Photo by Stephani Schaefer, Los Molinos
ELECTRICAL STORM
—Elizabeth Bishop
Dawn an unsympathetic yellow.
Cra-aack!—dry and light.
The house was really struck.
Crack! a tinny sound, like a dropped tumbler.
Tobias jumped in the window, got in bed—
silent, his eyes bleached white, his fur on end.
Personal and spiteful as a neighbors' child,
thunder began to bang and bump the roof.
One pink flash;
then hail, the biggest size of artificial pearls.
Dead-white, wax-white, cold—
diplomats' wives' favors
from an old moon party—
they lay in melting windrows
on the red ground until well after sunrise.
We got up to find the wiring fused,
no lights, a smell of saltpetre,
and the telephone dead.
The cat stayed in the warm sheets.
The Lent trees had shed all their petals:
wet, stuck, purple, among the dead-eye pearls.
The only sly thing about that cat
was that he was not a cat.
He was a dog.
A dog-faced dog.
A dog-faced dog with no nasty
cat venom in his veins.
No fever from that scratch.
Just a bark and a wag.
Woof.
—Noel Kroeplin, Grass Valley
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Thanks, Noel! Noel Kroeplin is responding to last Tuesday's Seed of the Week.
And thanks to Steph Schaefer, too, for the dramatic photo. If you'd like to see more of Steph's photos, pick up a copy of the brand-new Rattlesnake Review (#17), now available for free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Contributor copies and subscriptions will go into the mail this week and next. And if you aren't any of those but would like me to mail you one, send two bux to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726.
Also premiering last night at our monthly rattle-read: Attracted to Light, a chapbook by Ann Privateer; Eclipse, a free littlesnake broadside by Jeanine Stevens; and Conversations Volume Two of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series. Speaking of B.L., it's Drive-By Day!
B.L.'s Drive-By: Micro-Review of the Week:
Wild Strawberries by Eric Greinke, Presa :S: Press, PO Box 792, Rockford, MI 49341. 95pp, $15.
Okay, I want to make it right this time. I have nothing against the poetry of Eric Greinke. I have nothing against any writer of poems. What I dislike are poems without focus. Poems which, had the writer taken a little more time, would have been outstanding works of literature. I'm not saying that this is the case with Eric Greinke, for his new collection, Wild Strawberries, has some wonderful work. Not great work, but wonderful work. Hugh Fox has put into print that Greinke “melds man, the universe, and the divine.” I don’t know if I can agree with that statement, but we all see what we want to see… right?
Anyway, back to this review: like all collections of poetry, this one has the good & not-so-good poems. There are poems that crawl up your spine & out your mouth, & this is so true of Wild Strawberries. Eric Greinke has some fine poems in this collection, & for that alone it is worth the read. Would I recommend that you run out to your local bookstore & purchase a copy tomorrow? No, I can’t do that because if I recommended every book in which I have enjoyed a poem or two or three, you, my dear reader would be hitting the food lines; you’d have a cool library, but you’d be broke! So, how did Roger Ebert say it? Oh, a mild thumbs-up for Wild Strawberries.
___________________
THE ORANGE BEARS
—Kenneth Patchen
The orange bears with soft friendly eyes
Who played with me when I was ten,
Christ, before I left home they'd had
Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs
Seared by hot slag, their soft trusting
Bellies kicked in, their tongues ripped
Out, and I went down through the woods
To the smelly crick with Whitman
In the Haldeman-Julius edition,
And I just sat there worrying my thumbnail
Into the cover—What did he know about
Orange bears with their coats all stuck up with soft coal
And the National Guard coming over
From Wheeling to stand in front of the millgates
With drawn bayonets jeering at the strikers?
I remember you could put daisies
On the windowsill at night and in
The morning they'd be so covered with soot
You couldn't tell what they were anymore.
A hell of a fat chance my orange bears had!
___________________
—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: News from Rattlesnake Press
Coming in April, we will mark the Snake’s fourth birthday by throwing the Fourth Annual Birthday Bash at The Book Collector on Wednesday, April 9, including a buffet at 7 PM, followed by a reading at 7:30 PM. That night, there will be three history-making releases: Ann Menebroker’s new chapbook (Small Crimes); Ted Finn re-emerges with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap of his poetry and art (Damn the Eternal War); and Katy Brown inaugurates her blank (well, not really) journal series for our HandyStuff department with her MUSINGS: Photos and Prompts For Capturing Creative Thought. Please join us to celebrate four years of [your] poetry with fangs!