—Public Domain Photos Courtesy of Medusa
SHIRT
Sew me a shirt of eighty-percent starch
with flinty gluten buttons,
a collar of gene-tweaked cells
to drip alkaloid into my blood
to make me icy cool,
molecular crowbars against fine lines,
and plucking at the nerves
run to tender trigger points
when my fool tongue itches
to say the truths I will regret,
a tail of fancy lockpicks
(perfection when perfection works)
and when I hit the pillow
have it stand by my feet,
pleated, loyal, and sage,
till cock crows pleated dawn.
Sew me a shirt of eighty-percent starch
with flinty gluten buttons,
a collar of gene-tweaked cells
to drip alkaloid into my blood
to make me icy cool,
molecular crowbars against fine lines,
and plucking at the nerves
run to tender trigger points
when my fool tongue itches
to say the truths I will regret,
a tail of fancy lockpicks
(perfection when perfection works)
and when I hit the pillow
have it stand by my feet,
pleated, loyal, and sage,
till cock crows pleated dawn.
GRAVITY WAVE RHAPSODY
I want the collision of our forms,
dearest someone,
to cause interferometer researchers
to call asking us
to stop, as instruments ping
madly off-scale.
I want my wayward silver
and the gold of yours
to be alloyed into a substance,
hip to hip,
concentration tapering toward
eight lucent limbs.
I want all spacetime to be kinked
by our encounter
a hammer blow's lasting mark
on a brass cauldron
down all the pendant ages
past the collision.
I want historians to number years
from the epoch when
we first made mutual landfall,
our selves collapsed,
quadrupole waves spreading out
from that moment.
I want our minds' moorings
to be so shaken
that afterwards any text messages
mundanes might view
would show up in a tangled
Glagolitic cipher.
I want all scholarly discussion of
our rendezvous
to cast it as a meaning-free zone,
a quiddity,
a something beyond any attempt
to interpret it.
I want our psyches to ring with
both immanent life
and sempiternal void, past
sex and substance
our potent new branch
of concrete math.
I want the collision of our forms,
dearest someone,
to cause interferometer researchers
to call asking us
to stop, as instruments ping
madly off-scale.
I want my wayward silver
and the gold of yours
to be alloyed into a substance,
hip to hip,
concentration tapering toward
eight lucent limbs.
I want all spacetime to be kinked
by our encounter
a hammer blow's lasting mark
on a brass cauldron
down all the pendant ages
past the collision.
I want historians to number years
from the epoch when
we first made mutual landfall,
our selves collapsed,
quadrupole waves spreading out
from that moment.
I want our minds' moorings
to be so shaken
that afterwards any text messages
mundanes might view
would show up in a tangled
Glagolitic cipher.
I want all scholarly discussion of
our rendezvous
to cast it as a meaning-free zone,
a quiddity,
a something beyond any attempt
to interpret it.
I want our psyches to ring with
both immanent life
and sempiternal void, past
sex and substance
our potent new branch
of concrete math.
SEE WHAT THEY’VE MADE US DO
one fine jet of plasma:
come, rabbi,
prophesy;
they're all bastards
draped across false ribs
yaassir alibaba,
fat man's chattel by
marriage,
whose slant of light
slipped off by Makkah
backplane IR bright,
van Winkle process counts
down...
vitamin V:
velvet sledgehammers
moss-crusted granite pregnant with lies
the front glass spidered,
stars unstuck, they flap on
high,
drawn by our drowbells
hex-winged cloudbanks
phalanges
by the dozens, aye, by the
hundreds
sea bat bints
smooth their fur
ridged fish-scale skin
round each arm
wires sparkle
clusters of clammy sockets
to bronze fingerpads
slimy nets filled with night wharf not-fish
fractal prods
jab through polyform
into muscle,
soup spoon Sal
negates her subtrahend
soon the pseudarch's
chrysanthemum chrysalis
stirs—
retroviral
mofo nodules writhe
flesh-picking larks
hack kkkkkkkkkkaaaaaaaaughghghhhh
a lesion in each
lobe's
well-proportioned
wax bipedomas
the death of self a five-gram caplet
Xinjiang waltz
ignition sequence:
Linear A
hard vacuum
inner eyelids clamped shut
one fine jet of plasma:
come, rabbi,
prophesy;
they're all bastards
draped across false ribs
yaassir alibaba,
fat man's chattel by
marriage,
whose slant of light
slipped off by Makkah
backplane IR bright,
van Winkle process counts
down...
vitamin V:
velvet sledgehammers
moss-crusted granite pregnant with lies
the front glass spidered,
stars unstuck, they flap on
high,
drawn by our drowbells
hex-winged cloudbanks
phalanges
by the dozens, aye, by the
hundreds
sea bat bints
smooth their fur
ridged fish-scale skin
round each arm
wires sparkle
clusters of clammy sockets
to bronze fingerpads
slimy nets filled with night wharf not-fish
fractal prods
jab through polyform
into muscle,
soup spoon Sal
negates her subtrahend
soon the pseudarch's
chrysanthemum chrysalis
stirs—
retroviral
mofo nodules writhe
flesh-picking larks
hack kkkkkkkkkkaaaaaaaaughghghhhh
a lesion in each
lobe's
well-proportioned
wax bipedomas
the death of self a five-gram caplet
Xinjiang waltz
ignition sequence:
Linear A
hard vacuum
inner eyelids clamped shut
ORNITHOSUCHUS ON THE DNIEPER
Get out of here with all that spider sheen
of equal parts of tears combined with milk
an attitude of genius wrapped in silk
a shadow-shape of Bess La Belle Poitrine.
It sickens us while dime-store glitter queens
drag Fenian debutantes from dreams of chalk,
debating godhead stemming from the yolk
which crushes bulk reversion to the mean.
And when the warbirds pirouette back south
keep still about Maureen's stacked autumn squalls
and thus deprive weak whelks of idle chatter.
You made me trade my pinballs for your mouth,
all battered and iced as soapstone spalls.
Let every good thing we once knew now scatter.
OUR NOVA
The space between us tents and folds
without seams. The vital force
you and I take from it, shall turn
our spirit emanations to ions.
This silent explosion in vacuo
incinerates all our qualms,
fences us round and round,
scorches away censorious thought.
For now we'll spend our time this way,
plasma skin and bone and heart,
against vacuum, against the cold:
as you and I convert to crystal.
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
—Ernest Hemingway
_____________________
Newcomer Richard Magahiz lives in Wilmington with his wife and spends much of his time writing, gardening, making music, and reading. Hs says he tries to live an ordered life in harmony with all things natural and created but one that follows unexpected paths. He's spent much of his time wrangling computers as a day job, but now when he's not making music he is writing. His work has received nominations for Rhysling, Dwarf Stars, Pushcart, and Best of the Web awards. His chapbook collection, The Reducing Flame, was published in 2025, and his website is at https://zeroatthebone.us/. Welcome to the Kitchen, Richard, and don’t be a stranger!
______________________
—Medusa
The space between us tents and folds
without seams. The vital force
you and I take from it, shall turn
our spirit emanations to ions.
This silent explosion in vacuo
incinerates all our qualms,
fences us round and round,
scorches away censorious thought.
For now we'll spend our time this way,
plasma skin and bone and heart,
against vacuum, against the cold:
as you and I convert to crystal.
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
—Ernest Hemingway
_____________________
Newcomer Richard Magahiz lives in Wilmington with his wife and spends much of his time writing, gardening, making music, and reading. Hs says he tries to live an ordered life in harmony with all things natural and created but one that follows unexpected paths. He's spent much of his time wrangling computers as a day job, but now when he's not making music he is writing. His work has received nominations for Rhysling, Dwarf Stars, Pushcart, and Best of the Web awards. His chapbook collection, The Reducing Flame, was published in 2025, and his website is at https://zeroatthebone.us/. Welcome to the Kitchen, Richard, and don’t be a stranger!
______________________
—Medusa
Richard Magahiz
For info about
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.
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.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
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.
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.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
