Lost in the Steam & Chatter

PARADOXES AND OXYMORONS
—John Ashbery

The poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don't have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What's a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.

It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren't there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.

_____________________

This weekend in Nor-Cal poetry:

•••Tonight (Friday, 11/30), 8:30 PM: Open mic (3 poems/songs each) plus features: Vocalist Maryann Mason and poets Terry Moore, Taylor Williams, Khiry Malik Moore and more. Isis Bazaar, 122 - I Street (In Old Sacramento, as soon as you enter on the right). $5.00 admission. Info: 916-208-POET or www.mybmsf.com/terrymoore/. (Before the reading, drop by Underground Books from 6-8 PM for the Terry Moore “Validated” book signing and social event. Address on the website above.)

•••Sat. (12/1), 7 PM: Poetry Flash at Cody’s Books in Berkeley presents Sacramentan/rattlechapper Susan Kelly-DeWitt and Davisite Sandra McPherson at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St., Berkeley, 510-559-9500. Info: Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476, www.poetryflash.org/.

•••Also Sat. (12/1), 7:30 PM: Julia Levine reads from her new book, Ditchtender, at The Avid Reader, 617 Second St., Davis. Julia's previous collection, Ash, won the 2003 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. Free.

•••Also Sat. (12/1), 7 PM: Poetry by AriA and music by Grapham Vinson and the Zoo Human Project. Butch N Nellie's, 1827 I St., Sacramento. $5 general, free for open mic performers. Info: 916-443-6133.

•••Monday (12/3), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Lorna Dee Cervantes and Alfred Arteaga, as part of SPC’s weekly series of readings to be held at The Space Theater, 2509 R St., Sacramento. Lorna Dee Cervantes has authored three books of poetry, two of them award-winning: Emplumada; From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger; and Drive: The First Quartet. Her poetry has appeared in 200 highly-recognized anthologies and too-numerous-to-count e-zines and magazines. She has performed her poetry twice at the Library of Congress and has also presented at the Walker Arts Center, The Dodge Poetry Festival, New York YMCA, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Vassar, Wellesley, and numerous other venues, university & college campuses in the US, Mexico, Spain & Colombia.

Alfred Arteaga, born in East Los Angeles, is author of several books of poetry, creative non-fiction, and cultural studies. His latest book of poems is Frozen Accident (Tia Chucha, 2006). He had been a National Endowment for the Arts and a Rockefeller Fellow. He teaches poetry in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.

_____________________

SUBTERFUGE
—Vassar Miller

I remember my father, slight,
staggering in with his Underwood,
bearing it in his arms like an awkward bouquet

for his spastic child who sits down
on the floor, one knee on the frame
of the typewriter, and holding her left wrist

with her right hand, in that precision known
to the crippled, pecks at the keys
with a sparrow's preoccupation.

Falling by chance on rhyme, novel and curious bubble
blown with a magic pipe, she tries them over and over,
spellbound by life's clashing in accord or against itself,

pretending pretense and playing at playing,
she does her chiildhood backward as children do,
her fun a delaying action against what she knows.

My father must lose her, his runaway on her treadmill,
will lose the terrible favor that life has done him
as she toils at tomorrow, tensed at her makeshift toy.

______________________

GENIUS
—Philip Levine

Two old dancing shoes my grandfather
gave the Christian Ladies,
an unpaid water bill, the rear license
of a dog that messed on your lawn,
a tooth I saved for the good fairy
and which is stained with base metals
and plastic filler. With these images
and your black luck and my bad breath
a bright beginner could make a poem
in fourteen rhyming lines about the purity
of first love or the rose's many thorns
or dew that won't wait long enough
to stand my little gray wren a drink.

_____________________

THEME FOR ENGLISH B
—Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue. Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear you—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
I guess you learn from me—
although you're older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

____________________

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/, as is October's Conversations, Vol. One of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's

Rain Dance, uh, Poems

Photo by Stephani Schaefer

WAITING FOR RAIN
—Stephani Schaefer, Los Molinos

It may not rain at all
this year, the high clouds
may keep it to themselves,

maybe let down tantalizing virga
in wispy streaks that
never reach the ground.

Meantime, the high desert waits
on the edge
of the last irrigated field.

_____________________

Thanks, Steph! Stephani Schaefer writes: This monster cactus is not far from my house. We are so DRY my hair stands up from my head with static...


Reading today at noon:

•••TODAY (Thurs., 11/29), 12 noon: River City Writers Series presents Zaid Shlah at Sacramento City College in A-6 [Auditorium 6]. A native Calgarian, Zaid Shlah now resides in Walnut Creek, CA. He obtained his BA in English from the University of Calgary and his MA in English from San Francisco State University, where he received the Distinguished Graduate award from San Francisco State University's Creative Writing department. His poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies both in Canada and the U.S. In particular, selections from the long poem, "Taqsim", have appeared on CBC Radio's Alberta Anthology. "Asking Iraq to Comply" appeared in the anthology, Canadian Writers Against the War, The Common Sky, 2003. And "Songs of Departure" and "Asking Iraq to Comply" are forthcoming in the anthology, Arab American and Diaspora Literature (Interlink Publishing, 2005). His first full-length book of poetry is Taqsim (Frontenac 2005).


And tonight:

•••Thurs. (11/29), 7:30 PM: Benefit for the Yuba Watershed Institute: “Peaks, Fires & Spirits of Love and Loss,” an evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder. Center for the Arts, 314 W. Main St., Grass Valley. Admission is $35 including dessert buffet and no-host bar. Tickets: 530-271-7000 or thecenterforthearts.org/. Info: Tania Carlone, Yuba Watershed Institute, 530-265-4459 or taniacarlone@sbcglobal.net/.

•••Thursday (11/29), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sac. Featured readers Terry Moore and Khiry Malik Moore, with open mic before and after. Info: 916-441-3931. [For interviews with both readers, see Conversations, Vol. One of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.]

_____________________

More rain poems, with some wishful thinking. We sorely need both.

ON A PAINTING BY WANG THE CLERK OF YEN LING
—Su Yung P'o (11th century)

The slender bamboo is like a hermit.
The simple flower is like a maiden.
The sparrow tilts on the branch.
A gust of rain sprinkles the flowers.
He spreads his wings to fly
And shakes all the leaves.
The bees gathering honey
Are trapped in the nectar.
What a wonderful talent
That can create an entire Spring
With a brush and a sheet of paper.
If he would try poetry
I know he would be a master of words.

(Translated from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth)

_______________________

ALONE
—Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov'd—I lov'd alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the sun that round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(Where the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—

____________________

AFTER THIS DELUGE
—Ingebord Bachmann

After this deluge
I would like to see the dove,
and nothing but the dove,
saved once more.

For I'd perish in this sea!
if she didn't fly away,
if she didn't bring back
in the last hour,
the leaf.

_____________________

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/, as is October's Conversations, Vol. One of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's

Sunflowers in December & Delusions of Ulro

William Blake

AH! SUNFLOWER
—William Blake

Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!

_____________________

Thanks, Bill! Today, William Blake would've been 250 years old!


Tonight in poetry, to celebrate Bill's birthday:

•••Weds. (11/28), 6-7 PM: Upstairs Poetry reading at The Upstairs Art Gallery, 420 Main St (2nd floor), Placerville. It's an open-mike read-around, so bring your own poems or those of a favorite poet to share, or just come to listen. Free.

•••Wednesday (11/28), 6-8 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center will hold its Annual Benefit at the home of Burnett and Mimi Miller, 1224 40th St., Sacramento. Victoria Dalkey and Quinton Duval will share their poetry; music will be provided by The Swing State (aka SPC Board Member Mary Zeppa and SPC President Bob Stanley); plus food, drink and fellowship. $30. Arts funding is always at a premium. If you can’t fit our party into your busy life, please consider helping to support our ongoing (since 1979) programs with a tax-deductible contribution. Send it to Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 – 25th St., Sacramento, CA 95816.


Calendar addition for Saturday:

Davisite/rattlechapper James Lee Jobe writes: Julia Levine's new book of poems is out, titled Ditchtender. Julia's previous collection, Ash, won the 2003 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. The local debut for Ditchtender is Saturday, December 1st, at 7:30 pm, at The Avid Reader, 617 Second Street, Davis. Julia gave a reading at the Unitarian Church in Davis a few months ago that was almost Standing Room Only. It was a vibrant, fun, almost electric reading! I encourage you not to miss either this reading or this book.

_____________________

FROM "MILTON"
—William Blake

And every Space that a Man views around his dwelling-place
Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount
Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his Universe:
And on its verge the Sun rises & sets, the Clouds bow
To meet the flat Earth and the Sea in such an order'd Space:
The Starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set
On all sides, & the two Poles turn on their valves of gold;
And if he move his dwelling-place, his heavens also move
Where'er he goes, & all his neighbourhood bewail his loss.
Such are the Spaces called Earth & such its dimension.
As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner
As of a Globe rolling thro' Voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro.

_______________________

A SKETCH FOR A MODERN LOVE POEM
—Tadeusz Rozewicz

And yet whiteness
can be best described by greyness
a bird by a stone
sunflowers
in december

love poems of old
used to be descriptions of flesh
they described this and that
for instance eyelashes

and yet redness
should be described
by greyness the sun by rain
the poppies in november
the lips at night

the most palpable
description of bread
is that of hunger
there is in it
a humid porous core
a warm inside
sunflowers at night
the breasts the belly the thighs of Cybele

a transparent
source-like description
of water is that of thirst
of ash
of desert
it provokes a mirage
clouds and trees enter
a mirror of water
lack hunger
absence
of flesh
is a description of love
in a modern love poem


(Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz)

___________________

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/, as is October's Conversations, Vol. One of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

Whitmans of the Wild

Allegra Silberstein

HOME THOUGHTS IN NOVEMBER
—Allegra Silberstein, Davis

In memory's mirror I look home
to the barn on my brother's small farm
in Wisconsin where we grew up.
The cows stand patiently waiting to be milked.
My brother and his wife know each one
by her given name.

When barn swallows leave,
their nesting days done
and the ducks gone from the pond,
cold, hard days come, as now they have.
Breath of the cows makes a mist
as they mumble summer-sunned hay.

No matter if the dark wind howls around
corners, within these walls, all are safe,
warm with shared body heat.
The cows first kneel, then lie down to rest.
The crumbled years shine like lime
spread upon the clean driveway.

____________________

Thanks, Allegra! Allegra Silberstein is a retired teacher who now has more time for writing. She also dances, sings, and plays the recorder when she can find a few spare moments. Her poems have been published in Poetry Depth Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Rattlesnake Review, Poetry Now, Poetry of the New West, California Quarterly, and other journals. Publication in anthologies includes: The Sacramento Anthology: One Hundred Poems; Gatherings; A Woman's Place, and Where Do I Walk. Her first chapbook, Acceptance, was published in 1999, and her second, In The Folds, was published by Rattlesnake Press in 2005. Look for more poems from Allegra in Rattlesnake Review #16, due out in mid-December, and on rattlesnakepress.com (Rattlechappers' page).

Allegra also co-hosts The Other Voice, a monthly reading series at the Unitarian Church in Davis. December 7 will feature Rattlechappers Danyen Powell and Katy Brown; more about that next week.

Speaking of Katy, do you have your copy of her KatyKalendar yet (A Poet's Book of Days)? Pick one up from rattlesnakepress.com (HandyStuff page) or The Book Collector, or directly from me at P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. Or come to Katy and Danyen's reading Dec. 7 in Davis!

If you'd rather have the daily kind of calendar, go to http://www.poets.org/store.php/mt/121/prmID/294/ for some cool poetry stuff, Christmas gifts for yourself or for others.


Calendar additions for this week:

•••Thurs. (11/29), 7:30 PM: Benefit for the Yuba Watershed Institute: “Peaks, Fires & Spirits of Love and Loss,” an evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder. Center for the Arts, 314 W. Main St., Grass Valley. Admission is $35 including dessert buffet and no-host bar. Tickets: 530-271-7000 or thecenterforthearts.org/. Info: Tania Carlone, Yuba Watershed Institute, 530-265-4459 or taniacarlone@sbcglobal.net/.

•••Friday (11/30), 8:30 PM: Open mic (3 poems/songs each) plus features: Vocalist Maryann Mason and poets Terry Moore, Taylor Williams, Khiry Malik Moore and more. Isis Bazaar, 122 - I Street (In Old Sacramento, as soon as you enter on the right). $5.00 admission. Info: 916-208-POET or www.mybmsf.com/terrymoore/. (Before the reading, drop by Underground Books from 6-8 PM for the Terry Moore “Validated” book signing and social event. Address on the website above.)

Call for Submissions: Be Part of the Premiere Issue

Editor Lisa Espenmiller of Oakland seeks meticulously crafted poems and short prose pieces for her new journal, Singing With The Whale, which intends to use a unique publishing concept that is based more on the idea of being a gallery or a book without ending, rather than specific issues with a beginning and an end. The site seeks in its design format to express a feeling of clean lines and Zen simplicity, enabling the visual focus to be on the words themselves. Check it out at www.singingwiththewhale.com or write to editor@singingwiththewhale.com/.

_____________________

SAMAPATTI OF A HIDDEN LAKE
—Allegra Silberstein

A storm had muddied the small clear lake.
Release came as molecules of water
let go the stirrings spooned by wind
and run-off: a healing time of wait—
the wind wound down
to a gentle breeze like an armistice.

As I walked down this wild-life road
I heard the song of a red-winged blackbird.
The sun well-past mid-day brought slant light.
The lake mirrored overhanging trees,
tule-reeds, elderberry, cattails
and Queen Ann's lace with perfect clarity.

Though storms may come with manifest power—
stronger the stillness that shaped this hour.


Samapatti: a Sanskrit term for a state of mental absorption
that allows a clear vision of the world made possible
when the turnings of the mind have been stopped.

____________________

CONSIDERATIONS OF THE FORMAL
—Allegra Silberstein

I heard the professor of poetics
proclaim the issues of iambic and
pentameter, of villanelle, sestina
and pantoum, of free verse, blank, and lyric,
of sonnets: Petrarchan and Shakespearean;
I heard his fine intellect—then
considered my singular ignorance.

Outside the vaulted window where I sat,
a brown bird singing distracted me.
I could not name this bird,
could not spell out the notes
of his unlettered lyric verse...
a Whitman of the wild, without a pen,
with his syrinx brought me poems.

_____________________

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/, as is October's Conversations, Vol. One of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

Bull & Otherwise

Photo by Kathy Kieth
(I call this one, "Two Seconds Before Chaos",
which is what broke out right after
the shutter snapped.)

_____________

Air is

the only
interference
between you
and me

and sight
acts
primarily
on the land-
scape

red earth
yellow sun
blue ocean

include humans
(of course)

to know
that
hugging
the coastline
the fog
is the only true
veil in nature

So

exactly what is
a tweed
under the sunshine?

(No one
is looking)

Go Free


—Gordon Preston, Modesto
from his book, Violins, published by Finishing Line Press

________________

Thanks, Gordon. Gordon Preston co-presents a reading series in Modesto, and was one of the editors of Hardpan. Yes, "was"—sadly, that wonderful journal is no longer publishing. Darn—we were all set to do a feature on them in the next Rattlesnake Review. Well, at least we have some poems from Editors Gordon Preston, debee loyd and Karen Baker for the issue, so that'll be a plus.

New from Do Gentry:

Sacramento Poet Do Gentry has a new chapbook from Small Poetry Press that has just been released: The Logic of the Heart. It is available at The Book Collector, (916) 442-9295, 1008 24th Street (between J and K Sts.), Sacramento, CA 95816 (bookcollector@sacfreepress.com/).


December Boot Camp:

Molly Fisk of Nevada City writes: It's not too late to sign up for the December Boot Camp, which runs from Sunday, 12/2 through Friday 12/7, in case you'd like to write poems about how your Thanksgiving went this year, and what it's like to go shopping the day afterward. You can also write gift poems for your loved ones or anything else you feel like writing. If you don't know what Poetry Boot Camp is, visit http://www.poetrybootcamp for a full explanation. This is also a good time to purchase a Camp for any of your poet friends as a holiday present. (You know how hard poets are to buy for...) Go to the Registration page and click on Gift Certificate.

The new year is going to bring some changes to Poetry Boot Camp, including special separate camps for beginners and for experienced poets, guest critiquers, more revision camps, and camps with particular topics. I'll let you know more about these innovations in about a month. Meanwhile, enjoy all the non-shopping aspects of December, and write whenever you can. It's a great stress-reliever.
Merry, Happy, etc., and many thanks for your participation and support as we wrap up the fifth year of Boot Camp.


This week in NorCal poetry:

•••Monday (11/26), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Brad Buchanan's Creative Writing Class from Cal. State University, Sacramento, at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic will follow.

•••Weds. (11/28), 6-7 PM: Upstairs Poetry reading at The Upstairs Art Gallery, 420 Main St (2nd floor), Placerville. It's an open-mike read-around, so bring your own poems or those of a favorite poet to share, or just come to listen. Free.

•••Wednesday (11/28), 6-8 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center will hold its Annual Benefit at the home of Burnett and Mimi Miller, 1224 40th St., Sacramento. Victoria Dalkey and Quinton Duval will share their poetry; music will be provided by The Swing State (aka SPC Board Member Mary Zeppa and SPC President Bob Stanley); plus food, drink and fellowship. $30. Arts funding is always at a premium. If you can’t fit our party into your busy life, please consider helping to support our ongoing (since 1979) programs with a tax-deductible contribution. Send it to Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 – 25th St., Sacramento, CA 95816.

•••Thursday (11/29), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sac. Featured readers, with open mic before and after. Info: 916-441-3931.

•••Sat. (12/1), 7 PM: Poetry Flash at Cody’s Books in Berkeley presents Sacramentan/rattlechapper Susan Kelly-DeWitt and Davisite Sandra McPherson at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St., Berkeley, 510-559-9500. Info: Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476, www.poetryflash.org/.

______________________

Tom Goff sends us the following poem, with this introduction:

[A sonnet naked of rhyme, in which Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford or Oxenford, bewails his inability, by high birth and impolitic disclosure of politics, to claim what plays he hath writ, under the pen name William Shakespeare; whereupon cometh a Stratford man of small education, haply named William Shakspere, under whose seeming authorship, the said plays are enabled to be published. The which sonnet containeth the true author’s name, but in a manner as may chance with courtiers, which do both rise and fall.*]

SHAKESPEARE IN ALL BUT NAME
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Evil stars in bad courses blast me dead,
Desiring silenced all that I work for.
Whatever I ache to speak, they chide me no:
A partless actor must all speech leave off,
Resentful-mute. What stood my love upon,
Designs of an English stage, in me alone
Originate, yet to one who signs his X,
X or what scribble he can make, must go
Eternal lines and name. This comes as dread
Nonsuits the great who rise and rule, yet fear
Faint semblances which satire out loud—la!—
Oily deceits and policies they speak low.
Reward avoids players and plays that lend the grand
Dark mirrors of darker deeds, that they may see.


*That is, a double acrostic. For the rousing story behind this limping conceit, see Mark Anderson’s 2005 book, Shakespeare By Another Name.

____________________

Thanks, Tom!

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/, as is October's Conversations, Vol. One of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

As Magic as Deer

Photo taken in Fair Oaks, CA
by Sam Kieth

SONG FOR THE DEER AND MYSELF TO RETURN ON
—Joy Harjo

This morning when I looked out the roof window
before dawn and a few stars were still caught
in the fragile weft of ebony night
I was overwhelmed. I sang the song Louis taught me:
a song to call the deer in Creek, when hunting,
and I am certainly hunting something as magic as deer
in this city far from the hammock of my mother's belly.
It works, of course, and deer came into this room
and wondered at finding themselves
in a house near downtown Denver.
Now the deer and I are trying to figure out a song
to get them back, to get all of us back,
because if it works I'm going with them.
And it's too early to call Louis
and nearly too late to go home.

_____________________

—Medusa

This Perfection

Norma Kohout

SOUNDLESS DREAM
—Norma Kohout, Sacramento

Walking a long river bottom
I follow a smooth path
which curves in a “U”
between green-gray willows and thick underbrush.

Where the path turns
a grey wolf stands alert and unafraid
with her half-grown pup,
smooth fur flecked with orange;
their unwavering silver eyes look straight ahead.

To avoid alarming them,
I quiet my thoughts, tread past
and make the turn carefully, wondering—
is that a mewling
in the underbrush. . .

_____________________

Thanks, Norma! Norma Kohout played tennis in her San Francisco years, was counselor for The San Francisco Boys Chorus, a secretary, and a student at San Francisco State College. In Modesto, she taught junior high school English and participated in three teacher organizatioins. In Sacramento, it's been poetry, poetry, poetry. She says highlights include receiving the Chaparral Golden Pegasus Award in 2001, being published in Senior Magazine, Tiger's Eye, Rattlesnake Review, and Song of the San Joaquin, plus Chaparral and Ina Coolbrith wins and publications. Also, Norma co-facilitates a weekly senior poetry group with Joyce Odam, and she has a littlesnake broadside, Out the Train Window, from Rattlesnake Press.

THE ZEN OF GRAPEFRUIT
—Norma Kohout

Larry brought me grapefruit from his tree-filled
place in the country.
I've begun cutting the peels
with a knife,
rather than removing them with my fingers;
which leaves
a sticky crowded feeling under my nails.

The yellow covering cuts away nicely
with a few curving motions; so does the white layer
that I rather like, and
purposely keep a bit of,
remembering my neighbor in Los Angeles
said it had lots of Vitamin K.

The bitter-mellow smell comes up; and
my mouth begins salivating when the serrated blade
cuts through the naked fruit, making cubes
of the natural sections
where little cells of juice glisten.
I put the grapefruit in a glass dish,
licking the citric sweetness from my fingers.

But I miss the comedy routines about grapefruit
from my distant girlhood:
grapefruit juice squirting from the spoon
into people's eyes,
and movie incidents like James Cagney
famously squashing
one in his blonde gangster moll's face.

_____________________

THE NIGHT FOR FROG LEGS
—Norma Kohout

Tonight, after a day of hauling freight,
he sautéed frog legs—
standing solid, still neat in the army-style
twill pants and shirt.

Hot butter perfumed the kitchen; the white meat
sizzled, and Mother
drained string beans at the zinc counter,
stepping around
our German shepherd, Frieda.

Even to a daughter's eyes, he was handsome:
ash-blond hair and clipped mustache—
turning frog legs
the way he learned in France in the war.
No other kids in the neighborhood
had frog legs for dinner.

We watched from the dining room table,
past Mother's cooking cabinet,
past the scar on the stove's white enamel,
where he'd hurled the spinach
in Grandma Lindholm's heirloom dish.

(Originally appeared in Rattlesnake Review #14)

_____________________

AT NIGHT
—Norma Kohout

Turning off the bed lamp
filled my room with soft dark.

The night sky came into view.
An oval pearl shone fiercely
on its cushion of indigo velvet.

I was glad the moon
was not yet round;
this perfection was all I could bear.

_______________________

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/, as is October's Conversations, Vol. One of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

Warmer Than Tomorrow

Family
Photo sent in by David Humphreys (right)

RAVENS IN BARE BRANCHES
—David Humphreys, Stockton

A chill on uncovered hands, chin, nose
and cheeks, red yellow brown leaves
piling up alongside the gray street, haze
filling the background with a soft veil lace
curtain into an interior distance. Half a mile
further on parrots mutter, still in their treetop
roosts. In a few days our families will reunite
again, another year gone and harvested and you
will see them all grown a little older with a touch
more gray at a temple or children more mature,
any signs of age or infirmity like a needle in
time’s tablecloth. Ask them all to join you with,
“Bless, oh Lord, this food to our use and make us
ever mindful of the needs of others.”

_____________________

WAITING FOR THE OTHER SHOE
("Ultimate Power Corrupts Ultimately")

to drop dead in its tracks like an enraged and
endangered rhinoceros brought down by some
lovely work of painstaking colonial homeland
industry, tooled to a micrometric perfection now
transcended by a super human nano dimensioned
world craft and workmanship that is presently so
revered with an astronomical sterling value, you feel
perhaps a bit relic and discarded, more precisely like
a garroted shaved head street walker whore fascist
collaborator. How is it that you can calmly wake each
morning to await the afternoon delivery of dividends
checks and balances secure in the principle embodied
in the inert carcass lying still warm at your feet with its
long curved aphrodisiac horn, a principle of lead and brass,
.600 Nitro Express, H & H, side by side, brought to you
clearly now in reverie from your father’s receding era of Sears
Roebuck Christmas Catalog teddy bears and whale bone corsets.

—David Humphreys

____________________

THE LAST GREAT KILLING
—David Humphreys

(His clothing was white as snow,
and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames,
and its wheels were burning fire.)
—Judgment of the Ancient One, Book of Daniel, 9

The last century watched newsreels of horrendous
conflagrations and atrocities beyond description
in safe American movie theaters. What brought
this about and who has never read “Flanders

Fields” or “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”?
Who will remember now as another approaching
storm swirls bleached with skulls stacked in catacombs
beside blood stained fields green with forgetfulness,
nuclear winter long with dark eternity?

What sweet child will bring us flowers
to fill with laughter warm afternoon hours?

______________________

Thanks, David, for sending us poems!


This weekend in NorCal poetry:

•••Saturday (11/24), 7-9 PM: The Show features Neo-soul artist Kevin Sandbloom (kevinsandbloom.com), Praise Dancer Tangela Campbell, House Band LSB, House Vocalist Chris Bush. Wo’se Community Center, 2863 35th St., (off 35th & Broadway), Sacramento. $5. Open mic, all ages. Info: 916-208-POET.

•••Monday (11/26), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Brad Buchanan's Creative Writing Class from Cal. State University, Sacramento, at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic will follow.

______________________

One more from David Humphreys:

A FEW DAYS LATER
—David Humphreys

Early this morning there was a column of smoke
rising just to the north as I started out with the dog.
The smell of it was strong and followed us all the
way around our circuit. When we first saw the cloud
I wondered if I should call the Fire Department but
then decided to wait for the sirens. This is the time
of year when controlled burning happens in the valley’s
fields. The sirens didn’t start though and by the time
we made it home the cloud had moved off and dissipated.
I heard the geese before I looked up and saw them
in a long uneven V. It just takes a few days for another
set of trees to come into full color and the golden yellow
was next to another house around an unexpected corner.
Down on the south street, El Camino, we walked into the
sun and two birches were ablaze in dark shadows. Beyond
them a big Cat back hoe was banging broken up asphalt from
the grade school’s parking lot into a dump truck. Its oversized
loader jaw was a metal Tyrannosaurus in the toothy serrated
dawn, colder than yesterday, warmer than tomorrow.

_____________________

Thanks, David!

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. (Sooner than you think!)

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/, as is October's Conversations, Vol. One of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

Let My Hands Find Such Symbols

Photo taken in Fair Oaks, CA
by Sam Kieth

PLYMOUTH
—Philip Larkin

A box of teak, a box of sandalwood,
A brass-ringed spyglass in a case,
A coin, leaf-thin with many polishings,
Last kingdom of a gold forgotten face,
These lie about the room, and daily shine
When new-built ships set out towards the sun.

If they had any roughness, any flaw,
An unfamiliar scent, all this has gone;
They are no more than ornaments, or eyes,
No longer knowing what they looked upon,
Turned sightless; rivers of Eden, rivers of blood
Once blinded them, and were not understood.

The hands that chose them rust upon a stick.
Let my hands find such symbols, that can be
Unnoticed in the casual light of day,
Lying in wait for half a century
To split chance lives across, that had not dreamed
Such coasts had echoed, or such seabirds screamed.

Photo taken in Fair Oaks, CA
by Sam Kieth

—Medusa, in great gratitude for The Poets

Hearing Music?

Grandfather Stump
Photo by Ann Wehrman

THE GRANDFATHER STUMP
—Ann Wehrman, Sacramento

He has grown here for a thousand years,
before Lewis and Clark reached the Northwest,
back when Nootka, Yorok, and Hupa
ruled the Pacific Coast.
One of countless giants
chopped down without regret,
now he's just a grandfather stump,
his bark dried and gray—
yet, cradling a saucer magnolia sapling,
covered with delicate, white blossoms of spring,
nourished by the soil
collected in the ancient's desiccated heart.

_____________________

Thanks, Ann! Watch for Notes From The Ivory Tower, a new littlesnake broadside from Sacramento's Ann Wehrman, coming December 12 from Rattlesnake Press. More about Ann later.


Dreaming of Mallorca?

Writing For Our Lives is a writing retreat which will be held at La Serrania, a remote and gorgeous retreat center in Mallorca, with Ellen Bass next May 3-10. This week will be an opportunity to delve into writing in an inspiring setting, to nurture the creative voice. There will be time for writing and time for sharing and response, hearing what our work touches in others. We'll help each other to become clearer, go deeper, express our feelings and ideas more powerfully. With the safety, support, and guidance of this gathering, you have the opportunity to create writing that is more vivid, more true, more complex and powerful than you've been able to do before. The focus of this workshop is on generating new writing, but there will also be time for feedback, critique, and guidance. Both beginners and experienced writers are welcome. Whether you are interested in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoir or journal writing, this workshop will provide an opportunity to explore and expand your creative world.

This size of the workshop is limited to 14 participants. The early bird fee for the workshop (which includes accommodations and all meals) is $1500 until December 31. After that the regular fee is $1750. A $550 deposit is required to hold your place. Most rooms are doubles, but there may be single rooms available for a surcharge. For more information about LaSerrania, visit www.laserrania.com/. For more information about the workshop and to register, please email ellen@ellenbass.com/.

_____________________

WHAT’S IN A WORD
—Stephanie Schaefer, Los Molinos

No meaning
without memory
translation
recognition.

Here lately I look at a word
and wonder
is it a real word.

Like seeing a friend
in an unlikely setting
and asking myself
do I really know that person.

I use many odd words nowadays.
Words that might be words.
Or not.

Perhaps not too long from now
I'll write in my own language,
without meaning for others.

But maybe they'll hear music.

______________________

Thanks, Steph, and Medusa is tearing her hair out over misspelling your name all over the place this week. (It's one "f", not two!) Watch for more of Stephani Schaefer's poetry, plus a review of her new chapbook from PWJ Publishing, Punk Medusa, in Rattlesnake Review #16.

Finally, one more stump poem, this one from Taylor Graham, who writes: OK, don't ask where this came from, except general pondering on the world and human situation. Plus, once I climbed into a huge old stump like this; the dog found me, but to his handler I was invisible, non-existent, and her dog must be imagining things.

NOTHING BUT

a stump in the meadow —
the stump of a behemoth tree,
a light-swallowing dinosaur of a tree
long gone extinct

so only the tree’s stump is left,
rooted, hollowed out
by rot, its empty center big enough
for a grown man — let’s say

a Hercules of a man, a Lion-Heart,
a St. Francis — to climb
into, and pull slabs of bark
across the door

and disappear, simply go extinct
as he is from human-
kind and unkind — a hero
wrapped in his losses.

Where owls go to dream...

Have a good day.

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15. Sooner than you think!

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/, as is October's Conversations, Vol. One of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

Stumped, Part Three

WHERE DO BIRDS SLEEP?
—Margaret Ellis Hill, Wilton

Ready to go before birds awaken,
the delicate lady paces the house,
feigns calmness, checks her hair,
waits for the car.

On the road, she chats about the cats,
today’s coffee, wraps her coat tightly,
tells us she is not nervous now,
chatters away with ideas and life.

As she is prepared with dressing gown,
warm blankets, attached with sterile lines
she chants the litanies again;
Our hearts reach out to hers.

Fragility like a bird,
etched wrinkles instead of feathers
shows a wearing down,
that wears us thin too.

With the mesmerizing hum of nurses,
soft sounds of family,
induced relaxation takes her
to the mercy of God and the angels.

Where do birds sleep?

_____________________

Thanks, Peggy! Peggy Hill is responding to Katy Brown's question yesterday: Where do owls go in winter?

And you: Have you sent in your stump poem yet? Tonight's the deadline: Send in your poems/photos/art about stumps or being "stumped" or other variations thereof (metaphoric and otherwise) and I'll send you Taylor Graham's latest chapbook, Among Neighbors. (Or, if you already have her new book, another Rattlesnake Press product of your choosing.) Send it all to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 by midnight (postmarked) Tuesday, Nov. 20. That's tonight! Here's one by David Humphreys; thanks, David!

THE WALNUT STUMP

out front is the last of three black walnuts
that lined the south side of the driveway. An
American walnut seedling nearest the house,
that was given to us by a grandmother, has
grown tall enough for shade but it is nothing
like the middle black that reached its zenith
height and glory the year before it succumbed
to a blight that ran through the area like wild fire.
The driveway needs to be jack hammered and
resurfaced. The roof needs to be replaced and
the garage door just broke. It’s an old house, a
beauty, but suffering from this climate of hot
summers. There’s plenty of work for an old
carpenter. I’ll take the chainsaw and grind down
the stump before too long but I’ll miss remembering
the kids climbing up into its branches and jumping
in the leaf piles every fall.

—David Humphreys, Stockton

_____________________

Call for submissions:

Song of the San Joaquin is accepting submissions of poetry through Dec. 15 for the Winter Issue. Info about guidelines: Cleo Griffith, (209) 543-1776, cleor36@yahoo.com/. See the last issue of Rattlesnake Review (#15) for a feature article on the SSJ Editorial Staff.


North-state poetry grants:

Jamie FitzGerald of Poets & Writers says: Poets & Writers administers the Readings/Workshops program, which provides matching fees to writers who give public readings of their work or teach writing workshops. One of the program goals is to reach underserved populations and/or rural areas where literary programming is often scarce.

For the past two years, we have chosen three counties to focus some of our efforts on. During this new fiscal year, which began July 1, we are focusing on Siskiyou, Del Norte and Placer counties. The goal is to help jump-start more events in these counties via outreach and education about funds available through the Readings/Workshops program.

Organizations must apply on behalf of writers, but you can help spread the word and initiate your own events with sponsors. Everything you need to learn more about this program (guidelines, application and FAQs) can be accessed on our Web site at http://www.pw.org/rw.

If you have any questions or would like to share your knowledge of literary events in your area that might qualify for support, please feel free to give us a call.

Jamie Asae FitzGerald
Poets & Writers, Program Associate
California Office & Readings/Workshops (West)
2035 Westwood Blvd, Suite 211
Los Angeles, CA 90025
310-481-7195 phone
310-481-7193 fax
jfitzgerald@pw.org


SPC Annual Fund Raiser

•••A week from this Wednesday (11/28), 6-8 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center will hold its Annual Benefit at the home of Burnett and Mimi Miller, 1224 40th St., Sacramento. Victoria Dalkey and Quinton Duval will share their poetry; music will be provided by The Swing State (aka Mary Zeppa and Bob Stanley); plus food, drink and fellowship. $30. Arts funding is always at a premium. If you can’t fit our party into your busy life, please consider helping to support our ongoing (since 1979) programs with a tax-deductible contribution. Send it to Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 – 25th St., Sacramento, CA 95816.

____________________


I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as... a stump!
What? Are you debating me?
It's what you get when you chop down
those "woody" tall shrubs for the sake of progress
Yes, whacking them down in field and forest like big weeds
because it's our destiny
to also tame and conform our landscape
in order to then, likely, later pave over what remains
for houses, buildings, shopping malls, lots, or highway
not knowing how many roots still remain under them
Then sun and weather help make buckled cracks
in which suddenly start poking out little sprouts
Perhaps some of those stumps attempting to resurrect—
rebelling at being buried and forgotten in secret

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento



—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15.

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/ as is Conversations, Vol. One of the Rattlesnake Interview Series.

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

Still Stumping

Photo by Stephani Schaefer, Los Molinos

And above Jenner, along the snake coil blacktop of
Highway 1, the churning salted water of Stump Cove
reflected the setting sun. At the apex of the
hair-pin, a wide spot to park, a mad dash across the
road, and we are gazing at the sunset. Our bare feet
going numb in the icy ocean, a shoe in each hand,
leaning against each other. Stump Cove at sunset,
waves bouncing on the rocks, kelp dancing up and down
with the water, and an orange ball sinking into a
grey-blue sea, add a pink cloud or two and we have a
new meaning for the term, "Stumped". Hold me tight,
we will soon have to go back to the real world.

—Wayne Robinson, Lodi

_____________________

Thanks, Wayne! Wayne Robinson and Stephani Schaefer have taken up the gauntlet thrown down by Medusa: Send in your poems/photos/art about stumps or being "stumped" or other variations thereof (metaphoric and otherwise) and I'll send you Taylor Graham's latest chapbook, Among Neighbors. (Or, if you already have her new book, another Rattlesnake Press product of your choosing.) Send it all to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 by midnight (postmarked) Tuesday, Nov. 20. That's tomorrow!

Here's one by Patricia Wellingham-Jones, who writes to say: Discovered to my great surprise that I won the Chico News & Review's first Poetry 99 contest (99 words or under); also an HM. Steph [Schaefer] also had a poem published in the collection. You can see it here, if you want: http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=598694/. They had a very good turnout for this contest.

POLLARD: LIVING STUMPS
—Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Tehama

Two sycamores bring
pain-squinches to my eyes.
Trees needing broad lawns,
wide space, heavy crowns,
these are crammed between bungalow,
chain link fence, narrow walk.
Each November the trees weep,
fingers severed to first knuckle.
Majesty reduced
to thick trunk, blunt stubs.
In midsummer their shame
is covered in green leaves
on thin whips the trees strain
to produce.
By November when leaves
start to litter the ground
the surgeons arrive with chainsaws
and I shudder for the sycamores
again.

(Originally published in Edgz, 2001)

____________________

This week in NorCal poetry:

•••Monday (11/19), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Donald Anderson, Nikki Quismondo and others to celebrate the release of Sun Shadow Mountain, their collection of poetry, art and photography at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic will follow.

•••Saturday (11/24), 7-9 PM: The Show features Neo-soul artist Kevin Sandbloom (kevinsandbloom.com), Praise Dancer Tangela Campbell, House Band LSB, House Vocalist Chris Bush. Wo’se Community Center, 2863 35th St., (off 35th & Broadway), Sacramento. $5. Open mic, all ages. Info: 916-208-POET.


Split This Rock:

Split This Rock Poetry Contest to benefit Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, DC, March 20-23, 2008. $1,000 awarded for poems of provocation & witness, Kyle G. Dargan, Judge. $500 for 1st, $300 for 2nd and $200 for 3rd place. 1st-place winner will read the winning poem at the festival. The poem will also be published on the festival website at www.SplitThisRock.org. All winners receive free festival admission. Postmark deadline: January 15, 2008. Info about how to submit: info@splitthisrock.org/.


Stonework:

Rattlechapper James DenBoer has another book out: Stonework: Selected Poems. Swan Scythe Press has published this volume as The Walter Pavlich Memorial Poetry Award 2007. Publisher Sandra McPherson says, James DenBoer is one of my favorite poets—He is the awake one, and vulnerable to his awakeness. In this physical world he has ties to the comic and to the suffering. He pays tribute, he asks for counsel, and a great spirit is born and sustained. Stonework exhibits the bonding of difficult material to lucid expression. What an artistic fulfillment! Please order from our press, http://www.swanscythe.com/books.html/. Jim will also be releasing another chapbook from Rattlesnake Press next June.

_____________________

Here's another stump poem, this one by Jane Blue. I mused about phantom pain...

THE BALM OF GILEAD
—Jane Blue, Sacramento

Mary, with your phantom pain,
I wish I could bring you the balm of Gilead
or the honey that rains from the ancient ash tree
Yggdrasil, that canopies this wounded earth.
You say you believe in the Lord, but “Damn!”
when the demon pain strikes and jerks
your puckered stump as if by marionette strings.

You reminisce about your love
for dancing–shimmying the Charleston,
twirling the jitterbug, slinking in the cha-cha
and the tango. You boast
that you won a contest in the pivot:
your partner slung you over his shoulder,
skidded you under his legs; you were the last
couple on the sweat-stained ballroom floor.
You are radiant with remembering.
“I don’t think I could do that anymore,” you laugh.
Then you look down at the wheelchair,
your slashed, unbalanced body. “Oh.
I guess I couldn’t.” You have forgotten,
flying to the past in your mind, the strange pain
in the invisible shank of your leg. Oh, Mary,
I wish I could bring you the balm of Gilead,
or the honey of the ash tree Yggdrasil.

_____________________

Thanks, Jane! And one more, this one in a totally different vein by Katy Brown. Don't forget to pick up one of Katy's new calendars, A Poet's Book of Days, at The Book Collector ($5), or send $6 (made out to Kathy Kieth) to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. Katy will also be reading with Danyen Powell at The Other Voice in Davis on Friday, Dec. 7; you can catch her and her new collection of poetry and photography there. These perpetual calendars make great Christmas gifts for poets and non-poets alike! Pick up two... or six...!

LOOKING FOR CRICKETS
—Katy Brown, Davis

Where have I put my car keys?
Spring flushes, laurel-green on the hills
and all winter, I have missed the burrowing owls
who lined Mace Boulevard looking for crickets.

Spring flushes laurel-green on the hills
and the winter-time red-winged blackbirds
have lined Mace Boulevard looking for insects.
I wonder: where do the owls go in winter?

The red-winged blackbirds
careen in frantic flapping.
Where do the stoic owls go in winter?
I tear apart my house looking for keys.

Careening, franticly flapping,
I scatter the clutter on my dresser,
tearing apart the house, looking for my keys.
Spring won’t wait for me.

I scatter the clutter on my dresser:
really, I have to get organized —
spring won’t wait for me.
How do the owls do it? Living in such small quarters all summer.

I have to got to get organized.
It is spring and the burrowing owls are out on Mace Boulevard
chasing off the blackbirds who have been eating their crickets.
Where the heck have I put my keys?

_____________________

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15.

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/ (in a day or two).

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

Sermons in Stones

Photo by Stephani Schaefer, Los Molinos

Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference; as, the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
"This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am."
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

—William Shakespeare
As You Like It, Act II, Scene i

_______________________

Hopefully you, too, can find tongues in trees, or at least in stumps. Send Medusa your poems/photos/art about stumps or being "stumped" or other variations thereof (metaphoric and otherwise) and I'll send you Taylor Graham's latest chapbook, Among Neighbors. (Or, if you have her book, another Rattlesnake Press product of your choosing.) Send it all to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 by midnight (postmarked) Tuesday, Nov. 20.

—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).

Of Bunnies And Stumps

THE SPACE BETWEEN BREATHS
—William S. Gainer, Grass Valley

Reading her poem
I notice
the difference between
the words —
“lovelies”
and “love lies” —
is only
one small gap,
a pause,
no more
than the space
between
breaths...

____________________

Thanks, Bill! Watch for more of Bill Gainer's poetry in Rattlesnake Review Sweet 16, coming in mid-December.

What's with the bunnies? Marie Ross mentioned "gnarled stumps" in one of yesterday's poems, so I went hunting for photos of stumps on the Web. As usual, Fotosearch came through with more royalty-free pix than you could shake a stump at, lots of 'em with way-cool critters perched on them, besides. So expect lots of future photos of stumps, some with wee beasties. (Which of course Medusa is a sucker for, given her on-going habitation with snakes of various ilk...)

There is something very, very fruitful about the image of a stump: life that once was, something cut off/truncated too soon, life that sometimes regenerates from the roots. Amputated. Do trees have phantom pains; do they remember old limbs? What does it mean to be "stumped"? Or even to "stump" in the political sense; is that related?

Let's have an off-beat challenge, something that might even stump you. Send Medusa your poems/photos/art about stumps or being "stumped" or other variations thereof (metaphoric and otherwise) and I'll send you Taylor Graham's latest chapbook, Among Neighbors, which is about our relations with our fellow creatures: arboreal, two- and four-legged, and elsewise. (Or, if you have that, another Rattlesnake Press book of your choosing.) Send it all to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 by midnight (postmarked) Tuesday, Nov. 20.

______________________

THE COMPLACENCY OF FOOLS
—William S. Gainer

They don’t
frighten
the way they
should —
not realizing
that age
has only
made us
look safe...

_____________________

LOOKING FOR TOMORROW
—William S. Gainer

Windshield
dirty,
truck
pushing
through time,
hitchhikers
with signs —
needing to be
someplace else.
This is not a rescue,
it's an escape.
They can find
their own way.
The gas gauge
says
go...
So,
we go...



_____________________

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15.

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/ (in a day or two).

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

Foxes, Canaries, and, of course, Snakes...

KEEPING TIME
—Kate Wells, Placerville

This old heart
has been buried
in sand for how long?
Sand in its gold links
graining away gold.
Grit against crystal.
How long?
Not enough to grind
the inscription
off the back—
To M, From B, 1950.

Wind it.
Do you remember how?
Listen to it beat.
Tend it.

_____________________

Thanks to Kate, a member of Red Fox Underground, for this. Kate Wells and Susan Kelly-DeWitt will be reading at Our House Gallery and Framing in El Dorado Hills tonight (11/16) at 7 PM. From Highway 50, take the Latrobe exit south and then turn left into the shopping center. Our House is on the northern edge of the shopping center.


Other NorCal poetry events this weekend:

•••Tonight in Sacramento (Friday, 11/16), 7:30 PM: Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun presents Luz Maria Gama, [rattlechapper] JoAnn Anglin, and Manuel Pickett, Theater Professor at Sac State and Diane Martinez, who will present a brief dramatic arrangement of selected items from Cantos y Cuentos, Poems & Stories of the Writers of the New Sun/Escritores del Nuevo Sol. La Raza Galeria Posada, 1022 22nd St., Sacramento. Free-will donation as you can afford. Info: Graciela Ramirez, 916-456-5323. Website: www.escritoresdelnuevosol.com/.

See last Tuesday's post for some of JoAnn Anglin's beautiful poems, and check out her page on rattlesnakepress.com, under "Rattlechaps".

•••Saturday (11/17), 7:30 PM: The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, presents Jeff Knorr, reading from his forthcoming book, The Third Body. Info: 916-442-9295. Free! Jeff Knorr is the author of the three books of poetry, Standing up to the Day (Pecan Grove Press), Keeper (Mammoth Books), and The Third Body (forthcoming from Cherry Grove Collections, 2007). His other works include the co-authored Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Poetry and Fiction (Prentice Hall); the anthology, A Writer's Country (Prentice Hall); and the newly released, The River Sings: An Introduction to Poetry (Prentice Hall). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies including Chelsea, Connecticut Review, Red Rock Review, Oxford Magazine, and Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America (University of Iowa, 2002). Jeff has also edited, presented, and been an invited judge for various awards. He was the founding co-editor and poetry editor of the Clackamas Literary Review. He has also been an invited reader and judge at such venues as University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writer's House, The Des Moines Festival of Literary Arts, and for contests such as the Willamette Award in Poetry and the Red Rock Poetry Award. He currently directs the River City Writer's Series at Sacramento City College, where he currently teaches, and also serves on Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission's Poet Laureate committee.

•••Also Saturday (11/17), 6:30 PM: “Words, Music, and Motion”, an evening of storytelling, spoken word, music and dance. Free family event at Cafe Refugio, 1901 Del Paso Blvd., Sacramento.

•••Also Saturday (11/17), 7-9 PM: Underground Poetry Series presents Aushanti Pierce, plus a combined reading of Black Men Expressing Tour & Black Women Expressing Tour, plus open mic. $3.00. Underground Books, 2814 35th St. (35th and Broadway). Hosted by La-Rue, 916-737-3333.

•••Monday (11/19), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Donald Anderson, Nikki Quismondo and others to celebrate the release of Sun Shadow Mountain, their collection of poetry, art and photography at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic will follow. See below for two poems from Marie Ross of Stockton, one of the contributors to the anthology and a frequent contributor to Rattlesnake Review. Thanks, Marie!


Sing for the Canary!

Nevada City poet and publisher Gail Entrekin (watch for B.L. Kennedy’s interview of her in Volume 4 of Rattlesnake Presses on-going interview anthology, Conversations) is the editor of a new online literary magazine, Canary, which is currently accepting submissions of poetry, short fiction and short essays on environmental topics. She says, Let’s spread the word about the deteriorating environment and global warming! Beginning Dec. 1, the Canary can be heard singing online at www.hippocketpress.org/. Please e-mail submissions to gailentrekin@hotmail.com/.

_____________________

AUTUMN'S PORTIONS
—Marie J. Ross, Stockton

Autumn accelerates,
stripping leaves
caught in the slice
of wind.
Cranberry jackets
wallow in the moist sod,
hiding among gnarly
stumps and brittle bush.
Autumn
unseals furrows in readiness
for frost, breathes the
soil limp for curl of foliage.
Indigenous birds flare
their wings, fly under smock
of sky to their nests,
as summer's fruits shrivel
on matted turfs.
Winter aligns,
turns breeze to wayward wind,
sun into driving rain, the
mistress of leaves betraying her
seasonal pastures.

_____________________

CHARTREUSE FLARE
—Marie J. Ross

Chartreuse flares
in sunlight along tilted
branches and limb dresses
that ruffle in the breeze.
A train whistle cuts silence,
weaving in and out,
dark colored crags crust
the bank of the lake like
a rotted trestle,
as flurries of beige splinter
in reflection of ripple.
A young girl, pigtails tied
with ribbon,
watches chartreuse climb light,
extend like yellow glass through
leafy limbs,
as murky water carries wood chips
down the loch's lazy current.
This day is Autumn,
a crisp rendition of change,
of falling leaves on matted grass,
tepid air in circular waiting for winter's
joining.
And
she savors the blast of chartreuse
that illuminates along the tilting branches
as she listens to breeze shifting song to the
wavering silence.

_____________________

—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 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. Issue #16 will be out in mid-December; its deadline of Nov. 15 has passed. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15.

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/ (in a day or two).

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#16). Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

Drunk on Poetry & Friends

NO ESCAPE
—Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci, Princeton, W. VA.

You said you would track me down,
Dive into the dark shadow of me,
Mimic my gestures, salute and denounce,
Beg and give away to beggars.
I will not escape you, you said,
No matter how hard I try to vanish
From your sight, but I try nonetheless
To hammer my life into a fine thinness.
Still you find me, walk the surface of me,
Spitefully dance down my body,
Pursue me in the gray melancholic kingdoms
of far-away night dreams.

______________________

Thanks, Sal! Sal Buttaci is a long-time SnakePal (since the first issue of RR!) who helped the wee VYPER teen journal along by sending poems from his students before he retired this year. Watch for more of Sal's work in the next issue of Rattlesnake Review. TODAY is the deadline for Rattlesnake Review #16, by the way: Send 3-5 poems, plus photos and/or art to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No bio/cover letter necessary, but no simultaneous submissions or previously published work, please.

Last night's reading at The Book Collector was a veritable orgy of good poetry and good vibes, and I'm still drunk on it all. My thanks to frank andrick, Katy Brown, and Taylor Graham for the quality of their work and their reading and their willingness to play along with the Snake; to Richard, Rachel and Ru Hansen for opening The Book Collector to us and stocking our burgeoning collection of Snake books, free and otherwise; and to the warm and willing audience who attends these readings and welcomes the poetry of one (or more) of their own. Truly something to celebrate Thanksgiving for, and if you weren't able to be there last night, there's always next month!

Herein begins the pitch: if you're looking for Christmas gifts, for yourself or others, stop in at The Book Collector and indulge in a wee book or two, or even Katy Brown's new perpetual calendar of photos, poems and poets, A Book of Days, which is a bargain at $5 and makes a great gift for poets and non-poets alike. That's 1008 24th St., Sacramento (between J and K Sts.). TBC is THE place to pick up small press poetry books, not only from the Snake but also from many other fine poets and writers, local and otherwise. (And be sure to pick up some of Richard's tiny Poems-For-All while you're there. Free! And great stocking stuffers.)

And coming in December: Three years ago, Patricia D'Alessandro moved to Desert Hot Springs in Southern California, but on December 12, she'll be back with us to release a SnakeRings SpiralChap of her art and poetry entitled, Metaphoric Intervals From The Insanity Of Life. Pat has a wonderful sense of humor in her writing and is an insightful artist besides, and this rather surreal collection will tickle your funny-bone and feast your eyes as well. Also featured that night will be a littlesnake broadside from Sacramento's poet and musician, Ann Wehrman, entitled Notes From An Ivory Tower. Ann is a regular contributor to Rattlesnake Review and Medusa, and a busy music major at CSUS. More about these wonderful poets later.

______________________

DREAMING BERWIND LAKE
—Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci

Last night I dreamed of Berwind Lake,
Watched the dragonflies skim across
still waters, cardinals flying low,
Swashing red against the gray sky.

At first I thought I’d lost my way;
I did not recognize the bridge
Of wood beneath my feet, swaying
Like a pendulum above the lake.

Strangers at a picnic table
Were laughing at my clumsiness.
Each time I tried to stand, I fell
While the dream sky grew darker.

At last on level ground again,
I knew I would escape somehow
If only I could find my car,
If only morning would come and save me.

____________________

KNICKNACK
—Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci

The Buddha sits in his robe of gold,
bald head and belly round and bold,
cross-legged and smiling, looking quite old.
His two ears are huge for the stories they hold
and prayers still dance from the depths of his soul.

____________________

COLLECTIBLES
—Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci

in his childhood
he saved bottlecaps
matchbooks
baseball cards
coins and stamps

but in adulthood
he threw them all away
in favor of
collecting hearts
kisses
marriage vows

now in his closing days
his hands tremble
his eyes are too weak
to page through
the scrapbook
inventory of
his life's
Collections

____________________

—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:

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. Deadline for Snake 16 (Sweet 16!) is this coming Thursday, November 15—yikes! That's today!

New in November: On November 14, Rattlesnake Press released Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a free littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. These are now available at The Book Collector, from kathykieth@hotmail.com, or on rattlesnakepress.com/ (in a day or two).

Coming December 12: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Metamorphic Intervals From The Insanity Of Time, a SnakeRings SpiralChap from Patricia D'Alessandro; Notes From An Ivory Tower, a littlesnake broadside from Ann Wehrman; and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review. Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, December 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's. Be there!

Number Two Pencils?

Gorgon Fountain
Photo by Jane Blue, Sacramento

DEFINED BY POSITION
—Kate Wells, Placerville

My blue only blue
by white-bright stars—
sunlight held low in the west.
I’m held high in the east,

minor key blue,
flats and sharps undefined
until major key’s charity of light.

Without stars, sun, light—
what am I
in the dark? Am I blue?
Am I blue in the dark?

_____________________

Thanks, Jane, for the photo (Medusa loves pictures of herself, of course), and Kate, for the poem. Watch for more of Jane Blue's wonderful photography and poetry in Rattlesnake Review Sweet 16, coming out in mid-December—speaking of which, the countdown is on NOW for tomorrow's deadline! Send 3-5 poems, plus photos and/or art to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No bio/cover letter necessary, but no simultaneous submissions or previously published work, please.

Today's poetry is from Kate Wells and Susan Kelly-DeWitt, both of whom will be reading this Friday night at Our House Gallery and Framing in El Dorado Hills (7 PM). Our House is just a couple of freeway exits past Folsom on Highway 50; take the Latrobe exit south and then swing into the shopping center on the left; Our House is on the northern edge. Both Susan and Kate have recently released chapbooks from Rattlesnake Press; for more poems and to see their lovely, lovely faces, go to the Rattlechaps page on rattlesnakepress.com/. (Jane Blue's, too!)


Tonight!!!

Rattlesnake Press and Taylor Graham will be releasing her latest chapbook, Among Neighbors, tonight (Weds., 11/14) at 7:30 at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento (between J and K Sts.). Come hear Taylor read, along with frank andrick, who will premier his new littlesnake broadside, Home Is Where You Hang Your Wings, PLUS the added treat of Katy Brown's new perpetual calendar, A Poet's Book of Days, the first in the Rattlesnake HandyStuff Series! All this AND refreshments AND a read-around (bring your own poems or somebody else's!). Be there!

_____________________

HIGH SCHOOL BOYS

pad through the halls
all smiles and sharp eyes
bows strung too tight—
teeth flash
in fluorescent light.

They stalk the quad,
Chemistry book a shield for one,
another reinvents the atlatl
with his yogurt spoon and pencil.

They are muscle and bone. Veins
run with a hundred thousand
years of gazelle hunts, counting coup.
One hundred thousand years of manhood
folded into plastic chairs, bubbling
answer sheets with all too sharp
Number 2 pencils.

—Kate Wells

_____________________

FIRE SEASON
—Kate Wells

When sour-sweet smoke
layers the canyon. Sun red.
Moon red.
I become nine years old—
crawl under blankets of smoke—
locked in the living room.
Humid Texas air
saturated with Parliament 100’s.

I go school with their breath
on me, in me.
Clothes and hair.

When fire season comes.

_____________________

GORGEOUS GEORGE IN HONOLULU
—Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Sacramento

When it stormed we wrestled
gargantuan leaves, winds that pummeled
up from the Pacific, thrashing skies
that pinned things under.

Even the immense tendons
of banyans grunted, knuckled.

On a night like this my father fought
the Pontiac home in a torrent, triumphant
after winning his bet—with two gold-plated
bobby pins, “Georgie pins” in his pocket,
a gift from Gorgeous George himself,
a strand of the famous bleached blond
hair still tangled in each of them.

Red Smith said “Groucho Marx is prettier.”
But, in his pink satin robe with sequined
epaulets, the Star Bulletin called him
“a hunk of peroxided beefcake.”

His antics irked the crowds: A show-off
with curly ringlets. A muscle-man with a prayer
rug and valet. A chunky Apollo who misted perfumed
antiseptic into the ring before a match, “to remove
all germs, sweat and other obnoxious remnants.”

I remember the photo of George
at the beauty parlor, all wired up
into a permanent wave machine:

He looked like a golden tree of life
with electric branches.

______________________

NIGHT IN MANOA VALLEY
—Susan Kelly-DeWitt

This could be our secret topography:
the way the white ginger dared us
to look from grandmother’s porch to see

night in Manoa Valley—Cassiopeia
above the banyan tree, Andromeda
and Cepheus; the milky ribbons

of stars at 21°, and the enormity
of the moon’s tropic flare.
It was night in the Manoa Valley

but we were so young, so unaware
of the fragrant stars freely
blooming along the fence there,

paired indelibly
with night in the Manoa Valley.

_____________________

—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).

Tricky Attachments

Judith Ann Taylor Graham

SERVICING THE WINDMILL
—Taylor Graham, Somerset

Fifty feet up a Lego ladder
you climb to the platform housing our Aermotor.
Up there in an iron tub,
two big gears are screwing in a bath of oil,
while a tail-wind pointer and a ring of silver sails
spin whichever way the weather blows.
In boots and your one breakable brain,
you’re ascending
I can’t count how many
thin peened lacework steps toward heaven
over a hard November hillside.
This is your first time.

Earth is such a tricky
attachment. To the west, buzzard wings
go tilting at hunger while you’re grease-
gunning metal, glugging two yellow quarts
of oil into a matrix of gears that mate
at the winds’ whimsy.

And then at last you let yourself
back down, tread by tread,
hand by slippery hand. Everything
about you is greasy.

While you wash up,
I turn on the evening news, its large-
scale weather and mass-casualty disasters.
Tonight they aren’t our own. Outside
a west wind plays the vane
while lubricated gears mesh and sing,
drawing water. Across the table,
this present comfort: meatloaf,
the two of us at supper.

____________________

Thanks, TG! Taylor Graham and Rattlesnake Press will be releasing her latest chapbook, Among Neighbors, tomorrow night at 7:30 at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento (between J and K Sts.). Come hear Judith Ann (Taylor) read, along with frank andrick, who will premier his new littlesnake broadside, Home Is Where You Hang Your Wings, PLUS the added treat of Katy Brown's new perpetual calendar, A Poet's Book of Days, the first in the Rattlesnake HandyStuff Series! All this PLUS refreshments and a read-around (bring your own poems or somebody else's!). Be there!


Calendar addition for this week:

•••Friday (11/16), 7:30 PM: Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun presents Luz Maria Gama, [rattlechapper] JoAnn Anglin, and Manuel Pickett, Theater Professor at Sac State and Diane Martinez, who will present a brief dramatic arrangement of selected items from Cantos y Cuentos, Poems & Stories of the Writers of the New Sun/Escritores del Nuevo Sol. La Raza Galeria Posada, 1022 22nd St., Sacramento. Free-will donation as you can afford. Info: Graciela Ramirez, 916-456-5323. Website: www.escritoresdelnuevosol.com/. Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun is a literary community, established in 1993 as Writers in Residence at LRGP. Their mission is to honor and advance the literary and artistic cultures and traditions of the Chicano, Latino, Indigenous and Spanish-language peoples. Members write in Spanish or English, or both.

See below for some of JoAnn's beautiful poems, and check out her page on rattlesnakepress.com, under "Rattlechaps".
_____________________

Ellen Bass workshop at Esalen:

Ellen Bass will host a workshop at Esalen Institute in Big Sur from Nov. 30-Dec. 2, entitled Writing About Our Lives. Ellen says: If you have been to Esalen, you know it is one of the most beautiful—and inspirational—places on the planet. If not, perhaps it's time to visit. This workshop will be an opportunity to delve deeply into your writing without distractions or interruptions. If you find that you're not getting enough time for writing in your daily life, if you have pieces you can't seem to get started on, or if you just want to keep on keeping on, this is a spectacularly beautiful and nourishing place to do it. This weekend will help keep the channels open. There will be time for writing and time for sharing and feedback. From beginners to experienced, all writers are welcome. Whether you are interested in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or journal writing, this is an an opportunity to explore your truth and expand your craft.

Esalen fees cover tuition, food and lodging and vary according to accommodations, ranging from $320 to $605. The sleeping bag space is an incredible bargain. Some work-scholarship assistance is available, as well as small prepayment discounts and senior discounts. All arrangements and registration must be made directly with Esalen 831-667-3005 or at www.esalen.org/, but if you have questions about the content of the workshop, feel free to email me ellen@ellenbass.com (www.ellenbass.com), or call me at 831-426-8006.

_____________________

Whee-Haw!!

Sorry to perpetuate the stereotypes about cowboy poetry by whee-hawing; shame on me! I personally like cowboy poetry a LOT, so am thinking about heading up the hill to Elko, Nevada in January for the 24th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering scheduled from Jan. 26-Feb. 2. This is the largest Gathering (they don't call them readings) in the nation, maybe in the world. For the first time, tix can be purchased online at www.westernfolklife.org; prices range from $11 for a yodeling workshop (!) to $151 for a day of ranch tours. But the main thing is the poetry, of course, which goes on day and night and will feature many stars of the genre, plus dances, films, music, theater and a multitude of how-to programs. Check out the website for all the haps.

Easier to take, weather-wise, is the Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival (and Western Art & Gear Show) Dec. 7-9 at the Monterey Conference Center in Monterey. Tix for individual events run from $15-$35, or $190 for an all-event pass. Info: www.montereycowboy.com/.

______________________

Snake deadline this Thursday, November 15!

The countdown is on NOW for this Thursday's deadline for Rattlesnake Review #16. Send 3-5 poems, plus photos and/or art to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No bio/cover letter necessary, but no simultaneous submissions or previously published work, please. (Medusa's Kitchen does take prev-pubs, though; just credit them where credit is due, of course.)

______________________

IN THE WATER
—JoAnn Anglin, Sacramento

My grandson thinks he sees an otter.
And maybe he does.
My quick glance out the side window
as I cross over the bridge
shows something is there. Some specks,
of what size it is hard to say
Ducks? Pieces of wood? Maybe,
yes, an otter.
Something makes it own mild wake
pulling along a silky disturbance.
We move past the river, but now
that otter has moved into me.
An otter must have been needed.
Whenever I look at the river now,
I cannot not see the otter.

____________________

THIEVERY
—JoAnn Anglin

We writers steal the apples from other people’s trees
believe ourselves entitled to riffle through the
mail that others leave out, take the pennies from
tip jars, start bouncing the ball left on the grass.
We happily carry our oversize handbags, slip on
the garments with large pockets, some hidden.
Strolling along, we pluck the flowers from our
neighbors’ gardens, deftly slide in to cadge the
caress meant for someone else. Ask us, we’ll say
One life isn’t enough, we must borrow from others
who may not understand. We appropriate with only
the best intent, tuck away the meanings they will
miss or not appreciate. We must take them
because we see them in ways their owners do not.
We pretend not to hear, if somebody asks us,
How much did you pay for that?

_____________________

PRODUCT PLACEMENT
—JoAnn Anglin

You are the commercial that sneaks
into every scene, unthought of
until you are the pick-up truck
crossing the intersection.
I have turned away and tuned
away, yet you appear: the candy
bar in the break room, the
cigarette smoked by the
rebellious girl fated to die.
In the baby’s apple juice, the coffee
shop, the gay cowboy’s hatband,
the mint on the pillow, the brandy,
the cornflakes, the tissue, the bike,
and the cell phones and pens,
silvery sleek and flying high.
Flying away, always away.

_____________________

Thanks, JoAnn! Watch for more of JoAnn's poetry in Rattlesnake Review 16 (Sweet 16!), due out in mid-December. Did I mention the deadline is in TWO DAYS?

—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:

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. Deadline for Snake 16 (Sweet 16!) is this coming Thursday, November 15—yikes! Only two days away!

Coming November 14: 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 all of these on Wednesday, November 14, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's. Be there!

Big Snake Week!

Window in Cumbria
Photo by Katy Brown

TURNING TIME
—Katy Brown, Davis

The winter sun lingers a few moments more now,
slanting through curtains pulled against the lane:
solstice yearns for equinox in the long shadows.

This turning-time of year calls gardeners to their yards
to spade the earth and add some mulch.
Winter sun lingers a few moments longer.

Secrets, sealed all winter-long under the brittle frost,
lean to whisper in the warming breeze:
solstice beckons to equinox with thin shadows.

Not yet spring, but turning incrementally lighter,
the season shifts with each rising sun —
winter lingers a little more now.

Soon, sunlight will pry the curtains open and
warm the frozen days, as
solstice gives way to equinox with dancing shadows.

Mark the change with winter flowers planted
along the lane. Wash the curtains and dust the sills.
Winter sun lingers a few moments more now as
solstice longs for equinox in the shadows.

_____________________

Thanks, Katy! Rattlesnake Press is proud to announce the inauguration of its Rattlesnake HandyStuff Series, beginning with A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. At just $5 each, these calendars will make perfect Christmas gifts for poets and "civilians" alike! They'll be available at The Book Collector starting this Wednesday, November 14, at our November rattle-read (100 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM). Also premiering that night will be Among Neighbors, a new chapbook from Taylor Graham, and a new littlesnake broadside from frank andrick, Home Is Where You Hang Your Wings. Come hear Taylor, frank and Katy read from their latest works this Wednesday! Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's.

And for more information about Katy Brown, check out her new page on rattlesnakepress.com. Just go to the SnakeRings SpiralChap page and click on her name. Katy's previous Rattlesnake publication was her book of poetry and photography, entitled The Quality of Light; copies of that beautiful book/Christmas present will also be available on Wednesday.

By the way, Katy and the very-first-rattlechapper-EVER, Danyen Powell, will be reading in Davis on Friday, December 7 at The Other Voice, which is held at the Davis Unitarian Church, 27074 Patwin Road, 7:30 PM. More about that later, but save the date.


Snake deadline this Thursday, November 15!

The countdown is on NOW for this Thursday's deadline for Rattlesnake Review #16. Send 3-5 poems, plus photos and/or art to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No bio/cover letter necessary, but no simultaneous submissions or previously published work, please. (Medusa's Kitchen does take prev-pubs, though; just credit them where credit is due, of course.)


This week in NorCal poetry:

•••Monday (11/12), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Lisa Dominguez Abraham and Quinton Duval at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. See last Thursday's post for bios of these wonderful poets. Open mic will follow. Next Monday's reading (11/19) will feature Donald Anderson, Nikki Quismondo and others to celebrate the release of Sun Shadow Mountain, their collection of poetry, art and photography.

•••Thursday (11/15), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center’s fall reading series at the Carmichael Library culminates with a special event featuring readings by Joshua McKinney and Kathleen Lynch. Carmichael Library, Marconi Avenue between Garfield and Fair Oaks Blvd. in Carmichael. Free.

•••Thursday (11/15), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged features Tim Kahl and Richard Beban. Open mic before/after. Hosted by Geoffrey Neill. Luna’s Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Info: 916-441-3931 or www.lunascafe.com. Free.

•••Friday (11/16), 7 PM: Our House poetry reading will feature Susan Kelly-DeWitt and Kate Wells. An open mike follows. Our House Gallery & Framing is located at 4510 Post St. in El Dorado Hills Town Center. There is no charge.

•••Saturday (11/17), 7:30 PM: The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, presents Jeff Knorr. Info: 916-442-9295.

•••Also Saturday (11/17), 6:30 PM: “Words, Music, and Motion”, an evening of storytelling, spoken word, music and dance. Free family event at Cafe Refugio, 1901 Del Paso Blvd., Sacramento.

•••Also Saturday (11/17), 7-9 PM: Underground Poetry Series presents Aushanti Pierce, plus a combined reading of Black Men Expressing Tour & Black Women Expressing Tour, plus open mic. $3.00. Underground Books, 2814 35th St. (35th and Broadway). Hosted by La-Rue, 916-737-3333.


_____________________

FORD'S LANDING
—Matthew Craggs, Sacramento

Looking out over the valley
America stretches her arms with a yawn.
Complacent trailers lay down in ordered rows,
and beyond million dollar homes dot rich land.
A buffer of strawberry crops levees the flow from either side.
Trailers bend their creaking frames to pick
the red, sugared, jewels,
so that the ocean front property may feed.
Faded, cracked lawn chairs and pristine verandas
gaze over never-ending seas.
The varnished redwood decks
and tarnished aluminum siding
both lost in
Our Land of Opportunity.

______________________

ANYTHING
—Matthew Craggs, Sacramento

I’ve got this time in my mind
when she wasn’t next to me
and I wasn’t next to her
and the only thing connecting us was an open line on the phone
which was as faint as the beep…beep…beep of her heart.
And I was just trying to think of anything.
Anything that I could tell her to keep her on that line.

Like how I always appreciated the way she’d joke and jab at my friends and I
but take arms against any who’d do the same.
Or that I still remember our secrets that she kept.
And I was grasping at anything,
pacing the hall — phone held tight and not letting go.

Not letting go the whisper in my voice that reached for
any straws,
anything I could grab
anything I could tell her.
To keep her on the line.

The interruptions from my mother,
asking me if I was done,
stacked like lead weights on my chest.
Telling her over and over and over again
to put the phone back by my Nana’s ear.

So she could stay on the line.

Because I was not done.
I was not done and I sure as hell wasn’t ready.

There were more things to say,
more things to do so I would have more things to say.

No! I am not done!

I know I can think of something else to say if you just
give me the time.

I’ll read you the newspaper
or the back of this cereal box
or the fine print on that “Do Not Remove” tag that’s on every god damn pillow in the universe
until I have something to say to you.

Because if I stop talking…
Then I’ll have to tell you in these lines.

______________________

Thanks, Matthew! Matthew Craggs is one of the many fine poets who will be represented in Rattlesnake Review #16. Did I mention that the deadline is THIS THURSDAY???

—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:

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. Deadline for Snake 16 (Sweet 16!) is this coming Thursday, November 15—yikes! Only half a week away!

Coming November 14: 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 all of these on Wednesday, November 14, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's. Be there!

Like Kites

SILENCE ISN'T ONLY

the absence of sound.
There are sounds that create silence
and we stand still inside it
stunned by beauty.

—Stephani Schaeffer, Los Molinos

______________________

YOU OPEN A BOOK

to see what there is
that points silently to itself
and to the same place inside you.

This book for example, the book of earth:
You lift out page after page
and set them on wind, on water.

Like paper boats, like kites,
they find the current
and in its wake, in silence, the word.

—Stephani Schaeffer, Los Molinos

____________________

—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).

Why Edson Gave Up Microbiology

Creepy, yes?
Katy Brown found this photo and sent it to us.
More about Katy on Monday!

A ZOOGRAPHY
—Russell Edson

A man had a herd of miniature elephants. They were like wads of gray bubble gum; their trumpeting like the whistling of teakettles...

Also, he had a box of miniature cattle. When they lowed at sunset it was like the mewing of kittens...
He liked to stampede them on his bed...

In his closet a gigantic moth the size of a dwarf...

_____________________

THE WOUNDED BREAKFAST
—Russell Edson

A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon, squealing and grinding forward on small wheels, even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost the size of the night...
He looks up and sees a huge shoe ponderously mounting out of the earth.
Up in the unlaced ankle-part an old woman stands at a helm behind the great tongue curled forward; the thick laces dragging like ships' rope on the ground as the huge thing squeals and grinds forward; children everywhere, they look from the shoelace holes, they crowd about the old woman, even as she pilots this huge shoe over the earth...

Soon the huge shoe is descending the opposite horizon, a monstrous snail squealing and grinding into the earth...

The man turns to his breakfast again, but sees it's been wounded, the yolk of one of his eggs is bleeding...

_____________________

MY HEAD
—Russell Edson

This is the street where my head lives, smoking cigarettes. I pass here and see it lying half asleep on a windowsill on my way to school where I study microbiology, which I finally give up because it all seems too small to have very much meaning in a world which I attempt to live in.
Then I begin my studies in advanced physics, which entails trying to understand atoms and subatomic particles. I give this up too when I finally realize that I have entered a world even smaller than microbiology.
I think then that I should become an astronomer and open myself to the largest view, but see only dots, which the professor says any one of which might have taken millions, or perhaps billions, of years to reach only recently evolved optic nerves; and that in fact any star whose light we accept might be long perished, leaving only a long wistful string of light. And I wonder what this has to do with me or the world I attempt to live in. So I give up astronomy.

I come here now, into this street, looking up at my head lying half asleep on a windowsill, smoking cigarettes, blinking, and otherwise totally relaxed in the way men become when they have lost all hope...

______________________

THE WHEELBARROW
—Russell Edson

Cows they had, many, drifting like heavy clouds in the meadow.
But it was a wheelbarrow they didn't have. They studied catalogs and prayed.
At last despairing the future they tied wheels to the front legs of a cow; two stout men lift the hind legs and wheel the cow about the farm.
The other cows, having never seen a wheelbarrow, turn and look. Then, turning again, they drift out like clouds into the meadow...

_______________________

OF THIS WORLD
—Russell Edson

The old man definitely has wings. You see them when the light is right. They are attached to his faded covercoat, which once blue is turning brown.
The wings are so delicate, so transparent, they don't seem the kind of wings an old man would have. One would expect thick, woody feathers.
Yet, still he wants his hot soup, and wants to sit near the fire and rub the hands, grown thick and stiff, of this life together, to feel the blood of this life in them.
When he takes off his overcoat to sit by the fire I look to see if the wings are still attached to it. And of course they're not. Now the wings are attached to the old sweater he wears. When the fire blazes up the wings are suddenly there. They droop from his sweater and hang down from his chair, the ends lightly crumpled on the floor.
He rubs his hands together gazing into the fire. How he enjoys the fire of this world...

____________________

—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:

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. Deadline for Snake 16 (Sweet 16!) is next Thursday, November 15—yikes! Less than a week away!

Coming November 14: 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 all of these on Wednesday, November 14, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento.

Startling the Heart

Carlena Wike

DECIDUA
—Carlena Wike, Elk Grove

The slant of my pen invites shadow.
Like a sundial, it obeys the thin October light.
Something that reveres schedule stirs, tarnishes flowers.

Daytime ghosts come early, dressed in dander.
They ripple the dusty gauze of late afternoon,
waft through windows, white sleeves waving.

I wander through Autumn this year
as through a museum of summers gone to art—
pasted on the wind in temporary display.

I scratch passages—my words seem dry, bittersweet.
I lift my nib and break away—follow the wind toward winter.

____________________

Thanks, Carlena! Carlena Wike (rhymes with "mike") has lived in the Sacramento area for five years. She has been writing poetry since childhood, sharing it sporadically as the rigors of raising a family have allowed. She won First Prize for her poem, "The Executive", at Valley College in Los Angeles, and has been a featured reader at venues in Los Angeles, Laguna Beach and more recently, The Other Voice in Davis. Her complete "Autobiography" follows:

It's all there, every detail
Like a book I am finishing
One I would read again
And quote, except the pages stick,
The ink runs, and I can repeat
Only what catches
In the sieve of memory.


Watch for a littlesnake broadside from Carlena, coming in February.

_____________________


This weekend in NorCal poetry:

•••Saturday (11/10), 4 PM: The Central California Art Association and the Mistlin Art Gallery poetry reading, reception, and book signing by Lee Herrick, author of This Many Miles From Desire (WorldTech Editions). The reading will take place in the gallery, 1015 J St., downtown Modesto. Lee grew up in Modesto (he's the son of CCAA artist, Georgia Herrick), and is currently living, writing, and teaching in Fresno. Co-host Gordon Preston writes: Please RSVP; we will need a head-count for all the logistics of a poetry reading at an art gallery. 530-523-8916 or gordonbp@sbcglobal.net/.

•••Saturday (11/10): Creative writing students of Wendy Patrice Williams at The College of Alameda will be featured at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts Second Saturdays Poetry and Prose Reading in Alameda. Open mic to follow. 1601 Paru, corner of Lincoln. Jeanne Lupton hosts. Info (including time?): jeany98@aol.com/. [This Bay Area announcement caught my eye because Wendy Williams lives up our way and belongs to the notorious Red Fox Underground, plus she has done a littlesnake broadside for Rattlesnake Press. Come to the Rattle-read this coming Wednesday to hear Fellow Undergrounder Taylor Graham; I suspect there will be more than one Red Fox attending...]

•••Sunday (11/11), 2:30-4:30 PM: Poets on the Ridge poetry reading (open mic) at Juice and Java, 7067 Skyway, Paradise. Info: 530-872-9633.

•••Monday (11/12), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Lisa Dominguez Abraham and Quinton Duval, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. See yesterday's post for bios of these wonderful poets. Open mic will follow.

_____________________

ANNA, IN HER APRON
—Carlena Wike

Threat of rain, though no rain yet.

Waving one bent finger in the wind
she reads the mood and speed of clouds
then swings the laundry-laden basket—
heavier now than it used to be—
to her waiting hip, ignores its warning—
More than rain is in the forecast.

Threat of pain, though no pain yet.

She weaves her way outside
between two black, insistent cats
and pins her winter wear on summer’s line.
Some new delight is found in risking tasks
she’s always done—much faster young—
in spite of recent forecasts.

____________________

INDIAN SUMMER
—Carlena Wike

Wind etches the air
tugs at my attention.
At wind’s suggestion
I note the season
try to ignore
the brown fingers of Fall
tabulating time.

The sky
releases summer.
Autumn poses briefly
pretending to be
that younger sister
then, flailing her arms,
throws pretense aside—
Leaves.

I am of the autumn this year—
I know when summer ended,
am aware of winter’s certainty.
I watch my ripeness soften,
finger my changing hair,
let go the harvest of my longing,
children broken from my limbs.

Barren, winter waits
crouched in closets
knitting my brow.
I see her in the corners of my eyes,
catch glimpses of her
mimicking me in mirrors
staring out of yellowed portraits.

I watch myself become my mother.
Grandmother smiles from the mantel
a reminder—
I will become white, cold,
forget to feed the animals.

____________________

LAUDS
—Carlena Wike

I lift the slim book
hoping within it to find grace
as though the poet
could transmit prayer by pen
as though her common life
delicately inscribed
might elevate mine.

In the rising shadows of
a morning not yet lifted by sun
I strain, seeking not light,
but illumination.

My eyes tip the page up
like an early cup
lids eager as lips
for the first long pull.
I taste the pungent urgency
pressed between pages.
It startles the heart.

____________________

And Anne Sexton would've been 79 years old today.

MUSIC SWIMS BACK TO ME
—Anne Sexton

Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.

Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I liked it and danced in a circle.
Music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better;
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November;
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.

They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way,
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la,
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
and was not afraid.
Mister?

(from All My Pretty Ones, 1962)

_____________________

—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:

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. Deadline for Snake 16 (Sweet 16!) is next Thursday, November 15—yikes! That's less than a week away!

Coming November 14: 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 all of these on Wednesday, November 14, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento.

The Rain Will Fall, And Will Not Fall

me • DU • sa: the tentacled, usually bell-shaped,
free-swimming sexual stage (!)
in the life cycle of a coelenterate,
such as a jellyfish

MEDUSA EATS SPAGHETTI
—Stephani Schaeffer, Los Molinos

If she leans over her plate too far
she might spiral up the wrong mouthful.

Then watch out
for invective! expletive!

Sometimes
she just has to spit things out.

______________________

Thanks, Steph! Check up the up-and-coming Rattlesnake Review #16 for a review of Stephani Schaeffer's new chapbook from PWJ Publishing, Punk Medusa, in which she gives us some snapshots of a Day in the Life of Medusa. Snake 16 will appear in mid-December, but the countdown is ON NOW for the deadline, which is next Wednesday (11/15). Send 3-5 poems, plus photos and/or art to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No bio/cover letter necessary, but no simultaneous submissions or previously published work, please. (Medusa's Kitchen does take prev-pubs, though; just credit them where credit is due, please.)


Calendar additions for this weekend:

•••Creative writing students of Wendy Patrice Williams at The College of Alameda will feature this Saturday, November 10, at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts Second Saturdays Poetry and Prose Reading. Open mic to follow. 1601 Paru, corner of Lincoln in Alameda. Jeanne Lupton hosts. Info: jeany98@aol.com/. [This Bay Area announcement caught my eye because Wendy Williams lives up our way and belongs to the notorious Red Fox Underground, plus she has done a littlesnake broadside for Rattlesnake Press. Come to the Rattle-read this coming Wednesday to hear Fellow Undergrounder Taylor Graham; I suspect there will be more than one Red Fox attending...]

•••Monday (11/12), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Lisa Dominguez Abraham and Quinton Duval, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Lisa Dominguez Abraham teaches at Cosumnes River College and is the author of a new chapbook Low Notes (West End Press, 2007) and currently working on a collection of Rwandan Folk Tales with Mathilde Mukantabana. Quinton Duval is the author of Joe’s Rain [Cedar House, 2005] and Dinner Music [Lost Roads, 1984] and Guerrilla Letters [Quarterly West Press, 1978]. He currently teaches at Solano Community College so that he can pay the mortgage on his “two and a half bath chapel disguised / as a tract home” where he occasionally refers to himself as “fat, bejeweled maggot.” [Excuse me? Quinton's self-esteem issues aside, watch for a rattlechap from him, coming from Rattlesnake Press next May.]

______________________

More about Medusa's anger issues:

MEDUSA IN THE KITCHEN
—Stephani Schaeffer

sailing
every dish from the cupboard

______________________

MEDUSA ON THE THRONE
—Stephani Schaeffer

Sometimes her gut
gets packed with much
when her head's full of bile
and her heart's fed up.
She sits for hours
on her porcelain throne
solving crosswords
one by one.

Her bowels are twisted
cramps double her up.
Colitis, my friends
is a trouble that sucks.
It comes about
when you swallow rage
and can last too long
sometimes for days.

So vent your anger
and vent it all.
Write in your journal
and on the walls.
Don't show it to others
until the time when
it all comes out
all right in the end.

__________________

Finally, Louise Bogan's take on Medusa:

MEDUSA
—Louise Bogan

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved,—a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.

When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.

This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.

The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.

And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.

______________________

—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:

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—yikes! That's less than a week away!

Coming November 14: 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 all of these on Wednesday, November 14, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento.

Sweet 16!

A.D. Winans

SLEEPLESS IN SAN FRANCISCO
—A.D. Winans

I get up have a cup of coffee
Drive to Ocean Beach
It is early morning
No one is in sight except
A lonely seagull searching the
Water for breakfast

I sit down on the sand
Thinking of the past present
And future
Slices of my life plucked
From the soul
Playing my heart strings
Like a violin bow

I stare out at the ocean
Watching the seagulls
Spread their wings in flight
And for one brief moment the
Wind flickers off my eyelids
Like a butterfly's wings spread
Out across a flower

I slip in an image unconsciously
Like a thread through the
Eye of a needle
Listen to phantom voices
From the past
Hammered out like steel
Forged inside my head
My mind a volcano waiting
To explode
As part of my exiled youth
returns in bits and pieces
As I retreat back into myself
Shedding the years like a lone sailor
Charting his way back to the womb

___________________

Thanks, A.D.! A.D. Winans is a native San Francisco poet, writer and photographer. He is the former Editor and Publisher of Second Coming and the author of 45 books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. His work has appeared world-wide and has been translated into nine languages. In January 2006, Presa Press published a book of his Selected Poems (The Other Side Of Broaway). A song poem of his was set to music and performed at Tully Hall in New York City. He is the winner of a 2006 PEN Josephine Miles award for literary excellence. Check out his web site at www.adwinans.mysite.com/.

In addition to today's post, watch for more of Winans' poetry in Rattlesnake Review #16 (Sweet 16!), due out in mid-December. Get your poems, art and photography in NOW—the deadline is 11/15, a week from today! This issue will feature a spotlight on the Hardpan editors from Modesto, an article on Healing Poetry by Patricia Wellingham-Jones, "teaser" interviews of Joyce Odam, Jose Montoya and Terryl Wheat, plus plenty more, including our regular columnists and our new one: Shawn Pittard, whose column will concentrate on the dissemination of your poetry. (That's DISsemination, not INsemination...) Not to mention pages and pages and pages of poetry—and all of this for free!

___________________

This just in:

Tonight (Weds., 11/7) at Bistro 33's Poetry Night, we will be celebrating the work of student-driven literary journals and collectives at UC Davis. Beginning at 9 PM, Andy Jones and Brad Henderson will be introducing editors and contributors to Produce, the Journal of Undergraduate Creative Writing at UC Davis; Nameless Magazine, a new online magazine that showcases the works of writers and visual artists within the undergraduate population at UC Davis, and Sickspits, the UC Davis Spoken Word Collective that electrifies crowds with its readings and performances on the first Tuesday of the month in Griffin Lounge (beginning at 7:30 PM).

Bistro 33 (226 F St. in Davis) has kindly set aside the banquet room for this showcase of local poets. Members of each organization will also have an opportunity to introduce themselves and to invite you to participate in upcoming publications and events. At the beginning of the evening, your hosts will be awarding books of poetry and complimentary appetizers to three randomly-chosen attendees, so try to arrive by 9.

_____________________

POEM FOR GRANDMOTHER
—A.D. Winans

A swirling mist blows through
My ears
Filling me with strange notions
And I remember my childhood
And how the devil demons invaded
My head
Chasing mad dinosaurs through
Dark alleys
Pausing to drink from
My thirsty lips
All knowledge passed
On down to me
By well-meaning parents
Who insisted that dinosaurs
Didn't exist
Grandmother was eaten alive
By one
She knew what
I meant

____________________

I REMEMBER STILL
—A.D. Winans

I remember still how wonderful it was
running to join each other's dreams
sharing our separate worlds of hope
in rooms of music where angels lay
I remember your doll house dreams
your lips colored with flowers
my hands tracing the valleys of heaven
and finding them within your silent curves
it was a work of abstract art
a garden of unsurpassed beauty
I became God himself
and having you
I did not need a son

____________________

—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:

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 9572V6. Next deadline is November 15—yikes! That's just a week away!

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 all of these on Wednesday, November 14, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento.

Of Beauty and Vagabond Poets

Jack Micheline

BEAUTY IS EVERYWHERE
—Jack Micheline

Beauty is everywhere
Baudelaire
Even the worm is beautiful
The thread of a beggar's dress
The red eye of a drunkard
On a rainy night
Chasing the red haired girl
Baudelaire
Across the sky
Your raggy pants
Laughing at the rain
Beauty is everywhere
Baudelaire

Today Jack Micheline would've been 78 years old. A.D. Winans sends us this:

POEM FOR JACK MICHELINE
—A.D. Winans, San Francisco

He was the high note of a wailing saxophone
The spark that ignites a fire
He was a fifth of Jack Daniel's
A glass of imported beer
A shaman
A vagabond poet shuffling words
Like a river-boat gambler

Ravished by illness
Ravished by time
He painted his visions on canvass
In parks in bars and coffee houses
His poems singing out across the
Streets of America
Pure innocence
Pure genius
Spinning words that hung in the air
Like a hummingbird drunk on the
Pollen of life

______________________

Thanks, A.D.! Watch for more from A.D. Winans tomorrow.

Speaking of Baudelaire (and San Francisco), frank andrick (who, coincidentally has a littlesnake broadside coming out this month!) will be hosting The Pomo Literati radio program this Sunday from 2-4 PM on KUSF (90.3 FM in SF and/or www.kusf.edu), featuring William S. Gainer, Chris Olander, Josh Fernandez and Neeli Cherkovski, plus pre-recorded rare stuff from Philip Lamantia, Frank O'Hara, and Patti Smith.

Then, on Wednesday, November 14 at The Book Collector, come hear frank read from his brand-new, free broadside from Rattlesnake Press, Home Is Where You Hang Your Wings. Be there!

_____________________

David Humphreys sent us this poem in response to Jeanine Stevens' poems about Donner yesterday:

DONNER LAKE
—David Humphreys, Stockton

We had a cabin on the south side,
spent summers swimming in cold
melt-off water fishing from our
dock catching stocked rainbows
with salmon eggs. The Mogenson
kids joined us that summer ’63, Mika
so blond in her home-made bikini,
’62 winter we’d all gone skiing to
Badger Pass staying in little cabins.
It was the first time I ever swore a
“God Damn It”, or something equivalent.
Scared the hell out of me. I’ll never forget
the light through the curtains. Donner
was an idyllic place though I shot a hole
through an east side window not knowing
the gun was loaded. No one had died
as one of the Woodside boys had from an
accidental discharge of a .22. That was
almost as sad as was the death of Jerry
Rumelfanger at 14 killed by some vicious
heart virus. Don’t tell me how I should
tell this story. No one else could ever come
close to telling it right. The Corrums had
a big A-frame cabin two lots to the west.
They owned a liquor store in Sacramento.
They were rich as hen shit. Their son, Butch
Corum was an only spoiled child who raped
a girl later on and ruined his life. They had
a nice wood sided ski boat with a deep throated
V-8 engine. Walt Vorhees was a friend of my
parents who saved my life by carrying me out
through the snow on snowshoes one December
day a year before I came down with Rheumatic Fever.
He was a gun-nut iconoclast who lived up on
La-Honda and was later convicted of an early
seventies drug violation. I only heard there were
airplanes and made my own conclusions, this
a bit different from that era, Mike Milepsy corralled
by the Royal Canadian Police on snowmobiles in
Canada. Mike used to love doing the John Wesley
Hardin move with a Colt cap and ball six-gun.
My brothers and I went hunting for squirrels at the
Lake one day and ran into a black bear. Danny, my
youngest brother, let out a scream that lifted the top
off the world and scared us out of our skins as the
bear thundered off to die of fright somewhere very
soon... We took pennies, dimes and nickels up to
the railroad tracks on the pass to flatten them out
when the trains ran by. Mika who was so movie
star beautiful she never got over the attention we
paid her so she got into the 60’s drug scene and
gained a lot of weight to get away from it. The
cabin burned down later after we sold it when my
dad got a whiff of what was coming and pulled a
fast one on my mom and had her sign away the deed
before the divorce. None of us ever really dealt
very well with the cannibalism of the Donner Party
up at the east end of the lake where they have a State
Park now, to commemorate the winter of 1846-47.
Now, it all just feels like there was a curse on the place.

______________________

—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:

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 9572V6. Next deadline is November 15—yikes! That's less than ten days away!

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, 1008 24th St., Sacramento.

On Donner (On Blitzen?)

The California Zephyr Crosses Donner Summit

WEEDS ON DONNER SUMMIT
—Jeanine Stevens, Sacramento

Each winter, snowplows
spray salt showers
on tiny stars, pointed
as glacial chips,
small tan colored nosegays
hugging asphalt, poking
cracks in the interstate.

Some would call them weeds.
We picked armfuls.

A mix of black walnut
and nutmeg, they stood
in a pottery vase for years,
until only the scent
of dust remained. Just now,

I saw them from the
California Zephyr—tight tufts
sticking sideways in creosote
soaked ties, surviving...
wind, exhaust
and early autumn heat
—there then,
here now, outlasting us.

____________________

Thanks, Jeanine! Check out Jeanine Stevens and most of the other rattlechappers on rattlesnakepress.com/. We're finally finishing up the project of getting all our book-producing poets onto our website. Go to the Rattlechaps or Spiralchaps pages, click on their names, and watch their smiling faces appear! More goodies will appear on the SnakeSite in the next few weeks, too, so keep watching.


TIME ZONE MOTEL—RENO
—Jeanine Stevens

Heavy snow closes the summit; we need another night,
something cheap, old is OK. (You can tell

the age by the date on the toilet tank.) We check out lodgings
on the old road, Mr. Winkie's, a neon guy in a tux,

open 24 hours, but "no vacancy." We end up near I-80,
chenille bedspread, loops missing, round holes

like some Morris Code message. A "Flash Gordon" style
rocket ship beams purple and orange sparks

between cracks in the ripped shade. The clerk is done,
leaves sheets, still wet, from the dryer.

Now dark, someone named Lefty appears, pounds
on the door, asks for Rick, needs Rick.

Afraid we might be robbed or knifed in the plaster stairwell,
we skip dinner. There is no phone. We don't sleep.

I compulsively trace our route home on the sporadic holes
in the bedspread. At 6 a.m.,

the rocket lands, lights go out, we take a deep breath
as we zip past the Donner Memorial at 7,000 feet.

______________________


This week in NorCal poetry:

•••Tonight (Monday, 11/5), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Do Gentry and James DenBoer at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic and light consumables.

•••Tuesday (11/6): Poetry Flash will celebrate W.S. Merwin's 80th birthday and Robert Hass's new book of poetry, Time and Materials, 1997-2005, at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Rd., Santa Rosa. Tickets start at $10 (707-546-3600, noon to 6 PM, Tues-Sat, or wellsfargocenterarts.org). Info: www.poetryflash.org.

•••Thursday (11/8), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Featured readers, open mic before and after. Info: 916-441-3931.

•••Saturday (11/10), 4 PM: The Central California Art Association and the Mistlin Art Gallery poetry reading, reception, and book signing by Lee Herrick, author of This Many Miles From Desire (WorldTech Editions). The reading will take place in the gallery, 1015 J St., downtown Modesto. Lee grew up in Modesto (he's the son of CCAA artist, Georgia Herrick), and is currently living, writing, and teaching in Fresno. Co-host Gordon Preston writes: Please RSVP; we will need a head-count for all the logistics of a poetry reading at an art gallery. 530-523-8916 or gordonbp@sbcglobal.net/.

•••Sunday (11/11), 2:30-4:30 PM: Poets on the Ridge poetry reading (open mic) at Juice and Java, 7067 Skyway, Paradise. Info: 530-872-9633.

_____________________

ICE SCULPTURE
—Jeanine Stevens

A cocoon encased
in royal frosting, glazed
over at subzero
rendering brick a raspberry pink.
Beneath stained, ornate windows,
half hidden shades are drawn
and slump like weary eyelashes.
Firefighters try to rescue
this old Masonic Lodge,
but each blast from the fire hose
glazes history in ice.
Square nails pop,
great timbers ache and groan,
and the structure reforms
into something unsafe
for business dealings and parties.
The demolition crew will arrive,
destroy the plaster mold.
No longer will we hear tinkling
sleigh bells, or hoarse
street vendors hawking pork pies.

_______________________

—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:

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 9572V6. 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.

And Yet The Books

Imperial Printing Press
Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

THIS ONLY
—Czeslaw Milosz

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here.
Or perhaps memory. Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

_____________________

AND YET THE BOOKS
—Czeslaw Milosz

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
"We are," they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

_____________________

Did you remember to set your clocks back?

—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).

Too Brief To Have A Name

THE EXACT SHADE OF RED
—Taylor Graham, Somerset

Is it the gold-scarlet of liquid amber,
mid-October when neighbors
are raking the leaves already fallen,
smoke drifting in cold sky?

No, that’s not quite right. It’s more
the pink-orange-salmon of sunset
just glimpsed through pines;
or a scarlet-saffron I can’t find

in the color charts; seashell-
crimson of cohos surging upstream,
wild to spawn in silver-
carmine water. Or perhaps carnelian —

no, that’s too hardrock-unchanging.
Rather, the color young girls try on,
and blush, that shade too brief
to have a name.

_____________________

TERMS FOR THE MANY
—Taylor Graham

A pod of whales, a pride of lions,
a colony of frogs, a memory
of elephants — are they just
a memory now, those hundreds of
thousands passing before our human

eyes — our explosion of explorers,
hordes of trophy hunters, surplus of
suburbanites, not to mention metastases
of manufacturers with their passel
of pollutants?

How many frogs have you heard
this spring, thrumming the edges
of a pond? What shall we call the last
of an exaltation of larks,
when there’s only one of them left?

_____________________

INTERROGATION AT MIDNIGHT
—Taylor Graham

Her eyes unblink
slow as a single light
left burning.
She escorts me to a chair.
Where were you gone
so long? she doesn’t have
to ask out loud. And why?
She doesn’t need to say
a word. The room
is cold as a dead furnace,
the only sound a half-
rumble, a purr waiting
to be satisfied. She curls
around my ankle
then gathers
for the spring
eye-level staring
at me electric-
yellow. What
should I confess?
I reach to stroke black
fur, she responds
in static
against my wrist
a thousand tiny shocks.
She settles in my lap
with claws. You won’t ever
leave me again?

_____________________

Thanks, TG! Be sure to watch for Taylor Graham's new chapbook, Among Neighbors, coming to The Book Collector on November 14!

—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).

One Last Smooch

Freeway Wall
Photo by Jane Blue

DRIFT FENCE
—Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Tehama

Built to keep cattle
from bunching in corners
this fence undulates
across the fields
Curves like a snake of barbed wire
scaled in tumbleweed tufts

______________________

Thanks, Jane Blue, for the photos (see also below), and Patricia Wellingham-Jones for the poems (see also below). Both Jane and PWJ are well-represented on Medusa and in Rattlesnake Review. And watch for Patricia's upcoming article in Snake 16 on "Healing Writing". By the way, the deadline for Snake 16 is coming up in a couple of weeks (Nov. 15). Have you sent your poems in yet?


This weekend in NorCal poetry:

•••Tonight (Friday, 11/2), 7:30 PM: The Other Voice, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, presents Sacramento poet Susan Kelly-DeWitt. The reading is in the library of the church located at 27074 Patwin Road in Davis. Refreshments and open mic will follow, so bring along a poem or two to share.

•••Saturday (11/3), 11 AM: Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol's monthly writing workshop/potluck at La Raza Galeria Posada, 1024 22nd St., Sac. Info: Graciela Ramirez (916-456-5323) or JoAnn Angliin (joannpen@comcast.net). Also: www.escritoresdelnuevosol.com/.

•••Monday (11/5), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Do Gentry and James DenBoer at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic and light consumables.

_____________________

RIVER IN FLOOD
—Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Tehama

A river in flood
cuts away banks,
claws trees from their moorings,
scalpels another few inches
through earth's crust.

Water-rage howls
down the canyon,
sweeps away
cows and henhouses,
cars and children, tangles them
with snakes in low branches.

____________________

FALL START
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

November: American River College
pavement? Glare, glare, glare.
Friday p.m., a few last flip-
flops, Waikiki shirt petals; it’s
what’s for summer. Only
the oak leaves heard wrong: old lobes,
blown in past stuck-open doors
across Davies Hall floors. Beyond
all that rustle, what nervous waters must yet
rush through what slim random give
in the dam? But; oh well; the lazy tub, the lit
candles. So: what have we done to deserve
this one last lips-fluting-out smooch
of sun gob, glow soak?

____________________

Photo by Jane Blue

—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:

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.

The Dancing of Gametes

John Keats

THIS LIVING HAND
—John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

______________________

Yesterday, John Keats would've been 212 years old, and today Stephen Crane would've been 136.

SHOULD THE WIDE WORLD ROLL AWAY
—Stephen Crane

Should the wide world roll away
Leaving black terror
Limitless night,
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential
If thou and thy white arms were there
And the fall to doom a long way.

______________________

Let's go to DC and march in March!

For four days in March, poets will be descending on our nation’s capital, helping make it a true republic of poetry. Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness will hit the streets of Washington on the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, March 20-23, 2008. They’ll be giving readings, learning from one another in workshops, panels, and meet-ups, celebrating the rich history of socially engaged poetry in DC and the nation. Poets from all over the country will be converging, demanding an end to this immoral war and a dramatic reordering of our priorities here at home—to save our planet, restore our civil liberties, meet our pressing human needs. Some of the most celebrated and important poets of our time will be reading and participating. DC poets Chris August, Kenneth Carroll, Grace Cavalieri, Joel Dias-Porter (aka DJ Renegade), Brian Gilmore, Semezdin Mehmedinoviç, E. Ethelbert Miller, Princess of Controversy, Susan Tichy, and Belle Waring will be joined on stage by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, Sam Hamill, Joy Harjo, Galway Kinnell, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Alix Olson, Alicia Ostriker, Ishle Yi Park, Sonia Sanchez, Patricia Smith, and Pamela Uschuk. Read more at www.SplitThisRock.org http://www.splitthisrock.org/

_____________________

Meanwhile, welcome to November!

NOVEMBER
—David Anderson, Lincoln

Late Autumn. Mid November. Still, warm air.
Dropping beyond the Coast Range, the sun pulls down
the colors of the sky and leaves a bare
deep blue clarity. The trees around

us sussurate. Their leaves barely cling.
Before the stars appear, at the pause of twilight,
hidden in the shrubs, linnets do not sing
but chitter to each other against the coming night.

Before the storms sweep across the valley floor,
before the frost takes life in its iron fists
and squeezes, before the coming winter's war
on the innocent breath of its antagonists,

let us cherish this cool warmth of day
for we know that nothing here will stay.

(Republished from Time of Singing, November 2007)

_____________________

Thanks, David!

One more Secret of Life poem, this one from rattlechapper Allegra Silberstein, who will be hosting The Other Voice in Davis tomorrow night (which will feature another rattlechapper, Susan Kelly-DeWitt):

WITH TOUCH

we begin. Two gametes yoked.
We will swim in the womb,
fins and tail becoming arms and legs.
We will know the hard press of birth

the soft of our mother’s breast.
Hands will help us to walk,
comfort us when we stumble.
Life will have lessons for us.

Grades undeserved, friends touching
our lives, a lover’s arms and holding:
a poem, a painting, a daffodil,
waterfall, river, autumn color

blue sky kissing our eyes
the wind pulling us, pushing.
Calypso rhythms pulsing in our ears,
lightning in the night sky piercing,

scent of lavender and ripe tomatoes
your body curving into mine.
Bare feet feeling the soft of earth,
dancing toward the meaning of life:

to be touched
to touch
without trespass.

—Allegra Silberstein, Davis

____________________

—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:

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.