Patch
Photo by Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Tehama
WILD BOY
—Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Tehama
Like a gray shadow
the skinny kitten
slid into my life last spring.
Lived rough by the creek,
hovered in sunlit nearness.
In summer I announced,
I don’t know what you call yourself
but I think of you as Patch.
By the time of turning leaves
he sunned on the deck
with Smudge, Java and me,
‘happened’ to glide
under my trailing hand.
All winter he nested
on red towels piled
in the garage.
On Valentine’s Day
he discovered lady cats.
Next day the vet snipped
Patch’s love life away.
When he returned
from the creekside recovery room
I started my program in earnest.
Wooed him with a pan
of dry kibble at my feet,
hand stroking
the length of his body.
I have a private wager
that in a month, maybe two,
the pretty wild boy
will curl in my lap
and purr.
Thanks to Patricia Wellingham-Jones for the response to our cat Seed of the Week from several weeks ago. Remember, there's no deadline on SOWs. See more of Patricia's work in the new Rattlesnake Review—pick one up free at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or send me $4 and I'll mail you one. Also check out PWJ's tribute in there (with Steph Schaefer) to long-time contributor Ray Dunn, who passed away March 1.
This week in NorCal poetry (Wow!):
•••Monday (3/16), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents McKinley Park Poetry Gaggle a HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St. (at R), Sacramento. Open mic after. Info: http://www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org/. [See last Friday’s post for bios.]
•••Tues. (3/17), 9 PM: The Moore Time for Poetry TV series is on Ch. 17 Comcast, also SureWest and Strategic Frontier. This week features the 2009 Musiq Soulchild's Sacramento concert peformance at the Crest Theatre. The encore cablecast schedule is on March 19 at 5 AM. Also, visit this website, www.accesssacramento.org, and click on the BIG "Watch Channel 17" button to watch our program! Hosted by Terry Moore & 4-year-old daughter Tyra Moore.
•••Tuesday (3/17), 7-8:30 PM: Our House Poetry Series is back with poetry features and open mic; now it’s on the third Tuesday of each month at Our House Gallery’s new El Dorado Hills location, 1004 White Rock Road #400, El Dorado Hills, Montano de El Dorado Center (south of Hwy 50 on Latrobe Rd at White Rock Rd.). Info: 916-933-4278.
•••Weds. (3/18), 1-2 PM: CSUS Festival of the Arts presends Gabriel Gudding in the Library Gallery, CSUS, 6000 J St., Sacramento.
•••Thurs. (3/19), 7 PM: CSUS Festival of the Arts presents Tim Hernandez in the Library Gallery, CSUS.
•••Thurs. (3/19), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Features, with open mic before and after. Free!
•••Fri. (3/20), 2-3- PM: CSUS Festival of the Arts presents Kathryn Cowles in the Library Gallery, CSUS.
•••Friday (3/20), 7-8 PM: Poetry at Raven's Tale features Celtic Poets Rebecca Morrison, Jeanine Stevens, Brigit Truex, and Charlene Ungstad. A short poetry open-mic follows (signup before the featured readers). Raven's Tale bookstore is located at 352 Main Street, Placerville. Free.
•••Friday (3/20), 7:30 PM: The Other Voice, sponsored by the UU Church in Davis, is honored to present two prize winning poets: Julia Levine and Gillian Wegener, who will read in the library of the church located at 27074 Patwin Road. Julia Levine has won numerous prizes for her poetry, including the Tampa Review Poetry Prize for her full-length poetry collection, Ask; the Anhinga Poetry Prize and bronze medal for her first collection, Practicing for Heaven; a Discovery/The Nation award; the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize from Nimrod and six nominations for a Pushcart Prize. She is published in numerous journals and anthologies and lives and works in Davis. Gillian Wegener is the author of The Opposite of Clairvoyance, published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2008. A chapbook, Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other, was published by In the Grove Press in 2001 and she was awarded top prizes by the Dorothy Sargfenta Rosenberg Foundation in 2006 and 2007. She has been published in numerous journals, including Runes, English Journal, americus review and In the Grove. Wegener works as a junior high English teacher in California's Central Valley and lives in Modesto. Refreshments and Open Mike follow, so bring a poem or two to share.
•••Friday (3/20 and 3/27), 8-10:30 PM: Poetry Jam at Sacramento’s new and hot Spoken Word venue, THE UPPER LEVEL LOUNGE (Located inside of Fitness Systems Heathclub, by Cal State Skating Rink). Two back-to-back Friday Nights in a venue that also has a VIP lounge and a beverage area. Open mic, too. $5; 26 Massie Ct., Sacramento (exit Mack Rd. East to Stockton Blvd, left on Massie). Info: 916-208-POET (T-Mo).
•••Sat. (3/21), 2-3 PM: CSUS Festival of the Arts presents Elizabeth Cross in the Library Gallery, CSUS.
•••Saturday (3/21), 8:30 AM-4:30 PM: Spend a day learning how to enrich K-12 education through the arts for free! Educators, administrators, artists, and parents are invited to the ninth annual CSUS/Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Council Arts Resource Faire at CSU Sacramento in the University Union. Free parking is available in Parking Structure II. The Arts Resource Faire is a free one-day event for K-12 teachers and student teachers in the Capital region. You can choose from 72 workshops on integrating arts into the classroom. Selections include hands-on workshops on storytelling and children’s literature, African American Dance, sessions in printmaking, puppetry, collage, theatre, music and more.You can see details of the offerings and preregister for the event at http://www.sacmetroarts.org/other-programs-and-resources.html/. Info: Xochitl @ 916-566-3991.
•••Sat. (3/21), 6-8 PM: You are invited to stop by the Cozmic Café on Main Street in Placerville during the month of March to see the photography exhibit, Friends & Neighbors: Mexico, by Janis Arnell and Irene Lipshin. The show includes images from the state of Michoacán, where many of their students lived before coming to the United States. In addition, please join them on Saturday, March 21 for a Third Saturday Artwalk reception at the Cozmic Café from 6-8 PM.
•••Sat. (3/21), 7-9 PM: Underground Books Poetry Series (every third Saturday) presents Lolita Moore and Jane Guireman. Underground Books, 2814 35th St. (at Broadway), Sacramento. Open mic.
•••Sunday (3/22), 11 AM-1 PM: El Camino Poets invites you to join them for a mini-workshop at the Ethel Hart Senior Center, 27th and J Sts., Sacramento. Please bring 10 copies of your poem to share and have critiqued. Come join us for tea and an audio presentation of a famous 20th-century poet.
__________________
MOURNING AND MELANCHOLIA:
IN MEMORY OF SYLVIA PLATH
—Joyce Carol Oates
Ceaseless
and raw beneath the eyelids
visions work, unsleeping.
A dream rears backward, and a dream
works upward to the eye.
The eye-muscles cannot resist.
Exhausted with dreams they move
into focus, again
And then wake: a morning's weather
a noise of undreamt distance
where strangers accelerate
powerful machines.
Ceaseless the noise, the strangers—
Reading for enormities, we are anchored hard
unpitiable.
We persist in our Being.
We are never known.
__________________
MIDDAY
—Joyce Carol Oates
When Love fails loves fail.
The declension is almost musical.
Being after being falls back—
separate, whole. Strangers.
Moons become chunks of unreflecting rock.
How our friends' faces are exposed!
Their souls exposed, strangers!
They were separate and whole long before we lived.
They were children on distant coasts, in walled
villages in Europe.
As Love fails the backgrounds of blurred shots
rise to prominence.
The world shifts to midday.
Like stained glass it awakens to midday.
When love fails loves fail
waking us to the equilibrium of loss.
The midday shifts back inside us.
We are awakened: we wake.
___________________
CLOSURE
—Joyce Carol Oates
You pursued me as if this were not a game
of mid-life
as if your flesh had tricked you
the eyes stricken white-rimmed with dread
for what you forced of us.
Our mouths together, a communion of wounds.
In all such blood there is anonymous life.
The roads we drove along, aimlessly,
through one winter and spring,
are not now crumpled or barricaded—but are exactly the same.
Even the median's ravaged thistles are the same.
The rising of certain loves is—
The dying of certain loves—
When agony becomes anonymous it is perfection.
___________________
Today's LittleNip:
A dyslexic man walks into a bra...
___________________
—Medusa
SnakeWatch: What's New from Rattlesnake Press:
Rattlesnake Review: The new Snake (RR21) is out! The issue is now available at The Book Collector, and contributor and subscription copies will go into the mail this week and next—or send me four bux and I'll mail you one. Next deadline is May 15 for RR22: 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; let us know if your submission is for the Review or for Medusa, or for either one.
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!
NEW FOR MARCH: Rattlesnake Press is proud to present a new chapbook from Norma Kohout (All Aboard!!!); a littlesnake broadside from Patricia Hickerson (At Grail Castle Hotel); and a new issue of Rattlesnake Review (the Snake turns 21)!
COMING IN APRIL: Wednesday, April 8 will be our FIFTH ANNUAL BIRTHDAY PARTY/BUFFET at The Book Collector, featuring a SpiralChap of poetry and photos from Laverne Frith (Celebrations: Images and Text), a littlesnake broadside from Taylor Graham (Edge of Wildwood), and Musings3: An English Affair, a new blank journal of photos and writing prompts from Katy Brown. That’s at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM.
And April 15 is the deadline for the second issue of WTF, the free quarterly journal from Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe that is edited by frank andrick. Submission guidelines are the same as for the Snake, but send your poems, photos, smallish art or prose pieces (500 words or less) to fandrickfabpub@hotmail.com (attachments preferred) or, if you’re snailing, to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. And be forewarned: this publication is for adults only, so you must be over 18 years of age to submit. Copies of the first issue are at The Book Collector, or send me two bux and I'll mail you one.
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.......!
_________________
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.
