Texas Sunset
Photo by Jane Blue, Sacramento
REMEMBERING CARMEL IN TEXAS
—Jane Blue, Sacramento
1.
We were invited, they were not.
Insensitive people who would not leave.
A late dinner, we finally crumpled with laughter
after holding our breath for hours; sharing
some complicated emotion of the grown-ups.
Geraniums in the fog, banana slugs in our shoes.
In morning light, giant guts
of kelp piled on the beach, buzzing
with a net of tiny black flies, and the awful,
wonderful smell. The sea lion washed up on the sand,
that same smell, but more awesome,
its whiskers and its fly-blown eyes.
2.
Reminiscing in west Texas. Brown hieroglyphs
of shallow wetlands seen from the plane.
On the ground a hard north wind, we look up
at hundreds of Canada geese gabbling for order.
A suspicion of the outsider.
Plastic bags snagged in harvested cotton fields.
Time moves slowly as childhood here.
Sunset erupts from the rust-colored ground.
—Jane Blue, Sacramento
1.
We were invited, they were not.
Insensitive people who would not leave.
A late dinner, we finally crumpled with laughter
after holding our breath for hours; sharing
some complicated emotion of the grown-ups.
Geraniums in the fog, banana slugs in our shoes.
In morning light, giant guts
of kelp piled on the beach, buzzing
with a net of tiny black flies, and the awful,
wonderful smell. The sea lion washed up on the sand,
that same smell, but more awesome,
its whiskers and its fly-blown eyes.
2.
Reminiscing in west Texas. Brown hieroglyphs
of shallow wetlands seen from the plane.
On the ground a hard north wind, we look up
at hundreds of Canada geese gabbling for order.
A suspicion of the outsider.
Plastic bags snagged in harvested cotton fields.
Time moves slowly as childhood here.
Sunset erupts from the rust-colored ground.
Thanks, Jane! Be sure to pick up your free copy of #3 in B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series, this one featuring an interview with Jane Blue. Or write to me and I'll mail you one.
This weekend in NorCal poetry:
•••Tonight (Friday, 7/20), 7:30 PM: Our House Poetry Reading features Steve Talbert and Mary Field. An open mic follows. Our House Gallery & Framing is located at 4510 Post St. in El Dorado Hills Town Center. There is no charge. [See Medusa's post for last Weds. for bios of these two lively readers.]
•••Be sure to register by Saturday (7/21) for the CSU, Sacramento Writers Conference on Aug. 10-12, will feature three days of lectures, workshops, critiques, panel discussions and reading events. Through July 21, the registration fee is $245; after that it's $285, though some of the evening readings will be free to the public. Register at 916-278-4433 or www.cce.csus.edu/conferences/writers/Conf07/index/htm/ Info: Amy Ruddell at aruddell@csus.edu.
•••Saturday (7/23), 7-9 PM: Underground Poetry Series present Black Women Expressing Tour and open mic hosted by Taylor Williams. Underground Books, 2814 35th St., Sacramento. $3. Info: 916-737-3333.
•••Unheimlich Theater's A Beaudelaire Evening has been moved to NEXT Saturday, July 28. See last (or next) Monday's post for details.
•••And don’t forget the Sixth Annual Sacramento French Film Festival, which runs July 20-22 and July 28-29 at the Crest Theatre. Info: http://sacramentofrenchfilmfestival.org/.
•••Monday (7/23), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center continues the french theme with French Poetry Night, in collaboration with Alliance Francaise to help celebrate the French Film Festival. Hors d'oeuvres and visual entertainment. After the featured readers, please join the open mic and read poems in French, either in translation or about France. Hosted by Rebecca Morrison. 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Info: http://www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org/.
_____________________
Michele McDannold sends us the last of the fire poems, this first one about my favorite pastime, playing with fire:
PRETTY THINGS
—Michele McDannold, Jacksonville, IL
I used to blow up
plastic lighters,
it’s really quite easy,
not very dangerous,
except for maybe
to the fingers
and maybe
any nearby
flammable
items.
It starts off spitting
little droplets
of flame
like baby
roman candles,
only not so
big.
Kinda pretty.
_____________________
Michele McDannold lives in downstate Illinois. She has published poems in Rattlesnake Review, Remark, Zygote in my Coffee and several other journals and online publications. Poems are forthcoming in the Poems-for-All series.
LAMPLIGHT BURNING
—Michele McDannold
Shouldn’t have moments of realization in motel rooms;
fake cups wrapped in plastic they are
half-full, the cup ripped open
to serve my butt and ash turned to muck,
every crook you ever knew
haunts these walls,
pictures sold
from black market catalogues.
Like the whores they are,
the half-wit
cutthroats
compete —
to sell their asses.
And what have I done
lamplight burning
24/7?
Why bother with the clothes,
stacks on desks and tables of pizza boxes
not of novels or poems or papers
and the leaky window air conditioner says
buzz
buzz
buzz
(First appeared in The Indite Circle)
Lite
Photo by Michele McDannold
_____________________TIME FOR A CHANGE
—Michele McDannold
The couch is burning on the front lawn.
It was a pretty blue.
Now, it is ravishing,
the kind of blue that is silence.
It is consumption.
The old one—
well, it was
powder-puff.
(First appeared as "Do Not Alarm Yourself" in Red Fez)
_____________________
ON SMOKE AND MIRRORS
—Michele McDannold
The movies are always liars.
You can’t type with a cigarette
dangling from your lips for long.
Well ... you can, but there’s no point.
If you inhale, you get smoke in your eyes.
(First appeared in Zygote in My Coffee)
____________________
—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 Review14 is now available at The Book Collector; contributors and subscribers should have received theirs by now. If you're none of those, and can't get down to The Book Collector, send two bux (for postage) to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you a copy. If you want more than one, please send $2 for the first one and $1 for copies after that. Next deadline, for RR15, is August 15. VYPER6 (for youth 13-19) is in The Book Collector; next deadline is Nov. 1. Snakelets10 (for kids 0-12) is also at The Book Collector; next deadline is Oct. 1.
Books/broadsides: June's releases include Tom Miner's chapbook, North of Everything; David Humphreys' littlesnake broadside, Cominciare Adagio; and #3 in B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series, this one featuring Jane Blue.
ZZZZZZZ: Shh! The Snake is sleeping! There will be no Snake readings/releases in July or August. Then we return with a bang on September 12, presenting Susan Kelly-DeWitt's new chapbook, Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree. See the online journal, Mudlark, for a hefty sample of poems from her book; that’s http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/. Also coming in the Fall: new issues of the Review, Snakelets and VYPER [see the above deadlines], plus more littlesnake broadsides from NorCal poets near and far, and a continuation of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series—including an anthology of interviews to be released for Sacramento Poetry Month (October).