Photo by Mary Mills, Kingwood, WV
MAGIC MIST
—Mary Mills
creeping, seeping
clinging, swinging
crawling, sprawling
from the top
down to the
bottom branch.
magic mist:
soft, airy
spanish moss.
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WEIRDNESS
—Mitz Sackman, Murphys
The puzzles of this world
Lead me to respond
Why?
A never answered question
Hinted at in parts
Why?
All throughout my life
This question sings its song
Why?
I sit here and wonder
If I am just weird
Why?
The only answer when I ask
That seems to echo back is
Why not?
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Jim Powell and Heidi Steidlmayer at Sacramento Poetry Center:
•••Monday (3/8), 7:30pm: SPC presents Jim Powell and Heidi Steidlmayer at HQ for the Arts at 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Jim Powell is the author of two collections of poetry: Substrate, just published by Pantheon Books, and It Was Fever That Made The World (University of Chicago Press), and he is the translator of The Poetry Of Sappho (Oxford University Press) and Catullan Revenants (Booklyn). His poems and translations are included in the Paris Review Anthology; the Norton Introduction to Literature; the Oxford Anthology of Classical Verse In English Translation; California Poetry From the Gold Rush To the Present; and the Addison Street Anthology. His honors include the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines Younger Poets Prize, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Translation Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship. He held the Sherry Poet lectureship at the University of Chicago in Fall 2005. He is a native and resident of Northern California.
Born in Chicago, Heidi Steidlmayer is a graduate of Northwestern University and of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers. In 2007, she was a recipient of the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from Poetry magazine, and in 2009 she was awarded a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award for emerging women writers. Her poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, Literary Imagination and Calyx, among others. Her work is also included in Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology, Second Edition, by Helen Vendler. Of Steidlmayer’s work, Poetry magazine editor Christian Wiman wrote to The Sacramento Bee in September 2009: “She is a remarkable poet (who) writes poems of great compactness and density, as technically accomplished as they are emotionally devastating. This is an age of irony and sprawl, and she’s going—bravely and with great success—her own way. People may not know much about her work now, but they will soon.”
Coming Up at SPC:
March 14 (Sunday), 3-5pm: California Poets in the Schools reading
March 15 (Monday), 7:30pm: Women's History Month Reading: Jane Blue, Felicia Martinez, Lytton Bell, Yang Her, JoAnn Anglin, Shevonna Blackshire
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WAIT IT OUT
—Charles Mariano, Sacramento
heater’s broke
again
and it’s freezing
so cold
my moustache
hardened
after the shower
clicked the wall-thing
left, then right
nada
it’s march
and it’s been raining
alleycats and mutts
all week
up in the hills
snowed
to the neck
and by the time
i fix
this damn heater
it’ll be spring
so i throw on
a thicker sweater
rewrap my stumps
take a snort,
hunker down
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SHITBIRDS
(downtown sac)
—Charles Mariano
early morning darkness
before the streets
fill
to overflow
i parked,
looked up
and there they were
again
evil black crows
of winter
fierce warriors
in the trees
waiting, watching
by the thousands
soon
the familiar rattle
that builds
to a deafening,
thunderous roar
terror from above
screaming,
death-defying bombers
cars, sidewalks,
bald heads
all of us,
prime targets
marked for…Splattt
i’m hit!
i’m hit!!
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THE KILLING
—Charles Mariano, Sacramento
doing it again
taking a breather
from writing,
to read
before long
the chapters fly by
and i’ve passed
the point of no return
characters, plots,
victims, tragic heroes
assaults my senses
crawls
inside my skin
warn myself
constantly
don’t go there, kills the day
turns me into a zombie
my hands shake
as i slip deeper
into the killer’s
deranged mind,
“he stuck the blade
between her ribs
let her dance on the tip,
until she bled out…”
wait! wait!
just one more page!
alas,
on a dark, ominous
rainy day in march,
my writing succumbed
from its wounds
murdered
…in cold blood
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Today's LittleNip:
Did you hear about the guy who sent ten puns to different friends, hoping to make them laugh? No pun in ten did.
__________________
—Medusa
