Red Velvet and Midnight Rain

Andy Jones congratulates the winners of the Jack Kerouac

Poetry Contest in Davis, CA on Oct. 13, 2017

—Photo by Sandy Thomas, Sacramento, CA

WHERE I LIVE
—Michael Ceraolo, S. Euclid, OH

Cleveland Haiku #221

The bus driver goes past my stop,
nonchalantly—
no big deal to him

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #224

Car graveyards—
guarded by barbed wire
and menacing animals

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #225

November sunshine—
playing hooky
from its usual routine

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #229

Exercise in futility—
rain scrubs the sky,
temporarily

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #230

The skyscrapers
create canyons—
man-made wind tunnels

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #481

A family of deer
picnicking
in the neighbor's yard

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #482

Another family of deer
out for a walk
in the Metro Park

* * *

Cleveland Haiku #483

Football fever—
electric transmission towers
shaped like goalposts

 Allegra Silberstein reads at the Jack Kerouac Poetry Contest

—Photo by Trina Drotar, Sacramento, CA

MONODY
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

Blue air, irradiated, uniform
glow-satin, mists the darkest trees less dark.
So obvious a ploy to banish gloom:
we see the daylight spread, crass, obvious trick,
and fall for it while intellect consents
not ever to lose night’s melancholy pall.
Rapture me not, you skin, you eyes, my brains,
away from dread, despair. Restore the chill
field of crumpling autumn we call fall
in honor of the Fall we press to heart.
We sin who clutch at the Northern Flicker’s call,
each sun-from-shade emergence, blinding dart
that dubs us lizard. So reduced and mean
these aches make us, we snatch the flimsiest sheen.

 Sandy Thomas reads at the Jack Kerouac Poetry Contest

—Photo by Trina Drotar

THE GIRL ON THE RED VELVET SWING
—Tom Goff

         Such was the complexity of [Stanford White’s]
         character that he could at one and the same time
         be the disinterested patron and the scheming roué.
              —Evelyn Nesbit, ingénue and photographer’s model

        … a quivering pink poppy in a golden wind-swept space.
              —John Barrymore, on Evelyn Nesbit

The Pittsburgh smoke and grit began to chafe,
then sting your body craving for escape.
Insensibly your face, all creamy waif
with ninety-percent dark chocolate eyes, your nape
of neck that glided shoulders’ clear white pond,
stirred each rosebud electron inside you,
taught you how neatly bedeviled, utterly fond,
fond as in mad, one brush, one drop of dew
from cardboard blooms in grainy photographs
could drive men old and young. Diaphanous
Point de Venice transfigured in soft skin,
veiled as if confectioner’s glaze touched sweetmeat Sin.
The Shot was a last red icing, dark as crêpe
appliqued on mendacious epitaphs
for architect master-lover, Mister Date Rape. 

(Seduced and mentored by architect Stanford White,
Evelyn Nesbit witnessed his public murder at point-blank 

range by her husband, Harry K. Thaw, in 1906.
See American Eve by Paula Uruburu.)

 Evelyn, in White Fox Fur

—Anonymous Photo

EVELYN NESBIT, IN WHITE FOX FUR SMILING

—Tom Goff

Famed Gibson Girl, our Ur-Celebrity,
you pose in hats whose crowns exceed your face
in plume and bulk, not freshness. Honesty
demands we note how daintiness—that race
of innocence in you, the very mark
of unfoxed, unmarked loving spotlessness—
is wreathed in fur the brightness of a spark
ground by Life’s ax upon the wheel Excess:
Fox fur enfolds you boa-like in a white
fluffed, combed, and teased refined and exquisite
to squeeze from you your sweetest smile. Is it
a dog whose snuggling head insinuates,
or the white fox kit’s, dead upon your breast?
Whose head do you cuddle with girlish (ghoulish?) zest?

[Touched by the love that tendered this gift tainted,
how is it your smile glows frustratingly sainted?
Pre-Animal Rights, with delights beyond measure plied,
is not your face like the poor fox’s glassy-eyed?]

 Christine

—Anonymous Photo 

CHRISTINE
       to Arnold Bax, 1938

I love that you can love someone without talents,
original talents anything like your own.
I like you in person more than on the telephone.
If only you could see me when I’m balanced.
It’s hard, so hard in London by myself:
attending “our” first chamber concert, when you came,
murmurs in front and back of you (that’s fame),
pretending chance placed you near me on that shelf
of people odds and ends. I don’t remember,
(so shy was I, you too) of that night much more.
It’s all one crazed bright blur since last December.
My name, my hair: you like that I’m three-fourths Irish,
and so I’m now your dark flower. I don’t bore
you, of that much I’m glad. So sweet desire is,
and so damn funny. Your red face: Father Christmas.
Was it you who told me the only rhyme is “isthmus?”

How long can this last? How many other girls?
Play me your (my!) violin piece as it unfurls…

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Cleveland Haiku #484
—Michael Ceraolo

October—
midnight rain, much needed,
lulls me to sleep

__________________

Our thanks to our fine contributors today, including Trina Drotar and Sandy Thomas for their photos of the annual Jack Kerouac Poetry Contest in Davis which was held in Davis on Oct. 13.

As for Tom Goff’s poems today, he writes that he has become obsessed with the girl in the red velvet swing, and he also writes: "I should mention that this Christine [see poem above] was a real person, Christine Ryan, very much younger than Bax. It could be called, not a May-December romance but an April-December one, from the sound of it. From the one known letter of hers to Bax, she sounds intelligent and sweet. She may have been muse for his Violin Concerto. Apparently they played chess (one wonders if Shakespeare's Ferdinand and Miranda crossed Bax's mind)..." Tom's chapbook on Arnold Bax is coming soon from Tiger's Eye, consisting of eight poems, at least several of which have seen first light on Medusa. It's called Tintagel 2.0: Arnold Bax, a Composer-Poet Recaptured.

And tonight, 9-11pm, head down to Graciano’s in Old Sac. for Love Vibes, with features and an open mic for musicians and poets. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

 Andy Jones presents Trina Drotar with her prize

—Photo by Sandy Thomas

(Celebrate Poetry!)

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