—Poetry and Photos by Lewis LaCook,
Forestville, NY
How smoke sleeps
Burning through my skin from the inside out
you prowl my mouth for collapsed expectations
I quiet tongue unfurled gagging on sunshine
sky bleaches your whirlpool lips
Deer at dusk scatter in squalls
my skin inside-out repeats the crackle of brush
All day long wet bark steams in loose air
All day long you root in smoke
Are we thawing both in my skin
inside out in hushed smoldering vines
Burning through my skin from the inside out
you prowl my mouth for collapsed expectations
I quiet tongue unfurled gagging on sunshine
sky bleaches your whirlpool lips
Deer at dusk scatter in squalls
my skin inside-out repeats the crackle of brush
All day long wet bark steams in loose air
All day long you root in smoke
Are we thawing both in my skin
inside out in hushed smoldering vines
(Love is like) oxygen
They were scratching a melody out of rust
on a nap with a warm cat in the small
of their back as if existence is lawless
they were attaching meaning to facts dust
etched in a weak hand on the lens shows
their body seconds after the last time
a melody shrinks until to hear it is to shut
themselves off from every reason left to us
the screen sieves out whatever caused this
But we still hear ourselves in it behind
doubling in our sleep a dream of our bodies
Behind where we told them to meet
as if existence could be blamed
for not forgetting us asleep
through small hours eaten by air
They were scratching a melody out of rust
on a nap with a warm cat in the small
of their back as if existence is lawless
they were attaching meaning to facts dust
etched in a weak hand on the lens shows
their body seconds after the last time
a melody shrinks until to hear it is to shut
themselves off from every reason left to us
the screen sieves out whatever caused this
But we still hear ourselves in it behind
doubling in our sleep a dream of our bodies
Behind where we told them to meet
as if existence could be blamed
for not forgetting us asleep
through small hours eaten by air
Blue jay six
Cars slip off the road and rattle down the ridge into
our front yard sometimes. In a pink quilted house
dress with blue accents, a smile splits itself on a
corner.
On mornings mean light empanels the only hours
he lets you read books. On your knees in floods of
bathroom, he poisons looking at you, forbidding you
their comfort.
In a pink quilted house dress with hills bundled up
against snow.
At the bottom the pond drains into a snapping turtle;
it slices through every branch you give it. Every limb.
The boys hoist it in the air and its beak jars in silent
warning.
Everything you look at is poisoned. He says you
Cars slip off the road and rattle down the ridge into
our front yard sometimes. In a pink quilted house
dress with blue accents, a smile splits itself on a
corner.
On mornings mean light empanels the only hours
he lets you read books. On your knees in floods of
bathroom, he poisons looking at you, forbidding you
their comfort.
In a pink quilted house dress with hills bundled up
against snow.
At the bottom the pond drains into a snapping turtle;
it slices through every branch you give it. Every limb.
The boys hoist it in the air and its beak jars in silent
warning.
Everything you look at is poisoned. He says you
cannot be in the house while there is daylight, while
there is work to do. In your dreams you’re in love
with dogs. They nudge and lick without asking his
permission.
A metal shed with curled roof and a short row of
high school lockers where hornets nest, ensorcelling
paper until its cells heat with larvae.
The men and boys rake gravel up to the double-wide
trailer so he has somewhere to park his dump truck.
Their sweat pearls cold on raw pink muscle, plucking
the eyes of dead friends from blue accents. Low light
in kitchen wood, round like a half-moon of teeth.
You think you would leave all of this when voices
coming from the walls die when sweetness walks by.
When we walk the dogs up and down the same gravel
path we have to move for cars dripping down,
another boy to husband her.
He spits the corner of his mouth. His fists round
down to hunks of hairy sweet-sweatened meat. The
pits stain you when wood or leather comes down at
you from the sky, snarling a scarring path through
your hair.
You fool yourself into thinking you’re in love with
the dogs at night. We should know by now the precise
voltage of their hair, lit in peaks by your hand buried
in the paper nest.
In winter cars lurch to a stop after tipping from the
road, right where we buried the pond, where we
buried the little creek. This is the only light you can
read by. The words pave a scarred path through the
double-wide, over the steaming breath of dogs, up
hills, past the ice-glistening road.
When the car door rattles open you climb in.
there is work to do. In your dreams you’re in love
with dogs. They nudge and lick without asking his
permission.
A metal shed with curled roof and a short row of
high school lockers where hornets nest, ensorcelling
paper until its cells heat with larvae.
The men and boys rake gravel up to the double-wide
trailer so he has somewhere to park his dump truck.
Their sweat pearls cold on raw pink muscle, plucking
the eyes of dead friends from blue accents. Low light
in kitchen wood, round like a half-moon of teeth.
You think you would leave all of this when voices
coming from the walls die when sweetness walks by.
When we walk the dogs up and down the same gravel
path we have to move for cars dripping down,
another boy to husband her.
He spits the corner of his mouth. His fists round
down to hunks of hairy sweet-sweatened meat. The
pits stain you when wood or leather comes down at
you from the sky, snarling a scarring path through
your hair.
You fool yourself into thinking you’re in love with
the dogs at night. We should know by now the precise
voltage of their hair, lit in peaks by your hand buried
in the paper nest.
In winter cars lurch to a stop after tipping from the
road, right where we buried the pond, where we
buried the little creek. This is the only light you can
read by. The words pave a scarred path through the
double-wide, over the steaming breath of dogs, up
hills, past the ice-glistening road.
When the car door rattles open you climb in.
A message from our founder
What I run from it raves it wolves
is and isn’t my best saturday self
Stone storms that stall on you
tape your mind up like a warm takeaway bag
Whenever I fly I burn memory
more notch in what hides from you
What scolds
They scald the bristles until you think the clouds
won’t ever move again
They’re facing your dead friends
off against puckered saints
___________________
Porch fads on state routes
They're open on parch of a charge from
their here up at numbering in love with spread
they had gotten jitters and tear up at mention
discharge forms to lean back in your arms
they whup then ethics on the ghost wind legs
pouring charts over over place where friends
go over their own sleep through shocks
Absorbed by distance between both of
friends slip through carved in stairs to
started to surge from
there their heart starving the knives of
skin in tools hands on moon kind egg
with friends they porch mumbling tears in love
with peach halves faddish yes but stunned
Their heart arrow fudge of voles
open on steps to spread their hands around the room
it is heavy value they forgive target humbling in
learn to hear of hacking back at it
tender bones snap the overhead compartment
it is with heavy charmers chokepoints sugar
gushing quiet
they'd drama find eggs spins soothe
smidge valves guessed at hearty tin routes
into rehearsal boats cat shuffling votes around
their friends' numbers head epics
intake forks mother to touch too harm
money free the spacebar torture
Savage vaseline tips pluck solo cup beat spoons
where their friends go stumbling bark against cries
their hands ash moss for mischief corpse
sashimi doors to rehearsed value release towels
is their gin storming the goat flush with pints
grin flutes grin flutes grin flutes
What I run from it raves it wolves
is and isn’t my best saturday self
Stone storms that stall on you
tape your mind up like a warm takeaway bag
Whenever I fly I burn memory
more notch in what hides from you
What scolds
They scald the bristles until you think the clouds
won’t ever move again
They’re facing your dead friends
off against puckered saints
___________________
Porch fads on state routes
They're open on parch of a charge from
their here up at numbering in love with spread
they had gotten jitters and tear up at mention
discharge forms to lean back in your arms
they whup then ethics on the ghost wind legs
pouring charts over over place where friends
go over their own sleep through shocks
Absorbed by distance between both of
friends slip through carved in stairs to
started to surge from
there their heart starving the knives of
skin in tools hands on moon kind egg
with friends they porch mumbling tears in love
with peach halves faddish yes but stunned
Their heart arrow fudge of voles
open on steps to spread their hands around the room
it is heavy value they forgive target humbling in
learn to hear of hacking back at it
tender bones snap the overhead compartment
it is with heavy charmers chokepoints sugar
gushing quiet
they'd drama find eggs spins soothe
smidge valves guessed at hearty tin routes
into rehearsal boats cat shuffling votes around
their friends' numbers head epics
intake forks mother to touch too harm
money free the spacebar torture
Savage vaseline tips pluck solo cup beat spoons
where their friends go stumbling bark against cries
their hands ash moss for mischief corpse
sashimi doors to rehearsed value release towels
is their gin storming the goat flush with pints
grin flutes grin flutes grin flutes
Sore beds
In her window rocks gather to foam, eaten by water.
At night the glow of cities hours away shy on the
horizon's lips exhales a cold green ribbon of water.
Those days it was a deliberate decision. Lake Erie's
gray writhing etches the figures of his birthday on
sagging air. Her first little red car hitches in a black
wind; its tip rises. Before the nameless end of
Broadway takes his body from her in its flashing
In her window rocks gather to foam, eaten by water.
At night the glow of cities hours away shy on the
horizon's lips exhales a cold green ribbon of water.
Those days it was a deliberate decision. Lake Erie's
gray writhing etches the figures of his birthday on
sagging air. Her first little red car hitches in a black
wind; its tip rises. Before the nameless end of
Broadway takes his body from her in its flashing
ambulance a repetition of egrets empties itself into
my open palm. Those days the war waited in every-
one's mouth but her mother's criticism dug deep
into the flesh of her arm like primitive inoculation.
Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes but is
the deepest place she knows to look out from her
window upon and bury her memory. In those days
they had ridiculous hasps. Lake Erie piles matchstick
shipwrecks in gimcrack drifts in her window and you
choke on the germs on a ventilator with a steady
frailty unraveling in foam on rocks. The ambulance
flashes under a frosted rinse of April sunshine. In
those days she was all edges in it, the gray writ of
flat water rolled out over the horizon. The blown
cities deflated, waiting for the man to come to grab
you by the neck, to drag you across the rug. Lake
Erie owns us. Her husband's war leaves metal in
everyone. The lead on Ohio Avenue tastes chocolate
but leaves your palm cold in ribbons of green water,
reflected back to you by the minnows' eyes. Repeat
egrets. I'm diffusing through the things you glazed
Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes but is
the deepest place she knows to look out from her
window upon and bury her memory. In those days
they had ridiculous hasps. Lake Erie piles matchstick
shipwrecks in gimcrack drifts in her window and you
choke on the germs on a ventilator with a steady
frailty unraveling in foam on rocks. The ambulance
flashes under a frosted rinse of April sunshine. In
those days she was all edges in it, the gray writ of
flat water rolled out over the horizon. The blown
cities deflated, waiting for the man to come to grab
you by the neck, to drag you across the rug. Lake
Erie owns us. Her husband's war leaves metal in
everyone. The lead on Ohio Avenue tastes chocolate
but leaves your palm cold in ribbons of green water,
reflected back to you by the minnows' eyes. Repeat
egrets. I'm diffusing through the things you glazed
in clay in her first little red car and I can barely stay
awake here on the cool cemetery lawn. Lake Erie's
writing the color of fisheyes those days I'm not
around. I believe you're empty.
Her mother's criticism smells like liquor. Lake Erie
of all the Great Lakes foams on her window and
leaves behind the smear of the face of your
awake here on the cool cemetery lawn. Lake Erie's
writing the color of fisheyes those days I'm not
around. I believe you're empty.
Her mother's criticism smells like liquor. Lake Erie
of all the Great Lakes foams on her window and
leaves behind the smear of the face of your
husband. They turn you over so you don't get
bedsores.
________________________
Today’s LittleNip:
My writing, it’s my way of making sense of everything. My way to feel whole. May I never be complete and may I never feel content—please, let me always have the need, always have the urge to write.
―Charlotte Eriksson
________________________
Kitchen newcomer Lewis LaCook says that, as a child, on interstate trips, he thought the moon was following his family’s Econoline van. Upon reaching adulthood, he couldn’t tell whether the truth disappointed or relieved him, so he started writing things down. Some of these things looked like poems, and they may have appeared in journals like Lost And Found Times, Otoliths, Unlikely Stories, Whiskey Tit, Lotus-eater, Synchronized Chaos and Slope, among others. In 2012 BlazeVOX published Beyond the Bother of Sunlight, a book-length collaboration with Sheila E. Murphy; previously, Anabasis published his book-length poem, Cling. His collection, My Kinship with the Lotus-eaters, was published in 2022 by BlazeVOX (http://wp.blazevox.org/product/my-kinship-with-the-lotus-eaters-by-lewis-lacook/). Lewis can often be found wandering the wilds of Western New York state with his wife, Lindsay. Welcome to the Kitchen, Lewis, and don’t be a stranger!
Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day, as we head toward the end of National Poetry Month. See https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/poem-your-pocket-day for info about Poem in Your Pocket Day, and click on Medusa's UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS (http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html) for details about future poetry events in the NorCal area tonight and beyond—and keep an eye on this link and on the Kitchen for happenings that might pop up during the week.
Sacramento poets and storytellers will be saddened to learn that Mary Lynne McGrath has passed away. Mary read at the Sacramento Poetry Center just last month, and her poetry has appeared in Medusa’s Kitchen in the past. Our condolences to her family and friends.
________________________
—Medusa
________________________
Today’s LittleNip:
My writing, it’s my way of making sense of everything. My way to feel whole. May I never be complete and may I never feel content—please, let me always have the need, always have the urge to write.
―Charlotte Eriksson
________________________
Kitchen newcomer Lewis LaCook says that, as a child, on interstate trips, he thought the moon was following his family’s Econoline van. Upon reaching adulthood, he couldn’t tell whether the truth disappointed or relieved him, so he started writing things down. Some of these things looked like poems, and they may have appeared in journals like Lost And Found Times, Otoliths, Unlikely Stories, Whiskey Tit, Lotus-eater, Synchronized Chaos and Slope, among others. In 2012 BlazeVOX published Beyond the Bother of Sunlight, a book-length collaboration with Sheila E. Murphy; previously, Anabasis published his book-length poem, Cling. His collection, My Kinship with the Lotus-eaters, was published in 2022 by BlazeVOX (http://wp.blazevox.org/product/my-kinship-with-the-lotus-eaters-by-lewis-lacook/). Lewis can often be found wandering the wilds of Western New York state with his wife, Lindsay. Welcome to the Kitchen, Lewis, and don’t be a stranger!
Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day, as we head toward the end of National Poetry Month. See https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/poem-your-pocket-day for info about Poem in Your Pocket Day, and click on Medusa's UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS (http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html) for details about future poetry events in the NorCal area tonight and beyond—and keep an eye on this link and on the Kitchen for happenings that might pop up during the week.
Sacramento poets and storytellers will be saddened to learn that Mary Lynne McGrath has passed away. Mary read at the Sacramento Poetry Center just last month, and her poetry has appeared in Medusa’s Kitchen in the past. Our condolences to her family and friends.
________________________
—Medusa
For more about National Poetry Month,
including ways to celebrate, see
https://poets.org/national-poetry-month.
And sign up for Poem-a-Day at
https://poets.org/poem-a-day/, plus
read about Poem in Your Pocket Day
(this year, April 27) at
https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/poem-your-pocket-day/.
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!
