The Shape of the Leaf
—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA
IT IS A BEAUTIFUL RED DAY
It is a beautiful red day.
It makes many promises
It will keep.
It has days and days of hours.
It is so far from yesterday
I cannot count it all.
I don’t know
If I am enough to fill it.
(first pub. in Folio, 1970)
____________________
WEARING A DRESS OF VIOLENT RED ROSES
I go where I go wearing a violent gown of red roses; now I
am covered with scars. I go where I go in my violent dress
that tears and tears until I am bleeding. I save no petals to put
in a petal jar. Soon I am a long dry stem free of all I had to
carry—except for the thorns.
One Heart
RED, SLIDING OVER
The way color will slide sideways
at a glance, like
this huge red house
on this gray-fog day
making a false vertigo of confusion
at the corner of my eye,
my glasses bleeding a soft red light,
causing a brief fear:
(am I losing my sight?)
in a moment it has disappeared.
I look back to the red house,
slowly now . . . it is solid and still.
I let my eyes look slowly back
to the left. No red follows.
_________________
DREAMS ME AGAIN
Dreams me again in violent sleep—sees me in red deep
loom—woman of moan, blood-shadowed, whom he follows
helplessly. I smile at him on mornings when he tells
me stories I do not comprehend. Tonight I will follow him
again and call him to the edges and the dark; and I will be
so silent he will think I am fate masquerading as love; and
when the morning hand is clocking one more circle around
us, I will slip out of his mind when he wakens and smile
my innocence when once more he tells me his dreaming.
And Those Eyes
THE RED MIRROR
In the red mirror she glows. Candles burn
around her. The whole room flickers
as her image takes on life and mocks her.
The red glass holds her eyes—
draws her in—wavers with warning.
The room seems to burn. The glass melts.
The red cat wakens from its indolence,
sleeps again in its circle on the red chair,
has not seen or felt the shadows move.
She preens to the glass—likes how the
shadows move beyond her—how
when she moves they move, like a dance.
__________________
THE OLD ILLUSIONS
After Martha Graham, 1986 by Andy Warhol
The dancers in red are certain to betray
the timing, or the movement, or the sway
that bends them separate and bends them same,
joined at the hip, then flung apart—their fame
not what it was. Or was their old mirror-dance
illusion after all? Was it by chance
that they were discovered—two becoming one—
then two again? And now you have begun
to think of them as someone you recall
who only danced for mirrors after all.
Violette
PAINTING THE TOWN RED
After Fates #2 by Elizabeth Torak
They laugh and say they are The Fates
and ask you to sit with them as they
shift their chairs around the tiny table.
They want you to buy them a drink and
dance with them when the music begins.
They want to know if you find them
attractive and have mortal sympathies.
They get rowdy and tell you lies
then watch your eyes to see if you
believe them. If you do, they smother
you with truths and look at each other
secretly. They know what they know.
_____________________
A THEME OF RED
After Four Darks in Red by Mark Rothko
A figure of a man
dragging red behind him all his life:
His blood? His love?
All his rage and effort?
.
Now he stands
at a blank frame of ending;
everything behind him
is a hum of memory.
.
He does not turn to look.
He puts his hand against a wall
that was always there,
waiting for his handprint.
A Phrase of Yellow
SHARING RED MOUNTAIN
up where the wine is sad
in my mind
my eyes growing calm
I become the
faraway person
that I am
I call back with
brimmed love
the glass deepens
you fill it again
you are my
wonderful friend
I love you without edges
without plan
we are now
the kitchen is
world enough
read the poem again
Fallen Leaves
Today’s LittleNip:
RED DUSK
—Joyce Odam
. . . it was the burnished way
light shook itself from trees
and spilled into the red air,
closing down the day . . .
__________________
Many thanks to Joyce Odam, the lady in red (the fellas are crazy for…) for her poems and photos today riffing on red, our Seed of the Week. Joyce and D.R. Wagner were supposed to read at The Other Voice in Davis this Friday (12/15), but as you know, D.R. has had some health issues. So according to host James Lee Jobe, the event has been cancelled this month. Repeat: Friday’s reading at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Davis has been cancelled.
Our new Seed of the Week is Forgotten Treasures. Send your poems, photos and artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.
Here are two poem-a-day sites for December: The 10th Annual New Year’s Poetry Challenge started on Dec. 8 and runs for 30 days, thanks to Gillian Wegener of Modesto, who will send a prompt each day if you ask her. Send your name and email to info@mostpoetry.org and OPT IN. Info: www.mostpoetry.org/2017/11/18/10th-annual-new-years-poetry-challenge/.
The other prompt class is December Delights at www.nicenet.org. Copy and paste this class key on the site to join up: S38Z0Z8D93. Questions should go to Jannie Dresser at janniedres@att.net/.
For more about Elizabeth Torak and her work, go to elizabethtorak.com/about/. To see Mark Rothko’s Four Darks in Red, go to collection.whitney.org/object/897/.
—Medusa
—Anonymous Photo
Celebrate the dance that is poetry, and the poetry that is dance!
Celebrate the dance that is poetry, and the poetry that is dance!
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