Gold

dawn dibartolo, Mather

verse in July
—dawn dibartolo

the right words ~
aspirin turn of phrase
and dress the pain
in summertime
like that perfect
yellow cotton
i just coined yesterday.
i’ll wear it to the
carnival, flirt a little
with the breeze, let it
catch my hem and dance
as i give the past to the
quarter-toss toy booths
and assume
the stuffed animals
love me.

_____________________

gold
—dawn dibartolo

a box was delivered today,
and in baubles and florid earrings
i came to know my grandmother,
gone, but her spirit filled the room.
apparently, she was quite the lady ~
sister flash in hats, broaches
and ornate necklaces,
double and triple strand.
i didn’t know her,
and i admire her flair.
she was glitz & old-school class;
she was gossamer handkerchiefs;
she was silk scarves in jewel tones;
she was gold.

____________________

Thanks, dawn! Come hear dawn dibartolo read a few poems from her new littlesnake broadside, Blush, tomorrow night (Weds., 9/12) at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM. Also released that night will be Susan Kelly-DeWitt's new rattlechap, Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree, plus #4 in the new Rattlesnake Interview Series by B.L. Kennedy, this one featuring frank andrick, and a brand-new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#15)! Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's. More info: kathykieth@hotmail.com/.



A BABY ASLEEP AFTER PAIN
—D.H. Lawrence

As a drenched, drowned bee
Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,
So clings to me
My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears
And laid against her cheek;
Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm
Swinging heavily to my movements as I walk.
My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,
Like a burden she hangs on me.
She has always seemed so light,
But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain
Even her floating hair sinks heavily,
Reaching downwards;
As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee
Are a heaviness, and a weariness.

______________________

Today, D.H. Lawrence would've been 122 years old.

And David Humphreys sends us this—thanks, David!

COPPER STAPLES
—David Humphreys, Stockton

You are rolled out of the Operating
Room, copper staples holding your
open heart wound together in the iodine
stain of a post surgical morphine numbness.
You are shock stunned senseless as a prize-
fighter knocked out cold as meat locker beef
puffy with your bruised swollen lip and broken
jaw. Cracked open like a boiled red lobster tail
you don’t come around for days plugged in to
your robot of beeping life support, surrounded
by your angels of worry, blessed as you have been
with children and the weary hero of their arrival.

______________________

—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).