No Dogwoods, No Leap Week

Word Play
Photo courtesy of D.R. Wagner

THE LITTLE STORY
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

In the little story
The house could sing.
The trees had faces.
Their thoughts had wings.

They called them birds.
They kept them in their arms.
They played among the branches.
Their songs were magic charms.

In the little story,
The end of the day was long.
The twilight went forever
As it eased across the lawns.

There were dragons, any color.
They could be spoken to.
They were fierce, then tame, then magic.
You could watch them as they grew.

In the little story
With its adventures, plays and tales,
The wind would fill the sails,
Wandering the sea with whales,
Calling them by name.

They answered like an old friend.
They talked about the plains,
Places far from water,
Where they could remember names.

Like buffalo and Indian tribes,
Things they weren’t supposed to know.
In the little story, all that seems,
Was so, each thing, and real in time.

A moment, a year, a million years
Or more. That is why we must repeat It.
That is why the tales still grow.

So I’ll tell you not a thing more.
I’ll leave it for you to see,
And when you do, believe it
And come tell the rest to me.

__________________

Submissions opportunities:

•••Polymer Grove is putting together a podcast (as well as a website) and is interested in your poetry/experimental-spoken-word audio recordings. If you have anything to submit, please email plymrgrv@mac.com. By the way, Robbie Grossklaus, Polymer Grove Editor/Publisher, will be reading tonight at the Sac. Central Library, 828 I St., Sacramento, 6pm, along with Brad Buchanan of Roan Press and Kathy Kieth—I forget what she does...

•••Song of the San Joaquin, the poetry quarterly for the Central Valley, is accepting poetry for the Summer Issue through June 15. PO Box 1161, Modesto CA 95353-1161. For guidelines: Cleo Griffith, 543-1776, cleor36@yahoo.com or go to www.chaparralpoets.org/SSJ.html

__________________

Carl Schwartz writes: In the United States, the week begins on Sunday. In the United Kingdom, it ends on Sunday. In the Kathykiethian calendar, what day does the Seed of the Week usually begin on? Do you make adjustments from time to time with Leap Weeks? Actually, the SOW week begins on Tuesday, slightly wonky like everything else we do around here. But, since there are rarely deadlines for SOWs, it has no end—unless it's a giveaway, in which case the deadline is clearly stated and hammered away at. So no, no Leap Weeks, though that's an intriguing concept. This week, our SOW is Cliffhangers, and here are some dandy contributions:


FEAR OF SAILING
—Richard Zimmer, Sacramento

The sailor from his love has gone.
The sailor from the mainland’s gone.
Now parted from his love…
May never meet his dear again…
May never meet again.

Ancient sailors would sail on unknown waters
of the dark broad sea, where gulls and whales
play. Where the sea moans with many voices,
and gaping hungry mouths of sharks await,

An old seaman gets ready to sail the uncharted
waters. He feels a mindless fear stray into his
mind…fear of a noise in his ear, fear of anything.
Fear of nothing…some fancy of his brain…

He tries to throw those thoughts away, knowing
that God is at his head…the Devil at his feet…
both tugging on his soul so it will grow. Then
he smiles and thinks of all he needs to survive...

That fire will burn, rain will get you wet, and laws
being laws, have their own punishments. Then he
sighs and goes to sleep, like a lamb with no sense,
who lets himself be clipped by people for his wool.

__________________

CLIFFHANGER
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

All night the wind performed its wire-tap
and lightning arrowed down,
thunder testified
and earth groaned like the slaughterer’s truck.
All night you hung by a fingernail—
in and out of dream—over the black gulf
of your imagination.

By morning there was nothing left
of storm, only this evidence
in daylight: the world re-drawn
by a steady hand
as Tuesday follows Monday.

__________________

PRECIPICE
—Taylor Graham

(Pocahontas by Annie Leibovitz)

Running with a deer—almost a deer herself,
fawnskin fleet and wild—she ought
(that iron English word)
to look where she’s going.
See how water and the woods
and even sweet blue sky are running
away. (That ship already anchored
just offshore.) There will be
cliffs ahead. Does she think
if she runs fast enough
she might fly like the deer?

_________________

Today's LittleNip:

not saying i'm great
it's just that
i've got lots to say
and i type really fast

—Charles Mariano, Sacramento

Up here in Pollock Pines, they say the snow season isn't over
until we get snow on the dogwoods.
So far, no dogwoods, still snow...
—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

__________________

—Medusa

Speak of Oranges

Our Seed of the Week is Cliffhangers.
Ever feel like you're hanging on by
your fingernails?

BITTER WOOD
—Martin Carter

Here be dragons, and bitter
cups made of wood; and the hooves
of horses where they should not
sound. Yet on the roofs of houses
walk the carpenters, as once did
cartographers on the spoil
of splendid maps. Here is where
I am, in a great geometry, between
a raft of ants and the green sight
of the freedom of a tree, made
of that same bitter wood.

__________________

How come my momma doesn't do opera?
She gets loudly dramatic about household things
that ordinary people can handle on their own
without their spouse or their adult child's consolation.
"Oh no the kitchen disposal drain backed up
what am I going to do!”
or "Oh no, the dishwasher didn't run!”
"Oh the washing machine is leaking!"
she trills stuff like this at the top her lungs
as if the house had caught fire
or the whole block has to hear it.
Yet her whole life, she claimed she can't sing songs
nor put her voice to use doing gospel or blues
and possibly be making some money
instead of just being Dad's house frau…

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

___________________

NOW I PRIZE YELLOW STRAWBERRIES
—José Garcia Villa

Now I prize yellow strawberries—
With their dignities of silk and
Their archbishopal opulence—
Rivaling God the peacock only.

Assuming neither space nor time,
A purely intellectual fruit,
Yet of matchless elegance. This
Is my intellectual religion.

For I would not have bishops lean
Nor peacocks irreligious, but
Temper them to that great gold pitch
Of the first-ascending bridegroom.

So, to the tune of yellow strawberries,
Announce to philosophy my arrival—
O a little irreverent perhaps
But religiously, peerlessly musical.

___________________

INVITING A TIGER FOR THE WEEKEND
—José Garcia Villa

Inviting a tiger for a weekend.
The gesture is not heroics but discipline.
The memoirs will be splendid.

Proceed to dazzlement, Augustine.
Banish little birds, graduate to tiger.
Proceed to dazzlement, Augustine.

Any tiger of whatever colour
The same as jewels any stone
Flames always essential morn.

The guest is luminous, peer of Blake.
The host is gallant, eye of Death.
If you will do this you will break

The little religions for my sake.
Invite a tiger for a weekend,
Proceed to dazzlement, Augustine.

__________________

I WAS SPEAKING OF ORANGES TO A LADY
—José Garcia Villa

I was speaking of oranges to a lady
of great goodness when O the lovely

giraffes came. Soon it was all their
splendor about us and my throat

ached with the voice of great larks.
O the giraffes were so beautiful as

if they meant to stagger us by such
overwhelming vision: Let us give

each a rose said my beautiful lady
of great goodness and we sent the

larks away to find roses. It was
while the larks were away that

the whitest giraffe among them
and the goldest one among them

O these two loveliest ones sought
and found us: bent before us two

kneeling with their divine heads
bowed. And it was then we knew

why all this loveliness was sent
us: the white prince and the golden

princess kneeling: to adore us
brightly: we the Perfect Lovers.

_________________

Today's LittleNip:

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

—George Bernard Shaw

Hurley Kunert, who also sleeps in the sink
Photo by Michelle Kunert

_______________

—Medusa

While You Lived

Brain Drain
Photo courtesy of Carl Bernard Schwartz

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

We are so lucky today
to have word processors
with all those defaults
that do the thinking for us.

Once they work the bugs out of Spell Czech,
we can expect to see even more handy AI shortcuts:

The Provincial Default:
Type in “America” and AI
will recognize that as USA only,
automatically filtering out
any references to of all those other Americas
beyond our borders.

The Spin Default:
Use words such as “liberal” or “conservative”
even in an innocent recipe for cookie dough,
and AI will automatically adjust the context
of the surrounding words
to reflect a political ideology.

The Stakeholder Default:
AI will reduce any mention of an individual’s effort
no matter how great the personal pain and sacrifice,
to terms that quantify a business outcome
for people who invested money in the venture.

The Fanfare Default:
AI will present a 2-3 minute parade
of your credentials and testimonials,
complete with loud musical accompaniment,
each time you submit your
carefully crafted resume.

The Grieving Widow Default:
Begin typing a letter to anyone
who has demanded your immediate response,
and AI will compose a form letter
tearfully reminding the recipient(s)
that you are presently occupied with concerns
that are far more important than theirs.
AI will then ask them for a donation to your cause.

__________________

THE HERE AND THERE OF RECIDIVISM
—Carl Bernard Schwartz

You are not supposed to be here,
you are supposed to be out there.
You can’t get there from here.
Why did you come here
and not go over there?

So you started out closer
to here than to there.
We all face challenges,
that is not an excuse.
Many of your family and friends
are here, not out there.
That in itself,
like touching finger to flame,
should have taught you something.

Out there, most people
are not perfectly good,
but they usually respect
what another values.
In here, most people
are not perfectly bad,
but there is really nothing to value,
save the notion of not being here.
That is not a transferable skill.

There are a few ways to get out of here,
but none of them is guaranteed
to get you over there.
Of course, I am not supposed
to be here either,
so don’t listen to me.

__________________

Thanks to Carl Schwartz for some poems and "drain" photos today; I especially like the Brain Drain. Been there...


The Spring ‘10 Issue of Convergence is online!

Managing Editor Cynthia Linville writes to say that the Spring issue of Convergence: An Online Journal of Poetry and Art can be seen at www.convergence-journal.com/spring10. Look for work by Amy Bernays, Jeff Foster, Sasha Geffen, Anne Germanacos, Kyle Hemmings, Richard Luftig, Simon Perchik, Elahzar Rao, Brenton Rossow, Nate Shearer, and J. Zimmerman in the Spring 2010 issue. In addition, Editors' Choice pages and photos throughout the website are updated monthly, so stop by often. The site currently features new work by poet Viola Weinberg, artist Francis Raven, and photographers James Lee Jobe, Daniel Rinne, Casey Kretzmer, Christopher Flemming, Chris Jackson, and Brent Wiggans.


This week in NorCal Poetry:

(for a more complete listing of poetry events and workshops, go to eskimopie.net)

•••Monday (4/5), 7:30pm: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Visions of Joanna Newsom: a reading with Rae Gouirand, Tim Kahl, Christian Kiefer, Brad Buchanan and others to celebrate Roan Press’s 2010 release of her work. Sometimes mentioned as one of the most prominent members of the psychedelic folk movement, Joanna Newsom is a harpist and songwriter from Nevada City. Her music incorporates elements from Appalachian folk music and avant-garde modernism. She has recorded the following CDs: The Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City, 2004); Ys (Drag City, 2006); Have One On Me (Drag City, 2010). She is the second cousin, twice removed, of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom.

•••Weds. (4/7), 8pm: The Poetry Night Reading Series is proud to welcome Davis Poet Laureate Allegra Silberstein and Davis Poet Susan Wolbarst at Bistro 33 at 226 F St. in Davis. In 2010, Allegra Jostad Silberstein was named the first-ever Poet Laureate of the City of Davis. A longtime Davis teacher (now retired), dancer, and philanthropist, Allegra is known widely for her work as coordinator for The Other Voice, a reading series that takes place at the UU Church of Davis, and for her support of local writers. Her poems have been published in Poetry Depth Quarterly, The Yolo Crow, Blue Unicorn, Rattlesnake Review, Poetry Now, Iodine Poetry, Poetry of the New West, California Quarterly, and other journals. She has also placed poems in a variety of anthologies, including The Sacramento Anthology: One Hundred Poems, Gatherings, A Woman’s Place, and Where Do I Walk. Her first chapbook, Acceptance, was published in 1999, and In the Folds was published by Rattlesnake Press in 2005. She is currently working on a full-length book of poems.

Susan Wolbarst’s poetry has appeared in Naugatuck River Review and Poetry Now. In 2008 Susan placed first in the Sacramento Poetry Center Poetry Contest for her poem “Diagnosis,” and she won an honorable mention in the same contest for “In the Ladies Room” in 2009. A longtime Davis resident who has been published in The Yolo Crow and elsewhere, Susan Wolbarst writes poetry, short stories, and essays.

Attendees are encouraged to arrive early at Bistro 33 to secure a table, and to sign up for a spot on the Open Mic list. The Poetry Night Reading Series, hosted by Andy Jones and produced by Brad Henderson, occurs on the first Wednesday of the month at Bistro 33, and third Thursday of every month at the John Natsoulas Gallery, both at 8 P.M., with an open microphone segment at 9 P.M. Info: poetryindavis.blogspot.com/.

•••Weds. (4/7), 6pm: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Sacramento Poetry Publishers Robbie Grossklaus, Brad Buchanan and Kathy Kieth reading their work and talking about publishing at the First Wednesday Library Reading. Hosted by Sacramento Poet Laureate Bob Stanley, Sacramento Room, Central Library, 828 I St., Sacramento. Info: 916/979-9706 or www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org.

•••Thurs. (4/8), 7-9pm: Outta the Blue Poetry Series features Bill Gainer and Michelle Johnson at Roseville Arts Blue Line Gallery, 405 Vernon St., Ste. 100, Roseville. $5 members and students; $15 nonmembers, or sign up for Roseville Arts membership. Info: www.rosevillearts.org or 916-783-4117.

•••Thurs. (4/8), 7-9pm: First session of the Screenwriting Class at 25th and R with acclaimed Writer/Director/Producer Walter Klenhard. The free class will be taught by Walter Klenhard, a writer and director with over twenty produced movies. The class (limited to ten students) will meet April 8, 15, 22, May 6, 13, and 20 from 7-9pm, (except 7-10pm on May 20). SPC and Room to Write are located at 1719 25th Street, next to Alliance Francaise in the R25 Arts Complex at 25th and R Sts. in Sacramento. Classes are free, but we are requesting a $5 per class per student donation ($30 for the six class series) to benefit the SPC/Matrix Arts building fund. To register, contact Walter at WKlen@aol.com/.

•••Sat. (4/10), 2-4:30pm: Join Sacramento's Poet Laureate Bob Stanley, NY Times Best-Selling Suspense author Brenda Novak, and other local writers as they discuss their craft at the Local Author Appreciation Fair at the Folsom Public Library, Georgia Murray Building, 411 Stafford St., Folsom. This free event will feature author presentations, question and answer session, book sales and signing, and refreshments. Come for the entire fair or drop in when you can! For more information, visit the library’s website at library.folsom.ca.us or call the Adult Services desk at (916) 355-7357.

•••Sat. (4/10), 7:30pm: US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan will read at Modest Junior College. To order tickets: mjc.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=234354

•••Sunday (4/11), 3-5pm: Poets Club of Lincoln presents Sacramento Poet Laureate Bob Stanley. A creative writing and English professor at CSU Sacramento, Sacramento City College, Solano College & UC Davis Extension, Bob has written poetry for over three decades. He’s also president of the Sacramento Poetry Center. Bob has led hundreds of creative writing workshops and readings, and his poems have won a number of awards. Willow Room, Twelve Bridges Library, 485 Twelve Bridges Dr., Lincoln. Free! Open mic: bring up to 3 poems. Sponsored by The Friends of the Lincoln Library.

__________________

DRUNK AS DRUNK ON TURPENTINE
—Pablo Neruda

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made out of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it—our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal—
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowzy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.


(translated from the Spanish by Christopher Logue)

__________________

A DIFFERENT SHIP
—Pablo Neruda

A different ship will sail by on the sea
at its particular hour, it appears,
Not iron with orange
flags flying:
no one knows the port of departure
or the hour:
but all is in readiness.
The finest salon in the fleet, with everything
planned for the passenger's convenience.
Even the spray is spread fine
as the pile of a carpet
with stars in the threads,
and beyond lies the blue
and the green, the ultramarine movement.
Everything waits.
The reefs open out
scrubbed clean and eternal:
they rise from the sand
like a cordon of castles,
a cordon of towers.
All things
are amenable,
all silence, welcome:
even the watchers forget their habitual distractions
and wait for some presence that must not be missed:
they are wearing their sabbatical best,
they have polished their boots,
and slicked down their hair.
They grow old as they wait
and the ship never passes.


(translated from the Spanish by Ben Belitt)

___________________

FINAL
—Pablo Neruda

Matilde, sleeping
that feverish sleep, a day or a year,
here or there,
nailed down
to my backbone, or breaking it,
bleeding real blood,
waking, at times,
or comatose, lost:
clinical beds, foreign windows,
the white uniform of the caretakers,
that sloth in my feet.

Later, those journeys
and my ocean again:
your head on my pillow,

your hands flying
in light, in my light,
my terrain.

How lovely it was to live
while you lived!

The world is bluer, the night
more terrestrial, while I sleep,
grown enormous, in the brief clasp of your hands.


(translated from the Spanish by Ben Belitt)

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

pine needles inches deep hug the ground
no one lives here

—Ikkyu

__________________

—Medusa

Storm Drain
Photo by Carl Bernard Schwartz

Eons in Harmony

Photo from Hubble Space Telescope

WE ARE FIELDS BEFORE EACH OTHER
—St. Thomas Aquinas

How is it they live for eons in such harmony—
the billions of stars—

when most men can barely go a minute
without declaring war in their mind against someone they know.

There are wars where no one marches with a flag,
though that does not keep casualties
from mounting.

Our hearts irrigate this earth.
We are fields before
each other.

How can we live in harmony?
First we need to
know

we are all madly in love
with the same
God.

______________

—Medusa

This Petal The Earth

Photo by Art Beck, San Francisco

SPRINGING RAIN
—Charles Mariano, Sacramento

while i’d never be
accused
of scaling mountains
or skyscrapers
tall-telling tales
of youthful hi-jinks,

there was a few times
back there
where my skill
and expertise
proven
beyond a doubt,

by a well-timed
leapfrog
over a cyclone fence
with cops
in hot pursuit,

was damned near legendary

now,
as i gaze out the door
whimsically,
at the cold and doubt
of this latest
spring rain

the annoying aches
and pains
my leg, my knee
(i forget which),
that demands
some useless medication,
creeps in

i’m reminded
of those high-flying
good ole days
the world
spread wondrously
before me

in a non-stop thrill
of steely-eyed dare
youthful invincibility,

and the fence
that last fence,

i failed to clear

_________________

AND YET ANOTHER RESURRECTION...
—Art Beck

It doesn’t matter.
Easter comes to everyone,
those who keep Lent,
and those who stagger into April
with Christmas still
reeking on their breath.

The dead Greeks, who believed in
inescapable Aphrodite, believed
that in silky spring her whisper’s
impossible to deny:
those who willingly follow

she leads gently
into her thorny dreams,
those who foolishly resist, discover
the nightmare of their
lives. Sweet or bitter
anarchy. The season’s

the same. Another new voice, a sudden
mouthful of rose petals, clothes
that won’t ever fit
until they’re torn to rags.

__________________

CROATIAN WEDDING
—Art Beck

San Jose, California, 1987

Jesus, this is no place to bring blond
Protestants. None of your modern nuns with blue
bonnets and stylish stockings here. The two
lurking in the shadows behind the organ,
wrapped up like black widows of Christ and
smelling like paper, have the faces
of winter oaks. The priest must have been born

with that bushy eyed Slavic scowl. And even though
the wedding party’s dressed in white, pink and baby
blue and strolls up the aisle to Mendelssohn,
the ceremony still begins with the medieval ritual
of churchly guilt.

“Examine... repent... confess... Lamb
of God who takest away...
O Lord I am not worthy... Now and at the hour of
our death... “ Old men from the terrible old
country nod their heads, cross themselves,
and ask the inlaid floor for mercy.
Old women with vicious memories mutter their mea
culpas, but know it’s not their business to forgive.

Outside the open doors on the sunny lawn, the wedding
lamb relaxes on its spit, crackling tubs of ice
wait patiently for whiskey. The orchestra
makes whispery, testing noises under the ribboned trees.
A baby begins to wail in the corner.
The saucy two year old, three rows up, lifts her skirt
to show the boy behind her something interesting.
And the groom, his eye on the door, but as
serious as Jugoslavia, begins to read an excerpt from
Genesis to the congregation. He winces as if it were his
own rib God was taking. His nineteen year old, American
bride—eight months pregnant and worried she’ll
lose her water—also has to go to the pulpit.
She shyly works her way through St. Paul’s tongues
and angels, wants to giggle once but hides it
with a cough. Father Janos (he tolerates but

can hardly approve) takes charge again.
He quickly marries them and then the mass
begins. His mind is on sin, grief and wine.
He sermonizes on the feast at Cana: Jesus
rushed by his virgin mother into the wise world before
his time like any tragic draftee. Doing a light
hearted bit of magic to impress the crafty waiters,
but knowing—like a vague toothache—this
was going to lead to nowhere but pain.

The brown robed altar boy brings cruets as
large as table decanters. Father Janos waves
away the water and watches sternly while the gold
chalice is filled to the top with fortified altar wine.

In honor of the convert bride and the groom’s
great, adopted California home, the mass
is said in broken English rather than Latin.
Father Janos’ voice at the consecration is solemn.
“And knowing His hours were numbered, He asked
for his disciples to eat and for to drink with
Him one time more. He began to tear at bread—
Here, eat this, it is my flesh torn from my bones.
And later, after the meal, finishing wine-
This wine is my blood you are drinking.”

Father Janos raises the enormous chalice
to his lips with trembling hands.
His Adam’s apple dispatches the transubstantiated
wine like a machine gun.
All fourteen stations of the cross stare down with bloodshot
owl eyes on the trembling bride and groom. The dissolving
wafers stick to their tongues like glue. Their new rings
squeeze their knuckles. The bride’s about to faint,
the groom only knows he needs a drink. July’s invaded
the packed church and they’re sweating as much as the night
this all started with the fogged car windows shut
tight at the summer drive in.

And then the organ sets us free. The nasal Balkan voices
of the powerful nuns lead the congregation
in a processional whose words only the old country
initiates understand. Father Janos, still feeling his double
slug of consecrated wine hums along while he walks
with his arms around the captured couple.
His good day’s work accomplished he can already

taste cold beer. Christ, whose first miracle
was to make water into wine for man’s happiness,
has been ritually betrayed, crucified, and buried again.
But the warm wine in his belly (and the tiny
bride, holding her swollen belly out like a tabernacle)
remind the priest in a sudden Eucharistic revelation
that it wasn’t proud Peter, loyal John, or the perfect
Blessed Virgin—but sweet, slutty Magdalene,
who was first to be entrusted
with the news of the resurrection.
Without love, we’re nothing.

__________________

Today's LittleNip(s):

So fragile this petal the earth,
as fragile as
love.

—Mira

_____________

Look
what happens to the scale
when love
holds it.

It
stops
working.

—Kabir

Photo by Art Beck

_______________

—Medusa

Shadows Pushing Shadows

Water Buffalo
Photo Enhancement by D.R. Wagner

SPRING BROKEN
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

Really now, it had nowhere to go
Except toward Summer. Wasn’t
That a given? Wasn’t Spring given
Specific instructions about the dawn,
The new leaves, those choruses of frogs?

Still there it is sulking in the first
Week of April like a schoolgirl
Upset over something she can’t have
But doesn’t really want anyway.

High in the Sierra a late season
Snowstorm has turned the world white
Again. There are no flowers, no buds,
No rivulets babbling and gurgling.
There is so much snow the dawn seems
Late, there is a smile on the lips
Of Spring, if only for a day or two.

Perhaps that will be enough.
We will go to the market and buy
Vegetable seeds, try to recall the
Heat after Easter creeping back, getting stronger.

__________________

This weekend in NorCal poetry:

(for a more complete listing, go to eskimopie.net)

•••Tonight (Friday, 4/2), 7:30pm: Judy Halebsky will read at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Judy trained in Performance Studies at UC Davis and is a member of Sacramento Poetry Center's Tuesday night workshop. Since 2007 she has been in Tokyo studying Japanese literature on a MEXT fellowship. Her new book, Sky=Empty, was chosen by Marvin Bell as the winner of the 2009 New Issues Poetry Prize.

•••Monday (4/5), 7:30pm: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Visions of Joanna Newsom: a reading with Rae Gouirand, Tim Kahl, Christian Kiefer, Brad Buchanan and others to celebrate Roan Press’s 2010 release, Visions of Joanna Newsom by Joanna Newsom. Sometimes mentioned as one of the most prominent members of the psychedelic folk movement, Joanna Newsom is a harpist and songwriter from Nevada City. Her music incorporates elements from Appalachian folk music and avant-garde modernism. She has recorded the following CDs: The Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City, 2004); Ys (Drag City, 2006); Have One On Me (Drag City, 2010). She is the second cousin, twice removed, of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom.

__________________

SOMEHOW THIS DIDN’T SEEM LIKE THE CITY WE LOVED ANYMORE
—D.R. Wagner

The night unwound. A brilliant flashing
From the mouth, a moon in the crook
Of its arm. We walk the streets looking
For a warm place. There are lovely rooms
Just beyond the glass. From the street we can
See people smiling and are able to admire
The beauty of their garments. They seem to
Glow in the reflections from the silver and
Crystal. They show each other their bright
Weapons and slide the slim bullets into the chambers.
From here we cannot hear their laughter.

There are dreams sweeter than this one.
At least here I can hold you for a moment, never
Mind the wind. At least here I can trace the shape
Of your mouth with my finger and gaze into your
Face. It is as warm as the den of a fox. I push my nose
Into the hollow at the base of your neck and smell
The summer of you, honey in the wheat fields.

When the police got here we were leaning
On the window sill still looking at the ruckus
On the street. Nowadays no one wonders what
They are up to. Surely someone has done some
Wrong and deserves this kind of treatment. I
Watch shadows push shadows into cars full of circling
Red and blue lights. Someone says “Oh God” and then
Asks God’s mother for help. There are sounds I wouldn’t
Want to repeat in a poem. The street is awash with red
Weeping. The party lights shine on. I hold you
In my arms for the longer moment. We agree
Never to learn the words to these kinds of songs.

__________________

TOMALES
—D.R. Wagner

Came out last night.
It was snowing on the moon.
Pretty hard too.
Gusting about
like a room full of laundry
looks when you’ve lost something
in it.

Down here, I’m drinking splits,
looking at the road map.
Everything here is relative.
The moonlight on the beer foam,
bubbles rising like the stars.
The storms ease on the moon.
I ease out the back door
to look at the night again. Huge
drifts of snow slide through
the sky. I am amazed by
the intensity of the storm.

The moon moves across the back
of a fog bank.
Fingers of wind make noises,
almost music, across the tops
of the beer bottles.

__________________

I WOULD MAKE NOISES DEEP

in my throat that sounded
so unlike anything I knew
that I would scare myself.

I became ceremony in sound.
A whirl of phlegm, crackling
and sputtering up from the
rooms I guard against time
and her dancing princesses.

A quaking, as if a bear suddenly
came into the room on hind
legs and performed the crushing
of an arm as if it were a
dance and she the music.

Now, autumn pushes clouds
ahead of itself with a yard
full of leaves, I hear these
same sounds again issue
from their scraping across
the drive and think them
a familiar music, something
treasured, like a Nocturne by
Chopin remembered by the fingers
long after the mind has forgotten
the specificity of the notes and rests.

It is a rustling of lace
in a room draped with silences.


—D.R. Wagner

___________________

LA NOCHE
—D.R. Wagner

It bothers me
that the night
is outside minding its own
business while I am
in my room half
expecting you to appear
in the bed next to me.

You, with your brow arched,
surprised to have been
shipped across the night
like so much luggage;
the white roses of sleep
still in your skin.

I would be as surprised.
Hello? It would be like
saying hello to
myself on this late August
night, where the voices
of dogs are so small
in the distance, that my breath
seems huge. no, hellos
would never do.

The dark just outside the
window waits for me to put
the lights out. It has ways
of getting to me, of opening
the dreams like oranges
and spilling these thoughts
of you all around me,
before I can catch a glimpse
of you shuttling across the
night air, not alarmed
at all by this thinking
it is just the changing
of the season that causes
these things. not alarmed
by the love of it. not at all.

Knowing you will wake up
far away from this room,
the night being busy
with so much else. with
traffic and dogs and things
of its fabric as to
make such journeys a
matter of reaching to the end
of the bed and pulling
another blanket up above
your shoulders.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves. The families of weaver ants engage in child labor, holding their larvae like shuttles to spin out the thread that sews the leaves together for their fungus gardens. They exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

—Lewis Thomas

__________________

—Medusa

Photo by D.R. Wagner

Quick—Fetch the Snake!

The 2010 National Poetry Month poster, designed by Marian Bantjes.
Request a free poster for April 2010 from poets.org
(go to National Poetry Month under Poetry Near You)
or sign up to receive free Poem-A-Day emails in April.

I HATE TO POINT THIS OUT, BUT . . .

it looks like we are circling the drain, boss.
The computers all share a virus;
no one has been in reception for a week;
and payroll has not given us our time sheets.

The computers are all crashing with a virus;
they are painting-over your name on the door;
payroll says they don’t have our time sheets
and the lights are beginning to flicker.

They painted-out your name on the door;
a real estate man is measuring the front office;
the lights have all gone out.
Half of the phones are dead.

A real estate man is measuring the hallway;
even the junk mail has stopped coming;
and most of the phones are dead.
They are tearing up the parking lot.

We haven’t gotten any mail for a while;
the ceiling is leaking;
they are re-paving the parking lot
and we are up to our high-tops in water.

The drip, drip, drip in the hallway is distracting.
Someone needs to empty the buckets
because we are up to our knees in water.
Did you see the news van out front?

No one is in reception today and, well,
someone has to empty the buckets.
Did you see the film crew in reception?
I think we’re going down the drain. . . . . Boss?


—Katy Brown, Davis

Photo by Katy Brown

___________________

DIETER’S DILEMMA
—Mitz Sackman, Murphys

A week on a tip
Conference and family visit
Road food
The seduction of no work
Some one else cleans up the mess
The enticing descriptions in menus
Which like the smell of bacon and coffee
Can never deliver what is promised
Too large a serving of everything
I sit contemplating after eating too much
Watching the diet go down the drain

__________________

THREE SENRYU
—Patricia Pashby

echoing nightly
through the upstairs tenement—
the leaky faucet.

she carries washers
in her handbag—repair kit
for drip, drip, drip, drip . . .

finally it stops—
yikes, the drain is backing up—
run and fetch the snake.

__________________

BIRDS IN THE BUTTERFLY BUSH
—Dewell H. Byrd, Eureka

Like a bundle of pin-feathers
you young sparrows flap, fly, fall,
bounce off each other
into my butterfly bush.

Nature taught you to fly
but no one gave you lessons
in how to land on a twig
in a gusty cross-wind.

Feathers tremble, mouths gape,
and squawks startle the squawker.
Come, little featherlings, this is a
butterfly bush, so make like a butterfly.

Perch quietly, observe the butterfly.
It doesn’t attack the air wildly.
When you think airborne, remember:
take-off is optional; landing is mandatory.

Show some dignity; flap with grace.
Learn from the butterfly or get out of their bush.

__________________

LIGHT RICOCHETS

off broken bottles
smashed in anger
dropped by accident
some, forgotten after lunch—

blue, green, brown shards
clunked chunks
glisten in the apex
of a curve, stuffed
along railroad tracks
sidewalk grit
blunted on a building
edge, exploded on
supermarket floors.

fallen back to earth
after traveling
from beach sand
to blowing tube
after gracing the prince’s table
after a wino guzzles
the last drop, someone
crafted a perfect shape

glass—both delicate and strong
a container for many
becomes unglued, sifted
into mosaic rubble
ghostly patina oxide
hues of pearled lives
formed, transformed
discarded, lost, broken
out of fashion, useless.

A glass lip severed whole
from the bottle’s neck, intact
a ring both jagged and smooth
edged to wear like an amulet
on a string as the sun fades.


—Ann Privateer, Davis

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

Water which is too pure has no fish.

—T'sai Ken T'an

__________________

—Medusa, who says (1) Happy Poetry Month, which starts April 1, and (2) thanks to today's contributors, including Pat Pashby for the LittleNip, and Mitz Sackman, who managed to meet the challenge of two SOWs in one—food and Down the Drain!

By the way, Poetry Unplugged will be all Open Mic tonight; no readers that I posted last Monday. 8 pm, Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento, Mario Ellis Hill hosting.

...and happy April's Fool's Day!