Rampage of the Brown Stallion

 

—Poetry and Photos by Taylor Graham,

Placerville, CA

—And then scroll down for

Form Fiddlers’ Friday!!

 

 

 

RAMPAGE

It’s a raging brown stallion
bucking his way down the canyon
to join more of his kind on their race
from foothills to sea.
For most of the year placid
and parched, this rocky little gully
has come alive, ripping out
our fences with its charge. The fury
of hooves on hardpan! pawing
a path through our compacted
road. The earth opens to receive
such a steed, but he’ll
never stay. And the skies open
again. Coming fast
behind him, the rest of his
wild herd.

 

 

 

 

AFTER THE FLOOD       

Call it a thousand-year fury of water
gouging out earth, plugging culverts hidden
from sight under new lake covering
our driveway eroding under still-raging
seasonal creek—it would take a superhero
battle to drain landlocked water before
that multiplying menace, mosquitos
bearing who knows what—West Nile,
Zika, dengue, malaria; even
altering cells of the immune system.
But here’s our superhero—handyman
with pole, pump, and shovel to clear
our culverts, create escape routes
for trapped water, releasing
our little creek to run free again.

 

 

 

 


DESIGN: GREEN & WHITE

No sound or fury, unobtrusively pushing up through late winter-soft earth, round and white as a flower, a skull. My naturalist app IDs it: Western Destroying Angel (Amanita ocreata). In this landscape of life reviving vivid green, don’t touch that pallid form, but snap a photo and move on. And here, even whiter than mushroom and just as silent, a skull of bone; I suspect ground squirrel, my source of fury—garden disappearing, de-created by rodent teeth, dragged back underground.

white flowers of death—
lush green under leafless oaks—
I wander, naming

 

 

 

 

FURY OF WAIT

My new weed-eater waits
for grass to mow
but it’s a month till spring
when green grows lush
under sun whose fury
is fire’s glow
turning weeds flammable
in northwind’s rush!

 

 

 

 

UNDER WING & CLOUD
inspired by Andrea Lowch’s painting, “Crow’s Song”

She wears a storm cloud in her hair.
And that singing wind, and crows’ wings—
wind rearranging all that’s there

between earth and brain, wind that stings
of pondering what to do—cloud
heavy with rain, with hail that flings

bullets—she stands under that crowd
of crows black as a coming night.
She doesn’t speak her thoughts out loud.

Does she breathe worry or delight?
Or petrichor, a scent of change.
Eyes half-closed, focused on what sight?

Can wind and crows’ wings rearrange
this landscape with their fury-play?
No bump, no hillock on this range.

As background, house and barn that stay
on flat horizon, far away.

 

 

 

 

WALKING FOR SPRING

Dead branch gnarled and bent for old man
to lean on, greeting hill and fields—
a grassy-green bounty, tiding
in breeze almost spring-high.

 

 

 

 

Today’s LittleNip:

AVIAN YOGA
—Taylor Graham

Parking lot blackbird
casually balanced on
one leg—impressive!

_____________________

Many thanks to Taylor Graham for her poetry today, painting pictures as she does of life in the foothills. Forms she has used include a Haibun (“Design: Green & White”); a Verso-rhyme (“Fury of Wait”); an Ekphrastic Chanso (“Under Wing & Cloud”); a Ryūka (“Walking for Spring”); and a Senryu (“Avian Yoga”).

El Dorado County poetry doin’s this weekend include the 2023 Poetry Out Loud El Dorado County Finals in Placerville tonight at 7pm. Due to weather concerns, however, it will only take place in a virtual format, not in-person. And on Sunday, the Poetry of the Sierra Foothills’ reading in Camino has been cancelled, also due to “unpredictable weather”. Click UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS at the top of this column for details about these and other future poetry events in the NorCal area—and keep an eye on this link and on the Kitchen for happenings that might pop up during the week.

For more info about El Dorado County poetry events, go to Western Slope El Dorado poetry on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ElDoradoCountyPoetry/ or see El Dorado County Poet Laureate Lara Gularte’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/382234029968077/. Poetry is Gold in El Dorado County!

And now it’s time for…  


FORM FIDDLERS’ FRIDAY!

 

It’s time for more contributions from Form Fiddlers, in addition to those sent to us by Taylor Graham! Each Friday, there will be poems posted here from our readers using forms—either ones which were sent to Medusa during the previous week, or whatever else floats through the Kitchen and the perpetually stoned mind of Medusa. If these instructions are vague, it's because they're meant to be. Just fiddle around with some challenges—  Whaddaya got to lose… ? If you send ‘em, I’ll post ‘em! (See Medusa’s Form Finder at the end of this post for resources and for links to poetry terms used in today’s post.)


There’s also a newly dusted-off page at the top of Medusa’s Kitchen called, “FORMS! OMG!!!” which expresses some of my (take ‘em or leave 'em) opinions about the use of forms in poetry writing, as well as listing some more resources to help you navigate through Form Quicksand. Got any more resources to add to our list? Send them to kathykieth@hotmail.com for the benefit of all man/woman/poetkind!

 

 

 

Last Week’s Ekphrastic Photo

 

Here are responses to last week’s photo from Joe Nolan and Stephen Kingsnorth:


SHIP’S CARCASS ON SAND
—Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA

I have come to rest
And bark no
Further sermon.

“How did I get here?”
You might ask.

From lack of fear
And also lack of wisdom.

Don’t forget to count
Random rounds of bourbon
On friendly evenings
Spent ashore
Pursuing joyous daydreams.

What have we now?
But stranded boards
Topped-out
On the sand,
Nevermore to sail the waves
From which to wave,
“Hello!”

* * *

WRACKED, WRECKED
—Stephen Kingsnorth, Coedpoeth, Wrexham, Wales

Humiliations daily skirt,
lap dancing prance around her girth,
but she is bound, ground force holds down
as waves assault, but she unmoved.
Entrenched, bar stranded, sucking down,
her tidal lifting slow, but fast,
why is she propped there, scene as ghost,
through hulk, such grotesque man o’ war?

Her drink rust red, per oxide air,
just as her hair, bleached, set in flow,
with curlers, wrapping round her prow
but wind in neither sales nor glass.
Her bearing scuttled, limpets, mined
where underneath ramshackle signs
worn, unrequited plimsol line,
her timber, tone. past shivering.

Her spirit guide, head in the stars,
though studied charts, read current blows,
but gutted her, bruised blistered skin,
a wail beached after harpoon bull.
Her bow is low, though deepest, stern
the attitude, outlined drawn ketch;
old refugee, gang master’s dredge
drags her through mud and slime to bed.

* * *

Caschwa’s (Carl Schwartz’s) response is not only Ekphrastic, but, well, it’s some kind of form, too—five syllables/line, all lines end-rhyme with each other:


THAT OTHER SOCK
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

ancient ship aground
no one left around
surf the only sound

not from lost and found
big questions abound
stories that astound

once royalty, crowned
till fighting force downed
and left in a mound

no longer renowned
old clockwork unwound
hopeless howls from hound

* * *

Nolcha Fox came up with two responses:


You didn’t ask

a soul for help to find me.
You thought that you could
get there on your own.
Lost in fog, you ran aground,
forgot me and abandoned
all your dreams to wander
through the world alone.


—Nolcha Fox, Buffalo, WY

***

RUSTY
—Nolcha Fox

You say that I’m just rusty,
too old to care, neglected,
my clothes all worn and faded.
You say I’m out of practice,
my mind decayed, too sleepy.

Just don’t forget that rust is used
to polish gold and silver.
It takes away your itching.
I’ll take it as a compliment,
Rust is not too shabby.


(“Rusty” is from her new book, Cow Candy, due out any day from Amazon.)

* * *

Nolcha has been experimenting with repeated lines. This week, she came up with this whatever-it-is form:

 

 

 

 

CIGARETTE DAYDREAMS
—Nolcha Fox  (who-knows-what-form using repeated lines)

They played bridge and smoked cigarettes.
Dead butts kissed beanbag ashtrays.
Peanuts shells rose next to cards.

They smoked cigarettes, piled dead butts in ashtrays.
Peanut shells littered the table
while I was sleepwalking through the hall.

Peanut shells piled higher than cigarette butts
while I was sleepwalking through the house,
dreaming of smoking and flashing lights.

While I was sleepwalking and smoking,
flashing lights and sirens surrounded the house,
as curtains and shells burned from cigarettes.

* * *

And about another Ekphrastic photo of a fat cat, Nolcha says, “This picture on Twitter this [Saturday] morning made me laugh. So, I dubbed it a Caturday Ekphrastic Challenge”:

 

 

 

 

CATASTROPHE
—Nolcha Fox

A cataclysmic catastrophe
is a cat too fat
to roll off her back.

* * *

And last today, an Ars Poetica poem from Stephen Kingsnorth, this one about poetry styles that come and go:

 

 

 

 

COOKING THE BOOKS
—Stephen Kingsnorth

Too much spice, or not enough,
cream too rich for your palette,
the pastry rested or gone to sleep,
slumped Victoria or rise,
prefer layered cake or flattened bread,
what ingredients in mix,
which receipt to bake the choice?
How am I to find the lines
knowing this dish cannot be
as your mother used to make—
she would not like this cookbook page.

Crafted, as the watchmaker’s art,
vivid image exciting fresh lines of sight,
terms talked sounding in inner ear,
ambiguities for reader’s search,
economic words, cordial concentrate;
intellect meeting the heart,
avenues of feeling thought,
questions for the wrestling mind
rhythmic with the pulsing vein,
mean levels storied if we dare,
that chosen plate that I prefer.

But time beyond the dial’s care,
eyes hanker for familiar,
as if attendant witch can tell,
lobes open for the placid known,
and I need simple clarity,
described sufficient, cause no strain;
too tired for interrogatives,
or digging through the complex leaves,
bear nothing but insistent pump,
reluctant mind that will not lie,
nouveau cuisine not to my style.

___________________

Many thanks to our SnakePals for their brave fiddling! Would you like to be a SnakePal? All you have to do is send poetry—forms or not—and/or photos and artwork to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post work from all over the world, including that which was previously-published. Just remember: the snakes of Medusa are always hungry!

___________________


TRIPLE-F CHALLENGES!  

 

See what you can make of this week’s poetry forms, and send them to kathykieth@hotmail.com! (No deadline.) Let’s tackle some of the Irish poetry forms that are listed by Robert Lee Brewer in Writer’s Digest (https://www.writersdigest.com/poetic-asides/irish-poetic-forms):

•••Deibide Baise Fri Toin: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/deibide-baise-fri-toin-poetic-forms

AND/OR

•••Violette: www.poetrymagnumopus.com/topic/1882-syllabic-forms-found-in-pathways-for-the-poet/#veltanelle

•••See also the bottom of this post for another challenge, this one an Ekphrastic photo.

•••And don’t forget each Tuesday’s Seed of the Week! This week it’s “Etched in Stone”. 


____________________

MEDUSA’S FORM FINDER: Links to poetry terms mentioned today:

•••Ars Poetica: www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ars-poetica
•••Chanso: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/chanso-poetic-form
•••Deibide Baise Fri Toin: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/deibide-baise-fri-toin-poetic-forms
•••Ekphrastic Poem: notesofoak.com/discover-literature/ekphrastic-poetry 
•••Haibun: www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/haibun-poems-poetic-form
•••Haiku: www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/haiku/haiku.html
•••Ryūka: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryūka
•••Senryu: www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-senryu-poems#quiz-0
•••Verso-Rhyme: https://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/topic/1882-syllabic-forms-found-in-pathways-for-the-poet
•••Violette: www.poetrymagnumopus.com/topic/1882-syllabic-forms-found-in-pathways-for-the-poet/#veltanelle


For more about meter, see:

•••www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-iambic-pentameter-definition-literature
•••www.pandorapost.com/2021/05/examples-of-iambic-pentameter-tetrameter-and-trimeter-in-poetry.html 
•••nosweatshakespeare.com/sonnets/iambic-pentameter
•••www.thoughtco.com/introducing-iambic-pentameter-2985082
•••www.nfi.edu/iambic-pentameter

____________________


—Medusa

 

 

 

 Today's Ekphrastic Challenge!

What goes on here? Heinous crimes
and blood-curdling murders?
Unspeakable acts against society?
Or just alley cats and passed-out drunks?

 See what you can make of the above
photo, and send your poetic results to

kathykieth@hotmail.com/. (No deadline.)

***

—Photo Courtesy of Public Domain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For upcoming poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
in the links at the top of this page.

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.