Troubling Your Dark Sleep

 —Poetry and Photos by Moira Magneson, 

Placerville, CA

—Public Domain Photos Courtesy 

of Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA

 

ST MARTIN ANGEL’S

When it was bad we took your truck and bourbon
drove north Oregon hardly speaking at all
   cut the Siskyous to the Umpqua River
followed a dusty road to its end


Martin Angel’s land      there      a hot springs
he had told us about years ago       he had said
        if you’re in love go there  

We stripped and stepped into the scald  
of that pool     as we sat buoyed


in the water      sweating   I thought


we might have bloomed     your face
ruddy as if scraped
I thought I saw the meanness of years
lift from us     the way a bat     rises
softly    from a flower or a wound

By dusk your breath was warm with bourbon  
you went to start the truck and I walked


a trail to the Umpqua     I almost dove


but stopped     I smelled rot     across the water

        a deer netted in the rocks     the purple
        dunnage of guts drifting   out its side

The truck horn sounded

        the legs were just enough in the water
        so that the current caught its hooves  causing
        it to kick now and again
     

        a sort of peculiar   palsied    trot

I had to leave. 


(First published in Bindweed, and in Moira’s chapbook
from Rattlesnake Press, He Drank Because, 2008)   

 

 

 

 

I :: PONYMOUS

It’s easy to swell with self-
   

    Importance, the “I” in everything, if not explicit

       Implied. Language         

 

                                      Insists on immortality

In the hammer of the line,
    Its gold grammar.
        I, subject only to myself, object of mine own

Inflection, cleave to the unending
    Imperfect tense. O the mind is
        Ignorance, careering

Improbability—toss the dice—
    

    It’s snake eyes : crooked with ego &
        Illusion, a refusal to go 

                                      Incognito

In the universe.
    

    Ill-starred delusion,              

        I cannot not be.


                                      I e=x=i=s=t

Imploded by my own petard.
    

    Irreducible prolixity, the “I” is forever at
    work, doing
        Its job. Even at this moment,

It must signify,
    

    Infixing the final word, constructing/my
    deconstruction/
        Interred in this poem, empty pine box
        wherein I lie. 

(First pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen)

 

 

 

SUNDAY

Eighteen-wheeler on Highway 99 rattles along
in the slow lane, stinking of shit and loaded
with lowing cattle, pink muzzles pressed


to the perforated panels. On their way
to the house of revelations where crowded
together, they smell him before they meet him.
Bellowing out hosannas, each files up the ramp
to the end of the story: God is a man
swinging a sledgehammer, apron slick with blood.
When his shift is done, another man just like him
will step up to take his place.


(First published in The Southern California Review) 

 

 

 

 

THE WHOLE TRUTH
“Americans . . . need to watch what they say,
watch what they do.”
    —Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary,
       Sept. 26, 2001

I say this: you will not corral me,


Shear my words or dock my tongue. I


Will not cut it out. My mouth is holy.


I am the human form divine. I


Promise that my broken feet


Will trample through your dreams.


I will lick your neck, your body


Politic, keep you awake. I will


Trouble your dark sleep


As you’ve troubled mine. I do not


Fear the wild beasts for I am


Blessed. Black sheep, nightmare, wooly dis-
Invitation—I am the little lamb of God
Damn. God damn. 


(First published in The Sacramento News and Review) 

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

WHAT AM 👁!? 

tiny

         catastrophe    
       
           

                     of light


briefly
         briefly
                     briefly

blinking



(First published in Gathering Rounds, Volume II)

______________________

Today we welcome El Dorado County’s new Poet Laureate, Moira Magneson, a SnakePal who published littlesnake broadside #6 for Rattlesnake Press back in the early 2000’s, and a Rattlechap, Because He Drank, in 2008. Moira is El Dorado County's fifth poet laureate, serving a two-year appointment from July 2025 through July 2027.

Over the years, Moira has worked as a river guide, artist's model, truck driver, television writer, editor, and community college writing instructor. A Northern California native, she lives in the Sierra foothills where she has spearheaded many art actions and initiatives, including El Dorado County's Poetry Out Loud Competition, Veterans' Voices, Barbaric Yawp, and Black Lives: An American Overture. In 2024, she was the resident poet for ForestSong, a community arts project exploring solastalgia, biophilia, and resilience in the face of wildfire devastation. She’s also a long-time member of the Placerville poetry group, Red Fox Underground.

Moira is the author of A River Called Home: A River Fable, an illustrated novella (illus. by Robin Center, Toad Road Press, 2024, https://www.arivercalledhome.com/about), and In the Eye of the Elephant (Sixteen River Press, 2025, https://shop.sixteenrivers.org/products/in-the-eye-of-the-elephant), her first full-length collection of poems. People can purchase her books at Sixteenrivers.org or Toad River Press, or they can buy them locally at The Bookery on Main Street in Placerville. And Moira will be reading in Modesto at Second Tuesday Poetry on Sept. 9. Cogratulations, Moira, on all this excitement in your life of late!

______________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 Moira Magneson

A reminder that
Poets and Writers
of El Dorado will hold a
workshop with Lara Gularte in
El Dorado Hills today, 5:30pm; 

and today is the deadline for

Sacramento Poetry Center's 

next issue of Tule Review.
For info about these and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
 during the week.

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