Calling the Cat

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

SEDUCTION

for Kitty-Souris

Coyotes weave the ridge with polyphonic
song. They call our cat. She loves the bones
of small night creatures skittering their hunger
dances in the dark. Coyotes sing that song.
They sing any-body’s hunger under an empty
moon. Kitty sharps the chitter of her jaws.
She has no sense of size. Owl talon, cougar claw.
Coyote calling. She’s sweet as salmon from
a tin, safe with humans inside walls. We snap
the latch and listen. Coyotes go on improvising
song that touches a raw hunger. How soft
it sings the moon the dark and just for her. 

(first pub. in The Roanoke Review, 1997)

THE RIDGETOP SINGING TO ITSELF

The old black oak lifted its boughs
in tree-blessing, woodpeckers working its wounds.

Sentinel snag in manzanita thicket;
storm-fallen cedar, bark flaking off, humming
the length of its life

as your chainsaw bit in.
The living woods listening, holding fast.

I’d walk the ridgetop to The Stone.
Lichened granite rooted above canyon
where, years ago, we found bedrock-mortars—

Miwok grinding rocks.
I’d climb The Stone and listen into dark.

I never wondered if it might be catching
messages from boulders miles away,
passing them on down-mountain

where we live now. Those rocks and trees
coming to voice

if I could hear them, still among stone.


(first pub. in Windows of Time and Place 

by Taylor Graham, Cold River Press, 2019)

ART OF LISTENING

inspired by untitled drawing by Kananginak Pootoogook 
 
A child is drawing a dog—
a village dog? Its narrowly focused eyes
exactly mimic the skin of the boy’s hand as he
draws it. A dark dog lowering from its shoulder-
blades as if in play, tail half-flagged, paws
planted wide on a flat white featureless surface—
snow? The boy is filling in the near hind-leg,
making it dark to match the rest of the dog.
What does the dog think of all this?
We can only hear what a child translates
of dog with the point of his pen.
Is he listening to what he draws? 

LISTENING TO THE EERIE
for Latches

I’ve turned out
the lights. And it comes
just outside
the sliding
door. Owl calling, so close it
shivers my fingers

to write it
down. Hu Hooh Hu Hu
repeated
repeating
so close, I reach for black cat
in the dark—what Owl

wants. Its call
so intense, I slip
open the
door a crack
and the call magnifies deep
and hollow, echo

of itself,
so close I could fall
into its
abyss. It’s
the shiver
up my spine to
my fingers writing. 

Today’s LittleNip:

LISTEN TO THE LIGHT
—Taylor Graham

Sun-sparkle morning
cold January—blinded,
possessed by sunlight—
oops there’s a traffic signal
dull-red reminder of earth—

Put on the brakes, you
fool! You’re never going to learn
the high art of flight. 

_______________________

Friday it is, and we’ve made the switch from Taylor-Thursday to Taylor-Friday in order to reap the benefits of Taylor Graham's knowledge and love of forms. Today she has sent us a plethora of them, talking about listening (our recent Seed of the Week) to the owl who visited her last week, and listening to the woods around us—to the stones and the trees and all the mysterious sounds that the countryside brings.

More about forms below, but first I need to remind you that tonight at 8pm, SacUnified Slam presents New Works Only Slam at Luna’s Cafe on 16th St. in Sacramento. And at 7:30pm in Davis, The Other Voice Poetry Series features Len Germinara and Linda Jackson Collins plus open mic at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Patwin Road. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

_____________________

FORM FIDDLERS’ FRIDAY! 

It’s time for more contributions from Form Fiddlers! Each Friday for awhile, there will be poems posted here from some of our readers using forms—either ones which were mentioned on Medusa during the previous week, or whatever else floats through the Kitchen and the perpetually stoned mind of Medusa. If these instructions are vague, it's because they're meant to be. Just fiddle around with some forms and get them posted in the Kitchen. 


Here are some of the forms from Taylor Graham that we’ve already posted today:

Boketto (“Listen to the Light”): poeticbloomings2.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/inform-poets-boketto
Shadorma (“Eerie”): poetscollective.org/poetryforms/shadorma

This is Taylor’s One-vowel Poem about that pesky owl; we talked about that form last week:


OH NO
(a one-vowel poem)
—Taylor Graham

Owl hoots who-do voodoo
hoo-hoooh - hoo - hoo
oh follow cold woods-
woo, snows of long-go—
know for whom now?
for yoo


And here is an oh-so-smooth sonnet of hers. Check out which type of sonnet it is at blog.prepscholar.com/what-is-a-sonnet-poem-form/:


PRIMARY COLOR
—Taylor Graham

That color-swatch you showed me, classic blue—
an empty bottle left too long to sun,
so vibrant it’s a permutating hue—
blue sea of air where breaker-wave-clouds run—
the i-dot of a landscape, lake’s live eye
blue as the berry of a bramble-thorn,
its globed sheen beckoning as I pass by—
a comfort-denim many ages worn—
the sky embodied between day and night,
a rippled pond that soothes from dream to deep
magnetic as wild geese skein out of sight—
the hover-shade that keeps me in my sleep—
this blue is blessing without need of word—
the neon flash on sun-struck wing of bird.

__________________

Thanks, TG! The Kitchen is always open to poems sent in forms (or NOT in forms!), but stretching your poetic muscles can never hurt. It’s all in the service of The Art of Listening to what you’re writing, yes?

Here’s a chart about poetry that was devised for kids, but I think it’s kind of helpful. Something to bring us back to basics. Click on it to enlarge it, print it out, cut it out, and stick it on your forehead: 

—Medusa, who can’t see because of the chart stuck to her forehead ~

 Stump Full of 'Shrooms

—Photo by Taylor Graham

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.