Michael Cluff
INTO THE FIRE
—Michael Cluff, Norco, CA
I will easily admit
to slamming Eustace
smack in the head
with that thick
black, dented
frying pan,
Drina said,
no smile though
except in her voice,
over in the nice, clean
sink there.
It was
the only,
out of many
tried
and untrue, ways
to get him
to finally pay
some attention
to me.
If he's bleeding bad
or messed up in his head,
it will learn him
to listen
to me
when I speak
real cozy-like to him.
_____________________
Thanks, Mike! Michael Cluff is a full-time instructor of English at Riverside Community College in Norco, California. He has recently been published in Interpoerty, Rattlesnake Review, eskimopigirl, ZamBomba!, Autographs, Muse and Poetry Superhighway. He will soon be directing David Mamet's Sexual Peversity in Chicago, opening in late July in Ontario, and co-teaches an adult improvisation class for the Rancho Cucamonga Recreation and Parks Department, running through July as well.
_____________________
Two submits:
•••The deadline for the Annual CSPS Contest has been extended to June 15; please email Maura Harvey at maura@mauraharvey.com for complete details. Here are a few of them: 50-line limit; first through third place guaranteed publication in California Quarterly; $100, $50, $25, 10 HMs; $3 per poem; no limit on number of submissions. Send two copies: one with name and address, the other blank to:
Maura Harvey
CSPS
POB 2672
Del Mar, CA 92014
•••Russell Salamon, the editor of Private Poetry Line, writes: I am short on published poems for use in the next issue. Please send two published poems for use to: thesalamons@earthlink.net
Oopsie...
Our apologies to Anyssa Neumann yesterday for misspelling her name on the photo credit. I fixed it.
_________________________
FLORENCE RIVERS
—Michael Cluff
She left
an empty bottle,
nearly,
of Vanilla Lace spray perfume
behind.
Just a sixteenth-inch
of light amber
almost a cream soda-colored puddle
knocking slowly
against the clear
cold glass sides.
No smell remained,
an oddity
either due to the time
between use and departure
disposal
or the sinus infection
I have suffered through
since last Sunday
her Sabbath
not mine,
and the new penny
from 2005—
who knows?
______________________
SANS BOUNDARIES
—Michael Cluff
Julia and her French toast
without
or with maple syrup
has sweetened my life up
without the stickiness of convention.
And her son Neal
and daughters Amber and Eileen
only add to it when
he, she, they, us and me
color inside the lines in blue and gravy
but outside in cyan and indigo.
_______________________
Finally, a poem from Federico Garcia Lorca, who would've been 109 years old today:
THE DAWN
—Federico Garcia Lorca
The New York dawn has
four columns of mud
and a hurricane of black doves
that paddle in putrescent waters.
The New York dawn grieves
along the immense stairways,
seeking amidst the groins
spikenards of fine-drawn anguish.
The dawn comes and no ones receives it in his mouth,
for there no morn or hope is possible.
Occasionally, coins in furious swarms
perforate and devour abandoned chiildren.
The first to come out understand in their bones
that there will be no paradise nor amours stripped of leaves:
they know they are going to the mud of figures and laws,
to artless games, to fruitless sweat.
The light is buried under chains and noises
in impudent challenge of rootless science.
Through the suburbs sleepless people stagger,
as though just delivered from a shipwreck of blood.
(Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Spender and J.L. Gili)
____________________
—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.
INTO THE FIRE
—Michael Cluff, Norco, CA
I will easily admit
to slamming Eustace
smack in the head
with that thick
black, dented
frying pan,
Drina said,
no smile though
except in her voice,
over in the nice, clean
sink there.
It was
the only,
out of many
tried
and untrue, ways
to get him
to finally pay
some attention
to me.
If he's bleeding bad
or messed up in his head,
it will learn him
to listen
to me
when I speak
real cozy-like to him.
_____________________
Thanks, Mike! Michael Cluff is a full-time instructor of English at Riverside Community College in Norco, California. He has recently been published in Interpoerty, Rattlesnake Review, eskimopigirl, ZamBomba!, Autographs, Muse and Poetry Superhighway. He will soon be directing David Mamet's Sexual Peversity in Chicago, opening in late July in Ontario, and co-teaches an adult improvisation class for the Rancho Cucamonga Recreation and Parks Department, running through July as well.
_____________________
Two submits:
•••The deadline for the Annual CSPS Contest has been extended to June 15; please email Maura Harvey at maura@mauraharvey.com for complete details. Here are a few of them: 50-line limit; first through third place guaranteed publication in California Quarterly; $100, $50, $25, 10 HMs; $3 per poem; no limit on number of submissions. Send two copies: one with name and address, the other blank to:
Maura Harvey
CSPS
POB 2672
Del Mar, CA 92014
•••Russell Salamon, the editor of Private Poetry Line, writes: I am short on published poems for use in the next issue. Please send two published poems for use to: thesalamons@earthlink.net
Oopsie...
Our apologies to Anyssa Neumann yesterday for misspelling her name on the photo credit. I fixed it.
_________________________
FLORENCE RIVERS
—Michael Cluff
She left
an empty bottle,
nearly,
of Vanilla Lace spray perfume
behind.
Just a sixteenth-inch
of light amber
almost a cream soda-colored puddle
knocking slowly
against the clear
cold glass sides.
No smell remained,
an oddity
either due to the time
between use and departure
disposal
or the sinus infection
I have suffered through
since last Sunday
her Sabbath
not mine,
and the new penny
from 2005—
who knows?
______________________
SANS BOUNDARIES
—Michael Cluff
Julia and her French toast
without
or with maple syrup
has sweetened my life up
without the stickiness of convention.
And her son Neal
and daughters Amber and Eileen
only add to it when
he, she, they, us and me
color inside the lines in blue and gravy
but outside in cyan and indigo.
_______________________
Finally, a poem from Federico Garcia Lorca, who would've been 109 years old today:
THE DAWN
—Federico Garcia Lorca
The New York dawn has
four columns of mud
and a hurricane of black doves
that paddle in putrescent waters.
The New York dawn grieves
along the immense stairways,
seeking amidst the groins
spikenards of fine-drawn anguish.
The dawn comes and no ones receives it in his mouth,
for there no morn or hope is possible.
Occasionally, coins in furious swarms
perforate and devour abandoned chiildren.
The first to come out understand in their bones
that there will be no paradise nor amours stripped of leaves:
they know they are going to the mud of figures and laws,
to artless games, to fruitless sweat.
The light is buried under chains and noises
in impudent challenge of rootless science.
Through the suburbs sleepless people stagger,
as though just delivered from a shipwreck of blood.
(Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Spender and J.L. Gili)
____________________
—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.