Thursday, June 20, 2013

Half-Rests Under Sun

Sacramento Gay Men's Chorus sings Abba at
Crocker Art Museum 
—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis



ACCIDENT
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

She left the music running, Death
and the Maiden giving up to Winterreise.
First hot day of almost-summer going
on fall. Lost keys scattered in drawers,
on pantry hooks, no clue, no clef, no treble
tremolo that they belonged to. She left
the front door open as if to let
Schubert escape himself. Or was she
thinking of Die Frau ohne Schatten? Without
shadow she moved by half-rests under
sun, her scent trailing down the sidewalk,
fading but alive in accidentals,
pavement cracks she always wished
to break her mother's back. But these
were only snippets. The spinet
long gone to a world of her own
forgetting.

____________________

SOUND AND SHADOW
—Olga Blu Browne, Sacramento
 
Sound and silence sing as one:
"White is cold, Black is deep."

Their shadows now are silent.
 

(first pub. in Brevities)

____________________

THE COLOR OF EVIL
—Olga Blu Browne

I stand silent, sadness locked in.
My memories the weapon.
Dark fears of inward visions.
The scars of my soul echo within.


(first pub. in Brevities)



Sac. Gay Men's Chorus
—Photo by Katy Brown



INCONSOLABLE
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Almost alive

in your living room

watching Breathless

for the ninth time

you in your kimono

no one answers

the bell or phone

or questions where

we are terraced

or traced from time

by an indoor memory 

or number of drinks

what comes next

to amuse, trying to forget 

in mystery or illusion

of a melancholy season

wounded and reeling.

___________________

SUSPICION
—B.Z. Niditch




This must be

a great nightmare

in darkness to cover us

in blanket suspicion

at first light burning up 

with a high cabin fever,

A heartsick somnambulist

wishes for water

from nightfall's escape,

we oscillate

like fawns by branches

to drink in liquid silences

shattered by time

buried in volcanoes

of half-speech

unearthed like a catwalk

by ripples of phantasms

while turning here,

My sheets move me

from a daybed,

destiny dawns

on tuned-up sounds

unhinged images

signal forlorn thoughts

deep within.

___________________

Our thanks to today's contributors, talking about our Seed of the Week, Inconsolable. And thanks to Katy Brown for the pix! For more photos of local events, see Medusa's Facebook page for the new album, Recent Readings, by Katy Brown and Michelle Kunert.

___________________

Today's LittleNip(s):

i may not be
well-known
or famous,
but i do
a hell of a lot of
whatever the hell it is
i do

***

scribbled so many notes,
my ears are full

***

don’t go in there
don’t go
too deep
too hard
to come back

—charles mariano, sacramento

__________________

—Medusa



Seven Poets who read at Crocker last Friday:
Shawn Pittard, Paco Marquez, Marilynn Price,
Allegra Silberstein, Katy Brown, Danyen Powell