REVISITING
—Taylor Graham, Somerset
It’s in full color now,
not like those black/white photos
in the family album. A tiny
red-tile stucco house on a street
of gardens reaching out their blooms
and tendrils, everything kept
trellised, edged, and fenced.
Such a tidy neighborhood.
And the house where she grew up—
so much smaller
than she imagined.
How could there be room here
for the eagle totem, mountain
saddle, horsetail falls, coyote
call?
She remembers that photo
of herself at five: in spite
of ruffles, a bandaid
on her knee. She’d like to scissor
that girl from the picture,
set her free.
___________________
FIRST HOME
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
(for H.L.G., premature as me)
Few women pause in life—though blessed by
intervals the duration of prayer—to honor
their first homes: if by home we mean
womb, the mom, the mother. Almost no man
honors the first house, if that house is hospital.
If this is how we respect home, then let me
speak for the incubator: all glass panel, slid into
sterile steel frame. This cube, mere vitrine
denying its own evasions of light or heat,
took on warmth, became transparency
suffused with safety, became the doctor’s cradling gaze,
became nurses, a number of them country-bred,
squelching the index fingertip urge to stroke
us twin featherless chicks; in the way heat lamps
bore down benevolent on the sheets and pads
where tiny people-foals, dropped early
into the bawling world, couldn’t so much play
as wriggle-squiggle, honing shoulder-blade
buds on the napless white sheet. Even at this date,
incubators came fitted with airtight holes
stretched across by the slack wrists of sterile gloves,
the rubber thumb and fingers filling
as the doctor gingerly tested, or the nurse or the parent
deeply needed to caress the twin live young, brush
these morsels, half-handfuls. The gloves were, to us,
enormity; to the glove-wielder, the discovery of being
one’s own robotic hands, gentler and gentler with each
new model. Mom showed us our naked preemie selves,
in these red-fleshed newborn portraits, the photos
incubi, oven-chafed in a tiny scrapbook, we seeing
our likenesses so often that we remembered,
with profoundly somatic memory, being there,
Hugh shoving himself foreground, me background,
each twin inching, edging, yearning to press the pane:
touch, sheer, breakable, but enveloping, touch was all,
greed for the essences measured not in milk, but in
ounces per square glass millimeter. These days,
if we go back, it’s not to the photos (discarded),
but to our minds’ bright, inert incubator,
still warming our natal crèche, retinas
keeping primordial impressions, eye-vapors
maintaining our mental dolls in segments, phantom
limb-lifts and flexes, which—as our reveries cradle us—
impel us along triple vectors: to stay on this clean cotton;
to hurry out, inarticulate prototypes, into the blood
and flurry of the great world; or to ease back,
back up and in, once more inside the mother, never
an us apart from the her, the she-foam, sea and stir,
the mother love, mother unmade and inchoate,
the buttonless, unsewn pouch, marsupial universe.
___________________
Thanks to the two TG's (Taylor Graham and Tom Goff) for responding to yesterday's Seed of the Week: Birthplace Revisited.
News from our writer friends in Tahoe:
Ray Hadley from South Lake Tahoe writes: The second edition of writings from the Lake Tahoe Writing Club is out. It's been renamed The Edge, and it’s very attractive: 73 pp, perfect-bound with colored photographs. We are now accepting submissions for the next edition. Go to TahoeWritingClub.com or info@LakeTahoeWritingClub.com/.
Ray also tells us that Open Mic Nights are back July 25, August 27, and September 24, 7:30 PM at the Valhalla Grand Hall in Tahoe, just north of Camp Richardson on Hiway 89. Travel Hiway 50 to the "y" then take 50 north about 5 miles.
Great American Pin-Up:
Shawn Pittard reminds us to check out The Great American Pinup blog (http://greatamericanpinup.blogspot.com/2008/07/joy-of-lending-books-to-friends.html) for his recent article, “The Joy of Lending Books to Friends”.
___________________
THE OLYMPIAN
—Donald R. Anderson and Marie J. Ross, Stockton
Just like a cat she stretched her arms, preparing for the dash.
The heat shone down on her back, and she glanced at the crowd.
She was a runner waiting for the trophy, her shoes, conqueror
of the wind. A certain state of relaxation, a heightened sensitivity
to time with the adrenaline, she was in two places at once.
The rush of waves to shore enhanced her compatibility to seek
freedom’s erratic splendors. Pacing herself as she would against
a persistent and strong tide, she would stride as she would have swum,
her stride those instant steps into the other world.
Growing into native feel of the powerful determination, her arms
pushed through waves becoming tiger’s paws, stretching, reaching for more,
gripping the heat of sand as if in the ancient games of the Olympians—a
shocking splash as she is congratulated with Gatorade, the rush now one of
victory affirmed. Her eyes sparkled with the sunlight, caught off the medal
around her neck. Somewhere in the roar of the crowd she thought she heard
a tiger.
___________________
FLIGHT
—James Tate
(for K.)
Like a glum cricket
the refrigerator is singing
and just as I am convinced
that it is the only noise
in the building, a pot falls
in 2B. The neighbors on
both sides of me suddenly
realize that they have not
made love to their wives
since 1947. The racket
multiplies. The man down hall
is teaching his dog to fly.
The fish are disgusted
and beat their heads blue
against a cold aquarium. I too
lose control and consider
the dust huddled in the corner
a threat to my endurance.
Were you here, we would not
tolerate mongrels in the air,
nor the conspiracies of dust.
We would drive all night,
your head tilted on my shoulder.
At dawn, I would nudge you
with my anxious fingers and say,
Already we are in Idaho.
__________________
Today's LittleNip:
He heard something coming. Rain, like hundreds of mice running through corn.
—Virginia Hamilton
__________________
—Medusa
SnakeWatch: What's Up With Rattlesnake Press
The Snake will be snoozing through July and August, leaving Medusa to carry on alone. Then on September 10, we shall burst back onto the scene with Ten Poems, a new chapbook from Patrick Grizzell; #2 in Katy Brown's series of blank journals (Musings Two: Vices, Virtues and Obsessions); plus Issue #19 of Rattlesnake Review (deadline is August 15). Meanwhile, look in on Medusa every day, and, for heaven's sake, keep sending stuff! The snakes of Medusa are always hungry...
Medusa's Weekly Menu:
(Contributors are welcome to cook up something for any and all of these!)
Monday: Weekly NorCal poetry calendar
Tuesday: Seed of the Week: Tuesday is Medusa's day to post poetry triggers such as quotes, forms, photos, memories, jokes—whatever might tickle somebody's muse. Pick up the gauntlet and send in your poetic results; and don't be shy about sending in your own triggers, too! All poems will be posted and a few of them will go into Medusa's Corner of each Rattlesnake Review. Send your work to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline for SOW; respond today, tomorrow, or whenever the muse arrives. (Print 'em out, maybe, save 'em for a dry spell?) When you send us work, though, just let us know which "seed" it was that inspired you.
Wednesday: HandyStuff Quickies: Resources for the poet, including whatever helps ease the pain of writing and/or publishing: favorite journals to read and/or submit to; books, etc., about writing; organizational tools—you know—HandyStuff! Tell us about your favorite tools.
Thursday: B.L.'s Drive-Bys: Micro-reviews by our irreverent Reviewer-in-Residence, B.L. Kennedy. Send books, CDs, DVDs, etc. to him for possible review (either as a Drive-By or in future issues of Rattlesnake Review) at P.O. Box 160664, Sacramento, CA 95816.
Friday: NorCal weekend poetry calendar
Daily (except Sunday): LittleNips: SnakeFood for the Poetic Soul: Daily munchables for poetic thought, including short paragraphs, quotes, wonky words, silliness, little-known poetry/poet facts, and other inspiration—yet another way to feed our ravenous poetic souls.
And poetry! Every day, poetry from writers near and far! The Snakes of Medusa are always hungry.......!
_________________
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). And be sure to sign up for Snakebytes, our monthly e-newsletter that will keep you up-to-date on all our ophidian chicanery.