Like a Forest Brown Bear

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
—Photos by Denise Flanigan

IN WINTER'S SOLITUDE



In winter's solitude 


even trees shiver,


empty of birds


once half in flight

a red-scarfed poet 


with little language


left in a dark book, 

guesses that silence


listens closely


to the absent world



along aspen and elm,


when snow showers


collaborate with bells


from the town square,


a lazy sunlight pours


quiet silhouettes 


over an earth-wise vane



near seaweed reefs  


with an ocean mouth,


an ease of shadow


opens whirlwinds


from the home harbor


along tiny shore waves


now flake-speckled,


frozen without speech.

___________________
 

MORNING DOUBTS           

Between slices
of untoasted bread
and hearing
a Bach cantata
from a radio
unknown to have
tuned in,
and the cat
from next door
arriving early
for a second 
breakfast,
correcting the proofs
of flash fiction
in another tongue,
talking to myself
about the last nightmare
of an insomniac poet,
wishing for
the unsunken day's
unripened fruits
to be consumed
by the brightest sun.

___________________

AT VICTOR HUGO'S BOOKSTORE

On a February morning
browsing with students
on Newbury Street
thinking of Victor Hugo's
birthday on the twenty-sixth
and all he endured
for novels and poetry
his love of liberty
my ruddy face
here in refreshed air
by the Charles River
a few sparrows and grackles
piercing the quiet roads
take my French bread
by this bench
hoping my playing gig
at a jazz violin night
will not be stolen
by an upturned blizzard
roaring in from the Atlantic.

LIVE CHAT

Bruised conversation
on a local talk show
of this poet years ago
on a stolen dawn
at a Valentine's Day
bz is at last here
in his polished boots
with his heart on his sleeve
among camera lights
a heavy silence
of reverie takes me over
mesmerized by camera
with Laddie his sheepdog
having his media debut,
I take out my early collection
of poems, Freedom Trails
about revolutionary Boston
and speak, sigh free
hopefully grounded
by questions and answers.

___________________

LIGHT IN THE DARKROOM

In a void
from cabin fever
unable to venture out
and seeing the green fir trees
among the shadow
of pure white drifts of snow
hiding my body
disclosing my eyes
like a forest brown bear
hibernating by a mirror
a poet in a faithful minimalism
of animal magnetism
trying to save the earth
and the overflowing oceans
from man's pollution
while hardly saving myself
from a child's confidential time
as my shadow stretches
for a once-mile run,
it seems like a miracle
just to eye the sun
this St. Valentine's Day
from my absent green eyes
against the seasonal pull
pleading for any harbinger
like a Canadian robin
on my dark corner sill
where a few geraniums
still survive
in my soundproof studio
aching for first light
of spring to take a picture
of bird watchers or ice fishermen
at the slippery edge of the dock.

___________________

A FREE MUSEUM DAY

A cold but free museum day
at the Fine Arts
dawn flashes by
my memory's back
remembering Renoir's
birth on the twenty-fifth
and how he painted
the startling La Esmeralda
to honor Hugo
in his Notre Dame de Paris
a poet passes the snowy fields
near Fenway's Victory Gardens
watching ducks and turtles
in the pond by taxis
as someone calls
out to me by name,
and my memory crystallizes
in that twinkling of a moment
and it is Andrea
who teaches
in the museum school
where sister attended
and I'm invited for brunch
and feeling like a baked Alaska
with a carefree visit to her studio
to listen to her morning lecture
on Renoir's Dianna.

UPROOTED IN THE ALPS

Uprooted in the Alps
by mushrooming
pockets of dreams
yet redeemed by sunshine
on blankets of snow
of stolen nights and dawns
wearing animal skins
amid a stunning sun
in a collapsing coat
and carefree hood,
trying my hand
at a mystery play
with blue-penciled verse
now disfeatured in photos
of a distant mutineer
near my cousin in Grenoble
with his St. Bernard
and my recusant energy
cold-shouldered for now
yet up for a ski jaunt
with a heart scratch
among riotous wolves
in sheep's clothing
among macho sports reporters
from the Alps' make-believers
who tell me in French
to climb up, not to worry
have adventure with expectations,
yet with a comme il faut graciousness,
I'm hoping to survive
these huge white mountains
out here before me
with a poetic coup d'etat
as we finally arrive downhill
my new play is in my mind
in a metaphorical way
ready for the amenities and reviews
of Paris, San Francisco, Manhattan.

____________________

READING BUKOWSKI

Reading Bukowski's
new poetry and short story
collection, Betting on the Muse,
his kisses on once-rippling skin lie
over California's street-cred roads
uncovered from pallid nights of love
making out with the expressed mouths
on sleepless trains of bodies
spirited in piercing passes
of time-out tattoos
and you, Charles Bukowski
thinking you are number one
more than any slumbering fugitive
with energies into vein passages
of symbols and bloody retreats
in solitary brooding nights,
dropping your weights on boards
of splintered circled floors
resembling Dante's Hell
with liquid beer in one hand
falling off the scales
in cheap-rent motel rooms
surprising a welcome
from lodging houses
nourishing your punk syllables
of male malevolent tales
to overwhelm us
with your literary output.

____________________

THE GUITAR PLAYER

It's the twenty-first
and Segovia's birthday
and Igor plays guitar for us
to honor him
in his jocularity of music
here under the gazebo of stars
there is an innocence
and friendliness of snow
as Christmas wreaths
are taken down
from the benign doors
we have a glass of tea
Russian style
from an Old Believers samovar
and hear the winding notes
of a unmasked guitar.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

PHILIP LEVINE PASSES ON
 (1928-2015)

This Valentine's Day loss
but not of a poet's influence
in Fresno to factories in Detroit
as Phillip Levine passes on
in an assembly line
where exploited workers
in auto plants move along
with burning voices of writers
and other sisters and brothers
to take up
his cause of social justice
in the grit and sweat
of mill and song.

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to B.Z. Niditch, who remains buried under snow in Massachusetts—and whose plants keep him holding onto the promise of spring, he says...

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Alice

—Poems and Photos by William S. Gainer, Grass Valley

A BIRTHDAY IN SAN ANTONIO

Yeah kid—
been a while.
Still missing you—
lots.
That won't stop
no matter how many
birthdays go by.

You still wear that
red lipstick?
It's your color ...
I can see you
blowing out the candles
now...

Make a wish, kid—
something big.
I got mine—
you're in it.
Happy Birthday—
to you.
 

____________________

IT'S LATE AND I BEEN DRINKING

I’m sitting here
messing around
minding my own
business.
Out of the corner of my eye
I see the cat.
Then I hear the dog
bark.
But it’s not really a bark
something more like burrr
maybe kind of like a burff
short and low
quiet like
more just
to get my attention
than anything.
The truth is
we don’t have a cat.
It’s late
and I been drinking.
Regardless
I’m glad the dog
saw it too.

 Alice Barks Up the Wrong Tree

ALICE 

I have a feeling
I’ll be buried
by strangers.
The kids grown,
lost to their own lives.
Friends
a few.
Most hoping
I won't take too long.
The dog
might miss me,
the cat
not so much.
We never were
that close.
So the dog it is.
If there's anything
left
it's for Alice,
the dog.
Keep her happy,
warm
and fed.
Don’t let
the postman
try to pet her
he was never
a favorite.
And make sure
she doesn’t
sleep alone.
Neither of us
ever liked
sleeping alone.
 
______________________

WOMEN I'VE LOVED

Sometimes
you have to wonder
if Marilyn
ever got to
just set by the
pool
alone
swimsuit
loose, comfortable
straps undone
hanging
hair messed—
not caring
what she looked like
smoking a cigarette
sipping gin
no Kennedys
no Sinatra
no Rat Pack
just sweet dreams
of DiMaggio,
red roses
and some kid
from Santa Cruz
sending her
love letters …
 

______________________

THE GREY HAT
        
Picked up the new winter hat
today.
I think it’s black.
It was supposed to be
gray
Kae St. Marie says it is gray
just a very dark gray.
Isn't that what black is—
a very dark gray?

I like the fit,
but black isn’t my color.
Now I’m thinking
people are
fucking with me!
I got it on the table.
Peek at it
every once in a while.
Still think it's black.

The lady at the hat store
said it was gray.
I'm having second thoughts
about this whole deal.
Who can you trust?
Even the light seems to lie.
I just peeked again.
That hat is black.

 

Alice Working Security

ANOTHER TIME

When I used to drink,
which was considerable,
I’d tell stories.
I loved telling stories.
Like the one about the guy I knew
who knew a guy, who knew a guy
that could have been.
You know how that works—
it just piles on to itself.
Then there was this woman I knew,
had three toes on her left foot
and no thumb on her right hand.
Something to do
with an horrific bowling accident
and a botched surgery ...
The whole thing
was settled out of court.
A nasty affair.
Emotionally—
she's never recovered.
They’ve removed that brand
of ball polishing machine
from across the county.
There’s probably a few older models
still running up in Canada,
but when they wear out
they’re gone too.
The company went belly up
a year or two later,
their new pin setting machine
kept dropping the nine
they couldn’t get past it
sales never made expectations.
Rumor has it
that if there was a decent attorney
in the county at the time
she’d have three prosthetics,
all working
and minimally noticeable.
But you know how corrupt
it used to be
everybody on the take.
Hell, she was just a housewife—
her husband never took her dancing
that often anyway,
oh there was the Christmas parties
with the guys from the plant
and the occasional wedding reception
over at the VFW.
And her thumb,
hell she just pushed a few tissues
in her glove when she went to church
folks just thought she had a gentle grip.
It was a shame about her mind though,
slipping away like that
and all the dope they gave her.
Christ, no wonder the kids turned wild.
The oldest boy had that trouble.
The army was supposed
to straighten him out.
That was an ugly deal.
Feral, I think they call it feral
the kid was just too far gone feral.
But that’s a whole-nother story,
another time maybe.
I gotta go by the post box.
See if my check’s there.
All this talking
dries an old man out.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

CHRISTMAS EVE WITH HER

No cooking prep,
mistletoe hanging,
or rum drinks to set a mood.
Just the continuing drone
of knives being sharpened
coming from the kitchen.
Lots of knives …

_____________________

—Medusa, thanking Bill Gainer (and Alice!) for today's tasty potpourri, wishing him a happy belated birthday (yesterday), and noting that more of Bill's work will appear in the new issue of Rattlesnake Press's WTF which will be released at Luna's Cafe tomorrow night (and filmed for TV), 8pm. 

Alice exposes herself in the line of duty

New Book, Old Postcards

Moon, Cloud, Treeline

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

THE CAPTIVE MOON
(After "Dreamscape II", watercolor by Julia Cairns)
 
The low moon must be ransomed from the three bold
trees that have trapped and hidden the moon between
them—but the three moon-rescuers are moving in
arduous slow motion across the dreamscape to where
the sky is too heavy for the ground—where the trees
are pretending to sleep, and the caught moon seems
unaware of the three figures yearning toward it in
their red dream-dresses that serve to announce their
mission—each with an enthralling story to mesmerize
the three trees and make them release the stolen moon.
                                             

(first pub. in Peripherals, Rattlesnake Press, 2009)

______________________

WIDOW DANCE

Precarious,
on the high wall,
the low sun
blazing the stones
to fiery shadow,
loneliness
will not have her;
even the moon
must leave her there,
not knowing why
she grieves
or for how long
or with what loyalties
due to widows; her cries
are the harsh cries
of stolen time.
Her dance
is sacrificial;
she dances till
the hem of her dress
is thoroughly ruined and
the evening crows fluster around her.

POEM FOR THREE VOICES
(After "The Grief of Cafeterias" by Donald Justice)

What does poverty care for love, she asked, and rose from
her chair and flew through the window. But he was not there
to answer. He had used the door. The room twirled in con-
fusion. The child played quietly in the dark curve of the turning.

Room after room repeated this—rooms of stolen light bulbs
and solitaire—the child turning the cards while the mother
soared against the ceiling with the white moth that was so
beautiful. We must kill it, the mother said, handing the broom
to the child.

The child learned to fly beside the moth through the scene-
changing years. The cards learned to tell their own fortune.
The rooms simply changed the walls and windows while
the mother learned to sing with the voice of the child who had
learned to harmonize.

_________________________

AN ENDING

She rose from herself on a true day of being—healed and
forlorn for all days done—for all loves loved—for all
false seeing, and opened herself like a door and went
through to her own freeing, where, for a moment, she
held fast and was not harmed, and was not sent back to
any rending.

TIME ZONES

You are not the slender man
I have arrived to know;
you are as wide as a book.
How shall I begin you?

For once you are stolen from words
all over the countryside, mountains,
and tiny roads and in-between the
landscapes seen from airplanes.

And there was one star in the sky
when I arrived, as seen from the
third floor window, to be pointed to
and exclaimed over, foreign to Canada
and Mother’s one good eye.

Why are you just a book
I cannot begin? I have waited all day
for this remaining three hours behind,
wired to the difference,
and I avoid the beginning.

A new book is always savored
and waited for, or rushed at,
if time is eager. How can I narrow you
for the composition.

I will say now and you will open
your first page and speak to me,
and I will say yes or no to your thought
while I think my own.

Is this how we are to be, hesitate and
jealous, guarding ourselves from the
confrontation, set in ways that are
simply foreign, nothing to do with
eloquence or poetic realization.

________________________

THE ART OF QUESTIONS 

What am I doing for myself these days? I am an
old postcard, never mailed. Too much to say.
Never arrived. Too much silence. I am having a

wonderful time. You should have stayed with me.
We would have studied the whole conversation of
ourselves late into the art of questions and answers

which are rarely true to each other. You are an old
regret I memorize. How do you like being famous?
Out in the margins of my life are descriptions and

useless explanations. Now they crowd me into a
letter so rambling and incoherent it would be better
if I had not written it to you.

THE EMPTY CANVAS

How paint a burning canvas—
the old day’s sunlight reaching now

where I would risk a flower
or try an abstract thought

upon this vacant spot
at which I stare

waiting for some image
to appear

from dimmest recollection.
Alas, the sun has lowered now

and left a formless afterglow—
making no claim, where I would put

a rose or abstract thought,
or try to paint the inexpressible….

__________________________

THE DAYS LATER

what luck!
the whole day made useful with work

and what it needs now
is to quit running from itself

(don’t glance in mirrors, Alice,
you’re too old for that now)


(first pub. in Little Harlequin,
Choice of Words Press, 1998)

Today's LittleNip:

THIS POEM, NOT MY OWN

Again I steal
words stolen by another—
recreate,   rewrite,   re-say.

Who will know,
recognize,
or challenge

this poem—
in all
its incarnations . . . . ?

__________________________

—Medusa, thanking Joyce Odam for today's tasty fare, and noting that our Seed of the Week is Signs of Spring. Send poems, photos and artwork on that (or any other subject!) to kathykieth@hotmail.com/.

Like the Pearl in the Oyster

Mahogany Urban Poetry's Cleo Cartel reads at

Crocker Art Museum's family festival on Feb. 15

celebrating Black History Month

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

I momentarily thought I saw a friend of mine working at the S.F. Disney Museum cafe
           She looked almost like a twin of the lady who owns Cultured Kitchen, Rebecca Wise
           I said “Hi Rebecca, what are you doing here?”
           This woman looked at me like “what the hell?”
           Indeed she had the same olive skin, dark eyes, and hair, even including the nose, as my friend of Jewish heritage
           I thought maybe Rebecca didn’t tell me she dropped out of her business
           In the recent past there was a series of salmonella outbreaks in her products such as raw cashew cheese 
           and I feared that, for that, she quit or sold her business and didn’t tell me
           and now she was working for the Walt Disney Museum
           Anyway, soon after talking to her I realized she wasn’t Rebecca
           like I thought, or maybe I had entered a parallel universe
           and it was Rebecca, only with a different name.
           I still ordered a veggie burger.      

—Michelle Kunert

_________________________

A preschool teacher I had locked me in a closet

I got too rambunctious following a recess 

The preschool teacher had students gather 'round for story time

where she showed a book featuring cats

I got excited and said something like, “Wow, my Mom's got cats!”

She told me to be quiet as she turned the page

I said then something like, “Oooh that looks like one of my cats!”

The teacher then decided to quit story time to grab me

and then put me in the closet with the play supplies

I recall crying, screaming and banging hard on the locked door

(which probably would have created even more of a class disruption)

After some time in this dark closet

it was the teacher from next door who let me out

but she acted like I had gotten in there “accidentally"

even though I protested that I had been put in there by the teacher

not by myself or other students fooling around

After that I understandably was “anti-social" at preschool

I’d protest to Mom against going to school

I feared that if I did anything I’d piss off the teacher 

I still don’t know to this day who trained that teacher in L.A 
          
—Michelle Kunert

  Storyteller Shakiri at

Crocker Art Museum's family festival on Feb. 15

celebrating Black History Month

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

 

ALL GOODS ON DISPLAY ARE DAMAGED
—Richard Hansen, Sacramento

Thank God I was Target (except as a baby and toddler) all my life until age 56 and a little bit beyond
Thank God I used Meth Amphetamine in mid-'80s and 2001 through March 2003
Thank God at numerous points in my life everything meant nothing and I could only survive on the Word spoken to me by people who didn't apply it to me
Thank God I didn't spray a school ground with bullets even tho I'm a great shot
Thank God I don't own a gun
Thank God I question everything the Dalai Lama says because wisdom comes from a process of unlearning
Thank God 2 days before my first wife died of cancer ALL of her pain meds were refilled
Thank God I actually know what forgiveness means—that's a big one!
Thank God I care about what you think of me but it won't change what I do
Thank God I don't find him (God) in any church so far but I found him
Thank God I am alone with my dog
Thank God for coffee and beer and Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix and Martin Luther King, Jr. and my friends who live in other cities and others too numerous to list
Thank God I love my mom finally, and am having lunch with her tomorrow
Thank God I Love

_______________________

MY ATLANTIS
            (a new theory)
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Four thousand years ago, a piercing shock
flung lands and towers down to the liquescent dunes
that sift sand-hours long eras inside no clock.
What’s left of that continent lives inked in runes
crushed in sad books till now uncracked as that
once quakeless rock. Vast slippages tectonic
bouldered the mass through centuries, aquatic-
sunken yet sailing the magma, shearing flat
& arriving at last as a wedge of Nordic coast
we call the Baltics. This veldt brought its own warm
soft sheath of Ionic ocean & light to ghost
below ice, moss, and mist, save spring from harm.
So, when you seem Northern-sad, your gaze aimed wistful-far,
a Capricorn mischief flares hot: you’re half Atlantean, my star. 

______________________

I have always thought that art may be a disease of the soul,
like the pearl in the oyster.
                                    —Arnold Bax

IN THE OYSTER
—Tom Goff

Can love be love, can art stay art, which rubs,
chafes, scrapes so hard and sharp at your soft innards
that you must seal it, as we enamel our tubs
in some exquisite coat that shines, glows, glimmers?
Then, what if the grit-event, buffed lustrous, polished
to a rainbow brilliantine, must still be deemed
fit matter for rejection, must be abolished,
expelled, thrown out of the only shell you’ve dreamed,
slept, eaten, tooled around in, your life-carapace?
I hate to think what you’ve made lovely a dismal
germ you must counter with antibodies: brand,
hunt down, lay siege to, kick out. That sounds abysmal:
dark under-depths and frights I wish you’d reprimand,
rebuke back below, so quiet you might not hear a trace.

And why? Don’t lose it, but keep it: turn that grit-bit furl
(now curl, fold inward, shine shyly)—your most perverse
                    personal pearl.

______________________

BAX'S THIRD SYMPHONY
—Tom Goff

From the opening notes of piping bassoon
a man determined to show he’s deeply studied
The Rite of Spring, yet drunk from a much less muddied
spring, the clear mainspring of all tendril noon’s
upsprouting into the clangorous trumpet tune
and string song crossed by tympani, dissonance-studded
till eruption upsurges rose-thorned, rosebudded.
Then wells in slow tears (Falconetti, eyes of Joan).
Quick six-eight march sunk into a brooding world,
the wordless, snarling stopped French horn, bass trombone
stunned till unstuck when motion warms, unfurled
into and out of Irish, moodily alone
long ruminations, shiveringly rippled
across a mind’s blue waters greenly stippled.

At last a quick tempo, like fire: not dactylic, not Alcaic,
more rude bird plainsong under sun, greed-fed, voltaic.

Omari Tau and Marylyn Smith sing freedom songs at

Crocker Art Museum's family festival on Feb. 15

celebrating Black History Month

—Photo by Michelle Kunert
[For more about the festival, see 
www.sacbee.com/news/local/article10439723.html] 


 

UP THE SIDEWALK
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

No program in mind—but here you’re walking
up cracked sidewalk that skirts the old cemetery.
The city’s comeback lot. Some so young, their
days stolen. Each individual as if pulverized
under the gravity of stone, a marble angel veined
with baby blue, peach, powdered allspice—
basically, flesh-tone. So many disappointments
rest here. Not a sigh, recrimination, complaint,
or bargaining from the passing of a breeze.

_____________________

MESSENGER
—Taylor Graham

Two clear raps at the door.
I open, and there you are with walking-
staff raised to summon me. Dead
these hundred years and more, Elihu Burritt,
distant uncle. Blacksmith-linguist-peace
fighter always poor, your belongings
fit in a bindle or safe in your head.
50 languages, faith in man, God, freedom.
You look beyond me, into my house
of clutter. Too much, you say. In death,
you’ve pared your verbiage, slipped
off the Victorian purples. Clarity suits you.
You’d tell me what I already know.
Get rid of that bowl my mother left me and I
never use; table settings for 8 in a house
with 2 sittable chairs—6 broken, still waiting
to be fixed. Boxes of stuff I’ve lost track of
but can’t part with, dangling prepositions.
Unpackable baggage steals my
gumption and my days—what can I do?
Elihu, you’ve come to tell me.

____________________

FEAST OF BREATH

—Taylor Graham

In the soup kitchen, volunteers
are stirring onion and garlic in a skillet.
On this spot of earth once stood
a sanitorium—imagine lying for the rest
of your life making tradeoffs, sun
against chill. Right now, onion and garlic
send a thin trace of scent out
an open window, broadcasting up
the hill to draw from the woods
diners in thrift-store attire. They’ll sit down
to blessings. They’re alive where breath
passes under sky awash with wind
passing over, always passing, never
pausing. When no one’s looking,
it polishes mined-out rocks on the hill
so they shine like promises.
Onion and garlic sizzling in the pan,
fragrances of far-off places
the wind knows, whistling horizons.
After lunch, a young man will
take his guitar, shoulder his pack and
go on his way, traveling.

____________________
 

Today's LittleNip:


 

—Medusa, thanking today's contributors, including Abraham Lincoln (who was a poet himself) and reminding you that this is a busy week in NorCal poetry, with lots of readings all week (including the release of Rattlesnake Press's latest WTF on Thursday) and a Sonnet Writing Class with Poet Laureate Jeff Knorr on Tuesday to kick off Sac. Poetry Center's celebration of Shakespeare's 450th birthday. Keep track of it all on the blue board (under the green board) at the right of this column.

The Star

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

A GARDEN CALLED EDEN
—Allegra Silberstein, Davis

A girl child wandered among unicorns
and a myriad of flowers in a garden called Eden. 

In a new place she had not seen before, she saw
a mysterious tree with fruit of red and gold. 

Though there was a fence around it
she climbed it with ease.     

I’ll call the fruit of this tree, apple,
she thought—then I will have one to eat.
  
She ate it all, even the seeds and the star within
and she became all womb...   

a woman, a rider, boisterous and bold,
following a star within her now.

She left the garden far behind
but kept it in memory as her name...

within her the star, the seed.
Within her a quest only found in leaving.

(If you cut an apple in half horizontally you will see the star.)

________________________

Our thanks to Davisites Katy Brown and Allegra Silberstein for today's tasty morsels! More of Allegra's work will be appearing in the newest issue of Rattlesnake Press's WTF, which will be launching its seventh year this Thursday night at Luna's Cafe, 8pm. And then Allegra will be hosting The Other Voice in Davis on Friday at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Davis, 7:30pm, featuring Nancy Aidé González and Deborah Hickerson, plus open mic. Starting with today's readings in Placerville and Sacramento, this is a a very busy week in NorCal poetry; keep track of it all in the blue box (under the green box) at the right of this column.

_______________________

—Medusa, with apologies for Internet difficulties this morning.

 

All Of Us In The Song

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

 I STOOD AT THE RIVER'S EDGE

 I stood at the river's edge.
 The waters listen to me.
 It is part of their Summer to do so.

 Someone is standing beneath a tree
 Looking up at a great white owl
 With golden eyes that stare back
 Through a rain that has
 The most delicate of hands.
 A rain that can find the mouse
 Beneath a cluster of oak leaves.

 We know their names.
 We are still afraid to say them.
 There will be death if we say them.

 A great fish passes high
 Above this holy scene
 And it isn’t noticed.

 The wind grinning at us
 Knowing how bitter everything
 Will be the moment we fall asleep.

 The river rising up into the rooms.

_________________________

 SPLIT AT THE SEAMS

 They tore the threads out at the seams
 And we spilled into the valley.
 Some of us in the river.
 Some of us in the fields.
 Some of us in the air.
 Some of us in the glitter.
 Some of us in the woods.
 Some of us in the fruit trees.
 Some of us in the wind.

 All of us in the song.
 The singing louder than
 The Spring frogs telling
 Everything they knew
 To the fog.

 And the rays of sunlight
 Piercing every moment.

 THE QUICK GREEN

 The green is quick on the ground.
 Things dance when we least
 Expect them to.

 If you’ve business there, then bring
 It on.  And so does the sun
 Each day and the breath pumps
 Away looking for the charred one,
 The place after the rapids
 Where the river runs flat
 As glass once again
 And once again as clear.

 I won’t be mounting any towers
 To see the horsemen, now distant,
 Now at hand, for I can
 Hear as well as the next wind
 And bring myself closer
 To the fire, gather you in
 My arms, begin to tell of the open ground,
 Say again of the quick green.
 
________________________

 THE YELLOW GOWN

 I was sitting in the corner.
 You were playing in the yard.
 I tried hard to remember
 If you could play your card.

 The one they called the Queen of Spades
 Seemed almost a perfect choice.
 It would stop the boys from bantering.
 They would listen to your voice.

 I watched your face lit by the fire.
 I rose and closed the gate.
 The garden lamps were being lit.
 I did not want to wait.

 Deep as love might seem at times
 It still makes us all bow down.
 I let myself get caught in there.
 I saw your yellow gown.

 A LANTERN

 A lantern.  Where else would
 People greet you and ask how you had been?

 What was that song anyway?
 It seems to last and last
 But it never gets sung.

 So we keep life and death in our hands
 And go walking through the Winter
 Beneath that beautiful wing.

 And no one can tell us anything
 We want to hear and our eyes
 Fill up with tears
 And we can see ourselves
 Walking away from the sudden
 Town until all the world
 Could speak of nothing but darkness.

________________________

 HUSH, HUSH YOURSELF

 It was the thick part of longing
 Where you could feel your own hand
 Touching the beloved.

 A thin trace of scent in the air
 That one cannot say what the little
 Movement is and the sky is awash
 With only the prettiest of flowers
 And there is a joyous laughter
 That stays upon the skin
 Like some other being, an animal
 That knows where you are going
 And finds a way to be there
 When you pass the property you know
 As your own heart and opens a window.

 You look in and can see a leg
 Slide beneath the whitest of sheets.

 Hush, hush yourself.  Listen to the train
 Whistles out on the horizon.
 Surely you are going somewhere?
 Why else would be carrying
 On like this, lighting your own heart
 On fire and rushing to the tops
 Of the hills, showing it as if it were
 A flag of some sort, a mouth,
 A way of speaking?

 WORKING AT THE SAME WHEEL

 I have spent too much time
 With nothingness, I have felt
 The waters, aways twisting, always
 Finding some way to speech that discourages me
 From probing too deeply into
 My own journey.

 It’s not like I don’t know
 Where I came from or why
 I am here working at the same
 Wheel, moving what amounts to parts
 Of my soul to make some kind
 Of statement I can understand,
 Hold in my hand, like a knife, or a sword,
 Something to cut the jungle apart
 Only enough to allow me to pass through.

 I’ve been this way before.
 I just never thought of you
 Watching me from the shore
 As I held the deck, trying to
 Ride the great rapids.

 There was only one way to go
 And that was downriver.
 I could never come this way
 Again and there you were
 On the river bank that night.

 Your touch made the rocks look
 Like monsters and the rapids
 Spitting me past your point
 On the rock.

 I have no idea how you knew
 We would be traveling this way,
 But you did.  I closed my eyes
 To a red-violet that crashed
 As sound upon my ears.
 Yet I could hear each word
 As it was spoken.  You never shouted.

 You never asked that I return
 When we made it past the whirlpool,
 The river turning 90 degrees right
 Into an entire novel of new
 Water, each with something deadly
 To say about how we might
 Find an understanding of each other.
 Perhaps it was love of a kind.
 You dipping your touch into the current
 So only the moon could claim us.
 You, white across the river mist and caught in
 Very old tales where I had forgotten
 Our names, the memory of our wanting
 To finish this part of the journey.

 The clarity of the morning star
 Just above the bow of the raft.
 A poignant knowledge
 That all this might happen
 Again even as we walked
 Down a street in a city
 Talking about an image we had seen.
 How important it seemed
 To everything we thought
 Our love to be, from

 Any particular moment.

________________________

 Today's LittleNip:

 What a strange thing!
 to be alive
 beneath cherry blossoms.

 —Kobayashi Issa

________________________

 —Medusa   

—Ink Drawing by Sierra Mytirena

  

Arguments Between Angels

Beads

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO
—Photos by Stacie Sherman, Orangevale, CA

CONTINUITY

I'm just a dog barking,
I tell my wife who's upset
with my yakking on and on
at our weekly meeting
on a Saturday morning
stationed in our recliners
facing forward as if we were
in the same row on a plane
with the middle seat empty.

I tell her eventually
any dog will stop barking
if you give him a bowl of kibble
or let him in the house
or find his ball and play fetch.
Or do what my mother did
when I was an infant bawling
and woke my father who faced
work as a lineman the next day.

My mother would get out of bed,
grab her old bathrobe
and whisk me to the rocker.
Even to this day,
many decades removed,
it's the best solution:
Put a breast in my mouth
and silence will ensue.
Eventually I may even coo.

_____________________

SURPRISE, SURPRISE

The mother's dead.
Thirty years later
you meet the daughter
and realize the daughter
is the mother again,
poking her finger
in your chest half an hour
after her plane lands.
The same laugh knocks
folks in the elevator
back a bit.

Every time the daughter
grabs your arm
to emphasize a point
the way the mother did,
you want a ticket
to the Maldives
or maybe Bulgaria.
Sofia in the summer
might be nice.

This time, however,
you stay put.
She found you
on the Internet.
You must admit
the freckles
across her nose
scream she's right:
You are her father.
Surprise, Surprise.
Her mother never said.

 Rock Tree

FALLOUT FROM THE WAR ON WOMEN

I was warm and toasty,
curled up, napping
in amniotic fluid,
without a worry
when suddenly
this metal thing
came into my room

poked around
and pulled me out.
The doctor stabbed me,
smashed my head,
cut off my arms and legs, 
threw my pieces
in a bucket
with the others.
It's been a busy day
at the clinic.

At the closing hour,
a nurse dumped
the bucket
in a freezer sack,
took it out in the alley
and threw it in a bin.
In the morning
a private truck

took the sack to
the garbage dump.
The driver tossed it
on the highest pile,
launching flies,
at least a thousand.

Sitting up here now
I can tell you
I don't need arms or legs.
I can hear
the angels singing.

______________________

DYING AT MIDNIGHT

Two big attendants
in white coats are here
to remove my remains.
My son called the mortuary
after Murphy said I was gone.
The doctor, a good neighbor,
came over at midnight, found
no pulse and made it official.
I could have saved him the trip.
I knew I was gone.

My wife's in the kitchen
crying with my daughter
in a festival of Kleenex.
I told her I was sick
but she didn't believe me.
She thought I was faking it
so I wouldn't have to go
to her mother's for dinner.
I don't like lamb but
her mother's from Greece.
Lamb shanks are always
piled on the table.
Stuffed grape leaves I like
and she'll make them for 
Christmas provided I start
begging at Thanksgiving.
Every Easter, however,
it's another fat leg of lamb,
marbled with varicosities
and sauced with phlebitis.

Right now I'm wondering
who'll win the argument
between the two angels
facing off in the mirror
on top of the dresser.
The winner gets my soul
which is near the ceiling,
a flying saucer spinning
out of control.
I want the angel
in the white tunic
to take it in his backpack.
The other guy in gray
looks like Peter Lorre
except for the horns.

 Arch Detail, Pisa

A NIGHT IN MOROCCO

Middle of the night he flies out of bed
to the commode only to wonder
in the dim light minutes later
if that's blood or simply a good-bye
from his wife’s stewed tomatoes,
a Moroccan dish she found on the web.

When he asked for a third serving
he pronounced them delicious.
So too, he said, was her dessert,
the Moroccan plum mousse
with the dark plums he likes.
Even with the ceiling light on

he doesn’t know now what he sees
so with his medical history he's
speeding at midnight to the ER
where the doctor says better safe
than sorry and orders a fast
colonoscopy to solve the mystery.

When he finally gets home, he tells
his wife when her boss comes over
for that big dinner Saturday night,
why not make Moroccan tomatoes
and her magnificent plum mousse.
He may never forget either.

____________________

AN EMAIL ON SUNDAY

Some emails
are more difficult
to receive 
from a child
long out of college

the daughter who writes
her cancer is back
but the doctor says
with chemo and surgery
things should be fine

and all the while
the father wonders
why she didn’t call
at midnight and let
the telephone scream

hysterically in the night
to deliver the news
a computer is too
cold a messenger
to deliver hot terror

on Sunday morning
while machine guns
of sleet drive
bullets too bright
into the ground

 Victorian Hair Memorial, Bayou St. John

New Orleans, LA

CHOMPING

For some, too soon.
But none know when.

For some she’s still
a child at 49

with cancer
in the gut

spreading,
chomping.

Stage 4,
the doctors say.

Chemo
may help.

Runs in the family.
Brother survived it.

For some, too soon.
But none know when.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

DIFFERENT SIDES OF SAME COIN

Hands Up!
Don’t Shoot!

Pants Up!
Don’t Loot!

______________________

—Medusa, thanking today's contributors and wishing everyone the best of luck on this Friday the 13th!

Valentine Sky, Rattlesnake Bar, Folsom, CA