A Few Wild Stanzas

MUSHROOMS
—Mary Oliver

Rain, and then
the cool pursed
lips of the wind
draw them
out of the ground—
red and yellow skulls
pummeling upward
through leaves,
through grasses,
through sand; astonishing
in their suddenness,
their quietude,
their wetness, they appear
on fall mornings, some
balancing in the earth
on one hoof
packed with poison,
others billowing
chunkily, and delicious—
those who know
walk out to gather, choosing
the benign from flocks
of glitterers, sorcerers,
russulas,
panther caps,
shark-white death angels
in their torn veils
looking innocent as sugar
but full of paralysis:
to eat
is to stagger down
fast as mushrooms themselves
when they are done being perfect
and overnight
slide back under the shining
fields of rain.

__________________

A DREAM OF TREES
—Mary Oliver

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.
I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?

__________________

LANDSCAPE
—Mary Oliver

Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn’t it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I’m alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

__________________

THE BLACK WALNUT TREE
—Mary Oliver

My mother and I debate:
we could sell
the black walnut tree
to the lumberman,
and pay off the mortgage.
Likely some storm anyway
will churn down its dark boughs,
smashing the house. We talk
slowly, two women trying
in a difficult time to be wise.
Roots in the cellar drains,
I say, and she replies
that the leaves are getting heavier
every year, and the fruit
harder to gather away.
But something brighter than money
moves in our blood—an edge
sharp and quick as a trowel
that wants us to dig and sow.
So we talk, but we don’t do
anything. That night I dream
of my fathers out of Bohemia
filling the blue fields
of fresh and generous Ohio
with leaves and vines and orchards.
What my mother and I both know
is that we’d crawl with shame
in the emptiness we’d made
in our own and fathers’ backyard.
So the black walnut tree
swings through another year
of sun and leaping winds,
of leaves and bounding fruit,
and, month after month, the whip-
crack of the mortgage.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip (for Joyce Odam, singer-poet, on this, her 80-somethingth birthday)

HER SINGING
—William Bronk

What in her singing made us hear her
was less that flowing motion singing shares
with all the graceful ways of flying birds
and more a stillness, more a hover of flight.
As trees draw outward from the rooted ground
from trunk to branch to twig to stem and leaves,
her song was as she might have drawn upon
the air a tree, and it stood still.
Her last notes turned again to meet the first,
enclosing space whose entry hearing held
since her first notes began. Whatever her words
whatever that was she sang, speaking of change,
the flight of time, of our mortality,
the flowing turmoil space in which we move,
she said the moment shaped was more than these.
Her singing took the flight and held it still.

__________________

—Medusa

Long Shadows

Andrew Kerr

LIFE AS A TV COMMERCIAL
—Andrew Kerr, Davis

Horses clop down a country lane,
pulling a polished wooden cart
full of beer. Up ahead, old friends
smile uncertainly, restlessly arrange
buffet plates, waiting under
the long bands of afternoon sun for
something dawn-like to start the fun.

In the courtyard the cart wheels
make a flourish of a circle, and I unhitch
the horses, leaving the cart tongue hanging.
But the lead mare I saddle up and ride
up over the slow grin of hills,
across a field of winter wheat, sorry,
and into the sweet relief of forest. Most
of the trees are still leafless,
the sunlight is sharp off the bare branches.

Far below, figures gather around the cart,
bend with jolly laughter, stirring the group-glue.
Already the soft tool-taps of voices
are constructing moments
as golden as the bottles being passed
from hand to hand. Conga lines of laughter
spiral up in the clear air, but they don't reach here.
My eyes point like the ears of a horse,
up here where the crest opens out
to a view: hills, with the vibrant space between them.

__________________

Thanks, Andrew! Andrew Kerr has been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa, an administrator, a teaching assistant, and done agricultural research. He also has been a stay-at-home dad with his two daughters, who have introduced him to the worlds of soccer and horses. He plays the recorder and practices martial arts. Although he grew up in New York state, he has lived in Davis for many years with his family and dogs and too many books.

Going to be in the Bay Area this weekend? Drop in on Bay Area Poets Coalition open mic Saturday from 3-5pm at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St., Berkeley between Acton & Bonar Streets (park on street, not in SCL parking lot). Open reading will be held in the 4th floor Movie Room or backyard garden; please check in at the front desk when you arrive. All ages welcome, 3-5 min. per poet: www.bayareapoetscoalition.org

Then on Saturday at 7:30pm, Sacramentans Lee Foust, Rachel Leibrock, Ruben Reveles, and frank andrick will be featured at the Make-Out Room across the Bay in SF ($5): www.makeoutroom.com/. Or head the other way on Saturday, up to Grass Valley for the Nevada County Poetry Series Rent Party featuring Neeli Cherkovski and David Meltzer. See b-board for details.

As for next week, Red Night Poetry, the new 2nd-Weds. reading series at Beatnik Studios hosted by Genelle Chaconas, will skip the month of August and start up again in September.

__________________

CHASING A BREEZE
—Andrew Kerr

It is somewhere
in the house, I think.
I was up too late last night,
feeling the heat radiate in the relentless stillness.
Now, trying to get myself going,
breakfast eaten but not impelling,
I hear the sandy whisper of leaves outside,
see the moving shadows inside, the blinds sway
at the open window—it is inside.
I follow it up the hall.
It was not just the fly, I hope,
startled in the kitchen.
Newspapers on the floor—it was here.
There are more corners than you'd expect
in such a small house, boxes of
accumulated stuff, tables once belonging to grandmothers.
Strange how something unseen stirs me
like a scrap of paper in a shopping cart.
There it is again at the window.

__________________

TWO FIGURES
—Andrew Kerr

Where the path ended
they stood and stared at me
in the afternoon haze.
No features
with the hot glower
of sun behind them.

Both were slender, unmoving.
There was hostility in their stillness.

Either continue or turn
back—I went on.
Tried to saunter.
Looked across
the cracked furrows,
spoke to my dog.

They despised me, I could tell
by their pose, that sofaspring slouch.

Defiantly I lifted
my chest and
pumped my arms.
Something was odd, but they made
no threatening move. Finally
a tree's long shadow
was like a cool washcloth
on my face,

and I could see clearly
the two fence posts.

__________________

THE LAST DAY OF AUGUST
—Andrew Kerr

The last day of August
should be a holiday.

The geese fly in, exclaiming,
the flushing pipes in the houses
wail high in return,

in the morning blueness the
air conditioners have all shut off.

The treasure box of autumn
is soon to open.

On the dirt road, the scattered knobs
of horse poop
turn into plump brown birds

and fly away.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

FOUNDATIONS
—Leopold Staff

I built on the sand
And it tumbled down.
I built on a rock
And it tumbled down.
Now when I build, I shall begin
With the smoke from the chimney.


(Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz)

___________________

—Medusa

Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

What Woods

Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

THE TREE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIELD
—William Bronk

The tree in the middle of the field stands round, stands tall
as though the sun hung just above forever,
and every wind were always favoring wind.

Elm branches fall with pure contemplative grace;
oak asserts without sound, a maple tree
holds a whole summer's green in one rich green.

This tree! This tree! Look, there are parts of the world
not ever wounded, within whose light, the world
is always changed with light. This tree, this tree.

__________________

Head over to Luna’s Café tonight at 1414 16th St. in Sacramento as Poetry Unplugged presents Justin Desmangles, a native of Sacramento and host of the weekly radio broadcast, New Day Jazz, at KDVS, 90.3 FM, in Davis. Dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of African-American history and culture, the program features jazz, poetry, political commentary and interviews. Regular guests on the program include Ishmael Reed and Amiri Baraka, as well as musicians Matthew Shipp and Roscoe Mitchell. An independent producer of literary programs at the Koret Auditorium, in San Francsico's Public Library, Desmangles is the creator of Does the Secret Mind Whisper?, an annual celebration of poet Bob Kaufman. Desmangles' poetry and journalism has appeared in Shuffle Boil, Konch, and Drumvoices, as well as Black Renaissance Noire. In 2007, Desmangles was elected to the board of directors of the Before Columbus Foundation, and is an administrator of the American Book Award. That’s at 8pm, with open mic before and after. Mario Ellis Hill hosts.

Medusa’s b-board continues to morph, with refurbs, additions and other tweaks to keep us all on our toes. Scroll down to the wolf and his goodies for our latest new feature!

I confess: I’m not submitting my poetry out into the world anymore, partly because I’ve let my record-keeping fall into disarray (NEVER a good thing for a poet), and partly because Medusa is where I channel my creative juices these days. (Publishers are people who use OTHER peoples’ poetry for their own creative ends, I think.) But my own change of paths, whether it’s temporary or not, doesn’t mean I don’t think other poets shouldn’t submit their poetry to the world at large. So I’ve messed with the bulletin board again, moving the armadillo (see Monday’s post) up a bit on the board, placing it underneath the Deadlines section (me in my bathrobe). This reflects a greater emphasis on publishing and the painful, annoying process of submitting, which is, to my mind, something you ought to try—even if, like me, your interest in it comes and goes (and maybe comes again) in your life. I think it’s easier with encouragement from outside, so the subject will keep coming up in the Kitchen.

Speaking of which, Ellen Bass sends around an e-newsletter from time to time with some publishing venues/deadlines; my thanks to her for the following:


Calls for Submissions:

•••PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowships
Deadline: August 31, 2010

Fellowships of $1,000 each are given annually to emerging poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers from underserved communities. Each winner participates in an eight-month mentorship in Los Angeles with a professional writer, two public readings, and other programming. Housing is not provided. Writers who do not have significant publication credits, are not enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate writing program, and do not hold a graduate writing degree are eligible. Submit up to 20 pages of poetry or prose and at least two letters of recommendation with a $10 entry fee. Visit the Web site for the required entry form and complete guidelines: www.penusa.org or michelle@penusa.org

•••THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS PRESS POETRY SERIES’ ANNUAL MILLER WILLIAMS ARKANSAS POETRY PRIZE, $5000
Deadline: September thru October, 2010

One winner and up to three finalists will have their book-length collection published in 2012. Go to: www.uapress.com/geninfo/poetryguidelines.html

•••AESTHETICA CREATIVE WORKS COMPETITION 2010
Deadline: August 31, 2010

Aesthetica Magazine is inviting all artists, writers and poets to submit their work. Now in its third year, the Competition is dedicated to celebrating and championing creative talent. The Competition has three categories, Artwork, Poetry and Fiction. Winners and finalists are published in the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual. Winners of each category receive £500 prize money plus other prizes (about $795). Entry to the Creative Works Competition is £10 (about $15.90). The entry fee allows the submission of 2 images, 2 poems or 2 short stories. More guidelines: www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm

•••MISSOURI REVIEW EDITORS’ PRIZE
Deadline: October 1, 2010

Three prizes of $5,000 each and publication in The Missouri Review are given annually for a group of poems, a short story, and an essay. Submit up to 10 pages of poetry, a story or essay up to 25 pages, with a $20 entry fee, which includes a one-year subscription. Visit the website for complete guidelines. Select winning entries in the past have been reprinted in the Best American series. See www.missourireview.com/contest/editors_prize.php

•••Be sure to scroll down on the b-board to me in my bathrobe for these and other deadlines for poetry venues, contests, and workshops that want YOU! Yes, YOU!

__________________

TREE
—D.R. Wagner

When I last spoke to those
Luminous beings who seem to dwell
In the highest places of amusement
Parks where the thrills are,
They told me that they haven’t even heard
From you for so long they almost
Forgot you had anything important
To say. Please contact them now

Before this evening. They will be
Waiting. They know the prayers well.
They will bless you personally.
I will be waiting with them. You will
Recognize me by my smile and the fact
I know your name well enough to

Find your etymology in the trees
That once grew near the coast in
Northern California. I understand
You may be very endangered at
This time. Good luck.

__________________

WHAT WOODS
—D.R. Wagner

(for E.R. Baxter)


The altitudes have gone past tension.
We are required to know just how
High we are, what names the dead
Animals by the side of the road
May be identified by, what has happened
To the amphibians that the Spring
Isn’t as full; the vernal pools
With their pale eyes reflecting
The cool morning, the wakening
Rustle of the season, all green and up.

So we stand and watch the buzzards
Ride the thermals, circling round
And round and we learn to listen
To our breathing as we do so.

We can meet here as often as we are able
But let us speak to one another
About these changes, remind one another
Just how temporary it all is.
Or, if I am unable to see you here again,
I’ll be sure to text you, maybe that
Will be our attempt at presence
As Spring replies with confounding necessities.

__________________

EPHEBES
—D.R. Wagner

In the morning, very rarely, you hear them singing.
The ephemeral is considered luxurious,
Something they do not have to remember,
To reflect upon as one would fantasy,
Without perspective or much interior,
Shallow as mirrors are shallow
But seemingly deep simultaneously.

Misunderstandings are the coin of the realm.
They allow images for only a moment
When an ejaculation may demand its own
Punctuation to show propriety,
Their need of full citizenship
In a society unblessed by complete
Understanding.

We may wander up and down
The streets tempting them to knowledge
Of common things like music made
With the voice alone, or the shaping of glass
Using long, thin tools to play the fire.
There is little interest in these things.

Everything must be prepared well beforehand.
Nothing must be out of place.
Where love
Enters is difficult to determine,
A back door, left carelessly unlocked
So one might enter in the middle of the night
Undetected and find a bed with another,
Hoping for a morning that is full of rain
Or fog or other weather that confuses
The senses making everything harder to see.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

There is no such thing as a stupid question. But indeed, it is perfectly fair to challenge the mental acuity of someone who brings you a riddle.

—Carl Bernard Schwartz (bouncing off Wednesday's LittleNip by Diane Ackerman)

__________________

—Medusa

This photo is from Emmanuel Siguake's Wealth of Ideas
(vasigauke.blogspot.com/2010/08/all-about-eso-won-books-reading-and.html),
along with this caption:
Bill Roper playing the horn (vuvuzela) at the beginning
of the event. What a fascinating instrument;
I remember how it was used in the village
to summon people to an important meeting at the chief's.
Go to the blog for more pictures of the L.A. release party
of the new book, African Roar, edited by Emmanuel
and Ivor Hartmann.

To Praise the Music

Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

TO PRAISE THE MUSIC
—William Bronk

Evening. The trees in late winter bare
against the sky. Still light, the sky.
Trees dark against it. A few leaves
on the trees. Tension in their rigid branches as if
—oh, it is all as if, but as if, yes,
as if they sang songs, as if they praised.
Oh, I envy them. I know the songs.

As if I know some other things besides.
As if; but I don't know, not more
than to say the trees know. The trees don't know
and neither do I. What is it keeps me from praise?
I praise, If only to say their songs,
say yes to them, to praise the songs they sing.
Envied music. I sing to praise their song.

__________________

Big poetry day/night! Start the day with Molly Fisk on radio at 10am (www.capradio.org/programs/programdetail.aspx?showid=8156), then go down to the Central Library at 6pm to hear Judith Tannenbaum talk about her work with poetry and prisoners, sponsored by Sac. Poetry Center. That reading will be over just in time to head over to Davis to hear Molly Fisk read at Bistro 33 (open mic at 9). Then it’s back to Sacramento for the Mahogany Urban Poetry Series at Queen Sheba's Restaurant, 1704 Broadway (17th and Broadway), where DJ Rock Bottom spins at 8 and there’s Spoken Word-type open mic poetry hosted by Khiry Malik at 9pm, $5 cover, all ages: see mybmsf.com/01WordOut_Single.asp?wordoutID=3524/. Is this great Poetry Country, or what? (More info on the b-board.)

We're talking about Trees this week, but heck, you can send us poetry about anything! The Kitchen is always open and the Snakes are always hungry. Send artwork and pix, too. That's kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726.

Thanks to today's contributors for their leafy lovelies. Michelle Sackman continues her "Urban Solace" cycle, and Katy Brown's red Japanese maple is part of an on-going series of photos she's doing about a little tree in Sacramento on her way to work, photographing it through the seasons. (It's right down the street from the two dogs who hang out on their owners' roof. Yes, roof.)

Tom Goff and Taylor Graham read at SPC last Monday to celebrate the latest Tule Review, and I hear the joint was packed to the rafters, but that the evening's proceedings were well-run by Editors Theresa McCourt and Linda Collins and perked right along, despite there being 17 readers! Have you seen the new Tule? It's very elegant—glossy and perfect-bound. If you don't have one, pick one up at The Book Collector for $10. Here's to many more... (Next deadline is Sept. 15: www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org/tulereview.htm/.) And Taylor Graham will be reading again at SPC, featuring with Michael Paul, on Monday, Aug. 16. See you there!

__________________

URBAN SOLACE XIX
Alone Under a Tree
—Mitz Sackman, Murphys

He would never tell anyone from work
Not even one of his friends
But he loved to come to the park
To this special place
This quiet oak tree
Away from the paths and the crowds
At least once each week
He came and discussed his life with Mr Oak
A good listener
Mr Oak
Never criticized or told him he should do better
He just listened heart to heart
After these sessions he always felt lighter
Filled with happiness despite his challenges

__________________

THE SEQUOIA SHAPE
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Cold groves of sequoias. Your hand in mine, ensuring
our icily spiral climb turns by slow footfalls.
Upended, the odd giant victim-tree, whose root-ball’s
all snowburst spike—can blasts freeze into enduring?

Truer, more secret endurance instills the live trunk.
A narwhal strength-of-tusk stability,
“unicorn” swirl-horn torsion, nulls fragility.
Sequoias in skyward spiral designs can link

sunbeam to soil by long thoughtlike chains. Intrinsic
twists drink in a great dark that dispenses light.
O’Keeffe with her vulviform flowers, mystics, eccentrics…

Such sequoia-like seekers envelop our quest for insight:
my whirling out, restrained by your deepening down
—the transparent aspiring kind of dark suction down.

__________________

INDEPENDENCE TRAIL (II)
—Tom Goff

We come to Independence Trail
on a beautiful spring day—Nora’s
birthday, in fact—to see the April things:
the great wooden flume a corridor
to an anteroom, and at the far end of that anteroom
the benign dragon who bears gorgeous waterfall
in her mouth like cold fire; the buckeye’s
howitzers of burgeoning whiteburst,
the endless curling ferns and wildflowers;
sodden or springy leaf-mats under the feet
and next to no dust.

We see the trailhead and then: look!
a thin but blossoming puff, a spew
of seed-smoke from a fire pod, flame
in the tree tops of the high ridge
atop the trail. How can these fires be,
leaping fit to choke a Missoula smoke
jumper stuck by the silk of the chute,
in pines so lately rained through?

On what fir-thronged patch of garden
would any rural homebody light
a controlled burn? To these questions,
and others we’re too ignorant to dream
could need asking, we reply, Silence.
But we’re only shushing ourselves,
not the wingbeats of nature,
nor the insensate roar of fire.

Today’s trail, a winding we can’t retrace,
just as we know certain fevers mean,
leave that thermally pulsating skin
untainted with your questing hot lover-fingers.
Uncertainties like redbuds all around us:
crown fires leaping and leaping tip to tip
every spring, raising hot red-violet alarm,
then snuffed, no damage, and yet
everywhere death upon death to take the breath:
the little petals just swell and crumple like lungs.

__________________

“GRACES OF AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE”
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Will the utilitarian and unsparing science of the latter days...shear away these beautiful tresses?
—Elihu Burritt, A Walk from London to John O’Groats (1864)


Of hedgerow tree and hawthorn hedge
who can adequately sing?
Who but the birds who nest there at the edge

of cultivation? Like many a lovely thing
we take for granted, endangered now.
Who can adequately sing

of plough-horse and the brindle cow
in an age of iron, smoke, and steam
one takes for granted? Endangered now,

the unprofitable margin and unbridled stream.
The picturesque has little place
in an age of iron, smoke, and steam.

Still, a traveler’s lightened by the grace
of unproductive leaf, and shade.
If picturesque has little place,

who mourns the work of axe and blade?
Who but the birds who nest here at the edge
of unproductive leaf and shade,
of hedgerow tree and hawthorn hedge?


(from Taylor's new book, Walking With Elihu, from CreateSpace. See b-board to order from Amazon.)

__________________

PHYSICS OF APPLE FALL
—Taylor Graham

The sheep have counterclockwise wended
from oak shade to swale below the one lone
apple tree with its single surviving apple.

In April, it was less than nubbin. February
storms blew every other blossom
off the tree. This apple—would it have fallen

differently in spring? Scientists puzzle
over this. The sheep have had their
fill of grazing. They lie beneath the apple

tree and meditate on sweetness.
Their physics is the rumen of the universe;
or, when will this one apple fall?

A wizened apple kept too long on the twig,
scent of rot at the core. Or, a perfect
emblem of our globe that twists on its axis—

letting loose, just now. The sheep arise,
not worried if an apple’s pecked by birds,
or Adam lost an Eden in its fall.

__________________

THE TREES DON'T CARE

about our usual argument over
whether you made us late, whether
I nag too much. As we whizz along
the freeway in our hot metal time
capsule, the grand old trees we pass
don’t care—I doubt they even

notice (certainly they don’t bother
to turn their heads) as I natter on
about this and that, and you
apologize for the forty-ninth time,
and we end up back where we started,
even at seventy miles an hour. But

the trees don’t care at all. They just
lift their graceful armloads of blossoms
and toss them all over the stage, like
long-limbed ballerinas on opening night. . .


—Kathy Kieth, Pollock Pines

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn't matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life's many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are. It probaby doesn't matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady's slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.

—Diane Ackerman (from A Natural History of the Senses, 1990)

__________________

—Medusa

Photo by Katy Brown

Getting It Out There

Waiting
Photo by Carl Bernard Schwartz

URBAN SOLACE XVIII
At the Party
—Mitz Sackman, Murphys

Well it was her party
Her apartment
But she had had enough
The laughing the talking the drinking
She stepped outside
Onto the narrow balcony
Away from the noisy happy horde of friends
Laughing and talking
She needed to be alone
Looking out over the city
By herself with the moon for company
To be alone
Waiting for the guests to begin to leave
She breathed softly

__________________

Medusa’s bulletin board continues to grow! We now have another new feature: “Getting it Out There”. Scroll down past this week’s events (including Saturday’s NCPS “Rent Party” fundraiser with Neeli Cherkovski and David Meltzer) to the flying pig—and notice the new postings there—then onward to the armadillo for what I hope is a complete listing of current publications in our area (and a few in the Bay Area) which are accepting submissions. Hey—it’s time to get your work out into the world, if you aren’t already submitting it to publishers around the globe, and you might as well start locally. And please send me info for any publications in our general area that I may’ve missed.

This week’s Seed of the Week is Trees, even as we post more poems about last week’s Waiting. Send poetry/art/photos about our arboreal buddies to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline on SOWs.


Manzanita Writers Press Contest for Wine, Cheese, and Chocolate: A Literary Anthology

MWP is looking for submissions of art, essays, photos or poetry for its contest/anthology. Deadline is December 31, 2010, 11:30pm. Go to www.manzanitacalifornia.org/page3_C9EF.html for details/guidelines. Entry fee: $10.00 for 2 flash fiction or 2 creative nonfiction essays, or 2 poems, or 2 photos, or 2 art pieces. Prizes include 1st and 2nd prizes in all five genres: $200 First, $100 Second. Honorable mentions will be published in the publication and payment will be in 2 copies. Competition open to US writers. Other entries may be included in the publication.

__________________

WAITING TILL THE PRICE IS RIGHT
—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

Some
Hold that
The purpose
Of money is
To generate more
And more money so that
You do not have to worry
About just how much things will cost
In these times when dollars are shrinking,
Which leads us to thinking we bought too much.

__________________

NOVEMBER
—Carl Bernard Schwartz

The end of autumn
pairs redundant consonants,
and on the bi-polar ballot
for the governor’s race,
if you believe their claims
it is fecund vs. feckless.

The opposing candidate is always ochre:
their iron now fatigued and impure,
colored by the slipping saddle
of someone unable to face the true
challenges of the office.

The snow is piling up fast
but there is a shortage of shovels,
since they are all tied up
throwing political dirt.

__________________

DIFFERENT KINDS OF WAITING
—Carl Bernard Schwartz

A small circle of
established and aspiring poets
are eagerly awaiting the Ophidian,
while a son does what he must
to take care of his mother.

Two hundred thousand
state workers, and a plethora of
business enterprises that provide
them products and services
are eagerly awaiting a
balanced budget, while the
legislature and governor take
expensive vacations.

A gambler takes the rent and food money
and puts it on a bet,
believing that he is due.
then eagerly awaits his winning moment.

A parachutist jumps from a plane
and waits as long as he can before
pulling the cord to open his chute,
then he eagerly awaits what must
transpire in the next few seconds.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

WAITING
—Carl Bernard Schwartz

Waiting can take forever…
Procrastination, even longer.

__________________

—Medusa

Photo by Frank Dixon Graham, Sacramento

Whatever We Are Waiting For

Age of Innocence
Painting by Jeffrey Jones

WOMAN DAY-DREAMING
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

A woman
in a white apron

and a hat to shade her from the sun
sits in the day’s warm light,

hands in her lap, palms down,
mind-drifting to a place

that takes her from herself.
And the day shuts down.

Her work is waiting—
it waits behind her in a long field;

her work is waiting
in a house full of windows

that glaze their eyes
in the day’s warm silence

and also seem to forget
her work is waiting.

__________________

Thanks, Joyce, for the poems, and thanks, Carl, for the photo. We're still "waiting"...

Be sure to check the b-board (and eskimopie.net) for some of this week’s NorCal poetry events, including our “Other Events to Watch For” section under the Beat-Snake. Lots going on, even during the lazy days of August.

Sal Buttaci writes: A week ago I received THE VERSATILE BLOGGER AWARD for my site (salvatorebuttaci.wordpress.com) and was asked to forward this same award to 10 blog sites I felt deserved it too. As it turned out, I found 12 of them and decided to bend the rules a little and give THE VERSATILE BLOGGER AWARD to all twelve! Your blog site was one of them. (See salvatorebuttaci.wordpress.com/versatile-blogger-award/.) One last thing: the award for my site really belongs to Anthony Buccino, poet and writer extraoadinaire, who set it up and maintains it for me. Thanks, Sal! Salvatore Buttaci has been a SnakePal from Day One. In addition to contributing poems to Rattlesnake Review from the very first issue, he was very instrumental in keeping our high school journal, VYPER, active before he retired from teaching. See the May 1, 2007 Medusa post for more about Sal and his poetry. (Anthony Buccino, by the way, was featured on July 3, 2008. Check out his website at anthonysworld.com/.)


CPITS Science Into Spirit Symposium in Petaluma, Aug. 27-29:

Join numerous poets and presenters for a Writing Intensive Workshop and Reading at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma (www.ions.org), sponsored by Cal. Poets in the Schools. Registration deadline is August 13. Go to mohurley.blogspot.com/2010/07/california-poets-in-schools-science.html for details, reg., bios of the many presenters—all that good stuff.

__________________

DISCORDANT LOVE
—Joyce Odam

(After "Correfour" by Amy Lowell)


I reprimand you for your careless words
when I am suffering beyond your casual love.

I’d have you look at me
with great tragedy on your face;

with sorrow waiting in your voice
for my words that surface.

I am falling through your laugh
that scatters discord through my insecurities.

I’m desperate for your forgiveness.
What have I done to deserve you.

___________________

FAILED CHANCES
—Joyce Odam

albino peacock
stone woman in fountain
statue of love
*
carnival night
and sighing flesh-woman
entering the blue garden
*
in shadow by the pillar
lover watching with mask removed
lace collar caught in moonlight
*
they will not meet…they are shy…
rose petals flutter behind her
as she strolls
*
albino peacock
ambles beside her
assuring their lack of vanity
*
waiting too long by the dark pillar
lover is held
in tendrils of Bougainvillea.

__________________

TOMES
—Joyce Odam

(After Age of Exploration by Russell W. Gordon)


In lavender light, the old rules fade
into their
conglomerations
of fact and fiction.
Books lie open
to the spheres of knowledge,
waiting for the candle to burn down.
A tiny moon,
small as a moth,
wanes thinly
on the sky's far wall.
A sea of black ink
fills a small ink bottle
for all the words that will be written.
The books
pile higher.
The open pages
age and crumble.
The table groans and bears the weight.
All balances with all.

__________________

THE TIME OF DAY
—Joyce Odam

how fast we speak
in passing
hello
how are you
fine
and thank you
fast
in passing
smile
and smile
in passing

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

TODAY’S TASK
—Joyce Odam

I will look at
wet buildings, all day long . . .
~~~
I will consult windows
for change, or what stays the same . . .
~~~
I will measure the hours of the rain
while I wait, for whatever I am waiting for . . .

__________________

—Medusa

Waiting
Photo by Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

Something Else Climbs...

Falls
Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

Water is always the same—
Obedient to the laws
That move the sun and the other
Stars. In Japan as in
California it falls
Through the steep mountain valleys
Towards the sea. Waterfalls drop
Long musical ribbons from
The high rocks where temples perch.
Ayu in the current poise
And shift between the stones
At the edge of the bubbles.
White dwarf iris heavy with
Perfume hang over the brink.
Cedars and cypresses climb
The hillsides. Something else climbs.
Something moves reciprocally
To the tumbling water.
It ascends the rapids,
The torrents, the waterfalls,
To the last high springs.
It disperses and climbs the rain.
You cannot see it or feel it.
But if you sit by the pool
Below the waterfall, full
Of calling voices all chanting
In a turmoil of peace,
It communicates itself.
It speaks in the molecules
Of your blood, in the pauses
Between your breathing. Water
Flows around and over all
Obstacles, always seeking
The lowest place. Equal and
Opposite, action and reaction,
An invisible light swarms
Upward without effort. But
Nothing can stop it. No one
Can see it. Over and around
Whatever stands in the way,
Blazing infinitesimals—
Up and out—a radiation
Into the empty darkness
Between the stars.

—Kenneth Rexroth

__________________

—Medusa