Blinking at the Sun

Pig with snow on the Kieths' back deck
(This was about twelve inches ago.
Right now this pig's completely buried.)
Photo by Kathy Kieth
(Well, okay, it's not a REAL pig...)

WINTER NEWS
—John Haines

They say the wells
are freezing
at Northway where
the cold begins.

Oil tins bang
as evening comes on,
and clouds of
steaming breath drift
in the street.

Men go out to feed
the stiffening dogs,

the voice of the snowman
calls the white-
haired children home.

__________________

POEM FOR A COLD JOURNEY
—John Haines

On the road of the self-
contained traveler I stood
like one to whom the great
announcements are made.

In one hand I held
a hard, ddry branch with
bitter, purple fruit;
in the other hand a small,
blue-and-yellow bird
whoe closed eyes stared inward
upon a growing darkness.

Listening, I could hear
within myself the snow
that was coming, the sound
of a loud, cold trumpet.

__________________

This Monday at SPC (actually, it's at The Book Collector for SPC):

•••Monday (1/4), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Francisco X. Alarcón and Eve West Bessier at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., (916) 442-9295 or www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org/. PLEASE NOTE THE TEMPORARY LOCATION CHANGE. SPC events typically happen at their location at 25th & R Sts., inside HQ: Headquarters for the Arts.

Francisco X. Alarcón is an acclaimed poet and educator and author of ten volumes of poetry. Alarcón is the recipient of 1993 American Book Award, the 1993 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and the 1984 Chicano Literary Prize. In April 2002, he received the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association (BABRA). He was one of the three finalists nominated for the State Poet Laureate of California. Alarcón was also awarded the 1997 Pura Belpré Honor Award by the American Library Association and the National Parenting Publications Gold Medal. He also received 2002 Pura Belpré Honor Award, Danforth and Fulbright fellowships and the 1998 Carlos Pellicer-Robert Frost Poetry Honor Award by the Third Binational Border Poetry Contest, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Alarcón's most recent books are Sonnets to Madness and Other Misfortunes / Sonetos a la locura y otras penas (Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Company 2001) and From the Other Side of Night / Del otro lado de la noche: New and Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press 2002). He currently teaches at the University of California, Davis.

Eve West Bessier is an author of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. She was born in the Netherlands and has lived in Davis, California for the past two decades. She currently works as a Certified Life Coach and Vocal Coach, and teaches writing workshops and residencies. She worked for The University of California, Davis for eighteen years in educational research, program development and evaluation. She holds a Master's of Education from UC Davis and has done graduate course work in English and creative writing at California State University, Sacramento. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Eve is a performing jazz vocalist, a visual artist and a promoter of community arts programs. She has received several literary awards, including The Kathryn Hohlwein (2000), First Place for Poetry in The California Focus on Writers Contest (2000), and Second Place in Sacramento News & Review's Short Story Contest (2001). Her poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2003. She has two chapbooks, Roots Music and Splash, published by dPress, Sebastopol, 2002 and 2003.

___________________

SNOWY NIGHT
—John Haines

This is like a place
we used to know,
but stranger
and filled with the cold
imagination of a frozen
sea, in which
the moon is anchored
like a ghost
in heavy chains.

___________________

SOUTH WIND
—John Haines

I dreamed of horses in the night,
invaders with strong, sweating
bodies plunging through the cold.

The stars were suddenly hidden,
but dark manes flowed
with sparks, and on the black,
frozen hills the rushing air
soared like a forest on fire.

The thunder of their passage
broke down the walls of my dream.
I awoke in the ruined kingdom
of frost with a warm wind
blowing my hair, and heard about me
and in the distance
the heavy hoofs still pounding
as the wild, invisible army
overran the north.

__________________

THE MOLE
—John Haines

Sometimes I envy those
who spring like great black-
and-gold butterflies
before the crowded feet
of summer—
brief, intense,
like pieces of the sun,
they are remembered and celebrated
long after night has fallen.

But I believe also in one
who in the dead of winter
tunnels through a damp,
clinging darkness,
nosing the soil of old gardens.

He lives unnoticed, but
deep within him there is a dream
of the surface one day
breaking and crumbling:

and a small, brown-furred
figure stands there,
blinking at the sky,
as the rising sun slowly dries
his strange, unruly wings.

___________________

—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:

Rattlesnake Review: The latest issue of Rattlesnake Review (Sweet 16) is available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send $2 to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you one. Next deadline (for Issue #17, due out in mid-March) is February 15—sooner than you think!

Also coming in February: On February 13, Rattlesnake Press will present a new SnakeRings SpiralChap from Don and Elsie Feliz (To Berlin With Love), plus a new littlesnake broadside from Carlena Wike (Going the Distance), as well as Volume Two of Conversations, B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series. Come help us launch all of this on Weds., Feb. 13 at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM.