Sunrise

December Sunrise

—Photo by Taylor Graham, Placerville

I’ll tell you how the sun rose,—


A ribbon at a time.


The steeples swam in amethyst,


The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,


The bobolinks begun.


Then I said softly to myself,


“That must have been the sun!”

But how he set, I know not.


There seemed a purple stile


Which little yellow boys and girls


Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,


A dominie in gray


Put gently up the evening bars,


And led the flock away.

—Emily Dickinson

_________________________

—Medusa

 

House of Shadows

Before the Storm

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke

CLIFF

Near the edge of the cliff
Tiny lights dance in the air.
They are the souls of those we knew
As children, lost to us now.

They seem to move back and forth
And then wink out, only to reappear
Years later in dreams, moments
When we least expect them,
Glowing in the corners.

How we are filled with longing
As they burn the air with
Their lovely energy.  We travel
To far places to see them.
We cultivate memories so they
May have food in this state
Of being.  You may find yourself
Among them, playing near the border
Of a pond, thinking, the light on the
Water is beautiful.  You are eight
Years old.  The summer, lean in
Your muscles, the shade trees glistening.

 Before the Storm, 2

A ROOM WITH A PHILODENDRON

Tempted by seabirds,
Their long wings a comfort,
There was a room with a philodendron.

It was almost unpredictable
That I would knew consequences
If I followed the gestures
Their wings made toward
The morning.  I could see
The storms beginning in the West,
But was certain they had no knowledge
Of me and my desire
To leave this place.

There were no words here.
Things here were made of the infinite,
Like dead soldiers buying and selling
Silences as if they were water,
Trading them for cigarettes,
For stories of those who had lived,
Of the watchers who slid
Their cold hands down
Into our lives whenever they felt
Like it and pulled the breath away
From the familiar.  “Here are tears,”
They would say.  “They are very beautiful.”

They lied.  I had come down the strand,
Past the cisterns, through
The anterooms and libraries
Until I got to a window.
I flung it open.

The seabirds were whirling and
Circling, engraving the air with their wings.
They had our memories.
They had our yearning.
They rose higher and higher.

I knew I must follow.
I knew I was not of the dead.
Everything became mathematics.
It was like Springtime
Abandoned by nothingness,
Suddenly full of the separateness
Of a dream.

 Driveway

SORROW JUST BEYOND THE MORNING

They tore off a little piece of the morning.
It was the part where the mouth was located.
Not all of it went missing, just enough to allow
Some of the light to slip out the back and follow
Night to his house of shadows.

We were able to see him reach for and hold
The hand of sorrow as if he were trying to staunch
Blood pouring from a wound.  Even the blood
Looked dark.  We could hear it splashing
On the floor.  You said it was the sea.
I had my eye on the sky, so wasn’t sure.

I bent down and picked up a small part
Of light that had fallen from the edge of a wall.
That morning was touching as a lover might
Touch the most intimate parts of a mirror.

I reached for your hand but it was the same
As that of sorrow, and my belief that this was more
Than a mass of sand that could go no farther
Stopped me dead in my shoes.  I looked past
Where the corner had gone missing.
No one would notice it.  It would become
A distance, a whispered voice, the broken
Part of moonlight caught in an unforgiving
Carnival.  No matter how many of us might
Gather, we would remain forever alone.

A couple of clouds that had nothing much to do
Found their way to the torn corner of the morning.
They managed to fill it with birds and small animals
Running across the lawns looking for food.

 Drawbridge

SKYWARD

With an impossibility known only to clowns,
I tore a nail building a magic tower,
A kind of flower structure that was supposed
To be full of wonderful windows that looked skyward.

I liked the newness of your body under mine.
I love how love feels against such a sky.
Maybe it is just the world or maybe it is
Just your legs wrapped around my body
That stops my mind so completely
Before the thrones of our wanting
One another.  To skyward, I think.

You pull my mouth down upon yours.
It is worth everything, the kissing,
The laughing, the parting of the flesh.
The nakedness of all the doorways.

Feeling up beneath our clothing
We encounter streets we never knew.
I keep trying to think of anything
That is not your body against mine.
All our amused legs walking skyward.

_____________________

TRYING TO

I was trying to remember if it was
A long time ago that I saw you.

It was in the April time, I’m sure
And then again the leaves were falling.

I was waiting by the waterfall.
You were walking on the shore.

The sky was dressing itself with great clouds.
I was waiting by an open door.

There were dreams all about the camp.
There was magic in your hands.

There were songs.  We both sang them.
There were words we could understand.

It was like this forever, I recall.
It was never this way at all.

I only know that it was you I loved.
I never knew you at all.

 The Tong in the Rain

LOOKING FOR THE STARS

Looking for the stars, the edge
Of the sky folds back and I can
See them dressing for the evening.
They are delicious in their colors.
They are informal in their constellations.

I wait down at the end of the street
For you to appear.  You said to meet
You here for reasons that still
Remain unclear.  Maybe it's just
Fantasy.  I first see your reflection
In the rain puddles.  The night is warm.

We walk for hours to explain
Our lives to one another.  It doesn’t
Do any good.  There are entire trains
Highballing through our bloodstreams.
We can only watch the Mars lights
Spinning.  You tell me to trust you.
I hold you with my eyes, point to the stars.

______________________ 

Today's LittleNip:

GHOSTLY

Ghostly ships
On a ghostly sea.
Ghostly fog
On ghostly trees.

Ghostly corners
On ghostly roads
Ghostly croaking
By ghostly toads.

Ghostly whispers
From ghostly throats.
Ghostly strangers
In ghostly coats.

Ghostly dreams
From ghostly sleep.
A ghostly breeze
With a ghostly sweep.

Ghostly lights
On ghostly hills.
Ghostly terrors
And ghostly thrills.

An admonition
On ghostly things
To every life
All ghosts do cling.

This voice, a ghost,
These words are too.
A ghost you know
Brings them to you.

______________________

—Medusa

Walnut Grove in the Rain

Flowers From Our Tongues

Devil of a Sunset

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock
 

DATE NIGHT
—Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

From one end of the mall to the other
Shattering glass and scattering apologies
Beneath palm trees and bee lights
A late dinner of flowers and birdsong

Zigzagging straight through the night
Breakfast between quonsets and rust
Beyond grape vines and gravel quarries
Until the road ends in disgust

Will this house never have a roof?

_____________________

 HIT MY MARK
—Robert Lee Haycock

In the wings
Dust
Light follows me

My words
Taken by the wind
You lie

Your chest laid open
Why on earth
Are you here?

 Broadcast Forecast

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock
 

NO PASSPORT NEEDED
—Claire J. Baker, Pinole

Come, let us join
the multitudes
on the journey
toward peace.

We, the people,
motley, memorable,
poised, unprepared,
gay and not so happy,
handicapped and holy,

varying
yet all the same—
getting out of our
own way, for peace.
 

______________________

WAS A SEMINAR IN FAULKNER
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove
 
We were doing the uncollected
Stories.  One was “Ad Astra”—
To the stars.  I mentioned,
As the story didn’t
Make a whole lot of sense anyway,
And to sound profound,
As you’re expected to do,
In seminars, that
It was a NASA motto, and
Quite possibly also
A character’s from Toy Story.
The professor thought he’d
Seen it on Kansas state license
Plates.  Though he’d
Never actually been there.

“Well, I just don’t know
Why they have to use
Such nasty, ugly language,
About body parts and all,”
Commented our most
Sincere classmate.

 Laura Martin, Sacramento

HOW THE CEO STOLE CHRISTMAS
—Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

Every Howe down in Howeville found that Christmas was light.
Their pocketbooks were empty. Their belts were tight.

Even the rich CEO found that needs weren’t met:
a new house for his wife, more fuel for his jet.

The Dow-Jones had plunged, but the CEO was greedy.
He wanted a parachute.  Too heck with the needy!

Then the CEO Grinch got an evil idea.
The Grinch got a greedy, malevolent idea.

“I know just what to do,” the CEO snorted. 
He called up his Congressman.  He begged.  He extorted!

Tax payer dollars are the first thing to go!
Two-hundred million seems awfully low.

In every last Howe-home, the Grinch was a crook.
He raided the ice box.  He stole the MacBooks.

Little Mary Lou Howe asked, “Grinchy-Claus, Why?”
The CEO thought fast.  He told a big lie.

“This is Capitalism, Love.  To keep the economy healthy,
we must take from the poor and give to the wealthy.”


(first pub. in SacBee Online) 

__________________________

A GRINCHY LITTLE CHRISTMAS
—Katy Brown, Davis
 
I’ll ask you just once
if you’re doing your part:
making your lists and
filling your cart,

sending out cards
and buying those gifties
—no need to skimp
or try to be thrifty. . . .

I’m proud to announce it:
Christmas, I say
—not Holiday, Winter or
some other day . . . .

celebrates commerce
with part-time employment
—the swapping of stuff
for joyous enjoyment

we’ll feast on tofurkey
and GMO biscuits
with processed cheese food
spread on our Triskets. . . .

we’ll be dressed and fed
under holiday lights
as we all pray for peace
and stronger gun rights. . . .

I’m asking you nicely
to spend all you can
to show that you honor
the savior of man.

A credit-card debt
will show we’re aware
of making a splash
with those who don’t care.

Please, step past the family
that begs in the street,
they just want a hand-out
from those that they meet.

If they wanted security,
they’d get full employment
or sign-up for duty
for wartime deployment.

Hand-outs for homeless
only encourage the poor:
to do so much less
and ask so much more.

Keep our giving to those
who can give back the gift
and thank us profusely
and give us a lift.

That’s the spirit of Christmas,
we know, after all,
on the sale rack at Macy’s
down in the mall.

The Grinch had it right:
to make Christmas merry
we just need to score
all we can carry!

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

LOVE
—Claire J. Baker

I keep
talking these
stumbling words
over
and over

because I cannot
as yet
grow you flowers
from my tongue.
But I'll keep trying.

______________________

Our thanks to today's contributors: Laura Martin, Cynthia Linville, Katy Brown, Bill Gainer and Phillip Larrea will be reading for "Twisted Holidays" at Sac. Poetry Center this coming Monday, Dec. 15, 7:30pm, hosted by Cynthia Linville. Open mic on the theme and holiday treats will follow. 

And our thanks to yesterday's chef in the Kitchen! I forgot to credit B.Z. Niditch for his tasty poems. Thanks B.Z.!

______________________

—Medusa

Katy Brown

Happy Birthday, Emily!

Hygeia Detail from "Medicine", 1901

—Painting by Gustav Klimt

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

AT THE PARK

It's noon Thursday
in Central Park
when my lungs fill
along the footsteps
of dog walkers
in their slick yellow jackets
with a Fall chill
piercing the wide wind
as the last leaves on trees
weep along orange foliage
from the sauntering solitude
knowing the overcast skies
will cast writers indoors
as words from my past
shadow me on landscapes
hoping my blue beret
may erase the November rain
apprenticed here in adolescence
to a tempest of memories
carrying my movie poster
bought for two dollars
of Bogart In a Lonely Place
carrying an armful of scripts
of my one-act plays
and audition announcements
bereft of conversation.

 Portrait of Sonja Knips, 1898

 —Painting by Gustav Klimt

ONCE ON A SIDEWALK

Once on a sidewalk
taking hold of my sax
playing out loud
by a park bench
hungry, yet not indifferent
to a sprayed red leaves bonfire
of wild gusty breezes
yet almost sold out
to an achieved sadness
amid the continued Fall rain
of discouragement
with only a pure prayer
from childhood
in my jacket pocket
a large figure appears
as a passer-by
in a four-piece suit
smoking a pipe
before me in a puddle
near a muddy frog pond
and asks me to play
in a gig on Friday night.

 Portrait of Helene Klimt, 1898

—Painting by Gustav Klimt

THE RAIN SONATA

Music bathes
us for a week
luckily,
I'm in a workshop
of the arts
sitting by the piano
with lonely footnotes
and costumes on tables
having only Hamlet
to keep this poet company
yet meeting an animated
guy named Saul
a stranger from Sacramento
who was AWOL before
the war in Vietnam
who liked Van Gogh,
Hockney and Andy Warhol,
a pacifist who refused
all fisticuffs of a fight
yet could recite Blake
Donne, Marvel or Dickinson
as we sight read past midnight
until the morning's wake-up call
took hold of our space.

______________________

WORKING IN A LIBRARY

Here I am
putting away books
on wide shelves
of a college library
as enlightened sociology students
take out The Lonely Crowd
confident of a porous dialogue
with a few fatigued readers
staring at the text
bewildered by sleepless nights
before December's final exams
delving into an understanding
of American society
deciding to ask someone out
hoping there will be dancing
and a variety of sexy music.
for the next Friday eve.

 Schubert at the Piano, 1899

—Painting by Gustav Klimt

OVER THE HORIZON

Blushing animals
in my abstract art
on my poster poems
for fresh canvas
growing slowly pale
in a waning corner
at the window tall stacks
in a used bookstore,
reading Emily Dickinson
here on her
birthday on December tenth
and deciding to visit
her in Amherst
it was a lonely motorcycle ride
in the open cool air
with pumpkin and cranberry bogs
over the rain pelting our countryside
yet meeting four earthy hands
of others here to honor her
or offering a flower
we took turns to read memorable lines
even a few visiting souls
at this early hour
have their hands lined with fur.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

THAT GESTURE
—B.Z. Niditch

That warm gesture
of eye shut loneliness
would not surprise us
forgotten and unbowed by
runways on the bus
traveling to San Francisco
as tripping flower children
shadow us in our furtive dreams
coming alive in adolescence
with Joan Baez voice sounding
with a meditative alto song
on the radio
with a vision between sky
and the earth of a world at peace.

____________________

—Medusa

Portrait of a Lady With Cape and Hat, 1897-98

—Painting by Gustav Klimt

Seeking Our Sailor's Moon

—Photo by Carol Louise Moon

LADY OF THE FIELD
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

She’d run through sparkling fields
amid the yellow petals of her flowering youth.

Leaves on aspens shivered where she sat,
and there she’d rest in shaded dreams.

It was the time she cherished most,
the crumbled towers of doubt a distant town.

Wildflowers caressed her legs and dress
beneath the tree where songs are known and sung,

where time drifts by on willow fluff.
Soft memories tucked within her breast; those days

of life and love and song—warm days
near seashores line with snails and tiny shells.

And here, small stones lay round this tree
for her to turn in hand to see the variegated

bands like memories she held close.

_______________________

SHADOWS OF GRAY
—Carol Louise Moon

Tonight she comes to see a Hunter’s Moon;
her secret moon (by sea a Sailor’s Moon).
The fog, a veil in shades of misty gray,
lies silent on the crescent silver lake
between the lonely mountains of her youth.
She longs to hear him call her from the waves,
his voice a veil of echo’s dormant gray,
and so she comes to seek her sailor’s moon.
Faith has brought her to this lonely place.
Her solemn eyes portray a patient wait;
her hair, a shadow of her veil in youth,
caresses shoulders thin and bent with age.
Tonight she comes to seek the Hunter’s Moon—
instead, she finds the moon in shrouds of gray.

_______________________

THE CARPENTER
—Carol Louise Moon

I wish I had known him better,
the old man.
Only this house remains.

And the ivy…
a living vine
of words so green
I cannot read
his thoughts.

And the window,
wide open…
the air whispers
what I cannot read
of the vine,

He is in the wood…
his hands.

______________________

TAROT CARD JOURNEY
—Carol Louise Moon

A little dog begs at the heels of a Fool.
Feather clouds of evening make the journey’s
way easier on the Fool’s breath of grief.
The Fool follows the image of his dead father.

Feather clouds of evening mark the journey
through the town of Regret to a sandy bog.
The Fool follows the image of his father
carved on a walking stick he holds tight

through the town of Regret near a sandy bog.
I’ve come to plant a tree, he tells his dog,
the wooden walking stick he holds tight
leading the way.  He plants the stick in sand.

I’ve come to plant a tree, he lies to his dog
who knows the truth and could better lead
the way.  With the stick planted in sand
the Fool and his dog turn and walk away.

Who really knows the truth and could lead
the way? Or, ease the breadth of his grief?
The Fool and his dog turn and walk away;
the little dog begs at the heels of a Fool.

 —Photo by Carol Louise Moon

THE TITHING
—Lelania Arlene, Sacramento

The reflections of the others twin in my head,
Worn shoes Buster Brown scuff at gum
In the place that reeks of shame.

Where to look, where to deafen yourself?
Linoleum, someone getting spanked?
Jesus Poster with yellow tape curling in empathy?

No denial here I’m afraid,
It is a mirror of dirt maps and snot.

Brown paper bag soft as suede,
Carries a bag of stuffing sealed with tape.

It’s not Thanksgiving until we run free,
Celery boats of peanut butter, childhood again.

Baptized in the stench of institution,
We tithed our pride and kids rejoice
Until we dance with olives on tiny fingertips.

Windows steamed allowing us the illusion
That we aren’t named charity,
That we warrant familial privacy.

Ten days later, the cupboard is bare and we collide to hope upon the turkey wishbone.

______________________

BURY MY WOMB
—Lelania Arlene

Bury my hands in the worm-cast earth,

Bury them deep lest they clap like a bell.

Bury my knees bound together close.

Bury them never to part, never to tell.

Bury my teeth, clenched under ant hills,

Bury them as if filling in an unused well.

Bury me cloying, bury me finite, bury me honest.

______________________

YOUR FRIEND
—Lelania Arlene

My teeth would be a knives' edge,


Were they not sheathed in clench.



Eyes chapped, rimmed with salt. 


Smeared as if a kindness not to see clearly.



A cistern in the belly, echoes with sacred aching....



Hope a superstition, a denial bizarre.



Profess your love for the large stone in your throat.



It's your true friend, blocking all our screams.

______________________

PENALIZED
—Lelania Arlene

On my bare mattress in my pilled faux satin shortie pajama set.

Mama's dowry to the drug dealer's cherry gift.

The buttons of the mattress scrape me I twist them and feel dog hair in their dimples.

Sheets are for rich girls!

Sheets are for cared-for girls.

Not girls with dirt maps on their thin pale arms.

Not girls smelling pot smoke and hearing the moody blues, the forced laughter of the needful partiers.

Not girls that listen for the end of Saturday Night Live.

Then he comes to throw piss-scented stuffed animals with stiff fur to wake her.
She's always awake now.
But she will never tell.
Inductee to the white knuckle club.

He comes smelling of beer.
He comes to push her farther into the mattress buttons.
Do not remove under
penalty of law.

His sweat drips on her skin and tightens it with an unpleasant sting, an odd numb feel.

He comes.

Ann With Snakes, 2011

CHANGE CAN BE GOOD
          Visiting the Book Collector, Sacramento
—Ann Wehrman, Sacramento

autumn day, sun warm as spring
light breeze sweet from recent rain
trip down streets missed
in recent years, spent
alone before a screen

oh, this day, freedom
stride block after city block
over light rail tracks
greet line worker in his truck
pass Old Spaghetti Factory
streets quiet on Black Friday
shoppers online, at malls, in the Bay
has it just been two years?
more like five
there was the slow-down, recession
changed things

three years ago
I read from my Rattlechap
at The Book Collector
purple snake draped across my shoulders
hot summer night
perhaps you were there

today I visited The Book Collector
blank awning over the door
everyone’s chapbooks
now in one cardboard box
on mid-room shelf

I search the room
for ghosts
clerk listens to me reminisce
says, change can be good

_____________________

FOG
—Ann Wehrman

fog
cool wetness
blankets with secrecy
spider down my back
misty

_____________________

EVENING STORM ENDED
—Ann Wehrman

leaves bunch, cluster
russet variations
in light rain, at dusk
blurred texture
like Shetland wool or heather
dusk slips in
gentlest lover

trees make wet, black strokes
air shimmers in street lamps’ glow
air washed clean by the blood
by sorely needed rain
 

_____________________
 

Today's LittleNip:

I've got a lot of horses... I mean wishes.


They weigh a lot.


Horses and wishes.


Sometimes you have to jettison them.


Because… Well they are too heavy.

—Lelania Arlene

_____________________

—Medusa, reminding you that Ike Torres and Nancy Aide Gonzalez will be reading at Red Alice's Poetry Emporium at The Shine tonight (plus open mic), 1400 E St., Sacramento, 7:30pm. Host is Bill Gainer. Be there!

Ann Wehrman at her Rattlechap Reading, 2011

—Photo by Sandy Thomas, Sacramento

Feathers & Cold Moonlight

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

THE BARRENNESS

These simple stick-trees of winter
without their first leaves, too frail it seems
for the winds that tear

at their nervous gesturing
at the gray air, being merely a fragile part
of the cold landscape

with the empty bench and the stark lines
of a fence leaning against
whatever it was meant to separate;

and sometimes a lonely figure
will stand there
in the flat texture of the day,

a shrinking silhouette,
looking outward,
featureless, bareheaded,

hands in pockets of a coat,
seeming to be—itself—a tree of sorts,
as the day darkens toward evening;

and still the figure stands
and watches whatever is there to gather
for the mood of such lingering;

and the trees,
that look like a child’s drawing
of such trees,

shudder into themselves
with the toughness
it takes to survive such desolation.

 

I saw in his eyes

what I never remembered—
a haunting that I
never knew

for I was one with myself
and both were lonely
—this is not a revelation

this is a poem about love
that falters where it loves—
all this I saw in his eyes

______________________

INTERPRETATIONS

The conversations blur into each other.
The light teems.
It is good to be among people.

People are lonely,
they don’t have anything to say,
so they talk through each other.

The light plays with the room dust.
The door disappears.
No one leaves.

They are here to share their loneliness.
Laughter is loudest at
the point of tears.

The music has run out of money.
The hour struggles
toward farewell.

LIKE SOMEONE ALWAYS CRYING
             After Grigory Soroka, 1823-1864

As if love again is sacrifice
and time has finally escaped.
It’s all real:

the hesitations in the wrong moment,
the way light creeps
along lonely dark places,

the way sound echoes
into its own dimension,
as if sadness wins.

They are caught in this same dimension,
the mirror echoing behind them.
Or is it the doorway

that finally reveals itself as promise.
How still they are in vertical greenness
of wallpaper and carpet;

in sheen of white
that crumples toward them.
Is it night? midnight? winter?

What has wakened them
into this otherness?
They look at each other like strangers,

before they met, before they loved,
before they had this decision to make,
together or alone.

THE MIRROR AFTER MIDNIGHT

It’s easy enough to send praise into an aftermath.
What we receive of light is the other side of dark.

Who shouts in the hollow becomes echo there.
Here is a word I can use, wet with meaning.

Tears are the salt of grief, joy, and humor. Hollow out
the womb for the lost child. Name him Sorrow.

We are at the service of our souls
which are at the mercy of our lives.

In the stone light,
gray thought is manufactured as shadow.

Two who are unnamed
go toward love with fierce anticipation.

The hotels are empty now. They served the lonely
and the lost in their transitions.

It was the gulls, so starkly white in the gray field,
dark skies roiling inward.

Reading it all wrong, that word again, about to break,
like a face left in its mirror before it got old.

OLD MAN

An old man
crossed the field to the house
where he asked at the door,
“A pity, please,
for I am tired of wilderness.
I have grown up wise but lonely.”

The woman there
looked at his hands which were strong
at his eyes which were kind
at his height which was average
and she asked him in.

She told him stories while he praised her food.
Hers was the last house on the road.
“And where are your children?” he asked.
“Oh? One is off in the berry patch . . .
one is lying on the small hill
and dreaming at the sky . . .
and one is tangling in the stone field
with a playful lover.”

She asked him, of course, to stay the night.
In the morning she found him sleeping in a chair
facing the sunrise which was softening his face.
She fell in love with him.

He woke and told her a dream:
how he believed he was first a boulder,
and then a path of traveled stones,
and then a mass of sand which could go no farther.

THE SIGHING IN THE TREES
             After “Heard Whispers" by Robert Bly

She hears what is lonely
and speaks back in a whispered voice,
not to destroy the distance between them.

What never answers is love, with its caution,
with its fear,
which is jealous of surrender.

She hears what is lonely and sends
her loneliness in return, a whispered voice
answering, so low she cannot hear.

________________________
                                            
THIS LONELY LOVE

It was a far-fetched thing, this lonely love,
made of feathers and cold moonlight,
distant moans from old woes.

How easily they conjured
something to use
for reasons:
Perfect!
Every ruse!
Cold-storage-lies!
Early blames! New contagions!

Tawdry cynics—needing
something simple to believe in—falling
into old patterns because they were familiar.

TRAGEDY AND TRAGEDY, FADING-OUT
             After "Carnival Evening" by Henri Rousseau

Where are we now but in some dream together,
emerging a dark woods—

two mimes in white costumes,
wandering through a night-sketch—

late of a country carnival
(how long ago)?

Displaced by time, perhaps,
the winter-stricken trees already lonely

for our presence
as we slowly diminish—

two cloud-wisps emulating us—
the cold and following white moon about to weep.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

I AM SO SORRY

One by one the animals disappear.

The land that held them
yields to houses.

Windows
glint at other windows.

Ghosts of animals drift between.

_____________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's delicacies; she's been looking at the sky recently and has photos to prove it. Let's follow her: our new Seed of the Week is Skyward. Send your poems/pix/artwork about this—or any other—theme to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs.

—Medusa

Full Moon

The Violet Essence of Alone

(Today's photos are by our old friend, Anonymous)

VALLEY FOG
—Jeanine Stevens, Sacramento

Winter warps floorboards, curls bills left
on the counter, phosphorus green mildew dusts
shoes left too long in closets. The first January
I lived in this valley, fog lasted three weeks.
By noon, the dove colored lens began to release
faint stubby fence posts, and one by one,
our Muscovy ducks lay quiet, just the throat missing
—a half moon shape. We heard no sound,
   only emptiness in the hollow swale
             under the almond trees.

Today, driving north on Highway 5,
late morning, multiple blank
walls. I enter and exit flat white movie screens.
Restaurants dot banks, supported on stilts
like large gray birds—legs disappearing
into the milky Sacramento River.
I hunker behind a UPS truck,
no foghorns hoot a warning for hulking semis,
teetering RV’s. It’s easy to loose your way:
45-degree angles melt into rounded corners,
darker objects briefly fade, then loom
       abruptly.  I miss my off-ramp again.

Safely home, I hold my coffee mug in both
hands, feel this could be Holland, the Moors,
but different than the dry crush of tires on snow,
a wetter hush, deep in time, tropical, damp,
Carboniferous remnants, still cooling
             the immense dew of Florida.

(Ending with a line by Wallace Stevens)

(first pub. by Tiger’s Eye: A Journal of Poetry)
 
_____________________

I THINK I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED BEING LONELY
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

The name alone should have
Warned me—The Nite Jogger.
Shoes were a bright white fake patent
Leather with Day-Glo orange
Stripes and heel and toe
Reinforcements that glowed
Sickly green in the dark.

One thing about these shoes,
The clerks grinned, lacing me up,
“You’ll never be lonely
Wearing them.” I wondered
What he meant, but soon
Discovered.

People would stop on the
Street to stare, point,
And I think, smile
At my shoes, day or
Gaudy night.  Cars would
Stop, flash their brights
To get the full effect
Of my sneakers’
Nocturnal glow.

Never knew if they
Made me more visible
Or just a better target.

 AFTER READING JANET MALCOLM'S THE SILENT WOMAN
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

In the alone condition which is human,
I struggle and am tired of struggling on.
Reading as I am The Silent Woman,
I marvel how withdrawn and down I’ve gone
—never to surface, range my periscope
over that green mind-domain in which you live?
What must life be like, when sweetness is your burden?
When telepaths transgress, can you forgive?
I want to inhabit you—feel, shaken and sudden,
how low and slow and hidden a part I play
in your mysterious private psychomachy.

    Please understand. I love you, or let’s say
    you do, you do live in me, by my consent.
    I thank you for who you are. I never meant
    the hurt you blame. My mind’s my mind: I’m free.

That was you talking. That’s how I represent
your silence. Who’s truly silent? What one intent
will unsilence us both? Are you that speechless woman?
What feminine side of whom wants this communion?

______________________

EMBLEM
—Tom Goff

Outside the corridor to our classroom,
glassed off beyond my reach or that of Maintenance,
a bird, sparrow or starling, took a chance
that all transparency must perforce be air,
and volplaned smack into death. Brisk the high broom,
and crooked in its overledging reach,

that brings the victim down long past romance
with all things buoyant and light. But bird stays there,
puffing with lifelike volume, rain-refreshed,
withering, shriveling smaller, drier, more fragile
with each noon pail of daylight splashed on it
to add to the dark of death the burn of bleach.

Heap of heart and muscle and gristle and wing,
you draw somehow your birds-nest thatch or mesh
around my whole attention, victorying,
vaunting over your stillness who were once agile:
loneliness in your rigor and your chill
becomes as you dwindle quieter in your core
a living reprimand to my unquiet
way of bearing or dragging my disquiet.

Alive, you might be the soul of the girl I prize
in secret, her daring voice-pipe of command,
or pliant as her delicate inward of hand
proffered to an untamed animal’s nose.
Dead, you are stone, a washed-ashore-of-river
stone, inert as I have turned who can’t forgive her
her exquisite freedom, for I am not wise.

You be my wisdom, lying there in state,
armorial in your scrapped solidity:
feathered one whose plumes no longer blow
stroked by the wind’s finger. Quiddity
left you gone far beyond where you did go,
preserving whatever beak and bluster plate
glass could not batter. In a Browning poem

a man makes a girl’s hand clasp in a last dead flex
around a flower: amid-crypt, her bone tomb
domed by the not-yet-sour fingerskin,
for she’s his unliving guardian against sin.
Be my own Evelyn Hope, and I’ll walk by
your husk without so much betrayal as a sigh…  

OVERCOME
—Caschwa, Sacramento

It seemed so distant
Gun shots, ricochets,
A little zing over there
Then it was upon me

A bullet had come through
The open driver’s window
Passed easily through my
Left cheek, then out the right

My intention was to put
More distance between
Me and the volleys so I
Slammed on the accelerator

But lurching the car forward
Was not the right thing to do
Either as I now had a valley
Of pain in place of a tongue

I pulled over and dialed 911
That should be easy just to
Tell them my name, location,
And situation…however

A normally vast array of
Verbal tools was now
Narrowed down to labials
Gutturals and raw groans

Try saying “help” without
Moving your tongue
“Hep” just doesn’t invite
The outcome desired

In desperation, the expressions
“Shots fired” and “I’m wounded”
Came out as “pop, pop, pop”
Will they understand that?

Or will they just think I’m
Another babbling idiot
Reduced mental capacity:
Don’t take this guy seriously

Someone will make money
With this idea—install
Pre-recorded help messages
In cell phones, just one button

To push for people whose
Injury impedes their speech
OK now it’s out, run with it
Soon, I hope

HER TEN REASONS FOR LONELY
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Sun stares down, then slips away to the home she loved.
Childhood’s apocryphal tales of happy-ever-after.
Shiver of leaves like saffron silk robes before they fall.
Ice crystals at the edge of pond, to lock it tight.
Mulberry ink-drops littering the ground.
Winter inside her ribs.
A promise half-written, then the paper torn in two
and sealed with the other reasons in a jar
to keep,
and hoard in memory, to refresh the loneliness.

______________________

SOLITAIRE
—Taylor Graham
 
He rigged a gin to snare the sun, caught in cottonwood leaves.
They shivered with wind coming winter. How could he be alone
among rabbit trails through dead grasses on the crusted earth?
*
Someone planted a flag on a mound of stones left over,
overgrown with gray weeds, tailings of old dredgings for gold.
Wind flutters autumn colors under stars so the flag won’t feel alone.
*
You wrote the violet essence of alone. I send you this.
The morning isn’t soundless. Roots stir in their buried sleep.
Young grass arrived with the rain, unimagined birds begin to sing.   

______________________

EIN JEDER ENGEL IST SCHRECKLICH
                   (Quote from Rainer Maria Rilke)
—Taylor Graham

At cliff-edge there’s a pull between nothing
and gravity. Call it wind emptying. The nothing
that is, and the nothing that is not. An urge
to fly.
And hiking up through aspen I heard it
whispering but sweeter. Wind or wings? Later,
past midnight at the verge of a deep blue lake
among boulders, in my mummy-bag I shifted
bones against granite. I couldn’t sleep.
No one explains angels
of the high lonesome. Only laws of physics,
aberrations of the mind. Nighthawks. Invisible
flight rustling the tops of firs. I stared
at the Milky Way, stars absorbed every particle
of dust—wind or wings wiped clean the trail.
My day’s footprints
gone. Past midnight I called them angels.
Guardians of blue, aspen singers. If they
answered, it was their own language, their
terms.

______________________

DWELLING PLACE
—Taylor Graham

Beyond the fields gone fallow
is an old grave almost overgrown by oaks.
The hall of feasts in ruins—no one
lives here except for bats and the barn owl,
its banshee wail in the dark. One night
it stopped you with its nesting-hiss,
and the two of you spoke back and forth
in Owl, a tongue unknown to you.
Next day, earth in its not-quite-liquid
phase—its natural mud—clogged
your boot-treads. Some say,
spirits live haunting the eaves and hollows
with their thin, chilling owl-screech.
In your boots of clay, you know
it was a bird with wings for flying
out of the ruins into sky.
Is this not mystery and miracle enough?

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

YEP
—Caschwa

He got a really big gun
That had no safety
But not to worry

He put a sign on the back
Of his really big truck:
“Lights on for safety”

____________________

—Medusa, noting that we have two new features in the green box on the right: "For the Gourmet Poet" and "On the Air". Check 'em out!

Click on www.oneidaindiannation.com/culture/legends/Autumn-Color.html

to read the Fall legend of how the autumn leaves got their color.....