Holding Hands
Photo by Katy Brown, Davis
Photo by Katy Brown, Davis
THE STORY
—Lisel Meuller
You are telling a story:
How Fire Took Water to Wife
It's always like this, you say,
opposites attract
They want to enter each other,
be one,
so he burns her as hard as he can
and she tries to drown him
It's called love at first
and doesn't hurt
but after a while she weeps
and says he is killing her,
he shouts that he cannot breathe
underwater—
Make up your own
ending, you say to the children,
and they will, they will
_____________________
WIDOW
—Lisel Mueller
What the neighbors bring to her kitchen
is food for the living. She wants to eat
the food of the dead, their pure
narcotic of dry, black seeds.
Why, without him, should she desire
the endurance offered by meat and grain,
the sugars that glue the soul to the body?
She thanks them, but does not eat,
consumes strong coffee as if it were air
and she the vigilant candle
on a famous grave, until the familiar
sounds of the house become strange,
turn into messages in the new language
he has been forced to learn.
All night she works on the code,
almost happy, her body rising
like bread, while the food in its china caskets
dries out on the kitchen table.
______________________
SILENCE AND DANCING
—Lisel Mueller
Silence and dancing
is what it comes down to
in the end for them,
as they struggle from wheelchair to bed,
knowing nothing changes,
that the poor, who are themselves,
will become even poorer
and the fatuous voices on the screen
will go on gabbling about another
war they cannot do without.
What defense against this
except silence and dancing,
the memory of dancing—
O, but they danced, did they ever;
she danced like a devil, she'll tell you,
recalling a dress the color of sunrise,
hair fluffed to sea-foam,
some man's some boy's
damp hand on her back
under the music's sweet, hot assault
and wildness erupting inside her
like a suppressed language,
insisting on speaking itself
through her eloquent body,
a far cry
from the well-groomed words on her lips.
("Schwiegen and tanzen" are words spoken by Elektra near the end of the opera by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.)
______________________
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.)
SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:
Journals (free publications): Rattlesnake Review #13 is available at The Book Collector; RR #14 will be out in mid-June. (Next deadline, for RR #15, is August 15.) VYPER #6 (for youth 13-19) is in The Book Collector; next deadline is Nov. 1. Snakelets #10 (for kids 0-12) is now available at The Book Collector. Next deadline is 10/1.
Books/broadsides: May's releases are Grass Valley Poet Ron Tranquilla’s Playing Favorites: Selected Poems, 1971-2006, plus a littlesnake broadside by Julie Valin (Still Life With Sun) and a Rattlesnake Interview Broadside (#2) featuring Khiry Malik Moore and B.L. Kennedy. All are now available at The Book Collector. Rattlechaps are $5; broadsides are free. Or contact kathykieth@hotmail.com or rattlesnakepress.com for ordering information.
Next rattle-read: Rattlesnake Press will present Sacramento Poet Tom Miner at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, on Wednesday, June 20 from 7:30-9 PM to celebrate the release of his new chapbook, North of Everything. Also featured that night will be a new littlesnake broadside (Cominciare Adagio) from Stockton Poet/Publisher David Humphreys, plus #3 in the Rattlesnake Interview Series by B.L. Kennedy, this one featuring Sacramento Poet Jane Blue. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's. More info: kathykieth@hotmail.com/ NOTE: For June, and for June only, our monthly Rattlesnake reading will be on the THIRD Weds. instead of the second one. And there will be no Snake readings/releases in July or August.
—Lisel Meuller
You are telling a story:
How Fire Took Water to Wife
It's always like this, you say,
opposites attract
They want to enter each other,
be one,
so he burns her as hard as he can
and she tries to drown him
It's called love at first
and doesn't hurt
but after a while she weeps
and says he is killing her,
he shouts that he cannot breathe
underwater—
Make up your own
ending, you say to the children,
and they will, they will
_____________________
WIDOW
—Lisel Mueller
What the neighbors bring to her kitchen
is food for the living. She wants to eat
the food of the dead, their pure
narcotic of dry, black seeds.
Why, without him, should she desire
the endurance offered by meat and grain,
the sugars that glue the soul to the body?
She thanks them, but does not eat,
consumes strong coffee as if it were air
and she the vigilant candle
on a famous grave, until the familiar
sounds of the house become strange,
turn into messages in the new language
he has been forced to learn.
All night she works on the code,
almost happy, her body rising
like bread, while the food in its china caskets
dries out on the kitchen table.
______________________
SILENCE AND DANCING
—Lisel Mueller
Silence and dancing
is what it comes down to
in the end for them,
as they struggle from wheelchair to bed,
knowing nothing changes,
that the poor, who are themselves,
will become even poorer
and the fatuous voices on the screen
will go on gabbling about another
war they cannot do without.
What defense against this
except silence and dancing,
the memory of dancing—
O, but they danced, did they ever;
she danced like a devil, she'll tell you,
recalling a dress the color of sunrise,
hair fluffed to sea-foam,
some man's some boy's
damp hand on her back
under the music's sweet, hot assault
and wildness erupting inside her
like a suppressed language,
insisting on speaking itself
through her eloquent body,
a far cry
from the well-groomed words on her lips.
("Schwiegen and tanzen" are words spoken by Elektra near the end of the opera by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.)
______________________
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) 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.)
SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:
Journals (free publications): Rattlesnake Review #13 is available at The Book Collector; RR #14 will be out in mid-June. (Next deadline, for RR #15, is August 15.) VYPER #6 (for youth 13-19) is in The Book Collector; next deadline is Nov. 1. Snakelets #10 (for kids 0-12) is now available at The Book Collector. Next deadline is 10/1.
Books/broadsides: May's releases are Grass Valley Poet Ron Tranquilla’s Playing Favorites: Selected Poems, 1971-2006, plus a littlesnake broadside by Julie Valin (Still Life With Sun) and a Rattlesnake Interview Broadside (#2) featuring Khiry Malik Moore and B.L. Kennedy. All are now available at The Book Collector. Rattlechaps are $5; broadsides are free. Or contact kathykieth@hotmail.com or rattlesnakepress.com for ordering information.
Next rattle-read: Rattlesnake Press will present Sacramento Poet Tom Miner at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, on Wednesday, June 20 from 7:30-9 PM to celebrate the release of his new chapbook, North of Everything. Also featured that night will be a new littlesnake broadside (Cominciare Adagio) from Stockton Poet/Publisher David Humphreys, plus #3 in the Rattlesnake Interview Series by B.L. Kennedy, this one featuring Sacramento Poet Jane Blue. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's. More info: kathykieth@hotmail.com/ NOTE: For June, and for June only, our monthly Rattlesnake reading will be on the THIRD Weds. instead of the second one. And there will be no Snake readings/releases in July or August.