TYPEWRITER
—Jane Blue, Sacramento
Some romantics still cling to them, the keys
a neck, a ruff, a mouth, teeth
clack-clack-clacking, stumbling
all over themselves, trying to write “l-o-v-e.”
Love takes two hands. If you were passionate
or angry, you could bang your feelings out
like a piano concerto. The keys were round,
steel-rimmed like spectacles, letters slid
under plastic, they levered the keys,
which would tangle like stork legs.
You took typing in school
so you wouldn’t have to look,
just touch the keyboard and watch words
appear on paper. The typewriter
was painted black with gilt curlicues, a loved
thing, an admired thing. A heft to it,
it wouldn’t sit in your lap.
A bell clanged when you came
to the end of the carriage, slow down,
slow down, it said. You backed up and covered
your errors with kisses, like this: XXXXXXXX.
If you wanted to send your love poem
out into the world, you used carbons, black
or blue, and erased a typo twice, three times.
The keys banged against the platen hard,
leaving holes you could see through
when you held the paper up to the light.
You threaded an inked ribbon on two spools
through metal eyes; you had to get messy,
leave fingerprints. Some lead was chipped
from the keys, identifying an individual
typewriter used in a love triangle, a murder,
a kidnapping, just as a body
is instantly known by the cast of its teeth.
____________________
Thanks, Jane Blue, for the nifty poem and for the photo she found for us. Be sure to pick up one of B.L. Kennedy's free littlesnake broadsides, Conversations with Jane Blue, at The Book Collector, or write to me and I'll send you one. And of course Jane's rattlechap, Turf Daisies and Dandelions, is also at The Book Collector, or available from Jane or from rattlesnakepress.com.
This week in NorCal poetry:
•••Monday (8/27), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Luke Warm Water at Headquarters for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento. Open mic afterwards. The American Indian poet known as Luke Warm Water is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe who was born and raised in Rapid City, South Dakota. His storytelling style of poetry is of the contemporary urban American Indian experience, intertwined with poignancy and dark humor. Since 2005, Luke has been awarded three grants for his poetry endeavors. He was the first spoken word poet to receive an Archibald Bush Foundation artist fellowship in the literature category. Luke has been featured at poetry venues throughout the United States and in Europe, and has won Poetry Slam competitions from Oregon to Germany. He has been published in various literary journals and anthologies, including Red Ink, Drumvoices Revue, and Poetry International. Recent poetry books are Iktomi’s Uprising (2007) and On Indian Time (2005). Luke currently resides in northern California.
•••Thursday (8/30), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Featured Poet: Josh Fernandez. Open mic before and after.
•••Sat. (9/1), 11 AM: Monthly writing meeting and potluck of Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol at at La Raza Galeria Posada, 1024 22nd St., Midtown Sacramento. Info: Graciela Ramirez (916-456-5323) or website: www.escritoresdelnuevosol.com/
•••Deadline is Sept.1 for the Sonnet Contest from Poets Corner Press. Please see guidelines on poetscornerpress.com; send formal or free-form sonnets with $10 reading fee for each entry to Poets Corner Press, 8049 Thornton Rd., Stockton, CA 95209. Winner will be announced Nov. 1; judge will be Susan Kelly-DeWitt. First Place Award is $500!
____________________
ONE ART
—Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
_____________________
—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.) For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).
SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:
ZZZZZZZ: Shh! The Snake is still sleeping! There will be no readings/releases in 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/. And read more about Susan at her nifty new website, http://www.susankelly-dewitt.com/. Click on "Chapbooks" for a sneak preview of Cassiopeia's cover.
Also coming in mid-September: The new issue of Rattlesnake Review (15), plus a littlesnake broadside from dawn dibartolo (Blush), and a continuation of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series—including #4 (frank andrick) and an anthology of interviews to be released for Sacramento Poetry Month (October). Next deadline for Rattlesnake Review (16) is November 15.