Smack in the Center of It All

Long-time Northern California publisher (and heckuva poet) Crawdad Nelson has published a book for Eskimo Pie Girl Rebecca Morrison. The book is called The Cook Inlet Poems, a series of poems about growing up in Alaska. Copies can be ordered for $5 from Crawdad (Flyway Press) at crawdiddlydad@yahoo.com. The book includes a couple of photos, plus a beautiful drawing of Mt. Redoubt by Crawdad. Rebecca's poetry will also be seen in Snake 8, and click on the link to her Eskimo Pie e-journal to the right of this. Here is a sample of Rebecca's fine work:


THE CENTER OF IT ALL
—Rebecca Morrison, Sacramento

In the center of the house
was a clean white space
on the braided green rug
where I sat by the fire
in my clean soft pajamas.
White light came through
the many windows from
the sunlit forest.
The clean and the warm
came from my mother
in her freshly ironed
bright-flowered dress
standing in the kitchen,
humming and washing
and baking.
She always said,
You must have good light.
And I grew in that
bright circle,
twirling in her gaze
beside the old fold-up
phonograph, crisp piano
notes falling like
perfect snowflakes
as I choreographed
the enchanted forest,
lying on the clean
spotless rug,
reading my story
book aloud to
her in that perfect
light in the
center of it all.

____________________

Thanks, Rebecca! Check The Book Collector for collections of Crawdad's poetry, too.

And don’t forget: Bill Gainer’s RattleRead is NEXT Wednesday at The Book Collector, not tonight. Dec. 14, not the 7th.


CONSUMMATION OF GRIEF
—Charles Bukowski

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and all the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines...

it matters little

very little love is not so bad
or very little life

what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this

I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

___________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)

Seeing Ourselves in Weasel

Mustela frenata
(Foster Meadow, Eldorado National Forest)

I suck air between tongue and teeth:
universal squeal of animal distress.
Birdwatchers know this lure:
the little creatures’ soft shrill shriek.

High above the red fir they come winging
dipping low to better see;
warblers, perhaps nuthatch or chickadee—
too fast—too high to name.

Then, from below, eight feet away
undulating with a sinuous flow:
size of a squirrel but richer brown,
black tipped tail an ink-dipped brush,

she smoothly glides wave-like to disappear
beneath this deck of logs where I’m perched.
I think of her in winter white as ermine
seeking nests of sleeping mouse and vole.

Sleek, lithe, intent—why is her summer name
spoken with contempt?
Is she as evil as we think?
Or do we simply see ourselves in weasel?

—Hatch Graham, Somerset

________________________

Thanks, Hatch! This poem originally appeared in Rattlesnake Review.

This just in: This coming Friday (12/9), The Other Voice meets at 7:30 pm in the library of the Davis Unitarian Church (27074 Patwin Road, Davis). The featured poets are JoAnn Anglin, Nora Staklis, and Tom Goff, who together lead the monthly PoemSpirits readings at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento. Open Mic follows, so bring along a poem to share...perhaps a favorite poem of light. (Info: Allegra 530-753-2634 or Betty 530-753-1432.) About the poets:

JoAnn Anglin was an early member of Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun and the Third Sunday Writing Group. Her work has appeared in Poetry Now and in many anthologies, including The Sacramento Anthology: 100 Poems; Cantos y Cuentos: Poems and Stories; and The Pagan Muse. A chapbook of her work, Words Like Knives, Like Feathers, was published by Rattlesnake Press in 2004.

Nora Staklis draws strength and inspiration for her poetry from both her American and Latvian ancestries. Nora's work has been widely published in journals such as Tule Review, Rattlesnake Review, and American River Review, and in the anthologies, Poets Against the War and Flowers of Love. One of her poems is soon to be choreographed for a dance to be performed for the Renaissance Winter Solstice.

Tom Goff is the author of Field of the Cloth of Gold published by Poet's Corner Press. His poems have also appeared in many journals including Rattlesnake Review; Tiger's Eye: A Journal of Poetry; Poetry Depth Quarterly and in anthologies. He also writes critical reviews of literary works. New work is forthcoming in Blood on the Page, an anthology of writing as part of the healing process, compiled by Dr. (and Poet) Chip Spann.

And don’t forget: Bill Gainer’s RattleRead is NEXT Wednesday at The Book Collector, not this one. Dec. 14, not the 7th.

Speaking of JoAnn Anglin and Chip Spann, JoAnn will be debuting in this issue of the Snake as Interviewer-in-Residence; her first piece will be about Chip and how his poetry-as-healing program at Sutter has grown over the few years since he first established it.


AT A LOOSE END
—D.H. Lawrence

Many years have I still to burn, detained
Like a candle-flame on this body; but I enclose
Blue shadow within me, a presence which lives contained
In my flame of living, the invisible heart of the rose.

So through these days, while I burn on the fuel of life,
What matter the stuff I lick up in my daily flame;
Seeing the core is a shadow inviolate,
A darkness that dreams my dream for me, ever the same.

________________________

—Medusa (sorry to be late today; our 'Net server has been down)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)

Let the Snake Wait Under His Weed

A SORT OF A SONG
—William Carlos Williams

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.

—through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

______________________

The Snake is indeed waiting under his weed as I type-type-type; Snake 8 will "hit the stands" next week. Be sure to attend Bill Gainer's reading on DECEMBER 14 at The Book Collector (not the 7th!) and pick up a free copy. Also appearing that evening will be Indigo Moor, who will read from his new littlesnake broadside, Nomads. Herewith is a sample:


NOMADS
—Indigo Moor, Rancho Cordova

For six days we purify metal.
Sleepwalking through sulfur clouds.
A few pennies forged with every muscled
clang of pig iron and rust. Friday’s
whistle, our Pavlovian call to bedlam,
triggers us down to dogs.

Saturday, we hang our checks
on new shoes, silk ties, gold chains.
Scrub iron ore from our fingers,
coke dust from faces before slow fading
from day to night. A bottle of gin
passes between us. We stiff leg
and hip drop a pimp down the boulevard.

We tug our hats down—our faces
become curved horizons with brown,
felt suns rising askew. Walking the bricks,
we crave music worth killing for:
manna soaked in bourbon; grilled
over hot Mississippi coals.

The Easy Lion Jazz Joint exhales
the intoxicating vibration
of wood-stomp and tremor-slide.
Bass so cold it shatters hot breath.
The sax man’s vibrato wrenches
moans from our bodies.
Sways us into fevered cattails
wrapped in sweat and silk.
Spit-shined leather begins to fly.

Two more juke joints before sunrise.
A plate of ribs and a whiskey sour.
Sunday morning is a hangover
hard as an I-beam stove into our heads.
All too soon, the factory whistle.

___________________

Thanks, Indigo!

Tonight (12/5), the Sacramento Poetry Center features Mary Zeppa and Stan Zumbiel at HQ (25th and R Sts., Sac.), 7:30 pm. It's all about—


THE POEM
—William Carlos Williams

It's all in
the sound. A song.
Seldom a song.
It should

be a song—made of
particulars, wasps,
a gentian—something
immediate, open

scissors, a lady's
eyes—waking
centrifugal, centripetal

____________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)

The Same Message Holds

AMEN
—R.S. Thomas

And God said: How do you know?
And I went out into the fields
At morning and it was true.

Nothing denied it, neither the bowed man
On his knees, nor the animals,
Nor the birds notched on the sky's

Surface. His heart was broken
Far back, and the beasts yawned
Their boredom. Under the song

Of the larks, I heard the wheels turn
Rustily. But the scene held;
The cold landscape returned my stare;

There was no answer. Accept; accept.
And under the green capitals,
The molecules and the blood's virus.

_____________________

A WELSHMAN AT ST. JAMES' PARK
—R.S. Thomas

I am invited to enter these gardens
As one of the public, and to conduct myself
In accordance with the regulations;
To keep off the grass and sample flowers
Without touching them; to admire birds
That have been seduced from wildness by
Bread they are pelted with.
I am not one
Of the public; I have come a long way
To realise it. Under the sun's
Feathers are the sinews of stone,
The curved claws.
I think of a Welsh hill
That is without fencing, and the men,
Bosworth blind, who left the heather
And the high pastures of the heart. I fumble
In the pocket's emptiness; my ticket
Was in two pieces. I kept half.

_______________________

GOOD
—R.S. Thomas

The old man comes out on the hill
and looks down to recall earlier days
in the valley. He sees the stream shine,
the church stand, hears the litter of
children's voices. A chill in the flesh
tells him that death is not far off
now: it is the shadow under the great boughs
of life. His garden has herbs growing.
The kestrel goes by with fresh prey
in its claws. The wind scatters the scent
of wild beans. The tractor operates
on the earth's body. His grandson is there
ploughing; his young wife fetches him
cakes and tea and a dark smile. It is well.

______________________

Today's Sacramento Bee also has Bill Gainer's reading listed for this week. Yikes. It must've been me! Well, the same message holds as yesterday: the reading is the 14th, not the 7th.

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)

Gainer Alert!

On Wednesday, December 14, Bill Gainer will read at The Book Collector (1008 24th St., Sac.) to celebrate the release of his new Rattlechap, To Run With The Savages (7:30 p.m.). Unfortunately, Sacramento News & Review has the date listed as Dec. 7. Oy. December 7 would be an inauspicious day for such hilarity, being (1) Pearl Harbor Day, (2) the anniversary of my mother's death, and (3) the anniversary of the death of my all-time favorite cat. So be sure you show up on DECEMBER 14, and not the 7th. Also premiering that night will be Rattlesnake Review #8, as well as littlesnake broadside #19 by Indigo Moor.

Also listing Dec. 7 is Eskimo Pie Girl, Rebecca Morrison's local poetry website. I'm putting her site on my "instant" sites (see links on the right) because it's such a well-laid-out listing of interviews, poetry, and other local poet-phernalia. You should check it on a regular basis to stay in touch with the Local Scene. Just be aware that her listing for Bill's reading should say the 14th.

Here is a sample of the irrepressible Bill, who comes to us all the way from Grass Valley:


CHINESE FOR LUNCH
—William S. Gainer

It's a mystery,
why some insist
on using chopsticks.
Messing with their food
like that.

If you want to play—
get a ball,
if you want to eat—
eat,
if you want to impress me,
then pick up
the check.

____________________

TO RUN WITH THE SAVAGES
—William S. Gainer

Most are one or the other
but to run with the savages
you need to be both:
mean
and tough.

Everything is met
with eyes focused.
No conversation,
no running to momma,
no place to hide.

To survive
you need to learn
to take your meat
fresh.
Remember:
They don’t want to kill you,
they want to eat you
alive.

_______________________

Thanks, Bill! And don't forget that Dennis Schmitz will be reading tomorrow night (Sunday 12/4) for PoemSpirits at the Unitarian Church on Sierra Blvd. in Sacramento at 6 pm. Drive around to the back; it's in Rooms 7-8.

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)

The Words are Wild

Three poetry readings tonight: Susan Kelly-DeWitt and friends in Davis, Beth Lisick at Luna's, Taylor Graham/Phil Weidman/Kathy Kieth in El Dorado Hills. Check the last few posts for details. No matter which end of the county you live in, there's something going on near you.

Taylor Graham, as Energizer-in-Residence for Rattlesnake Review, encouraged us to write triolets for this upcoming issue, and she got a good response. Which brings to mind Gerard Manley Hopkins' "A Trio of Triolets":

No. 1—Is there any news today?

'No news in the Times to-day,'
Each man tells his next-door neighbour.
He, to see if what they say,
'No news in the Times to-day'
Is correct, must plough his way
Through that: after three hours' labour,
'No news in the Times to-day,'
Each man tells his next-door neighbour.


No.2—Cockle's Antibilious Pills

'When you ask for Cockle's Pills,
Beware of spurious imitations.'
Yes, when you ask for every ill's
Cure, when you ask for Cockle's Pills,
Some hollow counterfeit that kills
Would fain mock that which heals the nations.
Oh, when you ask for Cockles' Pills
Beward of heartless imitations.


No. 3—'The Child is Father to the Man' (Wordsworth)

'The child is father to the man.'
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
'The child is father to the man.'
No, what the poet did write ran,
'The man is father to the child.'
'The child is father to the man!'
How can he be? The words are wild.

___________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)

And Miles To Go...

Winter is finally here, with some rainy miles to go before the Solstice turns us around and the days start getting longer again.

WINTER'S WORK
—Jane Blue, Sacramento

Rain scrawls down windowpanes like smashed bugs.
Makes me remember my California childhood.
We trimmed the Christmas tree with aluminum icicles
mother called rain. Every winter I unfurled
strands of it, placing each laboriously on the tree
until they grew into a downpour. Afterwards
I packed each disintegrating string back into the skein
of rain, out of thrift, the nemesis of Christmas.
One Christmas day the uncle who always needed
to get a breath of air, swung up the stairs to the porch
and yelled, "It's snowing, it's snowing!" He led me out
with his big firm hand. Then all the cousins rushed
out of the house and we tried to catch snowflakes
on our tongues. Fog blew in and hushed everything,
but it didn't measure up to snow. Cards came,
with a single house in fields of snow, windows
glowing, a fox popped out of its den, unafraid,
and there were no quarreling families inside.

____________________

Thanks, Jane! See more of Jane Blue's poetry—and some of her photographs—in Snake 8, coming to warm up your cockles in mid-December.


SONG AT THE YEAR'S TURNING
—R.S. Thomas

Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream decays.
The props crumble. The familiar ways
Are stale with tears trodden underfoot.
The heart's flower withers at the root.
Bury it, then, in history's sterile dust.
The slow years shall tame your tawny lust.

Love deceived him; what is there to say
The mind brought you by a better way
To this despair? Lost in the world's wood
You cannot stanch the bright menstrual blood.
The earth sickens; under naked boughs
The frost comes to barb your broken vows.

Is there blessing? Light's peculiar grace
In cold splendour robes this tortured place
For strange marriage. Voices in the wind
Weave a garland where a mortal sinned.
Winter rots you; who is there to blame?
The new grass shall purge you in its flame.

_______________________

LORE
—R.S. Thomas

Job Davies, eight-five
Winters old, and still alive
After the slow poison
And treachery of the seasons.

Miserable? Kick my arse!
It needs more than the rain's hearse,
Wind-drawn, to pull me off
The great perch of my laugh.

What's living but courage?
Paunch full of hot porridge,
Nerves strengthened with tea,
Peat-black, dawn found me

Mowing where the grass grew,
Bearded with golden dew.
Rhythm of the long scythe
Kept this tall frame lithe.

What to do? Stay green.
Never mind the machine,
Whose fuel is human souls.
Live large, man, and dream small.

_____________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)