What Pockets Can't Hold

Red Rose

—Photos by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento, CA
 

5/2/2018
—Kim Clyde, Sacramento, CA

Being
A woman of a certain age
And temperament
I have taken down
The mirrors, yet
I see the passage of time
In these old hands of mine.
These hands
So deft at holding babies
And lovers
At digging
The earth
And washing up
At slicing and cooking
And generally turning pages
In this book of life.
They are everyday
More beautiful
Unlike this face
With a seventeen-year-old’s eyes.

FACEBOOK
—Sue Daly, Sacramento, CA

Facebook is my friend.
It’s good for reading articles
and seeing pictures of my
grandkids half a world away.

Perfect for collecting
gorgeous photos with
inspiring quotes that use
up all my storage capacity
or for following political pundits
I may agree or disagree with —
(Have to see what they’re
up to, don’t ya know?)

Facebook’s great for hearing
about all the interesting things
happening around Sactown,
Davis and Placerville too . . .
Fantastic for finding long lost
friends and family,
sharing good causes and
Go Fund Me pages.

But what about those
security nightmares
I keep hearing about?
I’ve had enough nightmares
to know there’s no real security
in this life, the next one
or even the one after that.
Immunizations from nightmares
are definitely in short supply.

I’d like to think
I’m smart enough
not to fall for foreign influences
(at least I hope so, LOL).
Not much money for
scammers to hack into,
but I have some time to
read poetry since I retired—
and when James Lee Jobe
updates his blog page,
or D. R.’s on Medusa’s,
I deem it’s worth the risk.

So I guess I’ll say thank you
thank you to Mark Z.
thanks from all the nanas
and grandpas,
the poets, and me. 

fill it up
—william yates, ft. bragg, ca

blank page
old age
cold feet
white meat

overnight
success
work hard
eat less

sleep hard
take a walk
come home
can't talk

telephone
ding dong
quick lunch
write a song

drink wine
relax
lean back
two cats

clock spins
time wins
night time
closing in

easy chair
wild hair
rapid breath
wild stare

moving on
pour it out
empty cup
fill it up 

After Dad’s mom died
         Dad filled up some unpacked suitcases
         Stuff that reminded him the most of her
         including her diaries, scrapbooks and photo albums
         collected in cases labeled “Lydia Swandt-Kunert”
         things he wants to pass on to my brother and me when he is gone 

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento, CA

Imagine having to figure out how to place your whole life into a suitcase—
        Not as a traveler
        But as a “refugee” of political and social times
        So I learned at the California History Museum
        Many of those of Japanese ancestry in WWII in this state were forced to do just that
        For the exhibit,
        there are these donated suitcases with these American-Japanese families' names marked on them
        though now standing empty—
        they were used when these otherwise tax-paying American citizens were sent to “relocation camps”
        —forced out of their homes and communities to board trains and buses,    
        sent to live in these camps from which they did not know if they would ever return
        They just hoped they would be eventually allowed to return to their homes and farms if they “complied"  
        At the camps they held dearly what they chose to pack along in their suitcases—
        anything that could give them comfort and hope of returning to a "normal life” once again in California
        even little home-made stuff such as hand-knit scarfs, mittens or slippers
        But alas many were also not recompensed with their lost security or property

—Michelle Kunert

 Holocaust Suitcases in Poland

—Anonymous Photo
 

HOLOCAUST SUITCASE
—Michelle Kunert

During a 2005 Paris exhibition in remembrance of the Holocaust
          there stood a pile of suitcases on loan from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
          A young French woman along with her father
          spotted a battered cardboard suitcase with the name of her grandfather who “disappeared” in 1943
          Many who were headed to the camps carried travel luggage, thinking they were being “relocated”
          The father and daughter immediately asked to have the suitcase
          because they had nothing else left of his
          and no other records revealing whatever happened to him
          Like so many whose likely fate was to be gassed and burned up in the ovens,
          his suitcase was now his only “tombstone”
          and they wanted to decide how to properly preserve it
          The father and daughter were regrettably informed by the curators
          there were no plans to return anything they obtained to present-day family survivors
          All suitcases and anything else “named" would go back to be on display at Auschwitz
          And so the suitcase will likely now continue to decay away with the rest—
          which will continue to allow people to forget the victims' names on the suitcases.    

                          
GOING ALL THE WAY
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
 
Never been to Paris
or to France, or to Europe
OK, never set foot outside
of North America

But I have my bags packed
eager to go on a miracle
adventure vacation
at last.

Camera gear:  set and ready
Clothing:  enough for now
Itinerary:  not starting with one
Empty suitcase:  for what pockets
can’t hold.

Maybe include the Riviera, where
I can sunbathe uncovered in the
warm glow of the moment, or giggle
uncontrollably, forever fated to
remain a little boy.

Look at that!  Readers are already
taking mental pictures for me and
cramming them into my empty
suitcase…a nice slide show when
I return.

FORKED TONGUES AND RATTLES
—Caschwa

(Agreeing with James Lee Jobe’s
“The sun never sets on the American
Empire”, Medusa’s Kitchen, May 5, 2018)


In World War II, willing volunteers populated
our factories to build the machinery of war, while
unwilling “volunteers” filled internment camps. 
All together this created a foundation for future
business ventures based on the premise
that

if you set your goals high enough, America
will help you find people to do your bidding for
free.

Enter real estate marketing, a core element of
building an empire, which thrives on amending
our original principles of democracy to include
Highest And Best Use, and Location, Location,
Location…

Until now, somewhere in metropolis, beneath
endless tons of asphalt and concrete and steel,
a whole political party left behind by astounding
changes in science, technology, and law, cries
out:

Don’t take our jobs, don’t take our guns, don’t really
free the slaves, don’t help the poor, don’t believe
climate science, don’t vaccinate my kids, don’t, just
don’t.

TOO QUICK
—Caschwa

Hindsight:
The view when a flasher
turns around

20/20 hindsight:
Now it all comes together

Amnesia:
Nothing triggers a memory

Retrospective amnesia:
Everything triggers déjà vu

Perfect recall:
All the cars were fixed before
anyone got killed

Perfect attendance:
Top prize goes to ants at picnics

Limited warranty:
No coverage for the most
likely problems

Lifetime warranty:
limited time offer

AN HONORABLE DAY
—Caschwa

True to the mission
to the very end, duty
bound, come what may

Spilled blood a certainty
some die trying, most
face unspeakable pain

Fully deserving of
voluminous merit orders
and decorations

But no place for that on a
receiving blanket, maybe
the PTA bowling league…

They do this over and
over, no ticker tape
parades, silent pride

Let us take a moment to
appreciate our mothers with
full pomp and circumstance.

Today’s LittleNip:

EMPTY SUITCASE
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

Poems

And butterflies.

All

Escaped.

_________________

Our thanks to this wonderful collection of poets today, and to Michelle Kunert for her dazzling shots of spring flowers from the Sacramento Rose Society show at Shepard Garden and Arts Center on April 28. Our Seed of the Week is “An Empty Suitcase”; about her third “suitcase” poem, Michelle writes that it is “based on the story at brucemhood.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/the-holocaust-suitcase-2/“.

Lummux Editor RD Armstrong is calling for submissions for his Lummox 7 Poetry anthology and the new Angela C. Mankiewicz Poetry Contest; see www.lummoxpress.com/lc/2018-lummox-7/. Deadline is May 31. Note that there is a $15 reading fee.

Poetry events in our area begin tonight at Sac. Poetry Center with Phillip Larrea and Katy Brown, plus open mic, 7:30pm. Wednesday will bring the Poetry Off-the-Shelves poetry read-around in Placerville at the Sr. Center, 5-7pm, or the Poets and Writers’ Sacramento Library Roundtable Meeting at Sac. Poetry Center from 6-8pm. Then on Saturday, from 6-8:30pm, SPC’s Second Saturday ART Opening presents a showing that centers on Mental Health Month. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

 —Anonymous Photo of Anonymous Camel
Celebrate poetry that’s so brilliant that 
you need shades to read it!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.

Poetry and Bitter Wine

—Anonymous Photo        

VISIT OF THE POETS
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

Then come to us
and we will give you
mysterious breads
and honey,
and we will give you
fruit to peel
and dates from
an apothecary jar.

And we will give you
all the hours of the night
for poetry
and bitter wine,
and we will give you
so much love
that you be drunk with us
and we with you.

And in the silence of
the meadowlark
whose broken song
has echoes through and through
and through,
we will give you
burning eyes
and a sun-torn hour
to take away
with you.


(first pub. in Aye, 1974, and  
The Poet Being [mini-chap], 2002)   

_________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Joyce Odam for her fine poem today!  










                   

Quiet

—Poems and Photos by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA

The land doesn’t have a name, and neither does the ocean; it's people who do that. Narcissism and humanity walk this earth together, often sharing the same shoes. We have it all backwards. The world doesn't need us. We need the world. You can't own the world, but if you live well, the world might own you. And that's somewhat better.

________________

I am dreaming. My Uncle Richard's ghost
Tells me of the horrors he endured in the Pacific
During World War Two. He weeps for the friends
That were lost, and for the starved American POWs
That returned to America on his ship.
He cries against my chest and I tell him that I love him.
And I do, in life he was my favorite uncle.
In life, we also had this same conversation,
Over thirty years ago, when he still lived,
And we would drink Pabst beer and talk,
Often late into the night.
"I never had a son," he tells me, looking up
Into my face with his red, watery eyes.
The alarm clock that wakes me
Sounds tinny, cheap, and far away.

The view of the earth from the moon is lovely, but we had hoped for better rooms. These are so small and dusty. Seeing the sun and the earth from your balcony on the moon is a thrill, and as I write this I am watching dust particles illuminated by the afternoon light from the window. They float in the still air of the small room like tiny planets, like tiny galaxies. My, my; isn't this universe something? And life—that's something, too.

_________________

The sun never sets on the American Empire.
There is never a moment when the troops stand down.
Like the Wicked Witch and her flying monkeys
In the Wizard Of Oz, another attack is always prepared.
The Americans are always ready for the order to come down.
What could America build if all the war machinery
Was melted down? Every tank, plane, and rifle.
Every ballistic missile and helicopter.
America could build a bridge all the way to Heaven.
America could walk right up to God and pray.
"Forgive us. At last the era of war without end is over.
Forgive us, please." 

You live among the green trees of the forest,
And sleep on the bare earth.
Your dreams rise up from the roots and the soil,
As a tree rises up.
You think that perhaps you will be come a tree.
Or a shrub. Or the warmth of things growing.
Your life is touched by the earth,
And by the sounds of your footsteps on the fallen leaves.

__________________

Quiet.
I have little to defend
And nothing to explain.
Weeks before spring,
A warm spell
Has the trees budding.
Looking inside myself,
I find that I can smile
Without willing myself
To do so.
This is my life
My little joy.
Quiet.

Today’s LittleNip:

May I breathe in joy and breathe out gratitude.
May my every heartbeat be the rhythm of kindness.

—James Lee Jobe

_______________________

Many thanks to James Lee Jobe for the hearty breakfast he brings to the Kitchen this Cinco de Mayo! 

For a New York Times article about Cinco de Mayo, see www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/business/cinco-de-mayo-facts-history.html/.

—Medusa

 —Anonymous Photo
May you empty out all your suitcases, one by one…
(And fill them with poetry!)

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa. 

Empress of the Wild Sky

Do Not Bend
—Poems and Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

A SUPERVISOR CONTEMPLATES REALITY

This time, this barely perceptible
line—this line that diminishes
as it crosses the page

and its inverse—the part that
is under the page—upside
down—growing shorter as the
other lengthens—

And the page—a seam between
dimensions of perception—

I find myself between the rails,
trying not to fall upon the
lethal third one—
leaving me
to flail about with my
briefcase held between my teeth—
avoiding hoods of moving rail cars—

At work, the modem hums along—
the computerized office managing
just fine without the line, the
page, perceptible reality on the
inverse side of electrons—
without me in my straitjacket.

 Red Ring

PLUM FIRE

The old plum drank starlight
and birdsong,
sipped the long summer days.
At night, its dry wood whispers
of seasons in its flame.

 Roxie Reads a Story

I imagine
your hand in mine
in the dark
when sleep won’t come.

* * *

You can’t take back:
the hour, once it’s gone;
scorn, once it’s hurled;
trust, once it’s broken.

* * *

My ghostly committee
comes on a shaft of moonlight
—in twos and threes
whispering of the past,
portending the future.

 Eye in the Sky

empress of the wild sky

cliff dweller
mother of thieves
midnight charmer
caller of the moon
beautiful outlaw
spinner of myth:

raven
mistress of the world

 Suitcase on the Hill

MARJI’S SUITCASE

The battered brown case,
—an overnight bag, really—
packed with essentials
and left at the foot of
the steep trail up a wooded hill—

I had no idea it was yours, Marji.
No idea you were preparing
to leave us so soon.
I’d have waited at the foot of that trail
all day and night and night, again,
had I known.

I should have realized you
wouldn’t take a lot with you:
your lightness and understanding,
the patient love of a youngest child.
Your smile.  And that deep chuckle
I long to hear again.

If I had opened it—if I had
taken it, would you have left us,
anyway?   Yet, who has the right
to strand a soul
in such a dark and painful place?

Take your suitcase filled with laughter,
then, worn a little from enough adversity
to guarantee a well-lived life.  Take it
up the hill and wait for us.  

 Light on the Wall

Today’s LittleNip:

WORKSHOPPING
—Katy Brown

They tell me:  shorten this line;
make it present tense,
exchange these words—
tinker with a mobile
and the balance is lost.

___________________

Our thanks to poet/photographer Katy Brown for today’s fine poems and pix, including “Marji’s Suitcase”. “An Empty Suitcase” is this week’s Seed of the Week, and it was inspired by Katy’s finding of an empty suitcase up here in Placerville on one of her recent visits (see her photo above). She has woven it into a tribute to “Marji”, who passed away very recently, and who was the younger daughter of Sacramento poets Don and Elsie Feliz. (Elsie passed away several years ago.)

Katy will be having a busy poetry weekend: On Sunday from 2-4pm, she will co-facilitate another in the Capturing Wakamatsu workshop series with Taylor Graham at Wakamatsu Farm in Placerville. Then on Monday, she will read at Sac. Poetry Center in Sacramento, with Phillip Larrea, 7:30pm.

Tonight in Placerville, Stan Zumbiel will read at The Good Earth Movement Poetry Night at the GEM Coop on Main Street, 6:30pm. And a note about an event next Wednesday, May 9, that wants your reservation: From 6-8pm, Sac. Poetry Center will present a Poets & Writers’ Sacramento Literary Roundtable Meeting to exchange ideas, news, resources. Guest Speaker: Katie McCleary, co-founder of 916 Ink. Sac. Poetry Center, 25th & R Sts., Sac. RSVP to jfitzgerald@pw.org/. Free. Info: www.facebook.com/events/359490141229320/.

Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area, including the Wakamatsu workshop details—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

  Who says you can’t take it with you…?
—Anonymous Photo of Gina Lollobrigida on the move
(Celebrate poetry!)

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.

Just Short of Eden...

Apples
—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

SONG OF APPLES

       for the wild apple forest of Kazakhstan
       and the tended orchards of Apple Hill

 

Just short of Eden the apple went wild, a forest of trees,
fruit of seeds dissimilar as Cain from Abel, disseminated
over earth for lovers to walk beneath apple blossoms
dreaming of futures ungrafted, the original, unbitten fruit.

You’ve peeled and sliced lengthwise—not
for perfect pie, but rough-shod cobblers,
fame of the farmer’s table. You’ve
pressed tart cider to vinegar with
“mother”—proteins, enzymes,
bacteria. Dried apple crescents stored
in pantry dark, pale moons that bide before
frost for lovers dreaming winter’s unbitten fruit.

Pink-blossom ridges of ur-apple forest burned,
charcoal to the core. On wind, apple-ash hovers.

Bless our unbittered foothill ridges, apples sweet
enough for seed and blossom and lovers.

GREEN WAVE

Wind plays roadside grass
as I drive—motion, motive force
of mountains and these spring-green hills
sprung from Valley that once was sea.
Field and pasture, counterwaves of buck-
brush breaking the green tide in foamy
white blossom. From the shoulder
of Thompson Hill, the countryside rises
in distance-haze toward forest
and the Crystal Range. A perfect picture—
ruined for my lens by the wavy scrub-jay
flight of powerlines beside the road.
Reminds me how the mind filters out man-
made intrusion. Already I’m past
the vista. And here, someone’s fitted
dredger-stone in a wall across the green
of hill. Grass goes tiding against it in waves
and continues green up the other side.

IN FRONT OF THE FEED & SEED

These flowers of paradise full-blown—
are they tulips? lilies? Adam must have
composed their names. I want to pick
one, take it home. Surely that’s
forbidden. A photo—I might dare.
But how about this withered bloom
that really ought to be dead-headed—
dare I erase it from the view? It isn’t
mine. Better to leave it as it was,
the natural way it grew.

MEDITATION

The sheep go browsing lush spring grass
with all the lovely flowers gone to rumination.
Last night I listened for the pirate band,
coyotes’ wooing howl that swirls
and undulates down canyon in the dark,
determined to take a lamb. Last night
they sailed their hunger elsewhere. Here,
by dawn no lovelorn bleat of ewe who mourns
her newborn. Do I hate coyote? She must
feed her pups. Do I begrudge field-blossoms
that sheep nip off with nimble teeth?
In this paradise, what could be forbidden?
By morning light our flock unfurls the swale
to fountain-flowing creek-bed, under soft
tsicka-dee-dee of titmouse in the oak.
If no skylark rises from this field in ecstasy,
our sheep will still lie down contented
in their rumen-moment, meditating green.

BOOTS

I put on my old Sorels, just in case. We’re
exploring ancestral channels, miners’ ditches—
hard to tell what’s what after man rearranges
landscape. New relationships and disjunctions.
        Those old miners took out everything
they could. Boulders, topsoil. Once this swale
was level with those rises.
                Graveyard for mining activity.
You point uphill, to the dark of woods:
not a trace of mining—haunted Indian village?
We skirt inlets of the lake, man-made
a century or more ago, and smaller ones—
water-filled mines or glory-holes or garbage
dumps.
               Bare vines choking live oak—
old vineyard grape gone wild, or native
honeysuckle? Is it sophistry, trying to decipher,
in an ancient landscape, what’s been done
by man and what the land keeps doing?
        Everything’s related. One skeleton
oak tree leafing out at last.
Hours of slogging in heavy boots. Hike done,
I'm glad to pull off the old Sorels and let
my feet breathe free.

ADIT

An iron-bar gate, locked, guards
the entrance underground—the adit,
horizontal path into the mine,

its mineral veins exposed along
dark corridor, a stone tapestry woven
of precious threads. Ore.

Did they find gold here, before
this place became a park, the mine
shut tight for safety sake?

Bad air in those underground
passages, maybe rotten shoring,
danger of collapse.

I wouldn’t dare step inside to see,
even if this gate were to open-
sesame.

Today’s LittleNip:

THIS DAY

in April, this wild-growing spring
bursting out of bounds, blossoms of every
flower-color speckling annual grasses

not yet formed to seed-heads, still soft
and lush, not yet spiked and barbed—

this brief lovely season green as Oz,
as wildwood of a child’s fairytale book
still opening its mysteries—

by May Day, turning summer-tan;
neighbors mowing fields,

and I with my weed-eater no longer
sparing lupine and vetch, without mercy
whacking the right-of-way.

This April morning I have this day.


—Taylor Graham

____________________________

Thank you, Taylor Graham, for these wonderful poems and photos! She writes that her poem, “Boots”, is about “old mining activity at Wakamatsu, which I think will be the focus of our next Capturing Wakamatsu workshop here in Placerville at Wakamatsu Farm this Sunday, May 6, 2-4 pm, with myself and Katy Brown. People can reserve a spot with julie@ARConservancy.org or 530-621-1224.”

Today is a big day in poetry in our area, including the 24-hour annual Big Day of Giving for the arts in Sacramento, which Sac. Poetry Center and Women’s Wisdom ART will be celebrating with activities from 2-8:30pm.  (Donate now at www.sacramentopoetrycenter.com/.) Also tonight, Ladies’ Night Out will be happening in Old Sac at 8pm, and in Davis, Stan Zumbiel and Jeff Knorr (plus open mic) will be reading at John Natsoulas Gallery, also at 8pm. Stan is a busy reader this week, heading up to Placerville tomorrow (Friday, May 4) to read at Good Earth Movement Poetry Night on Main Street, 6:30pm.

Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

—Anonymous

 Celebrate the poetry of being on the road—and don't forget

our Seed of the Week: An Empty Suitcase!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa. 

A Great Wind Came Rushing

—Poems by Allison Grayhurst, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA, USA

SWAN’S NECK

The afternoon is here. You are lost,
limited, sick with inadequacies
and innumerable attempts
to forget the unknown.

The wolf that communed with your bones,
did you place the swan’s neck
next to his teeth? You did.
You were scared but in love
with red blood on white feathers.
You wish you had the courage to forgive
yourself —days, weeks
on the edge of a sinister conspiracy darkness.

You are the last of my history.
I can’t go on in this vacuum
of thorny hedges, trying to kill boredom
with these grandiose unsubstantial schemes.
I think you are lonely.

I do miss you, sometimes
I would like to have your wax figure in my hands,
hold it over a candle, to see how fast heat can melt
your virgin body.

Everything is hard. Hard hats, hard watches—
everything, even your striking eyes.
And the Italian couple who gave us cookies,
the are hard and hurting
for revenge
And it’s no good,
it is just damn awful
to carry this sea full of creatures
in my stomach
to hurt like a worm
in the mid-day sun
attempting to mend this insanity
backhoe digging trenches
into my karma.

Please let me in on the secret,
can our gypsy dream really be over?

I want to throw the arsenic in the garbage.
I want to triumph.

 Leaves

COLOUR OF EARTH

Should I be
an aqueduct of faith
flowing and falling
onto the paralyzed streets?
            I know flowers
are infinite. I know the way is
risk. But I cannot climb
that blistered mountain
or hope for a gentle wind to save.
My mirror-ghost rises whole
with tangible flesh, too visible to bear.
And clouds obsess me.

Green forever. Green is
the ego waning and love
that grows in wild orchards.
Red is our age and our wait
for greatness inside the owl call.
Turn here, turn there—kill
the wheel and the virgin flight.

So much unanswered. So much
we must inevitably lose.

Bear Grass

DEVOTION

What links
and where?

Was I always flushing with need
there at your feet
with a terrible tenderness
or tenderness unborn?

I have watched you walk,
certain you will never run,
mystified by your suffering.
Was there ever a miracle great enough to touch you?

The world is madness, unsafe,
and you are captive to that tragedy
trying for an impossible life

I have imagined brighter days
I have imagined to be eternally in love
enslaved by nothing
delivered from everything

I have imagined a life unabstract.

More than flesh,
but never more.

 Snow Plants

A GREAT WIND CAME RUSHING

A great wind came rushing
and I said to the wind
“Bitter wind, stop before you carry me off.”
A great wind came rushing
and pulled me into the sky,
I travelled past wheat-fields
sailed under its furious reign.
I was broken into many pieces,
hit what the wind could not pass through
half-crazed with resistance
I fell to the ground
into worm-holes and the open mouths of laughing children.
I sunk into soil and dreamt of sprouting.
And the wind said to me,
“Do not perish with fright in these strange places,
close your eyes and wait for spring.”

Spring came,
I cracked and grew flesh
then like a vine I crawled out of that dark ground
and found the sun
soothed by heat and rain.
I praised the earth with untainted joy
And I said to the earth,
“Sweet earth, allow me to walk.”

Gradually my limbs found movement
lips formed, eyes appeared, blue and wide
and I ran from land to land
celebrating life with each step.
I wore no clothes, carried no yardstick
found equal peace, equal rapture
with every new encounter.

A great wind came rushing
and I said to the wind
“Powerful wind, come carry me off
for I am still young and can bear the storm.”
Weightless with excitement
I joined its intense ride
gathered at the centre
half-dead with stillness
I gave myself up
lost the beating of my pulse, lost momentum
sunk low into my depths, immune to singing
And the voice said to me
“Do not despair with sorrow in this vacant hollow,
open your eyes and wait for love.”

Love came,
I expanded and felt communion
Like a clam I crept out of my isolation
and shone my pearl

Like a clam I closed back my shell
and hid in the safety of darkness.

And I said to my love,
“I am as incapable of loving as much as
everyone else is.” And my lover said back to me,
“So am I.”

A great wind came rushing
And I said to the wind,
“Great wind, be still
It is time now to learn.”

The great wind ceased.

My love and I walk hand in hand
on an unknown mission, swept away,
carried by each other, alone.

 Scars

INTO THE FIRE

My egg
sticks to my womb
wanting something
like a thunderbolt

My love
makes havoc in my breast
like a sinister struggle.
I am expecting him
his lost satisfaction
stretched out to annihilate my own

I am expecting him like
a flickering tongue, a goodnight kiss
in the twisted cry of his need,
folding up inside of me
expecting
a terrible after effect

My love hovers in a madman’s purgatory,
where eternity gets stuck in a single moment,
no claimed victory, no wingspread
to express his freedom

I continue in silence
expecting him…

I will never sleep again.

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

… and we will shade


Ourselves whole summers by a river glade;


And I will tell thee stories of the sky,


And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy,


My happy love will overwing all bounds!


O let me melt into thee! let the sounds


Of our close voices marry at their birth;


Let us entwine hoveringly!

—John Keats

______________________

Our thanks to Canadian Allison Grayhurst for today’s poetry, and Davisinian Katy Brown for today’s photos! Fine artists checking into the Kitchen from one side of the continent to the other!

Today, Cal. State University, Sacramento, will present VocaLabUlary, a poetry-music collaboration between faculty and students, including works by Cynthia Linville, Josh McKinney, Ann Michaels, Kim Golubev, Kris Robinson, Rhony Bhopla, Bob Stanley. Some works will be spoken, some will be sung by members of the Sac State Vocal Jazz Ensemble and other music majors. That’s in the Special Collections Rm. of the CSUS Library, 6000 J St., Sac., 3pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

For “8 of the Best Quotes on Love from Poets Who Might Surprise You”, see www.barnesandnoble.com/nook-blog/8-of-the-best-quotes-on-love-from-poets-who-might-surprise-you/.

—Medusa

 Celebrate poetry!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.

The Religion of Figs

Do Not Touch
—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA
 

THE FIG

I have brought this fruit for your mouth
that you may know the religion of figs
so dusty and warm
still pulsing
in the cup of my hand
that offers to you
like a flower
this gift
from the waving young tree
that bends ever-so-delicately
its thin stem
like a long neck of the giraffe in
the zoo
as it bobs above the fence
this is
the first ripe fig of summer
and I give it to you.


(first pub. in Cellar Door, 1979)

________________

AFFAIR OF THE HEART

It is seduction that they understand,
though it be folly, precursive to despair;
they yield to its addiction; they declare
themselves clairvoyant, yet go hand in hand
with Fate and Blindness, those misleaders. And
for passion that they always knew was there,
they wear whatever mask they need to wear
to keep illusion’s face. Their flame is fanned.

Wretched with love now, hopelessly confessed,
oh, they are tragic—they are tragic, true—
nor do they care. They are both cursed and blessed.
They grow possessive, and they grow afraid.
Too young to suffer less than others do,
they settle back into the beds they’ve made.


(first pub. in Poets’ Forum Magazine, 1997)

 Tell Me More

BRUSHING SHOULDERS

That woman with her face bent
in her scarf,

shop windows
do not tempt her,

nor do lives of others
on the street the same as she—

avoiding all those
shoulders,

voices,
eyes, 

that
man

who might have loved her
had they met—

the way these two do not,
the way

their shoulders brush in passing—
the way their auras don’t react to this.

 To Night

TIMELESS BEAUTY

She is here to tease :
the fan, the hanging silks,

the pearls around her throat—
that languid look,

her rumpled white dress
and

the cushion
that she leans against.

How young is she . . . ?
A century, perhaps.

A century
takes its time—

remembers as it will.
Though she

is many centuries gone,
she teases still.

 Thirst

THE DISILLUSIONMENTS

the disillusionments
cry in the trees
like starving birds

the trees are full of fruit
but the birds are blind
and crying such songs

that we listen with envy
songless and mute
and offer them mirrors

                      
(first pub. in One Dog Press, 1999)

 Whisper

HEAVY

Am I not the one with the heart made of lead,
eyes made of brass—hands without touch
through gloves of numb—am I not that one…?

I saw the peacock spread its fan,
and I wept for all women
vainer than seduction with its pretty ways :

how they preened back—in spite of
memory’s sweet haze. Never mind that :
I am the one without words enough to say

the deep yearn that lives
next to the leaden throb—the one
who pines away—who will foolishly sob.

 Cubbyhole
 

COSMETIC

There she is
with her lipstick and her smile.

She has seduced the
mirror after all.

See how her eyes connect
and almost hold.

She is rather attractive
and really not that old.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:
 
THE MOVEMENT OF THE LURE
—Joyce Odam          

No more will I rise to bait
like an old blue fish

breaking the water
to those rings of sunlight

and the movement of the lure . . .
my old scars ache.


(first pub. in Pearl, 2000)

___________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam for today’s fine poetry and May Day photos! Seduction, indeed… like our Seed of the Week: Forbidden Fruit.

Our new Seed of the Week is An Empty Suitcase. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

Speaking of May Day, check out the beautiful roadside California poppies as you head up to El Dorado Hills today for the Poetry Off-the-Shelves read-around at the El Dorado Hills Library, 5-7pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

 —Anonymous Photo

Celebrate the poetry of Nows!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.