Just Waiting—

Artpiece using pieces of real books

—Photo by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

MY FIRST MEMORY (OF LIBRARIANS)
—Nikki Giovanni

This is my first memory:
A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky
       wood floor
A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center
Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply
       too short
              For me to sit in and read
So my first book was always big

In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided
To the left side the card catalogue
On the right newspapers draped over what looked like
       a quilt rack
Magazines face out from the wall

The welcoming smile of my librarian
The anticipation in my heart
All those books—another world—just waiting
At my fingertips.

_______________________

—Medusa

Blinking Into The Night

Gateway

—Poems, Photos and Photo Enhancements

by D.R. Wagner, Locke

THE SILVER BELL

“a static line that danced now
and then like a drunken cemetery.”
                     —Richard Brautigan

The dream was running on tiny silver rails
That looked like railroad track
But were much closer together,
As dreams don’t need a very wide track.

Of course it curved away, out of sight
Long before it came to the horizon.
No one would notice it but me anyway
And I’m only telling you this so you
Can get to the part where the clouds
Begin to bring in all their luggage,
Plop it down near the mountain
That is on fire and then go out for more.

They aren’t doing much of anything.
At first they look like smoke
From the fire and the next minute
Like they are going to pour rain
Like nobody’s business.

You probably noticed there aren’t
Any people in here, except me.
That is because the dream was about
A beautiful silver bell and I haven’t
Got to that part yet.

The wind picked up and got so
Strong it lifted the tracks off the ground.
I was running as fast as I could
To grab at the tracks and pull
Them back down to the ground
So the dream wouldn’t get interrupted.

Just as I made the top of the curve
I saw it hanging in the air like
A harrier falcon, except it wasn’t
A bird at all or anything like it.
It shone beyond my entire imagination.
Just hanging below all those clouds
And just above the tracks,
The most beautiful silver bell
You have ever seen.

 The Conversation

BENDING THE CANDLE FLAME

And now this is the house of the night.
And now it is my house,
For it moves in my blood.

I know the stories of wonder.
I know the things belonging to the forest.
I have no mind but that of night.
The stars, the stuff of the moon,
The things where reason has no room.

I too move upon that wind
That bends the candle flame
Close to the wick.

What is madness then but
A skitter of leaves
Across a rain-swept street
And that faraway calling.
Calling that cannot be answered.

For I too dwell in the house of night
And these are the stories of wonder,
The unuttered breath
We drop into the clouds
And from the clouds
To what we hope
To call earth.

Lagoon

A GAME CHILDREN PLAY

They had already left the rooms
By the time we arrived.
All of the birds were dead
Except the ones so high up
In the towers they were impossible
To see.  Ramon said he could hear them.

The glow in the place was like a pulsing
Fire, ruddy and swept with a smoke
That smelled of incense and blood.
Furniture was smoldering in many
Of the rooms.

Names and symbols covered the walls.
Most were in a language we had not seen
Before. The writing looked embossed.
Occasionally video images would appear
In different parts of the walls.

There was also a row of small paintings.
They were framed in gold and had
A precious look about them.
There were people doing things
In the paintings but none of us
Could determine what is was
They were doing.  It seemed to involve
A game played with children
But the children looked to be telling
The larger persons some kind of secrets.

The people in the paintings were doing
Things we had never seen people do.
One of the soldiers wanted to tear them
Down from the walls, saying they were
Not right.  No one could understand this.

The only thing that was obvious
Was that no one here was alive
And that no one would be coming back.

“We have to leave this place very quietly,”
Said Ramon.  “The things that have happened
Here may never be spoken of again.
I want you to forget that we were here.”

We moved as many things in the rooms
As we could to their centers.
Three or four of the others began
To break the video screens with their tools.
They worked so quietly all we noticed
Was the growing darkness.

This is the last you will hear of this place.
I cannot tell you anything more, just like
Some governments do.  They know many
Things but we are not allowed to know them.
"We are soldiers,” said Ramon.
“This is none of our business.”

Succulent 2

PROPHECY

This is a road.
It was once a field.
We were not allowed
To see the change.

Time was much too short,
Had other things to do.
Battles took place here,
Their outcomes were
Precipitous at best.
Nothing could come of them.

This is a field.
It was once a road.
There are many ways
To see how these things
Happened.  We will not
Know what they were.

I am telling you this
So that you can see this place.
We are the body.
This is the song.
Here, I will walk with you.

Bedroom Light

WAKE
 
The shadows are loose again.  The sun
Pressed against the window, just above
The trees, has insisted it is morning.
The coffee too, talks in a wake of bubbles
As it tumbles into the pot.

There is a comfort there in coffee and toast,
A room for memories that sprung from dreams.
Now they cluster around the east-facing windows,
The morning sun pouring over them, too bright
For eyes this old, but welcome nevertheless.

He will take his cup, find a chair and listen
To the wrens and tits, the yellow warbler
And recall talking to the crows as they made
Their way across the morning skies toward
Whatever it is they do during the day, wishing
Them well and that he might join them if only
To see from their great heights the arc
Of his life, the many mornings the many nights,
Some as dark as this aromatic cup of coffee
Held with both hands, blinking into the light.

Succulent

Today's LittleNip:

LEFT OPEN

“Once the horse is roped,
it is quite necessary to know
what to do with him.”    
            —Ellswoth Jaeger, Wildwood Wisdom


If there is no snubbing post,
Face the horse, plant your feet
Wide apart and lean backward
On the taunt rope.  Dig the heels
Of your boots in, for you will plow
Furrows in the dust.  The horse
Doesn’t like you facing him.
He thinks you mean him mischief.

As we so often do when leaving
A room or a unwelcome conversation,
Turn around and walk away from him,
Holding the lead rope and he will follow
Behind you.

________________________

—Medusa

That Rascal, D.R.

—Photo taken at The Other Voice Poetry Reading,

Sept. 19, 2014 by Katy Brown, Davis

[Note two new photo albums on 

Medusa's Kitchen Facebook page: 

Joshua Tree by Cynthia Linville, and

Jobe & Jones at The Other Voice by

Katy Brown]

Unfaithful Dreams

Tower of London Raven

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

CRADLE CODEX
—Grant Tarbard, Essex, England

Align yourself with purity, the sally willowing night sky
laid as a blanket for the Lady of Sycamore

and thrown onto bundles of kindling pulp,
boundlessly devouring the elements of fire and air,

fanning the pack of bloody savage flames,
lying on a shelf of pirates, thieves and cavaliers.

The countryside was trudging with irrelevant conversation,
the crows circling high, bewitching scraps into their gullets.

Raum, the Great Earl of Hell, ruling thirty legions
of a shawl of crowing, flapping in the breeze.

The sea shines like the lights that disappear
down the tunnel of the aurora borealis

that is a whisper under your breath.
Laughing, the oceans speak the words

that will summon a boy in his dream, unconscious to the depths
of mystery, mesmerized by Atlantis' eroding pillars.

Heartfelt in his vision of the mermaid's song,
under a cardboard moon, the cosmos is all dragons.

 Regimental Flags, English Church

—Photo by Katy Brown

the cadaver stanzas
—Grant Harbard

(i) in the mountains/in the cities

hearts entwined with the red klaxon,
a part is in the stop sign, a part is in alice's queen of hearts.

see the yellow grass morphing into murky white water,
a blur of the littlest jasmine petals.

unconscious mustard plants swaying,
a healer with a mood of roots.

-

(ii) all god's children

they're many languages transported under the tear drop
of the king james bible

asking questions of the rain,
take a closer look, the drops are wooden.

-

(iii) ornament of venus

broken glass and vinegar drum away
with a windscreen wiper's swish-swoop in the evening light's

deep black lens, a welcoming warmth of solitude.
thoughts coalesce into someone pretty,

and then she dissipates into an eye's iris.
here is the phenomenon of creatures of the Earth

creating music, presenting it to the sunshine
who digests the notes, pyrite requires nutrients.

a stalking horse cuts at the ankles
kissing fever on the mouth,

across the plank, two hands clasped in friendship,
there's nothing more unfaithful than a dream.

-

(iv) tied in black

the corpses are ravenous,
under the lonely earth, trees grow upside down

smothered by crow black soil.
the empty perished feel the fire of the eternal wreath

of granite rhododendrons, dusty and artificial.
the worm's tracks appear above a meandering stream

of narrow ringlets in winter's rime,
water vapour in a composite cloud of fog.

-

(v) the pantomime

the great sermon, cornerstone of an imaginarium of the divine,
amongst the hoods absentmindedly mishearing the encroaching terror

of creaking pantomime dust as the old Rapture rag,
wooden boards, warm blood fed through sad,

strange downy matted whines, a feeble milky morsel chorus
of in utero shreds of wire flowers and painted dames.

the limp man sullenly weaves the slightest rhyme:
the past you laid bare as her dwelt upon thighs,

the beautiful reeds who you wave goodbye aren't baptised,
the maniacal horror that you greet with spider's eyes

is the falsehood plasterer Mephisto in disguise,
your soul he does desire, he pits his wits to your untimely demise.

-

(vi) woe

what is it, here, what is it?
a cup, a telephone, a tin of mints,

the embers of a fallen star?
tragedy trails fire.

-

(vii) faint

one leaf of the tree of life
is a cardinal right atrium

throbbing in a cavity
of delicate flowers.

-

(viii) mortician's table

my gusto is attributable
to my tracks alone,

tread in scarlet lint.
my vigour for the task of butcher

sewing twill skinned figurines
with catgut sutures,

the doe-eyed dead
are silent on my table

-

(ix) one hour

hollow, sunk in
cheeks, going, going, gone...

the product was presented
as a treatment with a hose pipe

and a box of chartreuse miasma,
for an easy downpayment

you could converge on the gates
of paradise within the hour

-

(x) flute tears of stillness

the photograph is still weeping
flute tears of stillness

it's hardly you, a flowing lens
of one face absorbing into three

a cheek i cannot squeeze
through a solitude of glass

a lock i cannot feel
against my breast

dancing in a mist
of imagined coconut shampoo

 Avebury

—Photo by Katy Brown

THE VEILED ARTISAN
—Grant Harbard

He draws a line in magic
around the wounded boys.

He draws in chalk, he draws in oil paint
around the wounded boys.

He draws with the old families' blood,
the wounded are boys of clay.

He draws in Canon printer ink,
the wounded boys beg mercy in the optician's house.

He draws in melted copper,
the wounded boys spend their pennies

on years of a life unseen
through the cracked lens of a fly's eye.

________________________

Today Medusa's Kitchen welcomes Grant Harbard from over the sea! Grant lives in Essex, England, and he has worked as a journalist, a contributor to magazines, an editor, a reviewer and an interviewer. His work can be seen in such magazines as The Rialto, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Bone Orchard Poetry, BLAZE, The Journal, Southlight, Sarasvati, Earth Love, Mood Swing, Puff Puff Prose Poetry & Prose, Postcards Poetry and Prose, Playerist 2, Lake City Lights, The Open Mouse, Weyfarers, Miracle, Poetry Cornwall, I-70, South Florida Review, Stare's Nest, Zymbol, Synchronized Chaos and Decanto. Grant Tarbard is the editor of The Screech Owl; he says his main admirer is the stray cat that lurks round the bins. Welcome to the Kitchen table, Grant—and don't be a stranger!

This is our busy season in NorCal poetry, and we have lots of readings coming up. This weekend is action-packed; check out the blue board (below the green board at the right of this column) for all the happenings.

Also: the Rattlesnake Press website was inaccessible for a while, but it's back now at rattlesnakepress.com/. Which means that you can order copies of WTF, current or past, through PayPal for $2. Unless, of course, you are a contributor who never received one—in which case, let me know at kathykieth@hotmail.com and I'll send you one. (Or there may still be some at The Book Collector.)

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who've all longed and lost, who've all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you're not really any different from anybody else.

—Maya Angelou

_______________________

—Medusa

Grant Harbard

Persuasion's Vices

Two Chickens

—Photo by Ann Privateer

TRANSFORMATION
—Ann Privateer, Davis

Worry-free me splits
to the quirky aviary

bound by chicken wire
kept in to not expire

from Bavarian resignation
for a shot at redemption.

Fast forwarding
my work, chasing

an olive in the bottom
of a glass of bourbon.

You enter to convolute confusion
by backpeddling my emotion

shrink into your coat, try to find
the persistent mind

that will trade envy
for a decoy

ready to hunt
anything short of a bunt.

Redemption entices
persuasion's vices. 

 Three Palms

—Photo by Ann Privateer

ALL THAT GLITTERS AND GLOWS
—Ann Privateer

red sunsets, baby's laughter, news
of a lottery windfall, chickens tasting
winter, squash in butter, a sleeping
child, poems that smile, your
daughter's reminder, your son's
message, your own messy
room, your feet freed, your
dog or cat listening, all
that glows in beauty.

 —Photo by Ann Privateer

MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE
—Ann Privateer

Purple manganese peeps over
blue corn flowers where wild anise
curbs rows of velocity at the farm
where chickens scurry. We, like them
most likely drunk on Bacardi and rum,
hum the third stanza of Luna Park's rung
exulting simple pleasures, alive near
a stream that flows freely
with stillness in each moment.

_______________________

HEARTBURN—

he’s got it bad
He wants her to teach him
the art of un-loving
un-remembering—
but no one can.
He wants her 
to soothe him
with the scent of her skin—
oregano, basil and thyme—
with the comfort of her kitchen.

—Cynthia Linville

 —Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

VENUS BOBS HER HAIR
—Cynthia Linville

The 1920s is her favorite decade—
you should see her collection of
feathers and fringe.
She steps back in time to
Paris or New York
whenever the mood takes her—
a sleek brunette in white silk.
A Goddess men call her
as they pour her a pink gin fizz
or light the cigarette at the end of
her long ebony holder.
Those lucky enough to visit her chambers
are awed by the crushed red velvet
on her heart-shaped bed.
Have I died and gone to heaven?
they ask.
Not yet, says Venus.
Not yet.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

You’re an asshole
a jerk
a dweeb
a putz
a twit
a dolt
a sap
a prick.
No, you’re an asshole.

—Cynthia Linville

______________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

Fools & Spells

Folsom Antique Fair, Folsom, CA

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

BAD KARMA THURSDAY
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Thursdays are my worst days: the fatigue
just after rehearsal night. The traffic…why
in God’s name, Thursday? Everything in league
to thwart me—(anger issues I deny?)
Today, my record rage. A monster accident
I deked and dodged around, quite unconcerned
if four fire trucks meant no mere fenders bent,
but injury, blood. What mattered was, I burned.
So where has my compassion gone? What harm
ten minutes late for work? Quite brave, the cool
old man fresh from the wreck who stood diverting us.
You’ll know if you read this, you who are the charm,
the tenderness of my life, I hate when fools,  
spells, karmas delay us, separate us, keep hurting us.

_______________________

MY EVIL
—Tom Goff

What’s in your trunk in the attic? Medusa’s prompt
for poems this week. What last word won’t you have?
Or symphony still half-drafted, dance unstomped?
What inhibitions breed as glaciers calve
in the blood, to keep my undone all undone?
The American Scholar for this month divulges
Roger Grenier’s bemusings on such trunks.
The contents of mine? Dust, mold, or moth—such bulges
of yellowed whim as may atomize, dry vapors
of crumbling leaves and crumpled states of funk,
the torque and torture stuffing my inner jerk.
What sings out past the burn point of my papers?
The shine and softness and youth of you? My evil,
my lovely slaying my termite and my weevil,
you are—but why?—my undertow, my subliminal
wisp, my murmur, my meme, my tumor, my germinal.

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

AMOEBA FOR PRESIDENT
—Caschwa, Sacramento
 
Each election cycle we put forth
Candidates who take positions
On major issues, which sets the
Stage for a continuous debate

Will this candidate take actions
That represent the best interests
Of the nation, or are their programs
Just part of a special interest agenda?

It would be easy to get around
All these inflammatory issues
If we just put an amoeba into the
Highest office of the land

Birthers would drive themselves
Crazy trying to trace the family
Roots of single-cell organisms
Who divide to multiply

Polls and pols alike would simply
Not reach the amoeba who has
No connections with political parties
Or with rating schemes

The arguments for and against
Harvesting embryonic stem cells
Would be politely withheld while
An amoeba is in office

We needn’t drain our resources electing
Both a president and a vice president
When an amoeba could easily just
Split in two and fulfill both roles

______________________

THE COLE BROTHERS AIR SHOW
COMES HOME AGAIN
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

They’d fly back to Kewanee, Illinois
Every year to start their season.
Coming low out of the Southeast,
Out of Chicago’s Meigs Field,
They’d buzz their sister’s place.
Annie’d stayed home to tend
Family affairs.  She lived
In the house behind us.

Suddenly, brilliantly colored
Biplanes roaring out of the
Pale blue Illinois spring
Sky.  A Red Baron streaming
Blue smoke,
Five—five—Sopwith Camels
Doing Immelmann’s. 
A wingwalker in bright tights
Just above the elms
Shouting, “Hi, Annie,
We’re home!”

Scared the shit out of
Everyone
In the neighborhood.
Except Annie and me.
We’d be out in our
Back yards cheering,
Waving. When
It was over,
We’d nod, smile,
And go back inside.

_____________________

LUKE, PETER, AND I DIDN’T
REALLY WANT TO KNOW
—Kevin Jones

Used to donate my chapbooks
To my hometown library.  They
Seemed grateful, and put them
In special collections.
In the basement. Got a letter
From them once talking about
How the library book club
Was doing something different
That year—local authors—and
Each member would take one
Writer and make him/her
Their own. I could only
Think of the Glidden boys,
Who grew up to be Luke Short
And Peter Dawson, Wild West
Novelists  (No, they never
Went there) and, well, me.
Small book club, I thought.

Library also sent
Their reader’s guide.
Read it with interest till I came
To the fifth question:
“How, where, and when
Did your author die?”

Was quite a while before
I sent them anymore
Of my chaps.

Pond Lilies

—Photo by Taylor Graham

WAKE
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

He’s up before dawn, when his stoop—
that spinal question mark—throws no shadow
as he journeys to the kitchen stove.
Through the window, subdued hues of moonlight
balancing the thought of sun. It was a full
Harvest Moon. He remembers walking between
rows of corn and beans when he was tall
and straight, and young. Dust on a farm-road,
maple trees in snowfall. His dog churning
a wake of bubbles, chasing after a stick
in the pond. The crow that spoke to him
from the well-house dark. How many revelations
when you live so long beyond threescore years
and ten. Here’s the sanctuary of a kitchen table
in dim morning, coffee brewing black
for the bowl she would always set before him.
Nothing can cross her face out of his memory,
his past balanced between moon and sun.
He hunches over his coffee bowl as if giving
thanks for a humble meal. His life.

______________________

A DOOR LEFT OPEN
—Taylor Graham

To the falcon you saw flying overhead, you
meant no more than a hair-brush, or the crinkle
of a letter opening, the stamping
of its secrets in fading script. Children played
outside beneath a contrail,
watching the winds dissolve
cloud into sky. Doorframe between window-
glass and hinge—such a small window—
you imagined your
boxed life, itself too small to contain the five
directions a professional globe-master talked
about before closing the windows
of imagination and pushing the school-door
shut. A child dares ask no questions.
You chose the weathered stone
around the corner, and waved back at the falcon
trailing its feather-script from five directions
caught in the door
and the row of windows passing.

_____________________

IMAGINARY SHELVES
—Taylor Graham

The clock radio wakes you to say you will be
drenched with tedium today. Time to get up,
throw off the cotton quilt your mother sewed
for you so long ago, fabric scraps in orange
polka dots, yellow spirals and blue flowers
true. A comforter, sunshine of a rainy day
with those fairytale books of enchanted isles
borrowed from the library. Forever-keep
of the imagination. Close your eyes and look.
You never know about polka dots, especially
the orange ones. O child of the wandering sea.

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

‪I had a dream with local poet B.L. Kennedy in it‬
‪I guess I wonder how he is doing now since I haven’t seen him for so long‬
‪(and please I want to hear updates from anybody who knows him‬—
‪Ann Menebroker told me at The Shine Cafe B.L. told her on the phone that his computer no longer worked)‬
‪Anyway I dreamt B.L. handed me some crummy, worn black tennis shoes he found‬
‪He explained the shoes were “magical” ‬
‪and told me in his New York-style accent how I would be stupid not to take and wear them‬
‪I guess it was an analogy to say that nobody will hand me “ruby slippers” for a golden road‬

—Michelle Kunert

___________________

—Medusa, thanking today's chefs in the Kitchen, and reminding you that Taylor Graham will be reading with Phil Weidman (plus open mic) this Sunday, 2-4pm, at a new reading, Poetry at the Wine Cellar, in Placerville. That's at Nello Olivo Tasting Rm., 643 Bee St., Placerville. Be there!

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

Dream-Shadows

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

THE BODY IN THE SUITCASE

The body in the suitcase is
getting tired of being undiscovered.
It wants to become famous
as its murderer has promised.
It wants to show
its fingerprints and features
and offer clues for solving.
It does not like this cramped death,
its suitcase surroundings.
It wants to rejoice in vengeance,
to have its funeral and mourners.
It wants to come to light in the
eyes of justice.
It wants to prove itself
not guilty—just the victim.


(first pub. in Attention Please, 1978)

__________________________

TIME FRACTURE

I am on an unfamiliar street,
in someone else’s town. The landmarks
seem the same, but where is my house?

I thought I could stay
and recapture what I knew : there—
that street sign—changing as I look at it.

Now a car reels backward down the street.
A bottle flies out the window,
breaks at my feet, a drunken laugh—

my mother’s face in a gash
of window light. But she is younger than I am.
I am old and full of dream-shadows.

The broken glass has become
a slippery path
of sharp stones glinting in a stream.

I am wading across it
through glitters that snap at my feet.
I am cut, my thin blood flowing out of me.

I hear children’s voices taunting.
I pick up my suitcase, stuffed full of glass,
and turn in another wrong direction.

HOUSE, GROWING OLD   

he knows the house
knows all its rooms and
what the creakings mean
within the walls

he has been
under the house
crawling around in
the damp earth

helping it brace itself
fixing its water pipes
and looking for
termite danger

a leak slides down
the corner of a room
from the
all night rain

now he is crawling around
in the attic
over the
wiring and insulation

calling: house     house
are you all right
is there anything I can
do for you

                         
(first pub. in The Wormwood Review, 1973)

THE FRAGMENT YEARS

These passages… dim-lit hallways…
narrow stairs… I have known them before.

Some of them were Home Places. Some
were places of leaving. They all had fears.

Someone stole light bulbs. Someone listened
to comings and goings.

Between the walls of adjoining bathrooms,
someone poked holes, someone peered.

Rooms were small then;
memory does not contain much of them.

Memory blurs with reasons of its own.
How did I come to be me?

So many came through my life. Spoke words.
Sat on chairs. Were important—

then were gone. The stairways were
the worst. I could not be quiet enough.

I had to pass under the window…
try not to breathe…

Mother carried the suitcase
quiet against her body…

Even now I tell secrets instead of…
Even now I tell…  even now I…

have no words, though I am wrapped
in layers of poems—

poems that puzzle,
poems that I stuff back in the rooms.

I am under the eardrums of the radio.
I sleep under the loud ceiling light.

Mother returns to shout through
the transom,

to take me away again.
Where are we going this time, Mother?

PERSONIFICATIONS
THE PIERRE HOTEL, NEW YORK, 1946
(from GOING FAST—Frederick Seidel)

Once again I pack up my grief in a tired suitcase
and lug it forward, inch by heavy inch, over the
wet sidewalk toward a curb which always stops me.

Why go further . . .
the question I always ask
though I have no question mark.

This is not
a formal question,
only a weary repetition.

The grief is all I have left . . .
my only possession;
it is what I need for the next experience.

I tell it to be patient,
there is another room for rent.
I will let it out there to share the view with me.

DISCORDANT PRAYER

Dreams.
Wrapped in slumber.
Transparent and intangible.
Body going through a pane of glass.
Becoming shimmer.
Becoming ghost of sleep.
Return-prayers on echo.
Never-dying echo.
Sound become soundless.
Portal of light.
Of dark.
Why is this important?
Answers turn away.
Into.
Always into.
Answers are not important.
Only questions.
Variegated light breaks upon glass.
Only the delusions.
Hope for nothing.
Nothing hopes back.
Cry ‘save me’ and be saved.
Save me.

__________________________

Today's LittleNip:

STORED THINGS

Hark to the moan in the attic.
Creep up the ladder or stair.
Find what is making
that sound—unloose
the frightening old thing there.

__________________________

—Medusa, thanking Joyce Odam for today's fine fare, and noting that our new Seed of the Week is Libraries. This Thursday, Sac. Poetry Center's Poetry at the Central Library happens at noon, a chance to go back to that wonderful smell and feel of thousands of books waiting on shelves to send us on endless adventures. Send your poems, photos and artwork about libraries to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. (No deadline on SOWs.)

War Reporter

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

AN ATTIC'S FIFTH TRUNK

The fifth trunk
was unloaded
students came
to our assistance
we took precaution
to wash our hands
the luggage
had movie stars on it,
inside were theater props
eye make-up
scripts of plays
Beat poems
disquieting love letters,
pictures of tigers in zoos
sunglasses
amusement parks
bumper motor cars,
and swallows over California
that keep us moving.

________________________

A WALLA WALLA TRUNK

Finding your trunk
eastward on the islands
storing my past chants
of your daydreams
browsing over beachcomber
poems written by hand
from an old dynasty
of your ancestors
in a frozen unwieldy box
you inherited
when we lived
for a while
as roving actors
in my company
living out of a suitcase
with withered flowers on top
rosin for my bow,
music sheets below
the blankets,
these felt black boots
from your sailor grandfather
pirated out a shipwreck
out of a Japanese harbor
now washed-out blue images
covered by the year's dust
from voyages sailed by me.

POSTCARDS

Postcards added
in a sliding trunk
move the Jeff Koons
Stuart Davis
and Mexico's Orozco,
toward my hands
as summer goes brown
taking my weekend leave
for a modernist retrospective
now held in New York,
an artist up the walk
took me for a four-hour
tour of palpable art,
bringing the Big Apple
back to me
through slides, audio
in a visual perspective
launching me
in memory of Village Days
of O'Hara and Rivers,
along Saturday traffic jams
with my sax kept
on my lap in taxis
my poems in parcels
drifting off in my one-acts
off-off-Broadway
thinking there is
no mortality in art
feeling again free and young
resurrected with a breath
of ideas and idealism
encircled with my suitcases
full of pawned rhythm
and a smooth jazzy time
weeping on a tree
in Central Park
where I played kickball.

SUPER MOON

September eighth
a sky engulfed
the largest super moon
remembering how
to sleep the night
by playing chess
on the prewar bench
saved your life
now by the fruit stands
in the Paris market
before a little shop
of gloves and antiques
you read Poe
in French
eating a cheese Danish
and a Vienna roll
with a cafe au lait,
meeting a Jewish guy
from Munich
a psychiatrist,
at eight years old
was already a threat
to the Reich
who knew Schoenberg
could recite Rilke
and tried the organ box
of another Reich
when the country
had already gone crazy
incognito all through the war
a wayward educated recluse
living in libraries, print shops
and used bookstores
his son an astronomer
discovered
by a Hollywood star
of soap operas,
now exploring the universe.

PHOENIX

The most rain
recorded in history,
as your diva's song
is also recorded,
over a runaway time,
a sunrise
is up now for Phoenix
remembering
when you tried
to translate your child's
chocolate dreams
into a Spanish Beat poem
by a soundproof studio
after watching River
in Stand by Me.

______________________

RADIO WAVES

Radio waves
to us
on the oars' armpit
as lobster seekers
with their nets
on the boxwood boats
hear my music
setting out
early
to a Beat poet's muse
scenting the rain
in the home harbor's
first light.

TELLING ME

Telling me
you want to take courses
to explore a timetabled life
from the Cape's sea beds,
to study earth's resources
over books of knowledge
on buried outlooks of forces
in maps, whirring voyages
by sign languages
primary walls
shelters, pest houses,
Morse code,
passion flowers,
lodestars, landfalls,
flying islands
vatic prophecies,
sentient expressions
music sequences,
talk down consequences
orisons, horizons
beyond your own,
telling you
search and research
until you find
the perfect petal
assigned stone
and harmonic chord
then be assured
that your attention
reaction and satisfaction
to every cynosure
will be ordered
in your opened mind.

______________________

WAR REPORTER

At dusk
someone waits
upon an ocular silence
for the unknown solitude
in a secretive letter
of a revenant's passing
from an exile's absence
an earth's tenant
hoping his jocular wit
and avuncular humor
will carry him
as a foreign war reporter
in his blurred travelogue,
to a landing of peace.

CLASSIC SATIRE

If you are nervous
feed on Sextus Propertius
reaching for Venus
and in lust, just read Catullus
needing a poet's skill
there is the spirit of Virgil,
in your hurting middle ages
diddle Dante's pages,
for more of Paradise Lost
passages of Milton crossed,
expanding a confessional
at once Puritan, Catholic
(then secular) Lowell,
wishing to go over
Poe's Gothic path
stop first at Baudelaire
and Rimbaud
or drop a hand
on Bishop, Sextant and Plath
or at a Pound canto,
playing the lyre
or witty liar
the poet's critic
is ready to conspire
slandering a Nero or hero
try writing classic satire.

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

CAMPING OUT

Waking by syllables
on my tongue
sounding in uncut
music sequences
of smooth jazz
camping out
under Maine's maples
my orange kayak
straying from the Coast
as any grasshopper
with my field glasses
checking out landscapes
and salty marshes
for my laconic diary.

_________________________

—Medusa