Midsummer Sunset
—Photo by Taylor Graham, Placerville
GAMINE GONE LOST
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
When you
make hurricane eyes at me, little cloud,
my mind’s
a far thunderhead. Estranged
from the
snap of the levin or the consoling drumroll.
Mist upon
mist, like thought upon thought.
You are
my San Francisco: I toil in the vertigo
coils
across Golden Gate walkway
to
Sausalito, away from your loved Russian Hill,
Twin
Peaks, Glen Park. Unseen sun glazes
a sheer
gray curtain: why must your shine too
efface
itself behind the sheen? Why cloak
your
achingly slender white shoulders
beneath
Marie Ponsot’s “hood of fog?”
But so it
is: you turn your back, you iris out
like a
lady Chaplin. Come back, little waif,
don’t
become wraith without the option of return.
My
gamine, gone lost in the fog-dazzle…
_______________
THIRD OF JULY
—Tom Goff
Tuesday
afternoon. The raw heat chills.
Had you
dropped by as usual, I, leaving work,
would now
be leaving you. I drive the hill perimeter.
On the
radio, Puccini’s Intermezzo from
Manon
Lescaut, the
satin of infinite happy
sorrow,
sorrow, sorrow. Pacing the perimeter
I thought
mine, but beyond,
where
grasses dry & dirt seems to grow,
a coyote.
Deep chest, scant waist. For a moment,
glassed-in
man and far coyote seem to lock eyes.
I know
who I am, but you, I can’t place.
I
can’t place who I am, but you, I know.
Why is
dryness always so lonesome?
What
hunting here, any mice, no jackrabbits?
Where
is your love, your mate?
_______________
TO HART CRANE
—Tom Goff
Gray-helmeted,
far-battered warrior
against
all work save boozing. Scattering
Carib
rums eccentric into your ring-
ripple,
spilling cinnamon everywhere.
Incapable
of pure love yet all tendresse
for
worthy mouths or the slobbery inwards of lips,
you
departed port by obligatory noblest
bound
upon bound, all sails and no ship.
Feather
and metal wing, my hardest hawk
of Akron,
Cleveland businessfather’s enigma,
your
figure-skate blade stenciled poetic jigsaw
puzzles,
amatory tackle and block.
Your wish
was to bridge all human time and skin
one
sailor at a time: exquisite prowls
or
carousals sordid, delvings into bowels
of living
books. You gangplanked into sin;
and then
you descended, a caisson-grandeur-king
donjon-plunged
bends and benders Roeblinglike
from East
River concrete root to water-clear sky-spike
and
fretfully, harp-spun arch, could lyre and sing
conch-song
Aeolian washes cable-strung
of
saturate sound: a mystic game telephone-
lipping
the breath-warm softening rumor-stone
ear by
child’s ear from Brooklyn to heaven. Spring
gifted
your best poems. An Amazon to debouch,
yet on
went your revels, revetment-splintering dawn
you split
with a gob from the USS Arizona:
how didst
thou peel away from suchlike debauch
thy
clarity, persisting through surface disturbance?
Ah,
Saturn-centrifugal notes along pond-satin,
you,
embouchuring Whitman’s American Latin
to sexual
centurions, kin of the drunk Roman urbans!
We read
of your mystery sailor “Evered,”
stationed
prewar on this fated battleship,
wondering
how from history he slips,
yet
ponder the names aboard her (years later) like “Everett”:
berthed
amidships at Pearl, such young men, infant in sleep.
One
Japanese bomb in the left-open magazine:
Van
Valkenburgh, Kidd—and your sailor?—blown in one sheen
of shock,
black rubbery billow and steelfire sheet.
Annihilating
rums and sodas let us drink
to
mysticism’s evanescent sodality:
so many
writers affix their sheer carnality
to pages
that shred, inscribing in milk, not ink.
We guess
at your end—was it Orizaba’s blades?
The blue
desponding fathoms entombing Atlantis?
Swift
sharks with razor incisors, remora-clad mantas?—
What
“diced” you to “embassies” of galvanic stanzas?
O
consummate Orpheus, leapt to Sargasso glades!
Your
seaweed, coral & opal disintegrations
drift with
what Modernistic scintillations?
Head of Medusa, Didyma, Turkey
IMAGO III
—Michael Cluff, Corona
Fluttering between nightshade
and nutmeg jammed jars
Euclid a deaf alchemist
rams reality
back into fresh cedar slats
rotund rarities
not touching ambivalent
advice in atoms
IV
Sense the roaring cataract
before the descent
into stiffening death
breath
answer quixotics
when light drifts through
bluebottles,
collecting fragments
recant in fluent Latin
to the father's ears.
V
Stalker dons gray business suit
car chrome silk polished
black wingtips fresh from
repairs
to their broken soles,
an unaware terse sleeper
when a door opens
slides deep into ribald
dreams
knife bright passion.
_______________
I BROKE THE WITCH’S FIDDLE
—Caschwa, Sacramento
When I am seventy five
My income will be
Just Social Security
Supplemented by
Coins I find on the
sidewalk
Guest appearances
By dear presidents of old
Touching my bare feet
_______________
IMAGO FOR MI AMIGO JOE
DIMAGGIO
—Caschwa
I.
Our world is polar
extremes
Healthy or ailing
Popular opinion polls
Wizard or dummy
We cannot stress this
enough
Tasty or rotten
You are a beautiful swan
Or ugly duckling
II.
High definition TV
Gotta have it now
Can’t stand to miss a
pixel
Ten year service plan
Your numbers win without
you
Happens all the time
The bankruptcy court is
full
Can you spare a dime?
II ½.
Take liberties with the
form
Screw it up royal
Make your own definitions
Turn it upside down
Shave and a haircut, six
bits
That’s a retro price
DYI is big today
Start your own nation
III.
It is time to go to bed
Eyes getting sleepy
The dishes will do
themselves
Trust me and believe
A dream is in your future
It will feature you
In bed, asleep, not
reading
Why are you still here?
_______________
Thanks to today's contributors! About his "Crane" poem, Tom Goff says: Don't know how well the
"Hart Crane" piece works (an experiment in his manner, without
necessarily understanding it), but I'm fascinated with the biography by Clive
Fisher, and by what Crane does to poetic language, as seen in the new Library of
America edition of his complete work. My private little theory is that he
rejects some of the ordinary denotative language to describe experience,
picking maybe the nearest or next nearest connotative or associative spinoff as
a valid equivalent for the missing conventional word. Kind of like Charlie
Parker discarding the ordinary triad and skating exclusively in the upper
overtones or extensions of the chord, the sevenths, ninths, and elevenths. What
Fisher can do to decrypt the original through line of each poem is impressive.
Thanks also to those intrepidarians who tackled the current Form to Fiddle With, the Imago. Poets also tackled the Seed of the Week, mostly by writing senryus—though be careful that you know what a senryu actually is. Some are still confusing senryus with haikus. See Medusa Mulls in the FUCHSIA LINKS at the top of this for some thoughts about that. Even though you're writing beautiful, short little poems, be careful whatcha call 'em...
And the City of Davis has a new Poet Laureate, Eve West Bessier! See the links on the green board at the right of this for info about her.
_______________
Today's LittleNip:
DEATH OF A TREE
—Patricia Pashby, Sacramento
Towering black walnut tree
ancient growth snuffed
out.
Jade-embroidered canopy,
hostel for squirrels
elbowed by brand-new
stucco.
Limbs severed, trunk
hacked.
Gatherers scamper—stockpile
fallen nut fallout.
_______________
—Medusa
—Photo by Taylor Graham
