me • DU • sa: the tentacled, usually bell-shaped,
free-swimming sexual stage (!)
in the life cycle of a coelenterate,
such as a jellyfish
MEDUSA EATS SPAGHETTI
—Stephani Schaeffer, Los Molinos
If she leans over her plate too far
she might spiral up the wrong mouthful.
Then watch out
for invective! expletive!
Sometimes
she just has to spit things out.
______________________
Thanks, Steph! Check up the up-and-coming Rattlesnake Review #16 for a review of Stephani Schaeffer's new chapbook from PWJ Publishing, Punk Medusa, in which she gives us some snapshots of a Day in the Life of Medusa. Snake 16 will appear in mid-December, but the countdown is ON NOW for the deadline, which is next Wednesday (11/15). Send 3-5 poems, plus photos and/or art to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No bio/cover letter necessary, but no simultaneous submissions or previously published work, please. (Medusa's Kitchen does take prev-pubs, though; just credit them where credit is due, please.)
Calendar additions for this weekend:
•••Creative writing students of Wendy Patrice Williams at The College of Alameda will feature this Saturday, November 10, at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts Second Saturdays Poetry and Prose Reading. Open mic to follow. 1601 Paru, corner of Lincoln in Alameda. Jeanne Lupton hosts. Info: jeany98@aol.com/. [This Bay Area announcement caught my eye because Wendy Williams lives up our way and belongs to the notorious Red Fox Underground, plus she has done a littlesnake broadside for Rattlesnake Press. Come to the Rattle-read this coming Wednesday to hear Fellow Undergrounder Taylor Graham; I suspect there will be more than one Red Fox attending...]
•••Monday (11/12), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Lisa Dominguez Abraham and Quinton Duval, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Lisa Dominguez Abraham teaches at Cosumnes River College and is the author of a new chapbook Low Notes (West End Press, 2007) and currently working on a collection of Rwandan Folk Tales with Mathilde Mukantabana. Quinton Duval is the author of Joe’s Rain [Cedar House, 2005] and Dinner Music [Lost Roads, 1984] and Guerrilla Letters [Quarterly West Press, 1978]. He currently teaches at Solano Community College so that he can pay the mortgage on his “two and a half bath chapel disguised / as a tract home” where he occasionally refers to himself as “fat, bejeweled maggot.” [Excuse me? Quinton's self-esteem issues aside, watch for a rattlechap from him, coming from Rattlesnake Press next May.]
______________________
More about Medusa's anger issues:
MEDUSA IN THE KITCHEN
—Stephani Schaeffer
sailing
every dish from the cupboard
______________________
MEDUSA ON THE THRONE
—Stephani Schaeffer
Sometimes her gut
gets packed with much
when her head's full of bile
and her heart's fed up.
She sits for hours
on her porcelain throne
solving crosswords
one by one.
Her bowels are twisted
cramps double her up.
Colitis, my friends
is a trouble that sucks.
It comes about
when you swallow rage
and can last too long
sometimes for days.
So vent your anger
and vent it all.
Write in your journal
and on the walls.
Don't show it to others
until the time when
it all comes out
all right in the end.
__________________
Finally, Louise Bogan's take on Medusa:
MEDUSA
—Louise Bogan
I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved,—a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.
When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.
This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.
The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.
And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.
______________________
—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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. 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:
Journals: The latest issue of Rattlesnake Review (#15) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. Next deadline is November 15—yikes! That's less than a week away!
Coming November 14: The Snake is proud to announce the release of Among Neighbors, a rattlechap from Taylor Graham; Home is Where You Hang Your Wings, a littlesnake broadside from frank andrick; and A Poet's Book of Days, a perpetual calendar featuring the poetry and photography of Katy Brown. Come celebrate all of these on Wednesday, November 14, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento.