Disappearing Ink

Photo by Ann Privateer, Davis

adolescence
—charles mariano, sacramento

Miss Hernandez
was her name,
3rd grade teacher
Galen Clark Elementary

she, of the stifling,
confusing urges

i was eight,
barely there

she’d come down
those halls
shapely body
stiletto heels
tap, tapping
long, lean legs,
black hair,
gold hoop earrings,
dazzling red lips

when she walked by,
i desperately
hugged the wall
held my breath

she sent a note
recently
through a cousin,
the occasion of my
high school reunion,
regarding a story
i’d written

“aaahhh, Miss Hernandez,”
i remembered dreamily
a lifetime ago,

“first love”

__________________

Thanks, Charles, and thanks to the rest of today's contributors. We're talking about Fleeting Moments this week (but gosh and golly—they're all fleeting moments, yes?). Anyway, send some of your thoughts on fleeting moments or anything else to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadlines on our Seeds of the Week; some of you are still dreaming of last week's spiders and their webs, and that's perfectly A-OK...

Tom Goff was moved by the recent passing of Jack Herrera to use the SOW as a bit of a tribute:

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VIBRASCOPE
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

for Be Herrera and in memoriam Jack Herrera


You coupled sculpture and the saxophone.
Many poetry enterprises flourished.
Monotone was not your scheme of things,

but artistry blended, the sheerest fleeting wings
nourished and taught to glide the sharp sunlight.
You, saxophone couple, crafted musical sculpture,

sculptural music. Call it Kodachrome?
Right, yet not quite right, for your mighty colors,
To term your color theme: surely not monotone.

Not Cinemascope, but—much better—vibrascope!
Keller, Helen, invented the term, and that,
love nurtured with a touch of savagery,

was what leapt out your belling saxophone,
why, still leaps out when you craft metalwork;
sparks fly, these, not just from saxophone or sculpture,

but from the living, brooding, loving person.
The vibrascope-human nourishes potential.
Monotony, not (nor ever shall be) your theme.
Your sculpture, your saxophone, your poetry: one couple.

___________________

What if E.B. White's spider, Charlotte
had instead met Orwell's pig Napoleon (from Animal Farm):
"What's this writing about me in your webs:
"some pig", "terrific", "radiant", and "humble"?
"You humor me Charlotte
But ah how do I know you'll not also ‘Snowball’ me
while pretending to be my minister of propaganda?”
"No Napoleon dear sir,
I plead for your mercy!
I'm trying my best to serve this brave new farm
For you, I've exhausted my spinnerets
because I told you I love and admire pigs
Pigs are clearly the superior species
who guide us to be truly "free"
and have the best plan for spiders—
So much so, I've sworn over to you my children
to show all the spiders of the world
what spiders ought to be—
To be lead as one rather than being on their own…"
"Ha ha, no, Charlotte
my immortality is secure
You'll be the one gone and forgotten
But it seems you don't have any will to just leave
though indeed I will vanquish all spiders who are here..."

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

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ANALYZING FLIGHT: HUMMINGBIRD
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

The courtship display is a diving/
rising arc, the letter
J, a pendulum,
ellipse
written too quick
on air-paper in disappearing
ink.

All I remember
is arco-iris iridescence,
how I stood
upside-dizzy-down
wedded
to my feet,
unsolid ground.

___________________

MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER
—Taylor Graham

Half-sister, half a shadow
falling across

my memory’s wall.
Afraid of cliffs

across a continent
not quite a generation

she cantered
till her mind was a meadow.

Gone
before I knew her.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

ANYTHING THAT CAN DIE IS BEAUTIFUL
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

What quick lights these upon the glass
Go, go are gone again,
The air is quick, the air is fast,
Go, go are gone.

(Appeared originally in Cruisin' At The Limit, Duck
Down Press, Fallon, NV)

__________________

—Medusa

Photo by Michelle Kunert, who writes:
English Country dance in the Central Library
for Jane Austen Book Club on July 25.
The big chandelier-like sculptures in the ceiling
reflected little rainbows everywhere and I just tried to capture them.

Zebras and Keypads

Photo by Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

A NOISELESS, PATIENT SPIDER
—Walt Whitman

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres,

to connect them;

Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor

hold;

Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my

Soul.

__________________

Those of you who know Be and Jack Herrera will be saddened to know that Jack passed away yesterday. Our thoughts are with him and with Be.

Carl Schwartz sends us our Seed of the Week: Fleeting Moments—which seems appropriate at the time of the passing of yet another of our artist-friends. Carl sends us a photo of an okra blossom to go with it. Blossoms are fleeting, indeed. Well, hell—we all are!

The latest edition of DADs DESK is about to hit the stands (well, The Book Collector anyway). This is Sacramento’s only large-print poetry journal; it's nicely edited by Carol Louise Moon. Check it out!

We have a pretty potpourri of poetry today, from a variety of poets on a variety of subjects—still spiders and cobwebs, as well as talk of zebras, shadows and light, and ergonomically correct keypads. Enjoy! The zebras Michelle Kunert is referring to, by the way, are the two that escaped from a Carmichael zebra breeder (yes, a zebra breeder in Carmichael!) and went running around suburbia near Tom Goff’s house before they were eventually recaptured and sent to Oregon. Also in the Fleeting Moments category is D.R. Wagner's photo of his old Hudson; see below.

By the way, there was a mis-announcement on the b-board for a couple of days. ERRATA NOTE: The SPC Brown Bag Lunch Series meets on THURSDAY at noon at the Central Library, not Weds. My bad.

(Were you able to identify that blossom as an okra one? We don't grow much okra around here; maybe you Southerners remember it.)

___________________

Some zebras kept in suburban Carmichael, CA
broke out of a backyard to be free
Perhaps wanting to find someplace like an African plain
instead of getting trapped in car traffic
only to be rounded up in a paved parking lot
returned to their master and enslaver
Didn't the zebra read the previous day's news
about the state rounding up the last of its wild horses,
leaving legend now the only place for them to roam?

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

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SHADOWS AND LIGHT
—Carl Bernard Schwartz

Careful, well-meaning parents dutifully block the light
from outside to protect their precious offspring
from its harsh realities: Slavery, our own civil war,
tunnels to freedom, the true first Americans, and the
small-minded choices of people to whom we entrusted
our future.

These man-made shadows now extend several times
around the globe, premising a culture that distorts and
confuses any outside light that may happen to reach us.

There are miracles within people, the same as spiders
spinning webs and pigeons flying home, that may only
be visible when we shed our status symbols, step out
of the shadows, and bathe in the light of knowledge.

__________________

URBAN SOLACE XX
Silent Companion
—Mitz Sackman, Murphys

It had been awhile since
Yes she had to admit
It always was awhile
Looking at the high corner of the window
Under the valance, she spies a cobweb
A gleaming spider in the center
Awaiting the next meal
She shrugs and does not reach for her broom
At least it eats the summer flies
In the apartment
She is not her mother
Live and let live she says

___________________

REMEMBRANCE
—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

a hot wind
drove an herbal fragrance
up from a streetside hedge
to the balcony where I sat
in sun-warmed shade
Ophelia afternoon—
There’s rosemary; that’s for remembrance;
pray, love, remember:
she drowned in lost hopes,
her love for a tortured man

you, Rachel,
lately drowned in disease,
not despair;
I miss your fine-tuned soul
too delicate for this life

__________________

PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE
—Ann Wehrman, Sacramento

The lock sticks;
I push it open—
puff of noxious dust up my nose.
More dust settles on my skin, in my eyes,
the light switch on the left works,
I shut the door.

Alone in electronics storage,
old computers, like old women,
wait, sitting on fat haunches in circles.
Their circuits still work,
“Hell, girls, our titanium components
will last a long, long time,”
they mutter, with sickly smiles.
No sun in here, no exercise, they languish;
no one touches their
ergonomically correct, taxpayer-funded keypads.
One takes my ear as I lean on the wall,
protests, “I can still be of use,
in a school, volunteer…”
The others glare at her.

Is it the light, the lack of oxygen,
cobwebs in my hair,
certainty of spiders?
I back out the door,
bolt the lock.

__________________

SACRED SPACES—Reclamation Project #2
—Ann Wehrman

after a long night
I wake alone in my small room
sunlight sparkling through
ancient Venetian blind
dusty, stained, one slat crumpled
where I slap killed
a thick-bodied, thick-legged spider

no trace of spiders this morning
after night’s long healing
when time stopped for hours
breath came deeply
feet and legs released
their battle weariness

doves cooing just beyond the blind,
I feel you present
surfacing within my mind
warmth of your loyal, loving heart
as morning’s ground fog dissipates

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

Two Eskimos in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

__________________

—Medusa

Speaking of Fleeting Moments...
D.R. Wagner says: This is a photo by my dear friend,
Leslie Haber, from about 1975
of my 1951 Hudson Commodore sedan
in front of a club. Our band, Runcible Spoon, was
on its way back to New York and Florida, touring etc.

Consider...

Octopus's Garden
Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

CONSIDER MY BROOM
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

1. Focus:
This broom.
Unusual.
Archaic pattern.
Simple design.
Functional.

I take it up…sweep
the floor…the cobwebs from
the wall…feel the task…
aware of it…devotional.

2. Women swept dirt
before there were
floors, with a branch
of leaves, perhaps;

I consider the hems of
their long dresses…
on dirt streets…on
board walks…their
houses…

long dresses
must have frayed out
and never
washed clean…

3. I took a picture
of my broom once, full-
frame, up close, to show
the coarse straw,

the red string
binding, the ant—
and called the enlargement:
Yellow Broom With Ant.

__________________

Good Monday morning, and thanks to our contributors today! Don't forget the Sac. Poetry Center reading tonight at 25th & R Sts., Sacramento, 7:30pm, featuring Taylor Graham and Michael Read.

John Wolf, newsletter editor of Fox & Quill (online edition), invites your submissions: foxandquill.com/. For info about the Tri-Valley Branch of the California Writers Club, go to www.trivalleywriters.org

Cynthia Bryant, Past PL of Pleasanton, moved away but continues to publish online. She says “Poet's Lane is alive and waiting to hear from you, your poetry organization, your poetry, your bio, your comments, your poetry events, contests, submissions and your good news!” Check it out at www.poetslane.com

And don’t forget our new b-board feature, over there under Sam’s Snake on a Rod: go to Sam's curtain-rod snake (right near the top of Medusa’s skinny blue box) and click on any of the categories listed, which will then appear in this cream-colored box where the daily posts usually are. Check 'em out, then click the "back" button on your computer screen, or click on Home at the bottom of the cream box, or click on Home under the curtain rod—any of that will bring you right back to business as usual. Enjoy!

Once you figure all this out, click on Calliope’s Closet for some ideas and writing resources, plus what I believe is a comprehensive list of all the Seeds of the Week we’ve done. (Let me know if there are more.) There are also two of Medusa’s Bunched-Up-Panties Rants, one about what I think are the roles of forms and triggers in a poet’s life, and the other about Haiku. I used to be very hardcore about haiku and how Americans abuse them, but in my old age I’ve mellowed—though occasionally I do go off on some poor helpless poet… Anyway, check Calliope out. And then click on Medusa Mulls for the cheeky Medusa painting that DR Wagner found me—plus the RR24 article I wrote last December, which I’ve posted as a jumping-off point for the discussion we’re all going to have very soon about the future of Rattlesnake Press. My eight months "off" will be up Sept. 1. Where do we go from here?


Celebration of the Arts in the Blackhawk Plaza in Danville this Saturday

•••Sat. (8/21): A day of art, poetry, dance, music, and wine tasting presented by the Alamo-Danville Artists' Society (www.adas4art.org/calendar.htm) and the Blackhawk Plaza Management (www.shopblackhawkplaza.com/). During the Celebration, the Poets Society of Danville will give two poetry readings at The Read Bookstore in Danville (3630 Blackhawk Plaza Circle). The schedule for the morning and afternoon sessions are as follows:

10:30-11:30am

Charlie McCauley
Cher Wollard
Robert Eastwood
Vicky Richardson
John Barry
Robert Shelby

1:30-2:30pm:

Cher Wollard
Charlie McCauley
Connie Post
Kevin Gunn
Robert Shelby
Robert Eastwood

_________________

COLLAGE
—Joyce Odam

(based on “Family Album” photography of James Newberry)


What we are seeing here are the meager necessities
of love—the things that work—the things
that matter: the art of the commonplace.

Maybe it was winter then; maybe it is winter now.
Such things are important: the jacket
hangs on a hook beside the skillet and the funnel;

the heavy nails
are useful for the accumulations of the kitchen
and hold the backing of newspaper that hides

the larger crack
to keep out the drafts that flutter against it.
In relief, the children stare from their dusty frames

on the plaster wall. One holds a puppy.
The other sits quiet on a chair.
Blue shadows etch along the day.

The shadows behind the pictures lean outward
to exaggerate themselves
where the narrow path of sunlight always reaches.

The cobwebs stay undisturbed.
This is an art piece not to be tampered with.
This is the only story that it tells.

__________________

EXAMINING THE RUINS
—Joyce Odam

Lately we find ourselves amid the ruins;
evidence carries little to admire:
some skeletons, some echoes, and a wide,

accusing silence, which we must decipher.
Wrinkles in the air suggest a winter
that has lingered past the season, and we shiver.

Even the shadows struggle, caught in cobwebs;
nothing shall free them from neglected corners.
Such are the memories of stones and mirrors.

You argue one, and I suggest the other.
Shatters of light still glare and blind the eyes.
Shatters of love still seem to lead the way.

The dust is heavy and the way is narrow.
Even the darkness has a certain shimmer
as it settles down and bids us stay, or go.

It is enough, we say, and wonder why
we poke around through all this spill and clutter.
What did we leave behind that needs us now?


(First published in SOW’S EAR, 2000)

__________________

HOUSE OF WEB AND DUST
—Joyce Odam

Cobweb Lady
lives in her large house
of web and dust. Her windows are filmy.
Her cats groom themselves endlessly.
.
She sits in her gown of velvet,
reading diaries.
Everything is written there.
.
All day she recreates memories.
All night she suffers their transformations.
She has no energy for the spiders
or their works of art.
.
The spiders work around her,
patiently busy,
making the dark-house corners elegant.

___________________

OF MY EFFORT
—Joyce Odam

It was a dream
the way I moved against myself
multi-imaged
and tired of my effort.
.
She turned and watched
where I struggled
from so far away.
Her hair hung in ropes.
.
I was in the body of the child.
My hands pressed my air.
My voices jarred my silence and sound.
There was no safe parent around.
.
She had thoughts
like webs
and I walked through them
into her secrets.

__________________

THE STUDY OF DARK
—Joyce Odam

bring me the study of dark
old ways to go
new rules
tell me what is safe and what is too slow
show me the composition of flowers the
birds in broken windows
the weed grower
the puddles of unsafe water

hang the cobwebs low
i must understand them
bring the glass to my lips
and the clock to my hour
let the jasmine-ash lean that way forever
do not make a sound while i study this
have i said it well
can i make my wish


[Ed's note: This hard-working poem has appeared in Squeezebox, 1974; Ina Coolbrith Anthology, 1975; Lemon Center for Hot Buttered Roll from Hibiscus Press, 1975. It's had an interesting life: journal, anthology, chapbook, and now online! Wouldn't it be great if all our poems could do this much publishing "work" for us?)

___________________

Today's LittleNip:

THE HOUSE SQUEAKS
—Joyce Odam

The hinge on the door lets out a sound:

fear with its secret, here again—
enters and seeks you out. Oh, friend,
fear with its secret—old and thin.

The hinge on the door lets out a sound.

__________________

—Medusa

Photo by D.R. Wagner

How

Darling House Window, Santa Cruz
Photo by Katy Brown

HOW DOES A SPIDER KNOW

how to pull silk from her spinnerets, how
to weave the ancient secret of crossbeams
and guywires, symmetrical wheels of needles
and pins to hold her in a morning bed
of diamonds? How does a pigeon know

how to home, know where her pinpoint
of a nest box is over hundreds of miles, know
how to thread her way back around
trees and hills and rivers of long, thin,
silvery sunlight? How do I know

how to trust you again, how to rebuild
our web, find the nest box, sew our way home
after we've torn dark holes in the silk
of our marriage? And how does a poem know

how to build a web of its own? How does it
weave its way around trees and hills and rivers
and not be blinded by all that silvery sunlight?

—Kathy Kieth, Pollock Pines

__________________

—Medusa

A Voice From New Zealand

Wayne Russell


NIGHT SOUNDS
—Wayne Russell, Wellington, New Zealand

The savage wind quickly picks up its momentum,
slamming against the dilapidated wood slated house.
Inside barren paint-chipped walls, doors creak on
rusty old hinges.
The midnight hour has struck up its somber tune
on an ancient oak grandfather clock, while a docile
brown field mouse decides its next course of action.

_________________

Thanks, Wayne! Wayne Russell is a poet who originally hails from Florida in the USA but now resides in Wellington, New Zealand with his wife and two young children. Wayne has been published in Poet's Espresso, Inclement, Shoots and Vines, The Canon's Mouth Cannon Poets Quarterly, and Fragile Arts, among others. You can read more of his work at www.myspace.com/thezodiacpoet

__________________

SUBMISSION
—Wayne Russell

On the dark and unruly streets,
I roam late at night
in the virgin wilderness of my mind,
running on fumes, so tired of life and
infinite woe.

Helpless spirits saunter by,
as whimsical pseudo-starlets drift past
in their perfumed allure and consuming desire...
mere flowers in the dust.

Waves crash on broken beseeching shoreline,
a robotic throbbing of dance floor repetition
spills forth.

She kisses my desire, all thoughts fade,
for a moment...
nirvana.

____________________

LONE BALLOON
—Wayne Russell

A lone pink balloon caught in the crossfire of a
Blustery winter's day…
Gloom and doom it dissipates,
A golden ray of sunlight captures the circumference…
A small child in bright yellow rain coat gives chase.
The balloon ascends, the child saunters away
Dejected.

__________________

ROSES
—Wayne Russell

When the new wears away
and this love for you bleeds dry
from the arrow flung by cupid's bow...
Should we just stay together?

Should we watch our children grow,
like well-cultivated roses....
fermented within the compost
of a generic romance?

_____________________

AMERICA
—Wayne Russell

What happened to the carefree America of my youth?
I blinked and you were gone...
or was I just too young to know of all the horrors
lurking beneath your star-spangled surface?
Was I too naïve to understand what Mr. Carter said?
Or did I even care about his lies?
Was I too lost within the pages of my favourite book,
"Where the Wild Things Are", to follow the rhetoric of
what the smug politicians in D.C. said on the 5 O'Clock news?
Was I too childish to understand about the goings-on
in the bloody rice fields of the Viet Nam war?
Was I too wrapped up in being 10 to give it much thought the
night my favourite former Beatle, John Lennon was shot dead
outside the Dakota building in his beloved N.Y.C.?
Or was I just too busy wishing my drunken father
would just wake the hell up from his sloppy sprawled-out slumber
on the ugly green sofa, and just go away forever?
America America land that I still love,
I grew up and departed from your oil-stained shores
and downhill slide into corporate insanity.
Yet I still pray for your quick recovery,
for it is within your borders
I once again long to dwell.

______________________

CYBER FRIENDS?
—Wayne Russell

This must be how you felt
In darkened room
Encased within your straight jackets of woe
By solemn candle flame
you wrote of unimaginable pain

“click clack
click clack
ding”

on your vintage typewriter
in innocent hours of early morn
you found your voice

(insane as it was)

and spat your venomous muse.

All missions accomplished
while your legions of fans gathered at your
blood-stained feet so unassuming.
This must be how you felt when into my realm
you roamed so empty and deluded
I was the down-and-out poet a drunken loner
a “Diamond in the Rough”.

You picked me up dusted me off gave me hope
Hopes of a brighter future
(long as you could do my thinking for me)
you polished me off carefully placing me on your mantel
amongst your other trophies...

As “Publish! Publish! Publish!”
spouted forth from your deceitful lips
across the miles I lapped up every word
like a cat lapping cream out of his bowl
the victim?

Yes, silly me!
“Please be careful who you let in”
Yes from now on
I shall.

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble and a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

—Sir Isaac Newton

___________________

—Medusa

P.S. Katy Brown’s SO, Robert, is out of ICU but still in the hospital, after having a pretty rough time of it for the last week. She sends her appreciation to the poetry community for all the good thoughts!

Star anise seedpods

Good Luck Day

Photo by Jane Blue, Sacramento

SPIDERS
—Jane Blue

Don’t worry spiders,
I keep house
casually.
–Issa, version by Robert Hass


A dead bug, perhaps a dragonfly, clings
to the front door, a line drawing of a sea horse,
its long thin intestine clothed
in dry veined wings and a head, tiny
and resigned, a dead, profiled eye.
Next to it is a tiny spider, that has become
a star, a starfish, all caught in a web,
unseen now, the juice sucked from them.
The spiders weave and spin in the yellow
ceiling of the porch. I can’t bear
to sweep them away. I can’t bear to
sweep the desiccated art they leave behind
from the hospitality of my front door.

___________________

Today (Friday the 13th) is your Lucky Day, because you can hear Taylor Graham on Capital Public Radio’s Insight program (90.9 FM) at 10am. Then, next Monday (8/16), TG and Michael Paul will be reading at Sacramento Poetry Center, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento, 7:30pm. Michael Gregg Paul lives in Shingle Springs. He is the author of six chapbooks and is co-editor of two full-sized poetry anthologies in national distribution. A sometime journalist, he is also an award-winning visual artist in several media, and once upon a time was a garage band drummer. More about TG and Michael over on the b-board; see below for three poems from TG's new book (and go to the b-board to order it).

This weekend, head down to Modesto for the Song of the San Joaquin reading, or over to Mokelumne Hill for the Manzanita reading—two wonderful journals that you should be sending poems to. (See b-board for details.)

And don't forget the Banana Fest!

Earlier this week, we announced Rae Gouirand’s new One By One journal. Now there is another new one in our area: Snail Mail Review, Modesto's newest literary venture, is currently accepting submissions; guidelines are on FaceBook (search for Snail Mail Review), and the deadline is December 15. They also accept short fiction. (You can also pick up guidelines at The Barkin' Dog Grill in Modesto.)

Another workshop opportunity this Fall, starting Sept. 29, 6-7:30pm: New Voices Writing Workshop with Sacramento's Past Poet Laureate Julia Connor, to be held for ten weeks at South Natomas Library, 2901 Truxel Rd., Sacramento. This workshop (free to the public and open to all levels of experience) is sponsored by the Sacramento Poetry Center with a grant from the Sacramento Regional Foundation. Free, but advanced registration is reguired and the class is limited to 15 participants: go to cal.saclibrary.org/eventsignup.asp?ID=2


Just when you thought it was safe to go into the b-board...

...now I've gone and done something ELSE new! Will it never end??? (I know just enough about Blogspot now to be a danger to myself and others...) This time I've taken advantage of Blogspot's new Page option: I've moved several of the longer, wordier b-board features into "pages" of their own, which means the skinny blue box has a lot less posted on it now. Instead of scrolling down to the armadillo, the wolf, my bathrobe, etc., you can go to Sam's curtain-rod snake (right near the top of the skinny blue box) and click on any of the categories listed there, which will then appear in the cream-colored box where the daily posts usually are. Check 'em out, then click the "back" button on your computer screen, or go to the bottom of the cream box where it says Home, or click on Home on the list; any of that will bring you right back to business as usual. I'm very excited about this change, since it will allow me to post (and keep for longer than a day) a lot more material, including articles, photo galleries, a beefed-up Calliope—I haven't even begun to explore all the new things this will allow us to do. Thanks for your patience as we all explore the fun new world of [better-organized] cyber-poetry!

__________________

BLACK APPLE
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Latrodectus Hesperus. Innocent
ring to that Hesperus; it means West,
sounds like Hesperides, daughters
who sprout into life under

apple-laden holy trees, the fruit
pure gold. Not a bit of it! This is
the Western Black Widow.

Do spiders have apple abdomens?
I saw such a fruit once, dangling
from a tree, eight slender branches…
Here’s what I remember:

At a rental storage unit,
eager to get at the books I’m moving,
and oh by the way, furniture,
I peel back the big concertina door.

Cobweb…leading straight to a wee

black apple, an inch from my face,
staring out from the door jamb,
treading irrevocably close. Do I
crush her with a scrap of paper?

Ignore her and get on with extracting?
With or without possessions, I escape,
nictating by tics askance
at her timepiece red tattoo.

Break the name into Latin parts,
we get Latro (robber) plus dectus
(roof-covered?); leave it Greek,

a biter in hiding. Either way,

that’s enough acquaintance with you, milady,
strong though your web silk may be,
gold though your apple must be

somewhere under
black
lacquer…

__________________

SOME OF YOUR LANGUAGES
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

for Elihu Burritt


Arabic, self-taught by lamplight after hours at the forge;
Bohemian (now known as Czech) and Basque. In
Celto-Breton you sent greetings to the Royal Antiquarian

Society.

Danish was yours, and an obscure dialect thereof;
Ethiopic and of course English;
French, Flemish, each new word memorized in “spare

moments”;

Gallic, German. Too much study causes
headache, but you pressed on with Hebrew, Hungarian,
Icelandic, Irish, Italian—fifty tongues in all.
Just try to list them; try to
keep each one distinct, catalogued, and ready.
Latin became your key to Greek, The Iliad parsed one winter.
Manx was in your lexicon. Did I forget Dutch,
not to mention Chaldee and Cornish?
Old Norse (you translated the Viking sagas),
Persian, Polish, Portuguese. You didn’t claim
Québécois, that maple-leaf French, but
Russian you mastered, as well as Spanish,
Samaritan, Syriac, Swedish. In later years you
taught New Britain schoolgirls Sanskrit,
unraveled its sacred alphabet, its nouns, its
verbs, a very complex system, an ancient sound-dance.
Welsh sang in your blood, study-fatigue in your head (ref. pg.
xviii of Howitt’s “Memoir”). Was it by instinct
you caught mankind’s flighty speech as a swallow
zaps insects on the wing?

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THE BOND
—Taylor Graham

Some one asked for ‘the bond,’ and it was read; and there,
among great swelling words about liberty, we found it
written, that there was not...an inch of ground within the
limits of the great American Republic, which was not
MORTGAGED TO SLAVERY.
—Elihu Burritt, “All Mortgaged”


The night has a thousand eyes, so goes the song.
But that night in Massachusetts,
the sky must have had at least a billion eyes
looking down on the slave boy run this far north
in the land of the free. A bright night, full of stars
and slave-hunters coming with their dogs

scenting shadows darker than any silhouette
cast by star or moon.
Where can a bonded foot safely rest

in this New England pledged to Liberty
and Justice? Just read the bond of Union,
North and South alike. Even here in Worcester—

keep this from the children—no daughter
or son would understand why
fathers clothe the black boy in female garb

and arm-in-arm escort him to underground roads
bound for Canada, so far
from the birth-land that’s not his home.

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ONE CITY TO ANOTHER
—Taylor Graham

for Elihu Burritt, August 1852


London to Southampton, then by steamship to France
with a satchel full of letters. On the 19th you reach Rouen.

A Friendly Address, goodwill message from the people
of York in England to all the citizens of Rouen.

Raided by Viking (9th century); French Wars of Religion—
see the Calvinist scars on Notre-Dame de Rouen.

Le Tour Jeanne d’Arc recalls its warrior-maiden.
The English burned St. Joan at the stake in Rouen.

The Hundred Years War: under King Harry’s seven-
month siege, townsfolk starved on the rats of Rouen.

No time to meander through the Jardin des Plantes;
you’ve an urgent letter to deliver to the Mayor of Rouen.

While governments plot war, their subjects dream
of peace in London, Liverpool, Marseilles, Rouen.

What common hope binds men across the Channel—
freight handler of York, dockworker of Rouen?

The hostler in Bristol, the merchant in Aberdeen—
they want peace as much as any baker in Rouen.

And all the while, over centuries the Gros Horloge
keeps heavenly time over the ancient city of Rouen.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

Lightning!
Fleeing up the wall,
the legs of a spider.

—Kicho

__________________

—Medusa

Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

A Big Red Kiss

Photo by Crissy Lane

BLUE
—Ronald Edwin Lane, Weimar

Blue so blue
Infinitely deep, deep blue
Lost beneath the
Layer upon layer of
Hue upon hue
Of blue upon blue
Sky blue cloudy
So lost
So very very lost
In this blue
Without you

_______________________

THE COBWEB
—Raymond Carver

A few minutes ago, I stepped onto the deck
of the house. From there I could see and hear the water,
and everything that's happened to me all these years.
It was hot and still. The tide was out.
No birds sang. As I leaned against the railing
a cobweb touched my forehead.
It caught in my hair. No one can blame me that I turned
and went inside. There was no wind. The sea was
dead calm. I hung the cobweb from the lampshade.
Where I watch it shudder now and then when my breath
touches it. A fine thread. Intricate.
Before long, before anyone realizes,
I'll be gone from here.

__________________

SHREDDING THE EDGES
—Patricia A. Pashby, Sacramento

She encases her ebony body
in a gossamer wrap,
concealing her scarlet birthmark.

He mounts the web seeking her,
his tiny heart pounding
as he tangles in the mesh.

Four endless nights
they shake the strong sticky lacework,
snagging, shedding the edges.

On the fifth day she closes her eyes
curling bruised legs under her hourglass.
His time has run out.

___________________

CLEARING COBWEBS
—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

Alone at last, no hustle bustle
A slight warm breeze caresses the eyelids
Head resting back comfortably.

Now there was time to reflect
On all that had come before
And to postulate the future.

Both hands firmly on the wheel,
Right foot feathering the accelerator pedal
You’re a guy so you don’t need a map,
Just an open road, that is the key.

Reaching for the radio knob,
darned that static!
A cobweb covers the dial
Obscuring the numbers that for so long
Had connected you to a kind of
Excitement you could only dream of.

What a troubling thought: a web
That itself denies you making the
Connection you had aspired to make.
So you sit up, open the door, and
Move over to the next abandoned car.

Maybe this is the one.

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MATCH THIS
—Carl Bernard Schwartz

Very pretty eyes
as blue as the sky,
but her dough didn’t rise
and the clothes aren’t dry.

Mighty and strong
like a team of fine horses
he got into college
then flunked all his courses.

These two are now married,
have 9 kids, you know,
and their contract is legal:
just quid pro quo.

__________________

FLOURISHES
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

There is a little flourish this wren
Does just before it leaves the branch
For the next one. It is small, so

Small it is hard to see it when it happens.
You, in your way of speaking show me a flourish
That lifts your words just above the edge of
Understanding and tips them into the universe

So they look like an interesting species of butterfly
Never seen here before, never held in the hand.
It can hardly be noticed but I would bet

A blind man could feel it without a cane
Or a dog. There is a kind of dancing the spirit
Allows itself when a real passion for something
Finally finds the room it is supposed
To live in. The heart feels it. It moves air.

The afternoon had been a long time coming.
It got caught up playing with the sun across
The tops of small waves in the pond above
The mill dam and everything got so pretty it
Was nearly four thirty before it realized
There wasn’t much left of the job that day.

That’s when the passion kicked in.
Long shadows birthed with the heart
Fully extended like a bright wand.
It was hard to see when it happened
But it caused the tail feathers of a house wren
To flourish for the briefest of moments, like your smile.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

BLADDER SONG
—Leonard Nathan

On a piece of toilet paper
Afloat in the unflushed piss,
The fully printed lips of a woman.

Nathan, cheer up! The sewer
Sends you a big red kiss.
Ah, nothing's wasted, if it's human.

__________________

—Medusa

Photo by D.R. Wagner