Half-Rests Under Sun

Sacramento Gay Men's Chorus sings Abba at

Crocker Art Museum 

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

ACCIDENT
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

She left the music running, Death
and the Maiden giving up to Winterreise.
First hot day of almost-summer going
on fall. Lost keys scattered in drawers,
on pantry hooks, no clue, no clef, no treble
tremolo that they belonged to. She left
the front door open as if to let
Schubert escape himself. Or was she
thinking of Die Frau ohne Schatten? Without
shadow she moved by half-rests under
sun, her scent trailing down the sidewalk,
fading but alive in accidentals,
pavement cracks she always wished
to break her mother's back. But these
were only snippets. The spinet
long gone to a world of her own
forgetting.

____________________

SOUND AND SHADOW
—Olga Blu Browne, Sacramento

 
Sound and silence sing as one:
"White is cold, Black is deep."

Their shadows now are silent.
 

(first pub. in Brevities)

____________________

THE COLOR OF EVIL
—Olga Blu Browne

I stand silent, sadness locked in.
My memories the weapon.
Dark fears of inward visions.
The scars of my soul echo within.

(first pub. in Brevities)

Sac. Gay Men's Chorus

—Photo by Katy Brown

INCONSOLABLE

—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Almost alive


in your living room


watching Breathless


for the ninth time


you in your kimono


no one answers


the bell or phone


or questions where


we are terraced


or traced from time


by an indoor memory 


or number of drinks


what comes next


to amuse, trying to forget 


in mystery or illusion


of a melancholy season


wounded and reeling.

___________________

SUSPICION

—B.Z. Niditch




This must be


a great nightmare


in darkness to cover us


in blanket suspicion


at first light burning up 


with a high cabin fever,

A heartsick somnambulist


wishes for water


from nightfall's escape,


we oscillate


like fawns by branches


to drink in liquid silences


shattered by time


buried in volcanoes


of half-speech


unearthed like a catwalk


by ripples of phantasms


while turning here,

My sheets move me


from a daybed,


destiny dawns


on tuned-up sounds


unhinged images


signal forlorn thoughts


deep within.

___________________

Our thanks to today's contributors, talking about our Seed of the Week, Inconsolable. And thanks to Katy Brown for the pix! For more photos of local events, see Medusa's Facebook page for the new album, Recent Readings, by Katy Brown and Michelle Kunert.

___________________

Today's LittleNip(s):

i may not be
well-known
or famous,
but i do
a hell of a lot of
whatever the hell it is
i do

***

scribbled so many notes,
my ears are full

***

don’t go in there
don’t go
too deep
too hard
to come back

—charles mariano, sacramento

__________________

—Medusa

Seven Poets who read at Crocker last Friday:

Shawn Pittard, Paco Marquez, Marilynn Price,

Allegra Silberstein, Katy Brown, Danyen Powell