Photo by Ronald Edwin Lane
FALL REFLECTIONS
—Ronald Edwin Lane, Weimar
The scent of summer still clings in the dry soil and shallow streams, high up in these mountains where summer barely gains a grip. It’s gone now; summer slipped down-slope to gather up geese in the valley, I suppose, while winter sweeps at its feet, from the north, nudging it to the south. Fall is nothing but a battleground scarred yellow and red that eventually bleeds to naked limbs and white painted pines. On this day the lake is a mirror holding mountain peaks and clouds for trout to kiss and send rings through the stratosphere of their watery world. And I, I stand on this battleground, dreaming like a fish of what lies beyond my world, of a girl, of rings, and of a tender kiss.
—Ronald Edwin Lane, Weimar
The scent of summer still clings in the dry soil and shallow streams, high up in these mountains where summer barely gains a grip. It’s gone now; summer slipped down-slope to gather up geese in the valley, I suppose, while winter sweeps at its feet, from the north, nudging it to the south. Fall is nothing but a battleground scarred yellow and red that eventually bleeds to naked limbs and white painted pines. On this day the lake is a mirror holding mountain peaks and clouds for trout to kiss and send rings through the stratosphere of their watery world. And I, I stand on this battleground, dreaming like a fish of what lies beyond my world, of a girl, of rings, and of a tender kiss.
This weekend in NorCal poetry:
•••Tonight (Friday, 10/24), 7:30 PM: Special Sacramento Poetry Center reading features Katy Lederer and Rebecca Morrison at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Refreshments. Katy Lederer is the author of the poetry collection, Winter Sex (Verse Press, 2002) and the memoir, Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (Crown, 2003), which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year and Esquire Magazine named one of its eight Best Books of the Year. Her second poetry book, The Heaven-Sent Leaf, will be out with BOA Editions in the fall of 2008. Katy Lederer's poems and prose have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Harvard Review, GQ, and elsewhere. She has been anthologized in Body Electric (Norton), From Poe to the Present: Great American Prose Poems (Scribner), and State of the Union (Wave Books), among other compilations. Educated at the University of California at Berkeley and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she serves as a Poetry Editor of Fence Magazine. Her honors and awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize, fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a Discover Great New Writers citation from Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers Program. Lederer currently works at the D.E. Shaw group, a proprietary trading firm based in New York City.
Rebecca Morrison (aka Eskimo Pie Girl) graduated summa cum laude from UC Davis. She has published 5 chapbooks. She was the former VP of the Sacramento Poetry Center, was one of the founding editors of Poetry Now, and is currently one of the hosts for the SPC reading series. She has been the editor of eskimopie.net for 7 years. She has been running the 3rd Sunday Writer's Group with Nancy Wallace since 1995. She has given over a 100 readings and has read her poetry in Sacramento, Davis, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Lodi, Stockton, Reno, Auburn, Nevada City, El Dorado Hills, New Hampshire, Fresno and elsewhere.
•••Sat. (10/25), 7-9 PM: ‘The Show’ poetry series presents the Berkeley Slam Team, which has won many local, regional, and national titles and features Christian Drake, the 2008 Berkeley Grand Slam Champion. Wo'se Community Center 2863 35th St. (off 35th and Broadway), Sacramento. $5 general admission. All artists (poets, singers, musicians, comedians, etc.) are encouraged to sign up early for open mic. Info: 916-208-POET.
•••Sunday (10/26), 1 PM: Brad Buchanan will be performing poems from his new book, Swimming the Mirror, at The Avid Reader, 1600 Broadway, Sacramento. Brad Buchanan is the editor of Roan Press, an operation that he co-founded with his wife, Kate Washington, food writer for the Sacramento News & Review, Sunset Magazine and Via. Roan Press will be publishing 1-2 books per year, including poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs, and are currently open for submissions. Below is the url for a story that came out about Swimming the Mirror and Roan Press, in the Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/1108331.html/. Brad has done many readings in the area (see this online review of one of his readings at http://greatamericanpinup.blogspot.com/2008/07/noras-favorite-brad-buchanan-poem.html)
•••Sunday (10/26), 11 AM: El Camino Poets (a chapter of California Society of Chaparral Poets, Inc.) meets at the Ethel Hart Sr. Center, 27th & J Sts., Sacramento for a poetry workshop. Bring 8 copies of your poems for critique. All poets are welcome!
•••Monday (10/27), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Meg Withers and Tom Goff at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic after. Meg Withers is a writer, teacher, artist, social activist, and community college instructor of English teaching at Merced Community College (Los Banos campus), but has Sacramento connections, as she has published in Poetry Now and the American River Review, in addition to such well-known journals as Nimrod. She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State, where her graduate advisor was Maxine Chernoff. In particular, A Communion of Saints is moving, elliptically told, yet faithful to lived experience as it traces “ourgirl’s” wanderings amid the gay-lesbian-transgender community of Honolulu, Hawaii in the Eighties. Here are some samples:
***
…in the beginning was
the queen…not the queen certainly not the word…because they lie…the families this man/woman without kin exiled for abominations…wearing sequins parading through ranchstyle domicile in mothers pantyhose…spectator pumps shirtwaist dress with silicon injections for boobs later on… watery look leaks over drugs/mascara…such a lonelyheart this mirror…he/she asks the echo… ostracized? answers move to paradise… and thus…
…she painted her face and tired her head and looked out at a window.
—2 KINGS 9:30
***
. . .as ourgirl straddled grief
cold gulf between icon-pure desire of flesh...aware intrinsic
arid symbol status...she was all juggle dance soft flesh...
created to dwell amongst some other flesh...her softness
wore her down...flesh dying in bottles/pills/spoons...with
those other ones forsaken...those who schlepped her crystal
earrings/rhinestone pumps...but from whom there was no
fondle/kiss nor even touch...of her...
...for i also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore
suffered i thee not to touch her...
—GENESIS 20:6
(Two excerpts from A Communion of Saints, © Meg Withers)
***
CALIFORNIA PERENNIAL
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
Thick smoke invests the air for miles around.
But “miles around” supposes a pleasing distance.
This intimate gray presumes upon the ground;
it mimics fog—no moisture, just the dimness.
Tongues taste of a brass- or copper-savored spray.
No starts or jolts to scan for the motion sensor:
my workroom darkens. Outdoors, no birds fly:
just smoke, swung rich and repellent from the church censer.
Say this is our California, choked by fire;
these fumes a common perennial. Each return
of summer may expect the fey gray bloom
as writer’s block battens on trances, needle-inspired.
Will this pandemic recur? Then speed the doom.
I know it would not come back if it could not burn.
(with thanks to James Lee Jobe’s Just Poetry site, where this was posted)
***
FROM THE DARK END OF THE HALLWAY
—Tom Goff
The dark end of the hallway
gave on to my mother’s bedroom,
the room Mom at last had to be gently
brought to. There she’d be cajoled
to undress, persuaded into her nightgown,
coaxed to compose her restless hands
and wandering feet to sleep. She slept, or
was meant to, in the high, ebony-black Kentucky
bed brought so long ago over the Cumberland Gap,
the bed whose mattress began four
feet off the ground. This height dizzied her
like first planting feet on a gently canted plateau
atop a mountain, or the slow turn of a carousel
—beds are good for turning the slow dizzies in,
even for waltzing over and over the whole turnstile
world’s whirl—or perhaps her thoughts jumped
the great Cumberland Gap. At all events,
from the dark end of the hallway,
our bright-lit near end rendering the far dark
darker, blurrier, would come music, whistling
lips as if pressed upon the air: my mother,
whistling no particular tunes in no particular times,
but liquid, cherry-cheery. Was she reliving
the alternative girl she’d held
together like a time-release capsule,
let dissolve grain by grain these years,
only now accorded the last full fizz? Bartering
music for sleep, she’d lip-shape the notes
louder, louder, louder, the effervescence
filling the house, oxymoronic bonfire in the wet,
whistling not in the dark, but just whistling dark,
her whole musical soul bubbling
in ever more dizzy and lifting spirals
the waters of dissolve…
(previously posted at Medusa’s Kitchen)
__________________
THE 66
—dawn m. dibartolo, mather
bus stops.
sulfuric hiss
as doors open ~
welcome.
caramel man
with black-tooth grin
beckons me to
“climb on in!”
and i do.
he takes route 6.
i sit next to
an old man
with yellow skin
and red-rimmed eyes
locked in vacant, glassy stare.
all the other faces
are blank too;
acceptance ~ we all know
…we all chose.
childhood dreams
of golden streets
thru cracked windows
whiz by without so much
as a lingering memory…
fog upon the plexiglas
for all an eternity’s drive.
__________________
Today's LittleNip:
WHEN IT IS SNOWING
—Siv Cedering
When it is snowing
the blue jay
is the only piece of
sky
in my
backyard.
__________________
—Medusa
SnakeWatch: What's New from Rattlesnake Press:
October is Sacramento Poetry Month! October’s releases from Rattlesnake Press include a new rattlechap from Moira Magneson (He Drank Because) and a free littlesnake broadside from Hatch Graham (Circling of the Pack). Both are available at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or from me (kathykieth@hotmail.com), or from rattlesnakepress.com/. Rattlechaps are $6 by mail, $5 at The Book Collector.
Be sure to join us on Thursday, Oct. 30, 8 PM, when Rattlesnake Press will release not one, but two SpiralChaps to honor and celebrate Luna’s Café, including a new collection of art and poetry from B.L. Kennedy (Luna’s House of Words) and an anthology of Luna’s poets, artists and photographs (La Luna: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Café) edited by Frank Andrick. Come travel with our Away Team as we leave the Home of the Snake for a brief road trip/time travel to Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento to celebrate Art Luna and the 13 years of Luna's long-running poetry series. Who knows what auspicious adventures await us there??
And check out B.L. Kennedy’s interview with Art Luna in the latest Rattlesnake Review (#19)! Free copies are available at The Book Collector, or send me two bux and I’ll mail you one (address below). Next deadline, by the way, is November 15.
Coming in November: November will feature a new rattlechap from Red Fox Underground Poet Wendy Patrice Williams (Some New Forgetting); a littlesnake broadside from South Lake Tahoe Poet Ray Hadley; our 2009 calendar from Katy Brown (Beyond the Hill: A Poet’s Calendar) as well as Conversations, Vol. 4 of B.L. Kennedy’s Rattlesnake Interview Series. That’s Weds., November 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector.
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 SOWs; 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 (sometimes): 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 and in-between! 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.