—Poems and Photos by
Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch, CA
RETREAT
There are listeners crawling in the walls.
There are unknown uncles in your face.
There are massive machines.
There are wooden shoes.
DOGS AND LIZARDS
She had a mouth full of no
Pins spilled on a shag rug
Pushing cars in the mud
She cared only for my effigy
ORA PRO NOBIS
Bells were crying finally as it was inevitable that the choir would have to rehearse wearing their gas masks but why this ginger poodle should follow me home hectoring my hands all the while is beyond my ability to offer my brother-in-law any proof about where the tequila reposes.
I TRIED
And then there was the matter of those two coins nailed to your letter and a clover leaf and overcrossings and underpasses but I am getting ahead of myself again and it is harder and harder to keep up appearances since the city began to sink beneath the noise of parades and the piss-cold sleep of sidewalk dreamers between your towers of binary code where I find myself lost another time that might have existed if I cared to notice but a forgotten side of this hill tells me that more meets the eye than is here.
I am so sorry.
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Our thanks to Robert Lee Haycock for stepping in today with these fine poems and photos as D.R. Wagner takes a well-deserved vacation while continuing his recovery. The pix are from Robert's series, “Getting My Mind Straight”.
Gail Entrekin, editor of Canary, writers that “A very special longer issue of Canary was posted yesterday for the Autumn equinox. Dorianne Laux, Ted Kooser, Alicia Ostriker, Jane Hirshfield, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Bob Hass, Jeanne Wagner, and many other arguably less known but certainly equally gifted writers have work in the issue. Enjoy. And welcome to Autumn!” See canarylitmag.org
For poetry in our area today, either go up to Placerville for the Poetic License read-around at the Placerville Sr. Center, 2-4pm, or help celebrate the fifth anniversary of Sacramento Voices and the international 100,000 Poets for Change at the Sac. Poetry Center as high school students read from 10am-12, then 22 featured readers from past Sac. Voices read from 12-4pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming readings in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
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Today’s LittleNip:
The poet doesn’t invent. He listens.
—Jean Cocteau
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—Medusa
Celebrate the poetry that is our fellow creatures!
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