OUR TOWN
Our town was so small we lived each other’s lives.
Summer nights we’d gather under the one streetlight
and tell jokes and stories everybody had already heard.
All our menfolk loved the same wife, a frazzled
woman
who wore her hair pinned up like a latter-day
Katherine Hepburn.
Decent work, you can imagine, was hard to come by.
Our town was so small even we couldn’t find it on
any map.
We had to stand on the outskirts just to change our
minds.
No doubt you’ve been through our community any
number of times
on your way to some other, grander, destination;
completely unawares.
And I was the one you passed in the night, hitchhiking
in a downpour.
Remember? The one you left behind, and for good
reason, too.
In fact, I’m still there now, the rain still falling and
falling.
Honestly. It’s coming down harder than ever.
A paper gun and barbed-wire halo.
A sword made of charitable acts.
The good book of demons and a bomb’s wit.
It was the morning the altar boy went mad,
the very same day the war of the angels began.
We were being good by being bad,
in the same way light leads into darkness.
Someone had put salt in all the sugar bowls.
They’d just proven non-existence exists,
the newspapers buzzing with bruised roses.
Networks filmed their own eventual demise.
A wolf sued a lamb for non-compliance.
The rabid fox of intuition
raided the henhouses of reason.
ABSENCE
I love you and don’t know what love is.
I love you and wonder about the purpose of emotion.
Instead I imagine other planets and molten core of
the Earth,
a star born in deep space teeming primordial matter,
gravity remolding molecules, immense pressure and
heat
beyond the realm of human experience, human
understanding.
I love you and mechanical time is going backwards
and forwards.
You’re floating naked in the Triangulum Galaxy.
You’ve become giant and blot out the sun.
You’ve become small and trundle among atoms,
one dimension much the same as any other,
God in his little yellow house and weeping over
your absence,
calling your name and the silence replying.
An unfulfilled and terrible silence.
A LONG STRETCH IN THE SLAMMER
The abandoned penitentiary,
a place the crows avoid, a blot
on an otherwise enlightened century.
Where time slits its wrists,
the ghosts of the guilty
still proclaiming their innocence,
their cries like tin cups
dragged across the bars,
each moment equivalent to an eternity.
The house of correction, time
adding up to more than infinity,
the cons long gone.
Judged by a higher power.
It took seven days to assemble this silence;
The quiet booms and is trapped in amber,
the Earth held in a terrible hand
once noted for its strength and beauty.
Which is stilled, which is finally still.
All week, the auction's din, a mal aria
of factory-sound, of the human roaring;
all week an abominable noise,
an uncurtailable crashing of comets.
Tears, like huge blows, rained down like hell.
But on the seventh day we rested.
GAG ORDER
The last night on Earth
slipped quietly away.
The sky turned from that deep
rich blue the Sumerians so loved
to a godawful abyssal black.
Drinkers in the Sword and Rosary
paused between breaths
as an infinitely fabulous
maker willed them from one
level of existence to another.
Somebody somewhere
said something bordering on wise;
as if someone were listening.
And the less said about it the better.
__________________
Today's LittleNip:
Your wolves have more wit than your maester," the wildling woman said. "They know truths the grey man has forgotten." The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what the comet meant, she answered, "Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet."
—George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines, such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been performed and broadcast globally. More of Bruce’s work may be found at, among other places, https://stephdaich3.wixsite.com/phoenix-z-publishing/post/monsterisms-poetry-by-guest-author-bruce-mcrae/. Welcome to the Kitchen, Bruce, and don't be a stranger!
Tune in to Zoom today for the 2023 California Poetry Out Loud State Finals, hosted by Cal. Poet Laureate Lee Herrick, as high school students compete in recitation of poetry from 5-6:30pm. The winner will go to Washington, D.C. to compete in May. Info: https://www.capoetryoutloud.org/finals AND/OR https://arts.ca.gov/press-release/2023-california-poetry-out-loud-state-finals-to-be-held-march-19/?fbclid=IwAR3OMvzdZdng4FlI4xinJJURW97XvE_oM677N61ac7SpIi0torvF3p5kFYc/.
__________________
—Medusa, reminding you that Poetry of the Sierra Foothills will feature Alice Pattway and Lara Gularte, plus open mic, in Camino today, 2pm.
Bruce McRae
For upcoming poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
in the links at the top of this page.
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.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
