STORMY
—Taylor Graham, Placerville
It’s no weather for going to the lighthouse.
Imagine its brilliant eye.
This house is fogged in, every room. It’s cold.
Then light a fire in the stove.
It’s about to storm to shake the crockery off the shelf.
Think how a lighthouse rides the waves.
We have no potatoes for supper, only stones.
They’ll anchor us like the lighthouse rock.
How many people have drowned?
How your small fire dreams of becoming
lighthouse.
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Thanks to Taylor Graham for her response to our Seed of the Week: The Lighthouse. Tom Goff and Kevin Jones have also riffed to the theme, and both of them had their eye on the lighthousekeeper's daughter. Kevin, in fact, went for the son, the widow—the whole family, in fact. Tom's first poem previously appeared on James Lee Jobe's blog, which is now known as "Pulverized Diamonds". Check out Rattlechapper James Lee's blog by clinking on the "James Lee Jobe" link at the right of this column.
Watch for a new littlesnake broadside by Taylor Graham, by the way, coming in April, and a new rattlechap from Tom Goff, coming in May, and also watch for their columns in Rattlesnake Review #21, coming in mid-March (deadline is February 15). And next time you're in The Book Collector, pick up Kevin Jones' broadside, Low-Rent Dojo, or ask me and I'll send you one. Littlesnake broadsides are free!
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THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S DAUGHTER
c. 1927
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
Come sit with me. We have so little visit;
I ache to know what’s going on out there.
I’ll whisper to you, and you must whisper back;
these thick rock walls won’t echo our words, won’t swat
thoughts back at us, but people might. My father,
poor stooped and aching man, climbs miles of stairs,
and, if he has a word to say, it stings;
but how can he not give back with equal spear
the point that pierces him, life’s harpoon cast?
How thick are they? So thick, that when it storms,
the grey-black rage, the crashing violent white,
are magic-lantern shows with not one shadow,
soundless insane upheavals of the world.
The storm’s great battering becomes an external
cinema, a projection of what I
feel and suffer inwardly, heart ramming
apoplexy into my inner skin,
suffusing it with blood unbled, which pools
and crazes…but you fear for me; don’t, dear…
it’s just that you have some outlet. We have parlors:
parlor kitchens, parlor bedrooms, parlor parlors,
everything, everyone shrunk and battened down,
ship-sized. When my father or mother weaken,
I lug great basins of water, kerosene vessels,
coaloil for the wheels under the elegant lantern:
its tracks I oil, its lens I clean, the beam
itself I rarely see. What do you think?
I work to oil the very wheels of light:
is that not a line for a lighthouse keeper’s poem?
We have no sailor swagger, yet we’re sailors
in a different ocean; never launch out from,
nor do we return to, harbor beacon, haven.
Never quite sense the effect of our flung light,
tossed like a length of rope when men might drown.
I do apologize; please, please, do have
more teacake, do be good enough to pour
your own cup, my hand shakes too much to help…
Tell all about your life. Have you a beau?
But you’re a college student…you will soon
completely overtake me. I’m needed here,
not to learn, to add to small Greek and Latin,
but needed for our little flock of goats,
for gardening our patch of vegetables,
for events just like the day when—soundlessly
again—I saw the storm dash a great ship
on rock; it spilled the human cargo bleeding,
soaked, sputtering, and desperate to pull
torn lives with torn hands silently from the rocks.
Voiceless, they looked like dollhouse replicas,
puppet-castaways, puppet-victims, blood-spots
daubing the tiny porcelain skins paint-red.
I looked away: Mother, calling for rags
to rip and then to furl up into bandages.
I looked again—and, lit from behind by sun
that was itself a lighthouse-light, through turmoil,
an enormous wave reared up into ghastly profile:
the Brother Jonathan, wrecked in ’65.
I looked a third time: like a daguerreotype
fixed in the thick, slow-dripping window glass,
poised against the real and the ghostly
sea-wracks both, was my pane-face aghast.
Unable to stay or go, corpse-frozen, pallid,
trapped in the glass, the spectacle like flame
with death behind that flame; both eyebrows lifted,
my irises, pupils, islands in twin white seas,
wanting to beat my way out of this rock-hold,
just as did, last Thursday, a common cormorant,
blown in at the door, a sunny day, but strong gusts;
he beat and he beat against the walls, his wing-force
diminishing, but groped his way out of our tower.
I hope he did not leave damaged, the poor creature…
I’ve tortured you with the prattle of the pent-up;
no, no, don’t open that door yet, don’t go off…
dear, take my hand, come over with me this way,
I’ll show you the entire chambered nautilus;
the stairs wind up or down exactly like one;
the walls shut one from heaven, without a dome,
don’t you think. Just look at my father’s cunning:
given scant space, he built and hinged this door
so that it gives onto the long stairway down
just as it closes the passage leading up…
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LIGHTHOUSE
(watercolor by Nora Laila Staklis)
—Tom Goff
A binary painting, that’s your watercolor
of the lighthouse on Battery Point in Crescent City.
Slant doubles, oppositions,
rake and stabilize the natural scene: great jutting
granite headlands, one foreground,
one midground, twin sentinels to the last
high sweep of ground, a reclining nude
amid whose full soft curves is set
the lighthouse itself—two micro-cypresses
the verticals that counterpoise the flat
red roof and wall horizontals. A rubicund note,
a dark iron-smaragdine note: more doubled motifs.
The fourth-order Fresnel lantern’s
a distant inexistent supposition, so far afar
in god’s-eye view do we see it; yet
we need the red-roofed bulwark, as proclaims
one forefront splotch of paprika-colored
rock lichen—again, two pans in the scale.
Those red/green lighthouse-and-cypress idiographs:
equivalenced in the left (front) corner’s black-pebbled
hint of shingle. Binary, did I say?
Seen science-eyed, the mists and sprays
through which we perceive a blue-and-slate
civil war of stone and sky
seem to fling themselves in subtler
numbers, Fibonacci droplets. Through this commotion,
nevertheless, and through zigzag landmass,
bludgeons the vast gray-green black-tipped
bluster of the ocean, beating the stubborn bluffs
in waves of two by two by two.
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LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S SON
—Kevin Jones, Fair Oaks
Voted
Most likely
To join
The Foreign
Legion
__________________
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S DAUGHTER
—Kevin Jones
Dates
Always
Careful
To have
Her home
Before
The fog
Sets in
__________________
MAIN QUALIFICATIONS TO BE
A LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
—Kevin Jones
—Must
Look good
In blue cap
—Supply
Own shiny
Brass
Spyglass
—Have
Impressive
Muttonchop
Sideburns
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LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S FAMILY
AT THE LABYRINTH
—Kevin Jones
Walking,
Walking,
Walking
In
Straight
Lines
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LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
PARLOR GAME
—Kevin Jones
Let’s hear
Your favorite
Foghorn!
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THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S WIDOW:
A REVISIONIST VIEW
—Kevin Jones
All those
Tales about
The brave
Lighthouse
Keeper’s wife
Who ran
The place
For years
Decades even
After the spouse
Perished
In a horrible fall.
But sometimes
On a dark
And foggy
Night,
I think,
There, top
Of the
Twisting
Stair, one “Oh,
Hon, your
Shoe’s
Untied,”
And
Peace,
Quiet,
And job
Security
For life.
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Today's LittleNip:
There comes a moment in the day, when you have written your pages in the morning, attended to your correspondence in the afternoon, and have nothing further to do. Then comes the hour when you are bored; that's the time for sex. —H. G. Wells
__________________
—Medusa
SnakeWatch: What's New from Rattlesnake Press:
Rattlesnake Review: The latest issue (#20) is currently available at The Book Collector, or send me two bux and I'll mail you one. Deadline for RR21 is February 15: send 3-5 poems, smallish art pieces and/or photos (no bio, no cover letter, no simultaneous submissions or previously-published poems) to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. E-mail attachments are preferred, but be sure to include all contact info, including snail address. Meanwhile, the snakes of Medusa are always hungry!
Coming in January: Other than the ever-restless Medusa, the Snake will be snoozing during January; no releases or readings.
Then, in February: On Weds., February 11, Rattlesnake Press will be releasing a new rattlechap from Sacramento's Poet Laureate, Julia Connor (Oar); a littlesnake broadside from Josh Fernandez (In The End, It’s A Worthless Machine); and the premiere of our new Rattlesnake Reprints, featuring The Dimensions of the Morning by D.R. Wagner, which was first published by Black Rabbit Press in 1969. That’s February 11 at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else’s.
And on February 19, the premiere of our new, free Poetry Unplugged quarterly, WTF, edited by frank andrick, will be celebrated at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento, 8 PM. (For those of you just tuning in, Poetry Unplugged is the long-running reading series at Luna's Cafe.)
Also available (free): littlesnake broadside #46: Snake Secrets: Getting Your Poetry Published in Rattlesnake Press (and lots of other places, besides!): A compendium of ideas for brushing up on your submissions process so as to make editors everywhere more happy, thereby increasing the likelihood of getting your poetry published. Pick up a copy at The Book Collector or write to me and I'll send you one. Free!
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, or any other day!): 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.......!
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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.