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FIFTH NIGHT
—Taylor Graham
Again the jackdaw riddles
his dreams: rooftops of an alien city,
a flurry of darkness and wings.
The dreams pass like immigrants
through a portal, return.
Everything becomes departure
and last arrival: salmon
swimming up the current
of his sleep to spawn
in a fish-bowl. As if cobwebs
gathered the scent of mint
and watercress
to bring him back awake.
Mockingbird singing the black
before dawn.
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SPIDER
—Taylor Graham
In the garden courtyard by the fountain
we sat listening to poetry
into September dusk, then dark,
then one lamp illuminating
the web, and in its center, the orb-
weaver, abdomen gold-amber
spinning out its thread to catch
our words in a silken weave—bright
moths of poems in a perfect
orb, energy suspended in light
tension, gilded
by the crescent Harvest Moon.
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Thanks to today’s contributors, including Taylor Graham, who has not one, not two, but three notices posted on the b-board! She’ll be on CapPubRadio this Friday, then reading with Michael Paul at SPC next Monday. See you there!
We're talking about cobwebs this week; clear 'em out of your brain and your closet by sending poems about cobwebs—or anything else, for that matter—to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadlines on Seeds of the Week.
This just in:
Lorrie Kempf curates the public art exhibition spaces for Sac. Metropolitan Arts Council and is currently in the midst of putting a traveling artist sketchbook exhibition together for the Sacramento Int’l Airport, Terminal B Gallery. She’d very much like to include traveling poetry journals, as well. She is looking for poets who keeps such journals. Unfortunately, she’s under a very tight schedule with this particular show, so she’d appreciate it if you would let her know if you (or anyone you know) is interested by this coming Friday (Aug. 13th). Contact Lorrie Kempf, Art in Public Places Assistant, 2030 Del Paso Blvd., Sacramento, (916) 808-3977, www.SacMetroArts.org or www.Sacramento365.com
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THE HOUSE OF COBWEBS
—Richard Zimmer, Sacramento
The house on Pine Street
is no longer a home.
Its green lawn and garden
are all overgrown.
A once happy home’s
now empty and bare,
draped in cobwebs,
there’s dust everywhere.
Brush away the cobwebs,
bring everyone back.
Fill the house with laughter,
that’s what it does lack.
Forget the wandering and pain.
Though many years have passed,
dream and dream again
you’re back home at last.
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KACZYNSKI'S CABIN*
—Kathy Kieth, Pollock Pines
A riot of spiders have webbed
themselves into a gloomy
circus of highwires in the dark
woods of Montana: webbed up
the steep peak in this tiny
clandestine cave of a cabin, while
below them the cave-builder spins
his own pitchy truth on miles
and miles of paper: tightrope walker
on millions of words: tenebrous
ideas that play in the wind like
leaf-shadows against the dusky
forest floor. . . Meanwhile the spiders
watch him from overhead: look down
from shadowy trapezes they have spun
themselves: look down from their own
realities, suspended far away from
the purges of sunlight. . .
*Ted Kaczynski, also known as "The Unabomber",
lived and wrote in a tiny cabin in Montana.
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THE BLACK WIDOWS ARE IN EXCESS THIS SEASON
—Michelle Kunert
They hang in every darkened crevice
building gooey webs even along roof rafters
and managing to get inside patio ceilings
swinging to look down to spy out potential victims
Like Venom, the evil nemesis to Spiderman
you can imagine them wickedly laughing
perhaps thinking to bite you just as prey
You ponder whether to use toxic chemicals
but that would also kill the good spiders
who are your friends to catch flies
but need guidance to stay in the garden
Nevertheless you must take up a broom,
sweep away all traces of undesired spun threads
I sometimes pretend to be like Ridley in Aliens
and proclaim "Die, die you bitches!"
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TREES
—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
Over the years they don't talk
and say stuff like "Hey, glad to see you..."
But if they could
they'd be like Shel Silverstein's Giving Tree
Requesting you to appreciate
its willingness to give in to self-sacrifice
Even to give its very life for its wood
if something worthy be made,
such as a good book's pages
that will teach a child how to read
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Today's LittleNip:
Everywhere I look I see the possibility of love. To find wildness, I must first offer myself up, accept all that comes before me: a bullfrog breathing hard on a rock; moose tracks under elk scats; a cloud that looks like a clothespin; a seep of water from a high cirque, black on brown rock, draining down from the brain of the world...
—Gretel Ehrlich, from "River History" (Montana Spaces, ed. by Wm. Kittridge)
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—Medusa
Photo Enhancement by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove