The Secret

—Anonymous Photo

PLEA
—Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Secrets, you said, would hold us two apart;
You'd have me know of you your least transgression,
And so the intimate places of your heart,
Kneeling, you bared to me, as in confession.
Softly you told of loves that went before—
Of clinging arms, of kisses gladly given;
Luxuriously clean of heart once more,
You rose up, then, and stood before me, shriven.

When this, my day of happiness, is through,
And love, that bloomed so fair, turns brown and brittle,
There is a thing that I shall ask of you—
I, who have given so much, and asked so little.
Some day, when there's another in my stead,
Again you'll feel the need of absolution,
And you will go to her, and bow your head,
And offer her your past, as contribution.

When with your list of loves you overcome her,
For Heaven's sake, keep this one secret from her!

_____________________

—Medusa

 

The Friction of the Moon

Three Fish

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

PERSISTENT DREAMING

The boys played the fire game all night.
They would crowd in close to the fire,
Catching their hair on fire and then trying
To beat the fire out before it ran down
Their back and became blue flames
Of electrical energy which sprayed
From their bodies.  They were quite
Good at the game and kept it up for hours.

I noticed the game attracted tigers.
They thought it was holy and that it
Soothed anguish for them.  I can still
See the blood on their teeth as they circled
‘Round and ‘round the boys, making soft noises
And taking the form of dreams.  They would
Try to catch the blue flames that endured
Around their circle for hours and then vanished.

I don’t sleep much with you in my blood.
I wish to hold you close to me, sleep
With my arm around you, listen to your breathing.

All eight dharmapals stand guard around me.
They tell me that I am a temple and that I
Am making songs that sound like temple
Bells.  Eventually, you will come to me.

The evening reflects the dawn in its special
Mirrors.  All kinds of things endure beyond
Our own lives that never knew we existed.

 Corn at Dusk, Locke

 

                                  
A CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Your heart in all its splendor.
Your soul magnifies the perfection
Given to it by the children of the angels.

Mayhem departing by train,
Bound for fire in the high mountains
Where few know its name, can identify
The curious clothing it wears on its way
To destruction, a dissolution of purgatory.

What do we eat that calls John of the Cross
Through time atop Mount Carmel?  What allows
Us to speak in all these tongues and still be
Understood completely and then not at all?

A wild lament, the friction of the moon across
The starry sky assembled for the touch of your
Hand, your heart without boundaries beating
Out the spinning of the planets.  A song that
Is the dawn and day and evening and then night.

Oh my love, I look into your eyes and I no longer
Know the vale of bitter tears that is this earth.
I draw my sword and spin before the gates
Of your dear heart.  None shall defile such
A place as this.  No evil comes to us.
I am the guard.

 Japanese Box

LIVE: ACOUSTIC

I am caught in the darkness
Near light but still unable to see
Where it is I am.  The blear of night
Stumbling close by my footsteps.

If I put my hand on the wall,  I know
I am near light but there is no light.
The illuminated globe of the world glows
Just beyond the door, should there be a door,
And, of course, we always hope for a door.

         *
I saw you standing at the back of the room.
We had just finished playing the song about
The dawn during the snowstorm and how
The sun had moved through the falling snow.
Everything became a kind of gold that we did not
Know how to describe, so we made the music
Within it.  There was one bird, he had a damaged
Wing and flew in circles around us making a wonderful
Sound.  The lyrics were based on those circles.

I found my hands upon your shoulders.
I thought I was still in the music.  Golden
Lights flew along the edges of my vision
Inside my eyes, yet still high above it.
      
        *
I walked all the way to the end of the road
Where the waterfall began.  It was nearly
Twilight and the waterfall was a lilac and hyacinth,
The color of heartbreak or someone you love
Walking away and you knowing you will not
Be seeing them again.  I suppose there is
A music there but it is stolen by cellos and keyboards.
Given to a corner where we notice the quality
Of the light, the people crossing the room,
The way their conversation had its own agenda
And there we were, together once again, waiting
As we are now.  I lean close.  Listening to your breathing.

 Chair Back

17 BLACK SWANS

             for Kathy Kieth

We found the bones
    In a perfect circle.
    Each had been painted black
    With red ends.  In the center,
    A small pile of bright red sand.

 Sometimes in the morning
     The mist rising toward dawn,
     The lake looked choreographed
     With great black shapes floating
     In the air.

 They began to disappear
     For no apparent reason.
     It is said they can tell
     Where the wet will last the longest.

 Kathy called them The Stations
     Of The Cross.  “But there are
     Only fourteen stations,” someone
     Said.  “Yes, I know,” she answered.

 They look like prayers floating
     With their wings held fluffed and high.
     Prayers sealed with red wax.

 When I remember the Autumn
      I was in the kitchen looking
      Out the window at the lake.
      The sun was going down
      Across the red and gold trees.
      Black swans, exactly seventeen of them.

  The heart abandons
      The shadows for the sun.
      Swans coming into the sunlight
      Trying to surprise it as they did.

 I dragged a chair down
     To the lake of an afternoon and sat
     Reading William Butler Yeats.
     When I looked up, all of the swans
     Had gathered close to where I was.
     They made no sound as if waiting for something.

 During a thunderstorm one Summer
     Day, a lightning strike very near to me
     Made them seem bright red
     With black beaks
     For half a breath, inhaling.

 When I asked how dark
       It was outside, you said,
       “As dark as the black swans.”

 “Do you have any idea
       Why there are fewer and fewer
       Each year?”  I ask.
       “They know about places we don’t.”

 I showed my daughter
      The constellation Cygnus, the Swan.
       “Except for the stars it is a black swan,”
      She said.

 I had a dream I was going
       To see a famous wizard.
       I was traveling in a small
       Chariot-like vehicle, bright red.
       It was being pulled across the sky
       By seventeen black swans.

 The day totally blank
       And just before sunset
       Seventeen black swans
       Landing on the lake.

 I had just pulled into the drive
       And could see the lake clearly.
       The swans made a perfect line,
       One behind the other.

 “Cobs and pens.  That’s what they
       Are properly called,” she said.
       “Pens?  Like what I write with?”  I asked.
       “Yes, exactly.  What else would they be?”

 Black swans in the snow on the edge
       Of the lake.  Their red beaks.

 —Painting by Pascal Campion

LEANING OVER TOO FAR

I had a brook in the corner of the room.
It was guarded by a swan who
Sang a heart song in medieval German.

The song was of a destroying sea.
It was scored, as Borges said,
With “the ash of which oblivion is made”.

And here the poem comes to I love you.
It has bad habits and longing
That causes fires that seem
To hover just above the waters.

I find it hard to put my arm
Around your waist.  I feel as if
I am a verger when I would
Be a lover.  I am looking finally
At what I suppose to be your soul,
Yet might be sharp shadows
That may reflect time, but may be
Just me with my hands
In my pockets, falling in love
With something that has nothing
To do with me at all.

I take that place
Beneath the moon
Where I actually walk into
The room with the brook,
Invite you in, touch your hair.

You understand more than I do,
But that will not stand in my way.
The fireflies have come to the windows.

I press my lips against the pane.
My body fills with light.
The universe moves through me.

 Two Madelines

—Anonymous Photo

 

SOME FAIRIES

               for Annie Menebroker

The fairy of the heart.
The fairy of memories.
The fairy of autumn nights.
The fairy of the end of childhood.
The fairy guarding the feet of travelers.
The fairy who can speak the spells of olden times.
The fairy who can know when love is true.
The fairy of the evening summer grass.
The fairy of the fireflies.
The fairy of secret places.
The fairy who is seen but once.
The fairy who watches sleep descend.
The fairy of the Spring dances.
The fairy of long friendships.
The fairy who chases loneliness.
The fairy who appoints the stars.
The fairy who reveals what was hidden.
The fairy who can see lost things.
The fairy who protects the smallest breezes.
The frost fairy.
The fairy of winter windows.
The fairy who protects enchantment.
The fairy of distant music.
The fairy at the doors of dreaming.
The fairy called "delight of the newborn."
The fairy who attends the songbirds.
The fairy who can weave with music.
The fairy of the garments of the seasons.
The fairy lit by moonlight alone.
The fairy of the storm.
The fairy from the bows of ships.
The fairy of the starlit meadows.
The fairy of the grace in language.

____________________

Our thanks to D.R. Wagner for today’s most fine poetry and photos. Sadly, his brother Bobby passed away this week. Regarding this week's work, D.R. mentions that Annie Menebroker often requested at poetry events that he read his poem, “Some Fairies”, which appeared in Where the Stars Are Kept from Rattlesnake Press. As for “17 Swans”, I live by a lake which has black swans; occasionally we have snowfall, and the white landscape makes a stark contrast between black swans and white snow. Thank you, D.R., for the wonderful poem and the immortalization of our lovely swans.

Don’t forget that today is the deadline for Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest; go to lincolnca.gov/Home/Components/News/News/36/2267?backlist=%2fcity-hall%2fdepartments-divisions%2flibrary for details.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

JULY
—D.R. Wagner

July fills up fast.
Sunflowers notice ‘way too much.
Midsummer crowds in.

___________________

—Medusa

 Celebrate Poetry today with a trip up to Placerville 

for the poetry read-around, Poetic License, 2-4pm. 

Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box 

at the right) for info about this and other upcoming 

readings in our area—and note that other events 

may be added at the last minute.

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.

Old Poems in the Attic

Model T Ford, Cal. State Fair, 2016

—State Fair photos today are by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

A HEART TICKS IN HERE

You find old poems in the attic
in a box with the Remington Rand
you wrote them on in the Sixties
before computers were born.

They were published then in little
magazines like Bitterroot, the one
put out by Menke Katz, who loved
poetry by anyone from anywhere
who gave everything to write it.

What to do now with these poems
still breathing on paper but
scarred by erasures, smudges
and yellowed by time.

You could send them out
to a website where they might
appear until the site disappears
for reasons that take over
the editor's life.

Or you could put them back in
the box with the Remington Rand
and use a Sharpie to write
a note on the box that says
"Don’t throw this box out.
A heart ticks in here.”

______________________

A GREAT TIME FOR A CLIMB

That’s a very big tree
and a boy scout could climb it
with all the right gear.

But it’s a condominium, too.
You would disturb families.
Blue Jays don’t feature

interruptions when they
have young in the nest.
They put up with

squirrels scampering
across the branches.
Robins have young too

but they have no interest
in seeds or nuts and
no one else likes worms.

Sparrows chatter away
and raise a ruckus since
they have young also.

Why not wait until fall
when the young leave the tree.
Fall's a great time for a climb.

 1951 Buick Roadmaster Estate Car

A MAN AND A DOG

A reporter asked Wilbur once
if there were any advantages
to being deaf and Wilbur

used sign language to say
not that he could think of
except you miss all the gossip

and that’s a good thing
if you live alone in a trailer camp
in a small town in Oklahoma

but it’s not a good thing
when a tornado comes through
and everyone else hears it

at midnight and gets out alive
but they forget to wake you
and you go up with the tornado

along with a dog
you can’t hear barking,
two small stars in the sky.

 Buick Roadmaster

FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Yes, fifty years ago today
it happened. Quite a story.
He was your favorite uncle
and he liked you a lot too.
You were all torn up.
You were just a kid.
No one wanted to tell you.
You might have been
the one person he liked.

He drove your aunt crazy,
their kids as well.
He hated the rich and
hated the poor and
everyone in between.
Nasty to everyone
except you as a child.

You can’t be that way
when you’re a teller
in a farm town bank.
He wouldn't have
had a job if your
grandfather hadn't
owned the bank.

He’d sass farmers
and they’d complain
but there he’d be
cashing checks
and counting money
again the next day.

He should have
listened to that guy
at the window
when he whispered
put all the money
in the paper bag.
Everyone saw the gun.
Wrong guy to sass
fifty years ago today.

Skycar

HOT SPOTS IN THE CITY

I turn on the news to see
who won the game last night
but first the scores from
hot spots in the city.

Two people are killed
and a house is set on fire.
An infant burns to death.

Two men hijack a car
and a mother is killed.
Her baby is tossed
from the car and
found a block away
alive in a car seat.

The mayor says
we need more cops.
Money’s the problem.

The police chief says
he’s sending more cops
to hot spots in the city.

The anchor says at noon
a demonstration at City Hall
for Black Lives Matter.

He doesn’t mention
any demonstrations at
hot spots in the city.

 "UFO Alien Abduction Lamp" by Frank Barrera

BISON AND QUAIL

I never think about bison.
After all, I live in St. Louis,
why should I?

But when I went hunting
for quail in Montana
I tripped and

broke my leg, flopped
on the tundra all night.
Come morning

I saw bison romping
toward me, hundreds of them
coming in thunder.

I heard them snorting.
Honestly, I’m not lying.
I thought about bison then.

I never think about ISIS, either.
I live in St. Louis, after all,
why should I?

"Hearing With Our Eyes" by Rayna Zurkick

A STATIONARY BICYCLE

The doctor tells Phil and his wife
he’s in pretty good health for a man
his age but he needs to exercise.

And Phil says he agrees
and then goes on to explain
his faith in recliner therapy.

He sits in a recliner for hours,
watches TV or reads the paper
and wiggles his toes

at least three times a day.
The doctor asks if his wife if
they’d try a stationary bicycle.

She says she thinks there's
one somewhere in the basement.
Phil says his wife’s right as usual.

He saw it one night during a storm
when he went down to change a fuse.
Said he almost had a heart attack.

 "Refrigerator" by Irene Baldwin

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

When she leaves the room
when will she be back

When she leaves the house
how long will she be gone

When she must go out of town
why not Skype instead

When they send her overseas
there better be two tickets

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

A POET’S DILEMMA

Should she write about
the wonders of nature
and say it’s okay to lie

on the beach forever
without any sunscreen
or write at night about

the melanomas of life
under a skylight and
hope they’re excised.

__________________

—Medusa, with many thanks to Donal Mahoney for today’s poems, and to Cynthia LInville for more photos of this year’s Cal. State Fair. (See also Cynthia’s State Fair at Night photo album on Medusa’s Facebook page.)

 "Missing Link" by Janelle Sodona

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.

Laughter's Ink Dreams

Bay of Angels
—Paintings of Angels by Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

  

HYANNIS

It is early by the roses
of the iron gates
in garden plots
families gather
to eat strawberries
hearing the wind by the sea
you step out in faith
that quickly drawing on
a blue painted landscape
of the tide will sustain you
eyeing a friendly dolphin
near the edge of the shore
as you dive and swim
under rays of first light.

ALONG THE CHARLES

Along the Charles
after an hour at church
a child of eleven
hears an angelic song's litany
at St. John the Evangelist
near Harvard Square
bz searches over the river
in early dawn among the canals
for bread crumbs
on the shining rays
of a fairground
with some birds amid philodendron
suddenly hears bacchanals
and a lone sax riff’s sound
relaxes along the greensward grass
and wildflower shore
to his back a sailboat is down
near a kayak full of fraternal
Harvard companions
and Platonic friends who pass
hidden amid the sun-cast canals,
there is one black swan
turning almost in a nostalgic form
by the day's marathon runners
bz writes down salty words
with chalk on the graffiti wall
as a future free-spirit bard
painting over his courtyard hall,
and learns to draw
on carbon copy
a favorite Roualt clown.

 Magic Flute

ON JULY 12th

Leaning over the Atlantic
embracing nature
by a falling rain spiral
and a sleepless sunshine
by a shipwreck
in the home harbor
from a surprised
and capsized kayak
in an exiled mirror
back from lanterns
near the birdsong shade
of the sea's wildness of wind.

________________

BASTILLE DAY

Trying to feel
a joyful spark
on Bastille Day
like Jeanne d'Arc
only dying to pray.
 

 Elijah Touched by an Angel

JOHN CLARE'S HOUR

The secondhand
has caressed an hour
gesturing there is rain
on the way
still on the grass with
a beckoned expression of
one remaining sunflower
though caressed by the earth
on this fecund day.

_________________

THE LAST DAY OF SEXTANT

The last day
for the sky's nourishment
of blue
feeling the elements
of rain showers
along the urban roads
of the city's dust
your hands crossed
isolated from reality
with no absence
of long suffering
in the fragile mirror.

 The Falling Angel, 1947

BECAUSE

Because the voice summons me
in my wound of memory
from a millennia of visions
in seeds, dreams, saints, glories
and because my brother and sister
are not to be judged
but already have an epitaph
in this world and another
and because the moonlight hides
in the Evergreen by the Blue Hills
and the birds are wandering
amid the branches under sunshine
because all that I was and am
reporting is in the mangroves
after the rain shower
do not ask me to be silent
at afternoon prayer
or going about a pilgrimage to Sarah
at Hebron in the moonlight
in dusty sandals on our feet
and breaking the glass
at a wedding after the wine
or hearing the sea
from my Cape window
or the image of Chagall's angels
with trembling hands
nailed to a tree
I have already bathed
in the Jordan over the riverbeds
three times seen baptisms
by the midsummer pomegranates
and tasted the fruit of Eden's garden
known of the loins of my Savior
rejoicing in the wood
of the Jezreel Valley
got lost in the desert
found the Jerusalem stones
to be very handwritten on walls
of prayer wheels
expect the seraphim and cherubim
to arrive in early harvest time
in the brick crescendos
from the vessels of trumpets
with motioning lips
yet thirsty for a dig
of a lost map of the holy land
in the carried-off topography
by the open fields
wanting to rise in sunshine
of the ocean sails
reading Whitman
on a banana boat in Jamaica
with Derek Walcott,
taking an escalator
in the Moscow underground
with the Beats.

 The Little Angel (Lithograph)

SINCE

Since the sign
of silence
signaled immortality
in a spiraling portion
of awesome wisdom
we were caught up
in the freedom of green guitars
on the sailboat vessel
caught between sun showers,
since I do not wake up
without a poem and music
of six strings in my spirit
by the shady purple trellis
dreaming of a changed season
in a foreign language
and am granted to sit
under the juniper on a July dawn
despite the heaviness
of the heat I consume an orange
reading Hart Crane, Frost
and Emily Dickinson
drinking in the singing carols
feeding the wrens on the branches
whose mouths taste
my bread on the waters
as swans wander under waves
along the high tide off-shore
off the Cape,
since I'm under an umbrella
of a hot sun
you provide me with shade
of my kingdom's spirit
knowing the poet's silk
restores the kinsman's wisdom
of bardic ancient mariners
in the island home harbors
of all who are exiled
or coming to the shore
like the faithful birds
of Capistrano wishing
for a respite of bread and water
and cold milk
resting on the virtuosity
as a daughter from Spanish airs
of my Sephardic ancestors
on my grandmother's side
who came to America
as a young bride
eating dates and figs
under the wispy canopy breeze
on white curtain lace
to take a lottery chance
after the long ceremony
as a witness to Jacob's God
to accompany the ancient chants
at rivers of peace and grace
as my laughter's ink dreams
increase colors
upon an afternoon portrait
along the Pyrenees in the snow
with fleeing refugees
of Picasso moving to France
the willing angels ask
only to sit by the carob
near the hyacinth trees
since the sound of silence
explodes in a new world.

_________________

Today’s LittleNip:

NAZIM HIKMET'S CRY

in chaos
and loss
your country
in censorship
dictatorship
false worship
you crossed
the line too, Nazim
yet we belong
to Turkey
in song
to your cry.

__________________

—Medusa, with thanks to B.Z. Niditch for today's sumptuous fare!

For more about Chagall and his angels, see www.beliefnet.com/inspiration/angels/2006/01/marc-chagall-painter-of-angels.aspx

 Celebrate poetry today by going to one or more readings in

our area: Poetry at the Library at noon; 

Jennifer O'Neill Pickering and Guests at Luna’s at 8pm; 

 and Melissa Goodrum and Timothy Nutter at

Poetry in Davis, also at 8pm. Scroll down to the blue box 

(under the green box at the right) for info about these 
and other upcoming readings in our area—
and note that other events may be added at the last minute.

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.

Beyond Our Whereabouts

Al Van Horn Plays Harmonica and Performs Spoken Word

While M.C. Halie O'Ryan Plays Guitar at

El Dorado County's annual

"Cowboys and Cornbread" in Placerville, July 17, 2016

—Poems and C & C Photos today are by 
Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

 

COME ALONG, SHE SAYS

The river flows past her house. Today
I know I’ll find her with her rusty gold-pan,
working sand and gravel; swirling it
in shallow water like an incantation of hands.
This is her time away from chores
and schedules. As a fisherman releases
himself with the line he casts, here’s her sort
of healing, searching out the mountain’s
secrets. Mother-rock, erosion,
this river’s constant undammed flow.
She tries to teach me: where to pry a rock loose
to seek white sand, a nest for nuggets;
how to hold the pan, shake then dip, draw back,
let the light stuff float away. I never get it
right; it’s a touch I haven’t learned.
Already she’s down to color in her pan—
what’s heaviest, what stays
when everything else washes away: gold.
A gift from God, she says. She’ll
poke with tweezers in my swirlings, lift out
tiny specks of gold; send them home
with me in a little vial. I can’t
believe how bright, how heavy. She’s
panned enough for wedding rings to give
her grandson and his bride; a link
for life together, tractable yet strong
as love. How close she lives to the river.

 Tack & Leather Goods for Sale
 

WHICH PASS, WHICH RIVER?

I tried to find that place on the map
but it was beyond our where-
abouts, in the past before things were
leashed to their present boundaries.
You’d know it if you sailed there
on the see-through skin of remembrance,
late-summer lightning dancing
on a peak whose name you’ve forgotten.
Lost dreams of back-when. Which
watershed? The river calls itself
then and now by the same liquid syllables.
The meadow, too, keeps its magic,
blooming again every summer
after the death of snow. Late travelers
have gone to sleep forever
under September’s snow-spell.
It was your horse who saved you,
the sorrel who came to a whistle, not
to the shaking of bit against reins.

 Shinn Team of Black Percherons
 

YOU AND YOUR ANGELS

I was thinking about the drive
I used to make, along a creek they didn’t
bother to name. The twistiest way
to town, the road clinging to cutbank
like wild-grape to oak. In autumn
when those oaks settle
into remembrance of winter dark,
wild grape puts on its fall color—bright
yellow leaves festooned
thirty feet high in the trees, draped
from tree to tree, the light of all
last summer’s sun transformed to leaf
in a single shade of glory.
And again this fall, I’ll think of Monet’s
streetlamp angel. Intensity
of pure imagined light glowing
over dry creekbed that remembers
the rush of a winter’s silver
rain. Wild grape, your bright angels.

 Sheep Waiting For Mutton Bustin' Event
 

COWBOYS, CORNBREAD

Sounds like they rounded up all the kids
of the countryside in cowboy boots,
and shoo’d ‘em into the pavilion for Mutton
Bustin’ which involves wooly broncos
& small children hanging on by the fleece.
Listen to the whoops and flackery
on our way to other side of the fairgrounds, 
across lawn; crowds in shorts ‘n tank tops—
July just about too hot for cowboy garb.
We’re in old El Paso boots not easy
for walking, battered Stetsons; headed
for the stage to read our poems. You’ve
got your saga about old sorrel Blaze,
that time the first snow nearly caught
you, September, high Sierra. I overhear
“Don’t talk theory, I don’t want my brains
going out my ears.” What’s fair is fair
at the fairgrounds. After Cowboy Poetry
come the Harmonica Championships.
There’s still the Butts in Blue Jeans contest
or you can try for first-prize Mustache.
I’ll check out the blacksmith; or maybe
pan some gold—I don’t mean cornbread.

 Horse Show in the Arena

_______________________

Many thanks to El Dorado County Poet Laureate Taylor Graham for today’s fine grub, including her poem and photos of Cowboys and Cornbread, the annual county event which took place on July 17, including the Hangtown Harmonica Championship.

Taylor Graham writes that a new poetry venue has been established in El Dorado Hills. She writes, "We have a new monthly read-around, Poetry Off-the-Shelves, at the El Dorado Hills Library (7455 Silva Valley Pkwy, EDH), 1st Tuesday of the month, 5-7 pm, starting August 2." This will be in addition to the monthly Poetry Off-the-Shelves in Placerville.

TG also mentioned that she was introduced at C&C as “Poet Launderette”, which she found funny.

Today’s LittleNip is also by Taylor Graham, and it suits our recent “Friends” Seed of the Week. In this case, it describes the Three Meduskateers (D.R. Wagner, Katy Brown, and Taylor Graham) and the fun they have reading together and writing to each other’s work and posting it on Medusa's Kitchen over the years.

And speaking of friends, to see the July 20 Sacramento Bee article about recently-passed Sacramento Poet Ann Menebroker, go to www.sacbee.com/news/local/obituaries/article90685737.html
 
____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

TIME OUT OF TIME
—Taylor Graham

We were so much younger
five years ago, the three of us
in front of Vincent’s Starry Night,
smiling with those
full-face sunflower smiles
whose sun-light
beamed from all the roadsides,
our poems just recited
still filling the reading room—
“What Landscape Teaches,”
and “Gifts of the Wind.”
I stare at that
photo I’ve hardly thought about
in years, see the three of us
as we couldn’t stay,
Time forever moving. Time
out of time, a prayer.
How could we be anything but
so alive in song?

______________________

—Medusa

Taylor Graham, D.R. Wagner, Katy Brown

Starry Night Poetry Series in Lodi, CA

June, 2011

 

—Celebrate poetry! And, if you’re up in South Lake Tahoe, 
or if you're in the mood for a cool, cool road trip,

head up to tonight’s reading at Keynote Records and Books 

as Jeanine Stevens celebrates her new book, Inheritor, 7pm. 

Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box at the right) 

for info about this and other upcoming readings in our area—

and note that other events may be added at the last minute.

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.

An Interruption of Crow

Bird Flying High in Sunburst Sky

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

PALE DANCERS IN PURPLE DARK

Oh yes, my weary dancers, the
spotlight prisons you upon the stage
and you are locked in light.

Though you perform with all your might
and leap as far as you can
the spotlight widens to hold you in.

Oh syncopated dancers, you amuse your
unseen audience that never will applaud
though you can feel its smile across the dark.

You do dance well, and you respect your art.
But now you know the light you wanted
will not let you go.

Your shadows dance with you upon the floor.
But they distort
and mock your dance.

And they can leave
the circle of the light.  And they
can merge with what you cannot see.

But they are dancers too
and will not break
the frail connections to your feet.
                                                  

(first pub. in Literary Humanist, 1975)

Blue Hills, Sky
  

pale nude in sepia

sketch only
woman unfinished
caught in moment of

pure beauty
untouched by any artist
before now

one arm raised
as if
her face not yet filled in

a perfect torso
outlined from the other
sketches on the page

shapes and forms
filled in
somewhat defined

another nude
perhaps to capture
what is lost

in the first
like the beginnings of
love…   after love…

________________

POSTCARD TO A SANE FRIEND

Strange, wearing my bones,
walking among the dead
with my protective smile.

My clothing holds me together.
I check this in the mirror.
It is true.

I don’t tell anyone how
everything moves through me:
the heat, the cold, the light.

I have learned to speak
from the hollows
with a non-echoing voice.

I am thinner than yesterday.
The artificial flesh I wear
is porous and flawed with pain.

It only lasted through its warranty.
I should write to the company
and complain.

                        
(first pub. in Oregonian Verse, 1972)

 Field, Hills, Sky
 

WATERCOLOR:
DREAMER TRYING TO WAKEN

A pale wash of sky. A gray house floating above a thick
pool of sleep. Sharp green wind in the leaves. Crows and
mockingbirds—song scattered over the morning.

Vibrations in the air. Sirens making jagged lines, distance
bringing them nearer, then fading-them by in streaks of red.
A smear of dog bark.

Agitation of flowers: white, and white, and white blur. A
blue confusion of shadow. A receding figure that goes
textureless in a slow distortion of dark movement.

Something inside the sleep that refuses to awake, seeking
return to the dream—someone out of range of reality—
someone caught in two dimensions.

Something wrong here: a lake of admiration—a woman
watching her shuddering reflection—a man coming up
behind her, carrying a child.

A child-sized boat that rocks on the groping water, a
glitter of goldfish flashing underneath. The child holds
out its hands. Laughs. The reflection reaches up.

An interruption of crow cries. A drowned doll on a
pillow, covered with tears. A red rose drooping in a
waterless vase in the room’s deep, protective shadow.

A hum of gray balances the sky. Stillness settles in,
becomes permanent. With a brush-stroke of brown,
the gray house attaches to the land. The artist signs
his name.


(Tiger’s Eye Contest: 1st Place, 1993;
first pub. in Tiger’s Eye, Winter, 2003)

 Dillweed, 1 
 

THE PALE BIRD IN THE DREAM

It was the pale bird in the dream that I remembered.
It flew down a shaft of silence and found my window.

Glass broke in my mind and I shattered.

The pale bird entered my broken dream
and bled and bled its whiteness clear to the horizon.


(first pub. in The Bitter Oleander, 2002)

_________________

HALFWAY INTO THE DREAM

After Claude Monet’s Water Lilies

halfway into the dream the dreamer wakens
to a pale landscape of floating flowers . . .
swirls and swirls of monotones . . .
flowers made of sadnesses
which are the lost powers of the dreamer

_________________

STARS

each star goes out in turn,
goes
where—
oh where—and oh no,

the moon is still there,
pale in the dawn
the day comes on,
and the sun,

and
the night
goes,
but the stars

are
missing—
I saw them
last night when

the sky was black
and the stars
glittered
and seemed fastened there

Path to Hills, Sky

 

                                                                

YOU ARE THE ONE

pale down into haunted dark.
mark its edge.

press soft with your finger and thumb.
feel it resist.

grope past this flaw.
repair it with a shatter.

arranged and true,
like a bone.

you are a mender.
feel the power.

all breakage comes to you,
great hand and chance-giver.

all who are lost return their terror,
thin and difficult to measure.

do not be sad—all mockery is eager.
you are the one who will never.

yes, you are the one
who will never, never, never.
                                     

(first pub. in Celebration, 5/87)
 
________________

POEM FOR THE STRANGER

This much of loneliness I shall do unto you. Our eyes shall
never meet across the strangeness—you in your pose before
the mirror, I bent over the illusive poem. We both love,
though love is never found the way we seek it—though we
go open and inventive toward its needing.

You bend to pick up the paper at morning with your long
and tireless arm, unfolding it to its headline and stand there
reading. World-person, what of me? I live on the tag-end
of small paragraphs of inside pages too uneventful to mention. 
I am deleted, though I compose huge deeds and most of their
survivals. How could you learn of me?

I hear you sigh through walls of me. I am no house you enter,
though should you knock, I might not trust you where I hold
my breath behind the curtain. If we be murderer or friend—
whichever it falls for us to be—our fates are not entwined.
I am too busy. You are too far. We would not like each other.

And still I look at you on the other side of your eyes and my
surrealistic sleep—and do we levitate or drown, who are so dear
to each other—beyond all realness—though all is sensation and
not explicit feature. We hold each other in love and wake up lonely.

 Dillweed, 2

TIME CAN BE MEASURED

friend fool
you have already inherited
death
you have already been kissed
by its loving eyes
and signed your self
anonymous

so what is fame
but brief
and worth, at best, one
drop of rain
time can be measured
in instant or eternity
they are the same


(first pub. in Writers Showcase, 1971)

____________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam for today’s tasty poems and pix!

Our new Seed of the Week is Secrets in the Attic. Send your poems, photos and 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 more SOWs than you can shake a pencil at.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

I TAKE WORDS
—Joyce Odam

and they tumble by so fast . . .
  and I grab them . . .
     and they fall away . . .
        and they find me,
          saying,
           “Let me be poem .  .”
              and they stay . . .
                 and they play
                   with sense and
                    arrangement until
                    they like themselves,
                   one way or another . . .

___________________

—Medusa

 The Language of Conservation (Poetry in the Zoos)

Celebrate poetry by checking out the Poets House program, 

The Language of Conservation (Poetry in the Zoos) at 

 www.poetshouse.org/programs-and-events/poetry-in-the-world/poetry-in-the-zoos
If you don’t know about Poets House in New York, 

see www.poetshouse.org/. Some of Rattlesnake Press’s 

chapbooks are actually housed there.

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.

Enough Hell to Share

Victoria Mendoza Folklorico Dancers

Calif. State Fair, 2016

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

ANOTHER DAY IS PASSED BY A (VERY) MINOR POET
—James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA
 
Cheese, the crust of the earth,
The unmade bed built of dreams from last week,
Last month, last year.
Also—brand new dreams and more cheese.
Bread, a loaf fresh from the oven,
Take it from my hand.
Coffee-scented whiskers,
Hands without callouses,
And the gnarled feet of an old man.
Tomorrow is a promise never made,
And yesterday has been thankfully forgotten.
Shoulder the moment and bear its weight,
Lift it with strength and passion.
Find something to love and love it.
Rinse, repeat.

___________________

FISHING WHEN YOU ONLY HAVE ONE ARM
—James Lee Jobe

Talking your way out of death. Cutting down a tree
With a small folding pocket knife. Or seeking truth
In the world of small men. Continuing on with no strength left
And no reason to do it anyway. Living like a spider fighting
To stay alive in the draining dishwater. Sitting down at night
And not knowing where the day went; didn't you
Only just wake up? Fishing when you have only one arm.
Being angry over something ridiculous like a traffic signal
Or the wind. Surrender. Surrender. You were not born
To win or lose, but you were born; isn't that enough?

__________________

ENOUGH HELL TO SHARE
—James Lee Jobe

Hard times, some days the gravediggers just can't work fast enough,
    and there isn't enough Hell to go around.
Some people have to go without their fair share of suffering,
    and you know that just isn't right.
Don't worry about it, though; times will get better again,
    they always do, eventually.
Sooner or later there will be enough suffering for everyone,
    with enough Hell to share and some to spare.
Staying positive about things is up to us.

 Victoria Mendoza Folklorico Dancers

Calif. State Fair, 2016

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

Coyote would like
To be your friend.
But that would probably
Mean forgiving him
About the chickens.
And the garden
Gnomes too.

*
Coyote didn’t
Do it.  Said
It was wolf.
After all,
What
Are friends for?

*
As a pup, Coyote
Had friends,
Till the toy box
Was empty and
All the comic
Books read.

*
Friends said
They wanted
To take him
For a ride.
But Coyote
Was able
To find his way
Back home
Anyway.

*
“It’s a friendship
Ring,” they said.
“They make them
From plastic nowadays,”
Coyote marveled.

*
Coyote didn’t mean
To preach to you
About friendship.
Just wanted
To get a few things
Down before he
Disappeared.
As often happens
With Coyote.

 —Photo by Caschwa

A DIFFERENT SPIN
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

A recent TV show was
Talking about how the ancients
May have been visited by
Extraterrestrials

Now keep in mind
These ancients existed way back before
The “discovery” of North America
When the Earth was believed to be flat

So maybe these extraterrestrials
Really came from
Just around the corner
True Earth neighbors

Possibly from what is now known as
The Skunk Works, Area 51
A remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base,
Within the Nevada Test and Training Range

Or maybe these extraterrestrials were
What is now the intellectual property
Of one of many television
And motion picture studios

Or like suggested on the TV show
Maybe we are the extraterrestrials
And the other strange beings were simply
Here on Earth before us

  *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Yesterday I heard someone
Speaking Japanese
Which I could not understand at all
Until I heard the phrase “bye bye”

Which triggered my mind to gear up
In readiness for other
Familiar sounding expressions
That didn’t happen

I later learned that I had actually heard
The Japanese term for trade
Which is more properly expressed
In English as “buy buy”

  *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The poetry of others is sometimes
Read with the hope that the poet
Is a catch and release fisherman

Offering to readers some of those
Slippery, fleeting moments we had
Failed to etch in our memory

 Champagne with You

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

TAUGHT TO THE TUNE OF A HICK’RY STICK
—Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch, CA

Solve for x
Siphon from this stranger
My indecent skull
And after that descent
Apply a salve
Of honey and locust
Or should you prefer
Something stronger
A local anaesthetic
Dynamite perhaps
When I was schooled
Dinosaurs still roamed
And I rue my sloth
Those sylvan days

__________________

IRE
—Robert Lee Haycock

Surfeit of trains
Dearth of food for my friends
Glove box full of useless maps
Nary a glove to be found
In naught but my winding sheet
I am marooned

 Champagne with You

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

YOU ARE HEREBY CHARGED
—Robert Lee Haycock

Listen closely, my love
My significant own-ness
Instigator of cathedrals
Lighter of invisible lamps
Your feet bite vacancy
Bludgeon the ground
With muscle and calcium
At the junction of soil and skin
You are hereby charged
With being hopelessly
In love and sentenced
To untold unfelt kisses
And in my assessment
You got off lightly
Quite
Lightly

 Victoria Mendoza Folklorico Dancers

Calif. State Fair, 2016

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

_____________________

Our thanks to today’s contributors for their fine poetry and pix!

Lytton Bell reads at Sacramento’s Fremont Park tonight, 7:30pm, as part of Sac. Poetry Center’s Hot Poetry in the Park series. Then cool down on Wed. for the cool, cool poetry of Jeanine Stevens who will read in the cool, cool South Lake Tahoe air, celebrating her new book, Inheritor, at Keynote Records and Books, 7pm. (Owner Ray Hadley is a fine poet himself who has published with Rattlesnake Press and other venues.) Thursday brings (at least) three choices: Poetry at the Central Library at noon, Jennifer O’Neill Pickering and guests at Poetry Unplugged at 8pm, and Poet Melissa Goodrum with Musician Timothy Nutter at Poetry in Davis, 8pm. Saturday brings the monthly Poetic License read-around in Placerville, 2pm. Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box at the right) for info about this and other upcoming readings in our area—and note that other readings may be added at the last minute.

Note also that this coming Saturday, July 23, is the deadline for the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest: go to lincolnca.gov/Home/Components/News/News/36/2267?backlist=%2fcity-hall%2fdepartments-divisions%2flibrary for details.

We have a new photo album on Medusa’s Facebook page: Cal. State Fair at Night by Cynthia Linville, and many thanks to her for that. (For a virtual roller coaster ride, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsHVC5hcOXY for Medusa at Six Flags in Vallejo. Speaking of Hell to Share…!)

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

I WOULD DRINK TO YOU, IF I DRANK
—James Lee Jobe

If I enjoyed parties at all I might even have one,
But really I don't. Miserable happy chatter,
No one even thinking about death,
How can people enjoy themselves
If they're not miserable? To be happy
Without being depressed? What's the use
In that? If only I drank, I would drink to you...
Oh, hell; probably not.

____________________

—Medusa

 James Lee Jobe

Celebrate poetry with James Lee Jobe on his blog, 

Pablo (jamesleejobe.tumblr.com)!

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.