Candles in Ojo Caliente, New Mexico
—Photo by Cynthia Linville
HE IS A FEVER THAT HAS GOTTEN INTO HER BLOOD
and will never quite go away.
Over and over again,
she is singing the longest silence.
Her shoes show signs of weariness,
invoking dust from a thousand jet ways.
Above the clouds is another country.
In her dream on the plane
she is kissing people
she doesn’t even know,
over and over again.
She doesn’t even know he is a fever.
She doesn’t know he is another country.
—Cynthia Linville, Sacramento
_______________
ECLIPSED
—Cynthia Linville
I am
filling blank books with illegible secrets,
with what
I’m hoping not to find.
I hold
out my hands offering him . . . what?
Let him
carry the burden of our silence.
I will
not be an audience.
I will
avert my eyes, walk away.
It all
comes down to this:
even
a grain of sand can cast a shadow.
_______________
COME HOME, PLEASE COME HOME
—Cynthia Linville
—Cynthia Linville
A girl in pink glasses comes home to the suburbs—
row upon row of tiny box houses
tires rolled to the corner
an antenna where a tree once stood.
A couple kisses under a cosmetics ad
A cow walks alongside the road
Graffiti—
Estados Unidos ¿Por qué comen nuestros jóvenes?
Blood on the street—
one rescued
one body retrieved.
Time passes from silver gelatin to garish colors.
In the church a portrait of a former goddess—
blonde and gold
Our Lady of the Iguanas
Mexico.
Santa Fe
—Photo by Cynthia Linville
BABY FACE AT UNCLE BILL’S CABIN XI
—Patricia
Hickerson, Davis
baby
you’re a baby
your
poems are babyish
you lie
in your sleeping bag
sulking
like a baby
thumb in
mouth
oh poor
baby you
crying
like a baby
Uncle
Bill says you’re a baby
everyone
says you’re a baby
you stomp
around the window seat
waiting
for night so you can roll up
in your
sleeping bag
waiting
for the Good Fairy
you’re a
baby
grow up,
baby face
get out
there and pull some weeds
the
vegetable garden is overgrown
all you
want to do is eat the dusty tomatoes
you baby
even the
tomatoes look like babies
look at
their fat cheeks
red with
sun
smooth as
a baby’s bottom
and you,
Baby Face,
at the
bottom of the garden
sucking unripe
baby corncobs
behind
the kitchen door
chewing
rhubarb stalks
don’t you
know the leaves are poison?
rain or
snow you snuggle up in your bedroll
just like
a baby
you
should be ashamed, baby
golly
gosh and Christ Almighty
what
Uncle Bill has to put up with
not worth
mentioning, is it?
he took
you in, you were all alone
ungrateful
baby, you, sobbing over nothing
here!
pull my beard and have a drink!
this
rum is smooth as silk
or I
have single malt…hunh???
which
is it to be, Baby?
_______________
The news reports on a
three-month-old cat in Shanghi
stowed away hidden on a freighter bound for L.A
The kitty apparently, just
like people found doing the same,
risked going without food or water for days
He too was probably
seeking the promise of a better life in America
Now called Ni Hao
("hello" in Mandarin)
the cat doesn't need to
worry about the immigration department
nor finding work
The only impediment to his
freedom now will be to get neutered
but finding a place to
call "home" will probably be easy
Now this cat probably will
psychically send a message
to other Chinese cats to also make the journey
(and our trade ships might
even find more cats coming
"illegally" on board)
and Ni Hao sings, perhaps
like in a Disney song, to the tune of
that song in the "Little Mermaid"…
"Over the seas it
doesn't matter the economy,
almost everybody there
loves and adores kitties!
No need to hunt mice to
eat
people in America can feed
you till you're fat
and they will let you do
anything you please
even sleep all the time if
you want
and no cat fears ending up
being on some hungry person’s dinner plate”
—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
_______________
THE CAMPAIGN
(Dedicated to our dead
and wounded veterans)
—Caschwa, Sacramento
Slap on those bright, new
Shiny racing tires
Gas up with high grade
Tryouts, endorsements
Winning is everything
Faster, stronger, ahead of
the pack
Watch that turn!
Don’t get burned!
You did it!!
You won!!!!!
Winner’s Circle
Kisses
Photo ops
Focus on sponsors’ names
Don’t show the tires
They don’t advertise there
Because used tires
Are soon thrown away,
Served their purpose
Dumped in some pile out
back
Show the door and fender
Focus on sponsors’ names
Kisses
Focus on sponsors’ names…
_______________
Thanks to today's fine chefs, with a reminder that Cynthia Linville and the rest of Poetic Erotica will be reading at Mahogany tonight; check out the details on our blue board at the right. We also have a new photo album for Cynthia on Medusa's facebook page: Ojo Caliente!
For more about Michelle's poem, see www.sacbee.com/2012/07/12/4627754/chinese-kitten-stows-away-on-la.html
For more about Michelle's poem, see www.sacbee.com/2012/07/12/4627754/chinese-kitten-stows-away-on-la.html
_______________
Today's LittleNips:
New tide rises
covers the shoal
footprints becoming
extinct.
Snails will flow
over the cracks
trucks create in the
blacktop.
Lovely hawk
glides over fields
then crosses the
interstate.
—Michael Cluff, Corona
_______________
—Medusa
—Photo by Cynthia Linville
