—Robin Gale Odam, Sacramento
It started with high, sweet notes
and rich amber harmony, for contrast.
As I composed, the song told me
I was mistaken, told me how it
breathed in sorrow, how it was
a keeper of burdens, how its voice
was dark, how sweetness was a bane
to conceal or transpose or forget and,
although I begged it to reconsider,
it bade me to darken it.
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove
Bought it at a store that wasn’t
There the next time.
Pictures are all in black and white
Or sepia: whole families posed
And somber on wooden porches
And uncomfortable-looking
Hats, frock coats, prairie
Dresses, old men in soldier
Uniforms, long beards, missing
Limbs. There are people who
Look vaguely like actors I should
Know, but cannot name, standing
Heroically before screens
Of painted palms.
No color; nothing contemporary.
But my camera is old,
And so is the photographer.
________________________
—Caschwa, Sacramento
11. When he shot himself in the head,
He missed and hit the moon —D.R. Wagner*
People usually do only a
Couple things in the head
Both with the goal of
Realizing a feeling of relief
Discharging a firearm or
Shooting up drugs could
Be added to the pile of
Things to do in the head
It might be a small wooden
Out building with a sliver of
A moon carved in its side,
room for just one visitor
Or it might be a larger public
Facility where the typical moon
Would be the hind side of a
Guest with their pants down
Unfortunately missing in the
Head is an ongoing problem
That men of all classes leave
For the lowest class to remedy
*See last Saturday's post,
Medusa's Kitchen
—Taylor Graham, Placerville
The camera shows a brick wall shadowed
with sun, an image not quite mute to mood
and history. How much farther the mind
travels. 1866, Black Country. A girl of 12
clutches a mound of wet mud, lugging it
to the brick-molding table. Not yet mid-
morning, already she’s plastered with clay
so she looks like a moving statue—ancient
figure wrapped in fabric that clings to reveal
the human form; no way to separate girl
from muddy cloth. In my mind I see
the scene entire. Raw light without flash-
bulb to distinguish coal-gray mud from
shadow. This girl has no claim to delights
of childhood. Twelve hours a day hauling
30,000 pounds of clay. The camera shows
me bricks set in their places in a wall.
—Taylor Graham
The canyon’s deep-chiseled, shadowed
with sage-green and ochre. A horseshoe shines
in bas-relief. Each with its reason knitted
to the absurdity of dream where anything’s
possible, where I make allowance
for parents disappearing inside a dog
who’s about to go airborne—actual kinesthetic
flight without feathers. Will they crash,
or make it to the far edge, the light? A horse-
shoe holds gravity with or without luck,
sure as the possibility of waking
from dream to morning. Not chiseled in stone.
_____________________
WHEN NO ONE’S WATCHING
—Taylor Graham
Porchlights keep everything upright on this
sleeping street. A black car dreams. No moon
as guardian of the shadowed shoulders, hedges
edging solid walls. Bark-beetle tunnels
showing through every surface. Did someone
steal the moon when it was full of silver,
leaving nothing but colors too surreal to last
past waking; more vivid than daylight?
If you turn a key in the lock, it sends the colors
scurrying to their dens like night creatures
where only a poet or a dreamer can find them.
_____________________
Today's LittleNip:
—Medusa