—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis
SENSORY OXYMORONS
—Michael Cluff, Corona
The brilliant butter colored gopherweed blooms
intrigue by name alone,
the bright lily-shaped flowers
demand the complete attention
as set off against its shamrock-green leaves
while the rodent counterpart
sees none too far
and would never experience
visually the delight the plant's sight
could offer even a jaded,
ennuied artistic eye
but the underground creature
enjoys
and indulges
in its succulent beauty
as fully as its appetite
can.
Death then sets in
since such a blaring allurement
poisons not
the sight
but most definitively
the stomach.
________________________
COMING TO OUR SENSES AGAIN
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove
When I touch you, all is mystery.
Ripples through the skin
Unlock one thousand doors
Within, stretch a history
Almost too much to pin
Down, to clutch, fingertips
Whorling, whirling, waking to
Knowing angels, breathing in the wind.
When I see you, see you,
See you clearly, really see
You there, before me, morning
Wound round you, nearly
Pushing up, neat as a hemline,
Every time I see you, me, we, thee,
These, together without sound,
Dancing eyes in the field of delight.
When I hear you, speaking,
Singing, loosing the girdle
Of language, untying the verbs
That wind around us
Like the ghosts of kings,
Full and with their million stories
Moving on your lips, alive again.
A music flaunted by time.
Your mouth moving to shape the fields
Where words are the kingdom and sound
The castle keep.
When I smell you, in the room.
Nothing in the room.
Proust tells us that when we find
A memory from smell alone,
It is the most powerful.
It is the one most kind,
The true bone from which
The flesh is grown to grace
Again. Rooms of
you fill and fall
Away to empty space.
A chemical disturbance of the mind.
Nothing in the room, in the room,
When I smell you.
When I taste you, mouth to
Mouth or drawing with the tongue
To find the salty landscapes there,
There is suddenly no room for
Sense to be other than the
Slippery buds unveiling where
All love has wrung itself
From pore to pour against
The door of teeth, the core
Pretends at cooling, but melts
Before the lips and celebrates
Such food that is ourselves.
________________________
MY SWEATY PALMS
—Caschwa, Sacramento
When I woke up
There was piping hot coffee
All over my shirt pocket
That was the price to pay
For failing to procure
More paper filters
They said I could have
My pocket back when
They were done with it
A most effective memory tool
Right under my nose
M’mm, fresh coffee!
________________________
MIGRANTS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville
Across the field-wire fence with its T-posts
set upright like so many tin soldiers
enforcing the bounds of mine and thine,
I had no plans of how to spend
the day except with chores and errands,
schedules and sums,
till I saw, by daylight leaping free
through woven-wire,
a small commotion in the grass
lofting scents of earth-warm
taste of May with a buzz and skitter of
insects and smoosh of webbed feet in mud,
a wild mother goose with her six
fuzzy goslings undisturbed
by human notions what befits a Tuesday.
_________________________
HER NAME IS MISCHIEF
—Taylor Graham
The puppy's got the old dog by the ruff.
She twists and tugs until he's had enough
and thunder-grumbles gruff and old-dog deep.
She leaps aside and seeks the cat couchant,
who wakes with hiss and claws. Pup, nonchalant,
now riffs a leaf. Do puppies never sleep?
Her Name is Mischief
(Do puppies never sleep?)
—Photo by Taylor Graham
_________________________
Today's LittleNip:
Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy
of thinking.
—Wallace Stevens
_________________________
—Medusa
When Pigs Fly
—Photo by Katy Brown
