If you would please give a link to http://www.poetscornerpress.com/press2.html, I will love you forever.
—David
HEGEL FOR DUMMIES
—Dion Farquhar, Santa Cruz
Freedom’s just another word
for nothing left to lose.
—Janis Joplin
working by day, school at night
(though more cafeteria than class)
I didn't know had not seen
“choice” taxidermied into trophy—
our wild dreams, cascades of complaints
(male chauvinist pigs, bourgeois privilege,
TV-watching pathetic parents)
heady delusional, talk of revolution
—we read Baldwin Ginsberg Malcolm Che
Millett Leary Laing and Plath—
the sparkle of the not-yet
beckoned big: if it exists, it stinks
years morphed into decades
scrambling codes, perfect night rides
windows down, wind in our hair
car lapping up the road
carapace of community
living in the center, Manhattan downtown
round-the-clock friends, sex, music, drugs
demonstrations, midnight feasts in Chinatown
after double bills of French film
evenings of art —Met or LaMama—
leaning over the spiral balcony
at the Guggenheim (giant flower pot)
listening to Charlotte Moorman
play cello (topless) while someone read Artaud
when what was really happening...
___________________
AS IF I WERE
—Nancy Tupper Ling, Massachusetts
a thin clipped nail, a stray eyelash,
a speck of ash over Pompei,
yesterday’s newspaper, replaced and worn,
torn pages from The Sound and
the Fury, a brown, muddy
milkweed pod, a dandelion puff
blowing east over dry, heathered fields
where a common feather has fallen,
where a black snake passes
cloaked in evening’s grass,
vanished like Brueghel’s Icarus
in waves of midnight blue . . .
______________________
ARS POETICA
—Andrew Fader, New Jersey
One must have a mind that shines
like headlights onto a fog in the slough
he senses is beside the road
and eyes that stare so deeply
into the haze surrounding those lights
that they droop
as he studies each plume of the light
to find just which line will lead him
safely around the bend to the next exit
and onto the straightaway where the lines
are new but familiar and the road
continues into fog, but closer to home.
____________________
POND
—Holly Guran, Massachusetts
When death comes, and I am naked,
I tell myself it will matter that I loved,
watching the deep blue water dance inside the pond,
once the white ring of snow has landed.
Now the snow covers all paths in a thin layer,
and the gray clouds congregate like tribes
growing heavy with what they will lose.
I remember you
in the deep blue waves dancing,
in the string of lamps along the path,
in the circle of snow
so white against the water.
____________________
Thanks, David, and thanks to the wonderful poets who won your contest. But forever is a very, very long time...
—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.) 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:
Journals: The latest issue of Rattlesnake Review (#15) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. Next deadline is November 15. The two journals for young people, Snakelets and Vyper, are on hiatus; no deadlines this Fall.
Coming for October: Rattlesnake Press celebrates Sacramento Poetry Month on Wednesday, Oct. 10 (at The Book Collector, Home of the Snake, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM) with the release of Spiral, a rattlechap by Kate Wells; Autumn on My Mind, a littlesnake broadside by Mary Field; and #5 in the Rattlesnake Interview Series by B.L. Kennedy, this one featuring Sacramento Poet Laureate Julia Connor. Also released that night will be Conversations, Volume One of the Rattlesnake Interview Anthology Series (a collection of B.L.'s conversations with eleven Sacramento poets)—plus other surprises (and cake!). Be there!
