ICE CREAM
—Ronny Someck
"When I'm big," you say,
"I want to be an ice cream lady and a poet."
Here are scoops of ice cream that will slip through your fingers,
yellower than lemon, an orange grove in flame
and red sqeezed from watermelon blood. This is
where poetry lives. So why do you need words.
____________________
THE SIGN OF THE BITE
—Ronny Someck
In the morning after the great chaos concert the faces emptied
like beer bottles.
Who turned to look saw that between the women's lips an apple
shuddered
and in the apple—the sign of the bite.
And love? Love was threaded like elastic in underwear:
what holds it up is
what exerts the pressure.
_____________________
Sac Library Birthday Party Sunday:
•••Sunday (10/21) at the Sacramento Central Library (818 I St.): 150th Anniversary Party begins at 11 AM with the Opening Ceremony and Sacramento Taiko Dan. Festivities continue until 4 PM with music, book-signings, family entertainment (including puppet show at 3 PM), and various events at Cesar Chavez Park (9th & I), including book sale, food booths, free Velocab and Choo Choo Express rides, Damento Juggling club, goldpanning and more. Info and schedule: 916-264-2920 or saclibrary.org.
_____________________
Yesterday's pic:
Katy Brown's magnificent photograph of berries was posted late on Medusa yesterday due to Blogspot technical difficulties; be sure to scroll down a bit and take a look at it today. In addition to her SnakeRings SpiralChap, The Quality of Light, Katy serves as Snake Eyes for Rattlesnake Review, sending us her column which explores the connections between poetry and the visual. You can read more about Katy on the March 24, 2007 Medusa post, and of course her wonderful photographs of England and the U.S. are scattered throughout the days of Medusa and Rattlesnake Review.
This month, Katy is putting together a collection which will be part of our new Lola's HandyStuff series: A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring Katy's poetry and photography for each of the twelve months. This calendar will also be packed with poets' birthdays, and will be released at the November 14 rattle-read at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, just in time for Christmas and the new year. A bargain at $5; $6 with postage. Watch for it!
____________________
A SHORT HISTORY OF VODKA
—Ronny Someck
I don't remember the name of the bar, at the end
Of the Metal Workers' Hall of Culture in Chiliabinsk.
I remember only the girl who every fifteen minutes
Came from behind the counter to collect the glasses into
A red plastic bowl.
She skipped from table to table, her high shoes
Clicking out the smell of heaps of loot,
A fur hat spread war snow on her forehead
And fumes of alcohol blurred her face furled like a white flag.
There is, said the man beside me, no woman who isn't beautiful
There is too little vodka.
_____________________
BLUES FOR ELLIOT SHARP
—Ronny Someck
His guitar has a severed neck.
He plays like someone sweeping plucked feathers
from the slaughterhouse floor. The feathers long for the body as
the flower in the pot licks, till it withers, the ground water
that flowed in its leaves.
Music is never the last wish
uttered through the victim's clenched lips
anticipating the chords from the rifle barrels.
It is the escape route through the rusty heart
of barbed wire fences.
(Today's poetry was translated from the Hebrew by Vivian Eden.)
____________________
—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 youngsters, Snakelets and Vyper, are on hiatus; no deadlines this Fall.
New in October: Rattlesnake Press celebrated Sacramento Poetry Month on Wednesday, October 10 with the release of Spiral, a rattlechap by Kate Wells; Autumn on My Mind, a free littlesnake broadside by Mary Field; and #5 in the free Rattlesnake Interview Series by B.L. Kennedy, this one featuring Sacramento Poet Laureate Julia Connor. Also released that night was Conversations, Volume One of the Rattlesnake Interview Anthology Series (a collection of B.L.'s conversations with eleven Sacramento poets), as well as a free broadside tribute to poet/publisher Ben L. Hiatt, commissioned by Rattlesnake Press and designed by Richard Hansen from poetry by B.L. Kennedy and artwork by Patrick Grizzell. All of these are available at The Book Collector, 100 24th St., Sacramento, or from rattlesnakepress.com, or write to kathykieth@hotmail.com/.
Coming in November: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. Come celebrate the release of all of these on Wednesday, November 14, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector.
