Birthday Cake presented to Dennis Schmitz at the
Sac. Poetry Center reading on Monday, Aug. 13
—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
STAR-GAZING
—Taylor Graham,
Placerville
From the boardwalk
can you see the Perseids?
All day under sea-
sun, and still your eyes
swarm
with visions, small dark
squiggles, nomad
floaters of the aqueous.
Are they here to stay?
Creatures below the surface
of the waves. You've
walked sand until
your toes are crusted. You
step
on shells, the itch of
salt in your blood.
All afternoon the sun has
written
letters in the margin of
your eye, a script
so ancient, you've lost
the words.
Your eyes are clouded
with light. And now,
meteors
like the signature of
aging sight, inconstancy
of stars. Their patient
comfort until
dawn, their burnout and
fall. This constant
business of the eyes, to
watch,
to record upside-down in
reverse
the collapse, combustion,
creation
of worlds. Those
mysterious sun-letters
swimming in your eyes.
__________________
FORGETFULNESS
on a line by Billy Collins
—Taylor Graham
As if, one by one, the
memories you used to harbor
drifted away in corked
bottles, names detached
from faces, as tides
subside from the Boardwalk, dogs
chasing after driftwood on
the beach. You call
our Cowboy by the name of
his grandsire, Taco. In my
mind Cody merges with
Firebird, gentle blond ladies
shawled in black; so
similar a glance; by pedigree
unrelated. Fifteen dogs
over the space of forty years.
All of a breed, yet each
as individual as smiles
in a high school yearbook.
Three decades later, I still
can feel the silk of
Prissy's ears. Just now, I retrieve
a poem Loki shredded, and
by mistake I call her
Odyssey, the dog forever
sailing wreckage through
my heart; gone seven years
and longer, returning
but changed, with a
different name and face. Such a
bargain Life offers. This
image behind my eyes.
_________________
GAZING AT THE MOON
—Taylor Graham
Slowly, like a lover who
somehow slips
a key in his pocket and
walks out past
the boardwalk with no
goodbye on his lips—
suddenly decades older
than the last
time you saw him—the old
moon, pale, aghast
with aeons, is distancing
from our shore.
Don't ask the moon; it answers
like before,
in riddles quicker than
the eye can blink.
How imperceptibly this
morning's light
illuminates and smiles,
then dries the ink.
The old moon tarnishes its
silver; bright
no more like memory with
its dimming sight.
The moon is leaving us, not
looking back.
The space between,
mysterious and black.
Quinton Duval Chapbook Contest Winner
Denise Lichtig reads at SPC Monday, Aug. 13
from her book, Crystal Gods
—Photo by Michelle Kunert
—Photo by Michelle Kunert
ATTAR OF SEA-ROSE
(a Rainis
sonnet)
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
How did
you steal at first light, like sea mist,
into my
predawn dream? What benthic perfume
or attar
of you, sweet sea-rose, enticed me into our tryst?
Cold salt
truth, my talisman, useless in doom!
How do
you work that billowing fine whirl,
ply your
entangling aroma-ropes like seaweed in tidal spume?
Whole
oceansides of scent, rolled into one on-wheeling pearl.
All light
and arousal inside, our pearl chamber turned tomb.
You open
our door now to fathoms and phantoms:
show me the scentless infinite room.
________________
WHAT LURKS BELOW BOARDWALK
—Tom Goff
Under the
boardwalk, a welter of motel keys, half-asleep
cockroaches,
cigarette butts, spent condoms and cracked
seashells,
brilliant blue and orange gumballs—a few
half-chewed
and spat out, once in a while a wee hank
of
girl-hair blended into the scrimtoothshaw surface’s
dried
ick—not to mention dark red tickets from stupendous
ropes of
tickets to every ride, and all the notes of every
calliope
ever played, including those wine-barrel, fantod
wisps of
corkscrew cantata lost to the far-and-wide foghorn,
or those
glittering-star roulades, hymns, and melismas
scattered
by the first Calliope when free and afoot
she
circles the carousel heavens, shaking
free of
night-sky sand
the hem
of her soft goddess dress.
_________________
Thanks to the two TG's, Taylor Graham and Tom Goff, for their contributions to the Kitchen today. Taylor is talking about the boardwalk (our Seed of the Week), and she also sent us a very fine rhyme royal. Tom writes: I was struck to see Joyce [Odam]
writing a Rainis sonnet, since I've heard [my wife] Nora mention Janis Rainis as a
significant name in Latvian literature: he wrote lyrics and mythic narratives,
quasi- or completely epics, I think. So I had to do one... We holed up while our
condo roof was being redone last week, and watched Olympics to excess, but were
very pleased when the ultimate bronze medalists [from Latvia], Martins Plavins (MAR-tinch
PYA-vinch) and Janis Smedins (YAW-nis SMAY-dinch) knocked off two powerful
Americans, and then Maris Strombergs repeated as gold medalist in the dangerous
BMX bike race. Hail, Latvia! [Tom's wife, Poet/Artist Nora Laila Staklis, is from Latvia.]
Livermore Poet Laureate Emerita Connie Post will be reading at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis tomorrow night at 8; you can catch Andy Jones' interview of her TONIGHT at 5 pm at www.kdvs.org (go to the "listen now" section at the upper right). Connie will also be reading at the Woodland Public Library on Aug. 29. See Medusa's blue bulletin board at the right for details on all of these, and go to the GREEN board for a link to Trina Drotar's Sacramento Press article about Connie.
_________________
Today's LittleNip:
In today already walks tomorrow.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
__________________
—Medusa
Sacramento Artist Tim Messick talks about
his display that is in the current Poets' Gallery at
Sacramento Poetry Center
—Photo by Michelle Kunert
