—Matthew Travieso Williams, West Sac.
___________________
EPHEMERA:
—Marie J. Ross, Stockton
—Marie J. Ross
She dreams
Hears flash of thunder
Feels mystic flesh tingle
Like a steed
They roll on silk sheets,
She sighs,
In slow revealing moments,
And hears
His ache of completion
Her long black hair
Lay limp across his shoulders
As she kisses a drop of sweat
From the tip of his nose
When she dreams about him;
Stars tick like tango rhythms
Dancing on her pillow
Teeth marks surrendering
To his music,
And she turns
To dream another dream of him.
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento
They say our sun is one big star.
That's hard to believe, because we're looking
at it up close, well, closer than other stars.
So instead of twinkling, it looks
to be a lamp without a cord. "Don't stare
at the sun," my mom would always say.
"Looking directly at the sun
could make a person see stars."
So, don't even try looking at the sun
through a telescope.
Just star-gaze with your telescope
the more distant stars—
sort of like the way you spend all day looking
through those magazines about movie stars,
instead of time with little brother looking
like a lonely little left-out-of-all-the-star-
gazing-and-fun-brother things. It looks
as if he's got you on a pedestal: you, a star
shining brighter than all other stars.
________________________
NOW THAT MOTHER'S GONE—
before our golden age, our golden age
now bronzed before our time, and
time has taken feathers and other
nesting from this nest—the rest of us
all drift away. This house that housed
the thoughts we thought were so
important.
Of importance now, that what-of-what
is left: a crate on earthquake earth:
quaking, shaking that of what on earth
we knew of her. Too late, now, to think
our thoughts of late—of Mother who is
gone before our golden age, an empty
cage. . . she's gone. . . and now,
she's gone.
—Carol Louise Moon
_______________________
BROWN PAPER BAGS
—Carol Louise Moon
A ladder of nine rungs leads up to a loft,
a storehouse of memories wrapped
in brown paper bags, collecting dust.
Framed pictures of the ancestors from
Ohio, the poet among them—his
writings, some bound, some loose,
are also collecting dust.
What have I awakened to today? A
memory of my father? That too,
should be poemed so that it can collect
dust in a loft, like the grief I still store
somewhere between my shoulder blades,
somewhere within my nine-run ladder-
back—which leads to thoughts of my
father as memorialized in his portrait—
his portrait, which sits up in the loft
unwrapped of brown paper… like the
dream I had last night. My father was
helping me move and unwrap furnishings
for my new apartment.
As he left, he hugged me so tight I just
knew he was with me again. But no.
I awoke to find myself wrapped in a
brown paper bag of grief.
The easiest way
for graying men
to keep their edge
is to put their new
razors aside and grow
more facial hair
GAMBLING AT THE PUB
—Caschwa
We used to have
a surefire way
to lose pounds
until they converted
to euros
which she'll host on Feb. 15 at SPC.