Moira Magneson
HARD CANDY
—Moira Magneson, Placerville
During the rages
dictionaries flew across the living room,
ashtrays pelted like hail,
books were flung like lightning bolts. Once
the black coffin of your Underwood
crashed, cleaving a hole
in the floor. Always
some confession boiled up
from the center of your earth:
Your beautiful mother, long dead,
was the whore of Martinez, slept
with any soldier who winked
as she swept the drugstore floor.
Your father, worthless,
drank his way down the dirt road of your childhood.
Even worse you were a hack,
you couldn’t write.
Boozed and hiccupping,
you’d collapse,
clasp your hands in grief.
Sobs wailed from the hollows of your bones—
I can’t do it anymore. I don’t have it.
Help me.
I couldn’t.
I had learned about safety
during chalkboard lessons
in the dusty portables of Montclair School.
Wait for the white-gloved crossing guard
to escort you across the boulevard.
In case of nuclear attack—
duck and cover.
And if a man approached,
offered you candy,
a ride home,
asked for help
or directions,
you were to run like the wind,
away from him.
He was a stranger.
__________________
Thanks, Moira! Next Weds., Oct. 8, Rattlesnake Press is proud to release a new rattlechap from Moira Magneson (He Drank Because) and a littlesnake broadside from Hatch Graham (Circling of the Pack). That's at the Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else’s.
Born and bred in northern California, Moira Magneson has worked as a truck driver, television writer, substitute teacher, artist’s model, and river guide. She now teaches English composition at Sacramento City College and lives in Placerville, where she is a member of Red Fox Underground, a Sierra foothills poetry collective. Her work has appeared in Margie, Verse Daily, Runes, Rattlesnake Review, Hanging Loose, and elsewhere. He Drank Because is her first published collection of poems.
__________________
This weekend in NorCal poetry:
•••Sun. (10/5), 6 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents a special event: A Memorial Reading For Mahmoud Darwish. Mahmoud Darwish was one of the pre-eminent Arab poets and was recognized and revered by cab drivers and college professors from Cairo to Damascus. Readings anywhere in the Arab world would find thousands in attendance. Upon Darwish’s death last month, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestine, declared three days of mourning, and Darwish was granted a state funeral in the West Bank, the first since Yasir Arafat’s in 2004—and more attended Darwish’s funeral. Much of Darwish’s work has the theme of Palestinian exile at its heart. Early in his life, he and his family were forced to flee to Lebanon to escape the Israeli Army as it occupied Palestine. Upon returning to his homeland, he was given the status of “present-absent alien,” which plagued his sense of identity and his relationship to his homeland. He was the winner of countless international awards, and his work has been translated into more than twenty languages, more than any other contemporary Arab poet.
Please help us commemorate the life and work of Mahmoud Darwish by bringing a piece or two of his (or any other suitably appropriate work) to read for the reading, which is being organized in coordination with Ulrich Schreiber of Berlin and Sam Hamill (Director of Poets-Against-War) as part of an international effort to pay tribute to the spirit of Darwish on October 5, 2008. Some food and refreshments will be served and you are welcome to bring other consumables, as well. HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento.
•••Monday (10/6), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Susan Kelly-DeWitt at HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento. Susan Kelly-DeWitt is the author of a new full-length collection, The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press) and five previous chapbooks: A Camellia for Judy (Frith Press, 1998), Feather’s Hand (Swan Scythe Press, 2000), To A Small Moth (Poet’s Corner Press, 2001), Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2003), The Land (Rattlesnake Press, 2005) and a letterpress collection, The Book of Insects (Spruce Street Press, 2003). Her most recent chapbook, Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree, appears online as Mudlark 33 and was released in an expanded print version from Rattlesnake Press in September, 2007.
Her work has been included in national and regional anthologies such as Claiming the Spirit Within (Beacon Press); I’ve Always Meant to Tell You; Letters to Our Mothers (Pocket Books); To Fathers: What I’ve Never Said, An Anthology of Letters to Fathers (Story Line Press); O Taste And See (Bottom Dog Press); Highway 99 (Heyday Books); and Words and Quilts (Quilt Digest Press, 1996). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, North American Review, Rosebud, Cutbank, Nimrod, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Iris, Comstock Review, Oxymoron, Yankee, Runes, Poet Lore, Smartish Pace, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Quarterly, Hawaii Review and Passages North, among many others. Her short story, “The Audience”, is forthcoming as an illustrated chapbook (Spring 2007) from Uptown Books. She has been featured on Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily; her other honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, The Chicago Literary Award from Another Chicago Magazine, the Bazzanella Award for Short Fiction and a number of Pushcart nominations. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Northern California Book Reviewers Association; her essays, interviews, reviews and creative non-fiction have appeared in Poetry Now, Small Press Review, Perihelion and Gardening at a Deeper Level (Garden House Press, 2004). She also has reviews forthcoming in Poetry Flash.
Over the years she has worked as a freelance writer and poetry columnist for the Sacramento Bee and Sacramento Union, as the editor of the on-line journal Perihelion and the print journal Quercus; she has been a California Poet-in-the-Schools, the program director of an arts program for homeless women, an educator, and an artist in the prisons. She lives in Sacramento, California, where she is an editor of Swan Scythe Press, an exhibiting visual artist and an instructor for the University of California, Davis Extension.
____________________
WORK
—Moira Magneson
I am writing the poem as I punch
my time card. I am writing the poem
as I rouge my nipples, black-rim my eyes.
I am writing the poem as Nikki, Carlotta,
Brandi, and Dawn twirl and chat
in the hall of mirrors—it’s dangerous
to use each other’s real names. Most days
I am writing the poem as a blonde, sometimes
as a redhead (Midge), once
in a blue moon as a boy,
stuffed in tight-whites, hair butch-waxed back,
swaggering in Doc Martens,
sex-moshing on stage.
When the man with a fondness for Hawaiian
shirts mistakes lap dancing for
love, parks his late model Camry (Barney stickers)
on my street three weeks running you can bet
everyday I am writing the poem. I am still
writing the poem when my manager
tells me a restraining order sets
the wrong tone, as if we were discussing
—of all things—
a story and not my life.
I am writing the poem because at first
I was turned on and I can’t write
the other poem, the one about why
I am here in the first place.
Holding my father up
over the toilet
as bile thunders out of him—black, warm—
the doused ash of his body, I am writing
the poem. At the Laundromat, the market,
the newsstand, I am writing the poem. When I see
the blurred photos
on the Tribune’s front page—
Nikki and her boyfriend—I cry
writing the poem. At the after-school
meeting, as the history teacher recounts
the gang awareness class
he attended last Wednesday
when in fact he sat back row
in a crowd of beer-drinking men,
I am mute writing the poem. On my knees
in front of the manager, I am
writing the poem—
the last line of a villanelle—
that patterned equation of astonishing light—
night-knocking star.
(First appeared in Talking River Review)
____________________
WHAT THE PRESIDENT IS
(for George W. Bush)
—James Lee Jobe, Davis
The President is a mouse
Who thinks that the old cat will ignore him
Forever.
The President is a little girl
Diddled by the neighborhood pervert, or
A little boy
Buggered at summer camp.
The president is a hair clog
In a dirty bathroom sink, in an old rusted
Trailerhouse.
The last trailer on a dead-end street trailerpark
With beer cans in the ditches
And no sidewalk.
The President is the elusive vaginal orgasm.
The President is the G spot.
The President is a persisant stain
And the cleanser in the television ad
Did not work.
The President is the weariness
That the old man feels
Walking his meager groceries home,
The right front wheel on the worn-out cart
Wobbles, sqeaks, and catches on the
Uneven sidewalk.
The President is oil and blood.
The President is your father
On his death-bed, then
he is the death-bed itself.
The President is death.
___________
WHAT THE PRESIDENT ISN'T
(for George W. Bush)
—James Lee Jobe
The President isn't a trained monkey
Doing tricks to get
A treat from his master.
The President isn't a harbinger of peace
or a herald
Of a golden new age.
The President isn't Gandhi,
That's clear, or even
Johnny Unitas.
The President isn't here to please you.
The President isn't even
One of the dreams from your youth
That you gave up on when disillusionment
Set in, and with worry lines
On your forehead
Lifted your morning coffee cup
Like it was a death sentence.
_________________
Thanks, James Lee Jobe, for the response to our Seed of the Week: Two Poems that present two sides to a story.
_________________
Today's LittleNip:
With sixty staring me in the face I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.
—James Thurber
—Medusa
SnakeWatch: What's New from Rattlesnake Press:
Coming in October: October’s release at The Book Collector on Weds., Oct. 8, will feature a new rattlechap from Moira Magneson (He Drank Because) and a littlesnake broadside from Hatch Graham (Circling of the Pack). That's at the Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else’s.
Then, on Thursday, Oct. 30, 8 PM, Rattlesnake Press will release two SpiralChaps to honor and celebrate Luna’s Café, including a new collection of art and poetry from B.L. Kennedy (Luna’s House of Words) and an anthology of Luna’s poets, artists and photographs (La Luna: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Café) edited by Frank Andrick. Come travel with our Away Team as we leave the Home of the Snake for a brief road trip/time travel to Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento to celebrate Art Luna and the 13 years of Luna's long-running poetry series. Who knows what auspicious adventures await us there??
And check out B.L. Kennedy’s interview with Art Luna in the latest Rattlesnake Review (#19)! Free copies are available at The Book Collector, or send me two bux and I’ll mail you one (address below). Next deadline, by the way, is November 15.
Coming in November: November will feature a new rattlechap from Red Fox Underground Poet Wendy Patrice Williams (Some New Forgetting); a littlesnake broadside from South Lake Tahoe Poet Ray Hadley; our 2009 calendar from Katy Brown (Beyond the Hill: A Poet’s Calendar) as well as Conversations, Vol. 4 of B.L. Kennedy’s Rattlesnake Interview Series. That’s Weds., November 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector.
Medusa's Weekly Menu:
(Contributors are welcome to cook up something for any and all of these!)
Monday: Weekly NorCal poetry calendar
Tuesday: Seed of the Week: Tuesday is Medusa's day to post poetry triggers such as quotes, forms, photos, memories, jokes—whatever might tickle somebody's muse. Pick up the gauntlet and send in your poetic results; and don't be shy about sending in your own triggers, too! All poems will be posted and a few of them will go into Medusa's Corner of each Rattlesnake Review. Send your work to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline for SOWs; respond today, tomorrow, or whenever the muse arrives. (Print 'em out, maybe, save 'em for a dry spell?) When you send us work, though, just let us know which "seed" it was that inspired you.
Wednesday (sometimes): HandyStuff Quickies: Resources for the poet, including whatever helps ease the pain of writing and/or publishing: favorite journals to read and/or submit to; books, etc., about writing; organizational tools—you know—HandyStuff! Tell us about your favorite tools.
Thursday: B.L.'s Drive-Bys: Micro-reviews by our irreverent Reviewer-in-Residence, B.L. Kennedy. Send books, CDs, DVDs, etc. to him for possible review (either as a Drive-By or in future issues of Rattlesnake Review) at P.O. Box 160664, Sacramento, CA 95816.
Friday: NorCal weekend poetry calendar
Daily (except Sunday): LittleNips: SnakeFood for the Poetic Soul: Daily munchables for poetic thought, including short paragraphs, quotes, wonky words, silliness, little-known poetry/poet facts, and other inspiration—yet another way to feed our ravenous poetic souls.
And poetry! Every day, poetry from writers near and far and in-between! The Snakes of Medusa are always hungry.......!
_________________
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). And be sure to sign up for Snakebytes, our monthly e-newsletter that will keep you up-to-date on all our ophidian chicanery.
