Medusa's Kitchen

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

NEW SLEEP

“This is working all too well,” you said.
We had been tracking for over
a month now.

“Everybody’s moving. What
are these shadows
near the edges?” you asked.

I glanced over to your center.
“Avert your eyes and change
now!” I shouted.

I saw you outlined for an instant,
naked in sweat, blessed with distress.

All my symbols got scrambled.
Nothing was meaning, except
irregularly.

New sleep had filled me
before I knew it was on
the way.
I wish you were here.
I wish you were here.

Prayer Flags, Locke

PROGRESS

We are armed and dangerous.
We gather in the cities,
Undone like glass is to sand.
We transmute our architecture
With comedy and doubts
Of ourselves, whispering until
We are frozen in an arrangement
Dragged through centuries
On all fours, jammed with meaning
And the names of men, winged,
Laurel-draped and quivering into
Economies built of stone and dry
Tinder. Carefully, we light the fires again.

______________________

APOLOGY FOR THE SEA

I made up these phantoms
And now they haunt me like
Coast redwoods lifting from dark
Ravines and billowing high above
Our heads. Oh, that dreams should
Wear such garments, that the wind
Should be hollow and play flute
Music on our bones.

The beautiful marks teeth make
On the dimmest of lamps,
Always calling for more light, another
Way to know the mother of it all.
The spinning of the days, the warp
And wefts opened up to reversal.
The weaving, a random assemblage
Of parts pulled from the sea edge
And old magazine photos, from patterns
Of shells gathered between tides,
Mixed with plastic and that unmeasured
Sound the wind makes as it drags
Everything behind it, pretending
To be a parade of boiled stars and dawn.

Shack

ANGELS AND GLACIERS

Angels in large groups are seen
Flying away from cities.
We look underneath our beds and find
Sparks of light smoldering, glints off
Silver and gold baubles left there
So they may be understood as gifts
To others, as a kind of braille to help
Describe wonder and its patterns
Through our nervous systems like
Crying children afraid to be left
This alone. We watch the angels
Depart. There is little we can do.

The glaciers have receded. So much
More land has been revealed than
We are able to understand. We are
Offered places to live, carved from stone
By huge sheets of ice. Lakes are everywhere.

There is really no place to go when
We finally realize the extent of the
Angel exodus. We look for wings, hope
We may join them, seek other ways
To understand everything that has happened.
Do you remember who I am?

(first pub. in Medusa's Kitchen)

Tire Shop, Walnut Grove

NOW IS HERE

It is right here.
It is whirling like a
fan pointed at the future.
It sucks everything into
itself and blows it out
the past. We stand
in it, the proverbial
shit about to hit.
We don’t hit anything.
The dead are all behind
us. The birds here are
newspaper. The sun is
always overhead. Noon
and midnight trade names.
This entire poem has been
sucked through. So have
you. We can still stand
here and see where
we’ve been. If we stand
here long enough someone
will sell us nostalgia.
It’ll be in a pile against
the wall. Gardeners
with gas-powered blowers
walk through, cleaning
this whole poem up.
Right now we see it—
wind rowed in the middle
of the street. Right now.

Water Dragon

PURPLE LINES

All these dark places manage
To move into the early morning,
Finally free of the smoke and cry
That keeps horning in,
Like a real thought could stand
A chance here, like a feeling
Could get through.

Like talking to you or hoping
I am talking to you.

The clouds are purple lines
Caught in time, caught up
In the fine lace that traces
Us down, graces our hearts with
Its marvelous plans, so dumb
And undone.

I came here to hold you for awhile.
I came here to watch you smile.
I came here to watch the dark play
With these dials—here we are, awhile.

Do you remember that I love you?

Pollination

Today's LittleNip:

'THOTHER DAY
( for J. B. Jones)

‘Thother day two stars were talking:
“I don’t know ‘bout this night
in, night out stuff,” sez one. “I mean,
waiting till it’s dark and all,
and then takin’ off our coats
and sittin’ up here lookin’ out
for ships and forests alike.
Seems we could have some more fun
shootin’ ‘cross the sky. Probably
get a few more ohh’s and ahh’s too.”

“You might be right," sez the other,
polishing his points and blinking his
eyes. "But I ‘spect that if we stay
where we are, everyone will know
where they are. I mean, the way
everybody’s wandering around the universe
bumping into things and gettin’ angry,
it seems a bit more sane to roll
out across a lake now and then and wind up
in some lover’s eyes somewhere. "Yep,"
he said, "I’m happy, God knows,
and I’m not shinin’ you on, either."

The first one laughed a bit and cracked a smile,
known now as the Star of Bethlehem.

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner for these fine poems and pix!

...and for this poor, sad Medusa that he found for us...

Dogwood

—Anonymous Photo

BLAKE CAME TO ME
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Blake came to me
this morning
I'm rising early
with Nasturtium
on my surrealist sax
sensing a perfume glow
covering April's
Weeping Willows
on crisp leafy fields
Blake is pouring through
his art guidebooks
as the world opens to us
in a new day's beginning,
a poet has hid
in Elysian fields
all night by a tiny fountain
under brambles of birch
feeling clover and pine combs
on his body which is filled
with notes of pocket verse
against a morning sun
so ripe in anonymity
as silver kisses on riffs
and augmented interpretations
rebound by smooth jazz
dreaming truths
only Blake interpreted for me
as played by four violins
in a Warsaw cathedral
when peace has been declared
from blue bells of angels
at a children's chorus
of Hebrew melody and memory
reading from the Book of Kings
in a mystical prayer
of a penance
as dawn spirals to love
at every chance meeting
among all natural things,
praising the night's wind
under this lighthouse
scullers are out early
here on the river beds
having a crew race
along seething wild roses

Dogwood and Hyacinth
by orange blossoms
on the vacant shore,
we hear awakened nests
along murmuring barns
of robin red breasts
with gritty song bird tongues
waiting to be fed
by their watchful mothers
and down the dusty road
are forest bears
weighed down
by giving birth as a bride
here at a feathery dawn
not every poet hears the chant
over my prayer bench
with angels on my eyelids
as St. Joan sings to us
with a simple French chorus
telling us of her vision
with her loving visage
she also sees holy things
at a future time of dove's peace,
having succumbed
to wanting a walled-in life
of Tom Merton's contemplation,
yet in a benumbed spring fever
I rise at an early hour
here in my Rose of Sharon glen
by Marigold and Passion Flower
where I play a magic flute
imagining a woodland twig
is fastened to my fingers
yet there is the loveliness
of a tune that emerges
by the butterfly springs
through God's thorn bushes
and blood bright Lavender
hearing the mystical laughter
of a water-bearer song
from the deepest sleep
of sweet William Blake
who is just outside
our misty glass window sill
if we will only listen.

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to B.Z. Niditch for his fine contribution to our Sunday!

—Photo by Stacie Sherman, Orangevale, CA

BACK OF THE CLOSET
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

You’d think there would be
Sounds, odd noises there
In the dark. But no, it’s
Generally quiet, maybe
Too quiet, like after
The drums stop
In the B movie.

Sometimes I’ll find
The flashlight,
The energy, the courage
To check it out back there.

Always the same—nothing
New these days:
A Franciscan monk’s robe,
Burgundy velvet dinner
Jacket, black leather
Jacket (Literary critic
Style, not biker), opera
Cape, top hat, bag
Of wands, cowboy
Boots, battered Stetson.

Things I wanted to be once,
Or thought I did. Or maybe
Should have been. Or—
Who knows—can be yet.

—Photo by Stacie Sherman

FINN
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Ted Finn, in all my innocent ignorance,
I might’ve thought your warlike name a Finnish one,
yet truth dawns translator-late: were you named under Irish sun,
did all your poetry pulse to a harper’s warlock legend,
an Erin dance?

Oh I remember your unamplified voice
raised lusty, outrageous pranks of open mic.
Long swept into dark locked closets the memory spike
and pikethrust peculiar words; yet in the choice

of all you boomed out senza microphone,
legend and lore and knowledge of poetry,
so often an undersong dimly heard in the free
free verse and slam and projectile pun and groan.

Unheard because unlistened for?…Go slow,
my heart, be not a judge, but come to know.
Go slow, my heart, slow down and come to know.

And when I ever do come to know, though slow
my heart to go with my oftentime slowness of head,
I will comprehend, never the leader but always the one led:

oh once or twice did we talk away from the mic,
slow enough of Neruda or Rilke or someone,
someone famous you made more famous to me,
for you worked all day in a library.

Extraordinary your poetry, voice and swagger, to one
who thought librarians denizens not of sun
but of shadow, stacks of books, lip-fingering shush.
Now, barricaded by infinite stacks, call numbers,
bindings dust-coated, from you and intimacy,

I throw over my shoulders the mantle hush
who knew not enough of you in the time we had to go slow.
Even now I too slowly know.

—Photo by Stacie Sherman

THE CRICKET SANG
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

From the back corner of her closet
the cricket sings background music of leafy
meadow to this cornered world
he’s come to—a cricket rubbing its live wings
together from a pair of snow-white
mukluks, apparition of big daddy bear
released at last out of arctic winter.
From the ceiling hangs a stole, a coffle of red
fox-heads like so many former lovers;
it hangs over a merry xmas sweater worn once
forlorn, or so the explanation goes.
The cricket simply keeps on singing breezy.
She thought to clean her closet
out, but can’t part with the memories.

_______________________

PRESENT PERFECT
—Taylor Graham

There’s a hint of montane meadow and river-
bottom mud clinging to vibram of my
hiking boots in the far back corner of the closet —
places this puppy’s never been.
What scents is she cataloguing as she
sniffs the space of her blind puppyhood?

Most of her siblings are gone to homes
of their own; the others, scuffling in the kitchen.
She set out on her own—hall
to bedroom, closet that smells old and close,
familiar and worn. She’s vacuuming
the rug, inhaling memories from each crevice.

Meditative stance. Now she traces
the outline where her mother slept beside
our bed; follows invisible scent trails
to the sliding glass door,
puppy-route to their first fresh-air
excursion, sun almost too bright for their eyes.

At last, she finds her way back down the hall
and sits quietly by the entry.
Does she know, tomorrow a stranger will clip
his leash to her collar?
Is it in the nature of a puppy to think
of past and future? Her unknown life.

—Photo by Taylor Graham

SCOUT THE GARDEN HELPER

does battle with the drip-line, snaky black
creature that gurgles and spurts furtive pee.
He digs among clover that it feeds. He’s
a breath-powered blower to wind-row
the weddings—all this overwintered dis-
array of green.

I put him outside the fence. He finds thistle
I uprooted and tossed out for the sheep;
it bears my scent. I tell him “good seek-
mine!” This could prove useful training, if
in my overwintered disarray I should mis-
place my keys.

—Taylor Graham

_____________________

FLUTE OF THE BONE
—Taylor Graham

Scout grabs with too-sharp puppy teeth so I yelp high-pitched as a hurt bird, hold my wrist limp, a broken wing. He stops—looks up at me so his ears stand straight poised in air. Will he grow into those ears, ancestral, alert? He’s bored with the bone his mother buried under my pillow; the tug-toy I dangle before him. He wants something real and alive in his jaws. Knuckle of the universe he longs to taste, legbone he’d gnaw to its marrow. What beautiful scrimshaw teeth make. He’s hungry for the world the way his mother teases him—
open-mouth snatching at sky, dog-smile of praise for the great ungraspable. She’s teaching her child the tooth-grin that never bites down hard, how to hold life without hurting. At bedtime by dimmest lamp, separated by wire-weave of his crate, they spar with yips and growls floating on wind unmeasured through the screen-door, mother to pup and back again, generation to generation.

—Photo by Taylor Graham

Today's LittleNip:

On Gibbons Street in Sacramento
   somebody put up a sign about their missing African grey parrot
   it has added “needs meds”
   (possibly for depression or other psych problems birds develop as house pets)
   and offering a sizable reward
   I hope this parrot wasn’t stolen
   but somebody “liberated” it
   Or else the parrot decided to sneak off and fly away
   finding a way to fly to Africa to be with its own kind
   to not die all alone as did Alex the grey parrot at Harvard at age 31

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

_________________________

—Medusa, with many thanks to today's fine, fine contributors!

—Photo by Stacie Sherman

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

OLD SHOES

Somewhere an old shoe
lieth under a bed—
all dusty
and lost
from its other—
lonely as someone
dead
and searching still
for its mate
in a cadaverous closet
and making death
real for the
abandoned shoe.

____________________

CLOSET MUSING

There’s my good black dress
way at the back
covered with a blouse.
Why keep it? It’s so old.
It doesn’t fit. Its shoulders
have a permanent crease
where it has hung for years.
Dry cleaning is not practical
for my life style. I don’t know
anyone who’d want it,
though it cost a pretty penny
in its day. Is that why
I always give in at the last
to some nostalgic whim
and leave it hanging,
hard to reach
in back of everything?
I used to wear it dancing
with my rhinestones
and my black high heels.
Look at it now, all crushed
and filled with dust.
Pathetic! Next time
I gather stuff to give away
I think I’ll give it up.
I’ll never wear it anywhere.
Oh, mirror, look
at these arms, these hips.

(first pub. in Poets’ Forum Magazine, 1996)

OF FABRIC

The luxuriance of cloth with its soft folds—I am dressed
in seasons of sunlight and rain. I rustle when I move. My
sleeves reach the floor.

            ~~~

I am invisible to the mirror, which wears its own garment.
I turn one way; it turns another. We are a dance of separation.

            ~~~

Behind us another mirror closes it eyes. We cry reunion to
ourselves. The other mirror opens its eyes and lets us in.
Now we are three.

            ~~~

The fourth mirror is in the closet of the dream; long torn
dresses hang there, the favorite ones in the center. The back
of the closet is the mirror.

            ~~~

I go through the mirror, which closes behind me. I am in
the hall of vanity and illusion. I laugh and cry with the same
sound. There are no more mirrors

_______________________

THE ANGER
(After "The History of Anger, 2006" by Skinner)

Stuffed in the closet, a lifetime of hurts and angers.
Can’t shut the door now. The ones at the back
are suffocating. The ones at the front have no room.

And still more rage is supposed to fit. The suffocation
spreads, so the room grows larger to give the closet
room, and the house grows larger to accommodate

the scale. But nothing the mind does alleviates the
hoarding which can’t surrender a single grievance
lest the closet have no more use as a place to hold

the collection: every lost love, every failure, every
law of self broken. How can you still reach in to find
the one you need to polish and treasure. The heart

is about to burst. Two monkeys quarrel in the head.
Everything is mirrored and remembered. The house
is a waddle now—so large it doesn’t even fit itself.

RULES FOR LOVERS (Pantoum)

There are seven rules to remember:
Be perfect or you will not be loved.
I have a flaw.
I keep forgetting.

Be perfect or you will not be loved.
Be young and you will live forever.
I keep forgetting.
There are mouths in my closet.

Be young and you will live forever.
Be beautiful and no one will ever tire of you.
There are mouths in my closet.
Death is eating all my blouses.

Be beautiful and no one will ever tire of you.
If you are virtuous, you may wear white clothing.
Death is eating all my blouses.
I get so cold in the winter.

If you are virtuous, you may wear white clothing.
Be sensual and you will never lack for lust.
I get so cold in the winter.
My own hands cannot warm my breasts.

Be sensual and you will never lack for lust.
If patient, Luck and Fortune will bring you their trust.
My own hands cannot warm my breasts.
There is a false reflection in the mirror.

If patient, Luck and Fortune will bring you their trust.
Be cunning so as to gather all forces.
There is a false reflection in the mirror.
I am counting my divorces.

Be cunning so as to gather all forces.
I have a flaw.
I am counting my divorces.
There are seven rules to remember.

(first pub. in Piedmont Literary Review, l99l)

SUFFOCATIONS

I am so cold. I pull on endless dresses. I pull on sleeves
and dark skirts and become small enough to fit in all
of them, until my closet is empty—and it shivers—and
it is only a naked room now, full of whispering.

I am still cold—slipping into dreams which wrap around
me in different textures and patterns—each night I wear
their costumes, and cannot get out of them. There are so
many, and I keep getting caught in all their folds.

______________________

OCCUPATION: HOUSEWIFE

1.      She comes through the tugging children
and the quiet man drinking Scotch
and the long days and nights
crowded with kisses and quarrels.
The summer is upon her like an illness.

2.     She is separating and fading like
a jigsaw puzzle put together
by moist, incomprehensive hands.
Spaces move between her, and in them,
her husband and children
are living their safe lives.

3.      She is trying to hold together
till she has thought herself whole again,
but her eyes are surrealistic as
the mirrors she has broken every
time she smiles or cries.

4.      (She puts them in the closet with
the birds where they break each other’s
images in the dark. Love asks her
what that sound is
and she says, mice.)

5.       She drinks in the afternoon
when yesterday or tomorrow winds her
as tight as a clock; slow, deep
glasses of something sane and dark;
something to say to the telephone
when she is as easy to open
as a lock.

(first pub. in Caryatic, Volume 11, No. 2)

BRIDAL

I misread you. I thought you said love,
I thought you said forever.
I loved your words, believed you—

your touch like a promise.
I said, marry me—You said, I will.
I will, I will, after.

I was left with your words, the
burn of your touch, the lie of your
promise. I don’t believe in words.

After you left,
I put my white dress away.
My closet fills with it.

My mirror laughs at me.
Touch stays, like an admonition,
does not wash off, scolds like a mother.

I mourn what I lost, the sanctity
of trust, the stars from the eyes
—that river from the heart.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

ON THE DAY AFTER DEATH,

We picked up all our dark dresses
from the floor.

We hung them in gaping closets.

We bore into
the burning eyes of the mirror.

We listened to the morning sirens
in their tardy urgencies.

We called name after name
into the fading echo.

We watched a silent crow
glide past our windows.

_______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Joyce Odam for this lovely collection of poems and photos, and a note that our new Seed of the Week celebrates the season with Moms. Send your poems, photos and artwork about moms of any species (or any other subject) to kathykieth@hotmail.com/.

Goose Family

—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis

MY MOTHER WOULD BE A FALCONRESS
—Robert Duncan

My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
where I dream in my little hood with many bells
jangling when I’d turn my head.

My mother would be a falconress,
and she sends me as far as her will goes.
She lets me ride to the end of her curb
where I fall back in anguish.
I dread that she will cast me away,
for I fall, I mis-take, I fail in her mission.

She would bring down the little birds.
And I would bring down the little birds.
When will she let me bring down the little birds,
pierced from their flight with their necks broken,
their heads like flowers limp from the stem?

I tread my mother’s wrist and would draw blood.
Behind the little hood my eyes are hooded.
I have gone back into my hooded silence,
talking to myself and dropping off to sleep.

For she has muffled my dreams in the hood she has made me,
sewn round with bells, jangling when I move.
She rides with her little falcon upon her wrist.
She uses a barb that brings me to cower.
She sends me abroad to try my wings
and I come back to her. I would bring down
the little birds to her
I may not tear into, I must bring back perfectly.

I tear at her wrist with my beak to draw blood,
and her eye holds me, anguisht, terrifying.
She draws a limit to my flight.
Never beyond my sight, she says.
She trains me to fetch and to limit myself in fetching.
She rewards me with meat for my dinner.
But I must never eat what she sends me to bring her.

Yet it would have been beautiful, if she would have carried me,
always, in a little hood with the bells ringing,
at her wrist, and her riding
to the great falcon hunt, and me
flying up to the curb of my heart from her heart
to bring down the skylark from the blue to her feet,
straining, and then released for the flight.

My mother would be a falconress,
and I her gerfalcon raised at her will,
from her wrist sent flying, as if I were her own
pride, as if her pride
knew no limits, as if her mind
sought in me flight beyond the horizon.

Ah, but high, high in the air I flew.
And far, far beyond the curb of her will,
were the blue hills where the falcons nest.
And then I saw west to the dying sun--
it seemd my human soul went down in flames.

I tore at her wrist, at the hold she had for me,
until the blood ran hot and I heard her cry out,
far, far beyond the curb of her will

to horizons of stars beyond the ringing hills of the world where
the falcons nest
I saw, and I tore at her wrist with my savage beak.
I flew, as if sight flew from the anguish in her eye beyond her sight,
sent from my striking loose, from the cruel strike at her wrist,
striking out from the blood to be free of her.

My mother would be a falconress,
and even now, years after this,
when the wounds I left her had surely heald,
and the woman is dead,
her fierce eyes closed, and if her heart
were broken, it is stilld

I would be a falcon and go free.
I tread her wrist and wear the hood,
talking to myself, and would draw blood.

LATE SUMMER
—Mark Strand
1

When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from her cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her dress,
stands near the house
and watches the seepage of late light
down through the sedges,
the last gray islands of cloud
taken from view, and the wind
ruffling the moon’s ash-colored coat
on the black bay.

2

Soon the house, with its shades drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud heaving
and the pines, frayed finials
climbing the hill, will seem to graze
the dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the starlanes,
the endless tunnels of nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour’s spell,
she will think how we yield each night
to the soundless storms of decay
that tear at the folding flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner of
if not the conditions of love that brought her to this.

3

My mother will go indoors
and the fields, the bare stones
will drift in peace, small creatures—
the mouse and the swift—will sleep
at opposite ends of the house.
Only the cricket will be up,
repeating its one shrill note
to the rotten boards of the porch,
to the rusted screens, to the air, to the rimless dark,
to the sea that keeps to itself.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
It is much too late.

FAWN'S FOSTER-MOTHER
—Robinson Jeffers

The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels 

With her meagre pale demoralized daughter.

 Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun 

And saying that when she was first married 

She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon. 

(It is empty now, the roof has fallen 

But the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoods

 Have all been cut down, the oaks are standing;  

The place is now more solitary than ever before.)

 'When I was nursing my second baby

 My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake 

And brought it; I put its mouth to the breast 

Rather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies. 

Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler, 

Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach. 

I had more joy from that than from the others.'

Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad road 

With market-wagons, mean cares and decay. 

She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skin 

Soon to be shed from the earth's old eye-brows, 

I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries, 

The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.

MAMA, COME BACK
—Nellie Wong

Mama, come back.
Why did you leave
now that I am learning you?
The landlady next door
how she apologizes
for my rough brown skin
to her tenant from Hong Kong
as if I were her daughter,
as if she were you.

How do I say I miss you
your scolding
your presence
your roast loin of pork
more succulent, more tender
than any hotel chef's?

The fur coat you wanted
making you look like a polar bear
and the mink-trimmed coat
I once surprised you
on Christmas morning.

Mama, how you said 'importment'
for important,
your gold tooth flashing
an insecurity you dared not bare,
wanting recognition
simply as eating noodles
and riding in a motor car
to the supermarket
the movie theater
adorned in your gold and jade
as if all your jewelry
confirmed your identity
a Chinese woman in America.

How you said 'you better'
always your last words
glazed through your dark eyes
following me fast as you could
one November evening in New York City
how I thought 'Hello, Dolly! '
showed you an America
you never saw.

How your fear of being alone
kept me dutiful in body
resentful in mind.
How my fear of being single
kept me
from moving out.

How I begged your forgiveness
after that one big fight
how I wasn't wrong
but needed you to love me
as warmly as you hugged strangers.

THE CONSECRATING MOTHER
—Anne Sexton

I stand before the sea
and it rolls and rolls in its green blood
saying, 'Do not give up one god
for I have a handful.'
The trade winds blew
in their twelve-fingered reversal
and I simply stood on the beach
while the ocean made a cross of salt
and hung up its drowned
and they cried Deo Deo.
The ocean offered them up in the vein of its might.
I wanted to share this
but I stood alone like a pink scarecrow.

The ocean steamed in and out,
the ocean gasped upon the shore
but I could not define her,
I could not name her mood, her locked-up faces.
Far off she rolled and rolled
like a woman in labor
and I thought of those who had crossed her,
in antiquity, in nautical trade, in slavery, in war.
I wondered how she had borne those bulwarks.
She should be entered skin to skin,
and put on like one's first or last cloth,
envered like kneeling your way into church,
descending into that ascension,
though she be slick as olive oil,
as she climbs each wave like an embezzler of white.
The big deep knows the law as it wears its gray hat,
though the ocean comes in its destiny,
with its one hundred lips,
and in moonlight she comes in her nudity,
flashing breasts made of milk-water,
flashing buttocks made of unkillable lust,
and at night when you enter her
you shine like a neon soprano.

I am that clumsy human
on the shore
loving you, coming, coming,
going,
and wish to put my thumb on you
like The Song of Solomon.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

MOTHER
—Lola Ridge

Your love was like moonlight

 turning harsh things to beauty,

 so that little wry souls

 reflecting each other obliquely

 as in cracked mirrors . . . 

beheld in your luminous spirit 

their own reflection,

 transfigured as in a shining stream, 

and loved you for what they are not.  

You are less an image in my mind 

than a luster I see you in gleams 

pale as star-light on a gray wall . . .

 evanescent as the reflection of a white swan 

shimmering in broken water.

________________________

—Medusa, hoping you enjoyed Katy Brown's photos and this collection of well-known poems about Moms...

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
—Photos by Stacie Sherman, Orangevale, CA

MAY I

May I say a line
of my poem
as the Elms cease
to shiver
in my back yard
near the Bay
shading my eyes
of green, blue
in the middle of the sea
as a fisherman
in a Greek cap
unloosens the anchor
with his two strong hands
on my orange kayak
surviving the winter storms
bowing to the winds
circling our horizon
of swaying grey shadows
suddenly his voice rises
as he translates my poem
in his Greek tongue
and fixed sparkling stare
as he captures a cache
of salmon for our dinner
he prepares with ouzo.

EVERYONE FEARS

Today everyone fears
the greater powers

on earth
they cower as kings

on ships of state
they watch continents

motioning to our rowboats
as undercover waves

with hard-line lips
over the ocean passengers

ordering whom they wish
to manipulate

even mapping the censorship
between words of two mates

who like Hart Crane
just want love to communicate,

but what is a creator of poetry
in the fickle fate of theory

of today's unknown poet
a conduit of reason and rhyme

the unknown poet of our years
who sails past all time and season

by the floating sunshine
in his work-out body

waiting on once-sublime words
to anchor his or her literary weight

when there is no Byron, Pushkin,
or Shelley around to elucidate

no Sappho, Dickinson,
Chatterton or Whitman to date.

CARNIVAL IN HUNGARY

We wrote of iamb
and anapest
while roasting lamb
in Budapest
translating a poet
unfolding a Gypsy melody
to play on his old fiddle,
he and his divine wife
a new bride with dark eyes
liked me a little
as I played second violin
to their first jazz riffs
in the middle style
of an Elysian field
yet I yielded to none
of the arrows of St. Sebastian
in the archery contest
held outside the tent city
holding up my swift arrow
to hit the target and string
in my homemade bow
with a prayer to God
the successor to Apollo,
to whom I lyrically sing
my musical gift
wanting to be gracious
for the huge size of pots
circling over the covers
on this generous open table
of goulash and Parisian wine
we could not wish for more
as we dine in the sunshine
in Hungarian informality
here at the arts festival
at carnival time.

____________________

WHISPERS

Whispers cannot be heard
by those authorities
who identify you
as abiding like a songbird
in harbored secret words
hung on your cage
needing to be set free
at your young age
reassured only in shadows
to those who must murmur
at the emperor's clothes
and blinded by a lonely stare,
yet soon we will get our feet
wet in the afternoon rain
and be able to laugh and sing
for it is only just and fair
to escape our nest, lair or bed
to rest under the sun
and share our bread.

INFLUENCES

A student asks me
for my early influences

It is a confluence
of masks and sequences,

At ten I read John Very
telling me of the heavenly

then the Puritan Milton
with his aerial quality

and visionary John of the Cross
who loved a dark night absolutely

then at eleven in the park turned
to Ashbery's symmetry

I thought up on his pages
a language's long chemistry

then in easier French
read Rimbaud's songs to my ear

on a bench yearned for sound
turned to T.S. Eliot and Pound

Sought to be modern
and fed on W.H. Auden

and away from a patriarch's path
met Sexton and Sylvia Plath.

_______________________

NEPAL, April 26, 2015

As if mountains fall
when the earth shakes
over Nepal
as one wakes again
and all life will stall
in the fountains of rain
and for a time breaks all.

_______________________

ITALIAN LIBERATION DAY

Partisan resistance
realizing what fascism does
your small bands who fought
brought honor and buzz
from your hands and cause
and taught us
seventy-five years ago
that one must disobey
all of racism's laws,
as you know.

HAROLD BLOOM'S CANON

Is there any more room
in Harold Bloom's canon
from a bold pantheon
of Milton, Dickens
and Dickinson
or having their own champion
like in a song of Campion
all sensing they are a conduit
for the divine as a poet
even if they do not believe
like Chesterton
in the Word's highest power,
they loose a partisan attitude
in their best invention's hour
being fit in their literary mode
of their wronged convention
sharing at least a Party's ode
on their own code's pretension
of an arbitrary mode
that would eventually flower
from their own sex or sects
by an arty sectarian guest
reading for a librarian's hour.

______________________

WHERE THE LIVING ARE

Where the living are
in the death March
yet it is now April
and we choose life
at this moment
with love feeling fragile
and vulnerable
as stones tossed
into the Bay
from my outstretched hand
as a prayer
on days of gratitude
send us your rhythm
of a grateful beatitude
on mountains of transfiguration
renew our siren of creation
to the frenzied open heaven
of warring angels,
save us in song
on your Christ eyelids
hidden in the Word
from your world
of mercy.

REMEMBERING

On Mother's Day
a time for remembering
from snowy November
to flowering May
asking her wise advice
is understood
to think twice,
as our eyes awaken
from a river bed
in woodland's evening
by blackbird's red wings
we recall
what Mom has said,
picturing her
gathering wild roses
from the rock garden
reminding us of Mary
in our middle-aged mind
from a quattrocento painting
by Masaccio,
how parts of our memory
on our own mirror endure
in or out church doors,
we poets search
like Virgil, Dante, Milton
for a lost paradise
here in conduit of the sun
near the water and springs
as kindly art and nature
transform and pardon us
as a new born bird sings.

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

MARIE PONSOT'S LECTURE

Unique understanding
of John Donne
where body, soul, spirit
share as one
with the metaphysical Word
as a bird watcher
catches the sun
leaning on an Elm
in the April's spring air.

_________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's master chefs, and a note that there is lots going on tonight in NorCal poetry; be sure to scroll down to the blue box (under the green box) for all the news!

Meercat Mom

—Anonymous Photo

GUANERI'S GHOST
—Loch Henson, Diamond Springs, CA

She fled home at seventeen with  

precious little: the clothes on her

back  and a can of peaches, a can opener and 

a bedspread. She left the violin.

She’d been invited to rehearse and join

the Junior Symphony, an opportunity that 

she craved, but could not quite wrangle

 the details into alignment.

The story of her dream set aside

 for the necessities of

 an escape leaves me with the hope

 that Guarneri’s ghost will take mercy

 on my mother and help her find a

 violin suitable to bring forth

 the music inside her now.

Alpaca Mom

—Anonymous Photo

LIFTS HER LIKE A CHALICE
—Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

The weekday Mass at 6 a.m.
brings the old folks out
from bungalows
around the church.
They move like caterpillars
down sidewalks,
some with canes,
some on walkers.

Father Doyle says the Mass
and then goes back to the rectory
to care for his mother
who cannot move or speak
because of a stroke.

And every Sunday at noon
when the church is full,
Father Doyle, in full vestments,
wheels his mother
in a lump
down the middle aisle
and lifts her like a chalice
and places her in the front pew
before he ascends to the altar.

Sometimes at night,
when his mother's asleep,
Father Doyle comes back to the Church
and rehearses in the dark
three hymns she long ago
asked him to sing at her funeral.

He practices the hymns
because the doctor said
she could go at any time.
When that time comes,
he doesn't want to miss a note.
The last thing she ever said was
"Son, I'll be listening."

Loki and Child

—Photo by Taylor Graham

HOW SHE BECAME A MOTHER
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

The truck stopped. On leash they led her through a high gate, past trash cans. Intense black and red, he circled fast—a dance she didn’t know. At last, back in the truck and driven home, she put him out of mind. Her belly swelled. Restless, she wished to dig a nest in the bedroom floor. One by one the puppies dropped out, squealing at daylight, mewling for milk. She was in love eight times over, each soft pink mouth, the kneading paws, eyes like blind blue moons.
*
A fault line slipped in her brain—between snuggling her babies drunken with milk, and the shock of those babes growing teeth. Her first time at this job, how does she know to leap the shifting line and keep her balance? This too-bold pup—she grabs him by the scruff, takes his whole face in her jaws and gives it a squeeze. He squeals, shakes his head, trots off to see if he can rattle some more tectonic plates.
*
I carry one puppy out the gate to deliver him away. New master, new life. How the mother-dog—my dog—hangs with draggled eyes. I imagine that tug, like pup at teat. No words. She’d keep all of them, each one until they sucked her dry. Of eight, we’ll choose just one for her, for me; pluck it from this wild and heaving crying puppy-mass; take long walks with it, look it in the eye, learn its singular language.
*
Scrupulous as worry, rummaging under cushions for his secrets—somewhere he left the toy that squeaks like a wounded rabbit. She’d be less crazy if her remaining pup didn’t play at war, swallowing bone chips instead of bullets. Does she watch him hold his breath as if dead; dream one stone down his gullet, then another? In his sleep he chases dragons. Beyond her sight the sand-flats erode. Does she dare to think of never letting go? Her jaws around his head, gentle as love.

Scout

—Photo by Taylor Graham

Today's LittleNip:

THINGS BETTER LEFT ALONE
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

Though she was blind,
Grandma was yet one
More person I
Could not beat at chess.

_______________________

—Medusa, thanking today's chefs for their Moms poems!

Foxy Mom

—Anonymous Photo

Reflection of Bridge

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

LONG HANDS

Morning has long hands filled with rain.
Its mouth is full of hissing
Down the street, dull gray reflections
On duller window panes.

Morning here is like morning in
The mouth of fog. It becomes
Hard to tell what one is going to do
With such vast grayness, such
Sameness fondling the day.
Load up the car, drive away.

Every city looks the same.
Everyone’s name has the same
Tonality, a breakdown of fiddle
Music and flat-picked guitars.

A single gull carves an arc
In the mist. It is only visible
For a moment. One value exchanges
Itself for a lighter one, then a darker
One, fog moving close to the ground.
Then, finding no place to rest, closes.

(first pub. in Medusa's Kitchen, 2012)

Locomotive Shops, Sacramento

PENULTIMATE

I’ve got this house in the desert.
They won’t find us there.
You can wear a rose in your hair.
Tomorrow is close, still small, still inert.

You showed me the knife blade.
It almost glowed when I touched it.
Who was going to believe we were here?
We shredded our clothing as it got darker.

We stood on either side of the window
So we could see the streets. A patrol
Was walking slowly up the avenue
With their dogs and their rifles
Cradled in their arms like something dead.

The streetlight across the way would flicker
Then go out for a few minutes.
That was our signal to leave.
I grabbed your forearm and pulled
You near to me. "Listen, this is all
We have left. We will meet on the other
Side of the river. Stay close to the buildings."

When I saw the video later, I couldn’t help
But notice that you were biting your lips hard.
I put my hands on the screens. I could feel you
In the flickering light. Things would be okay.
The children told me you would be here in morning.
I kissed the back of my hands. They were trembling so.

(appeared recently in another form in New Flash Fiction Review)

Carquinez Strait (Through Train Window)

THE FREEDOM OF PROMISES

I no longer have the freedom
Of promises. I want you
To roll across my body
With your kisses and your
Breathing and your hands of light.

Come here. Let us stand
At the window a moment.
The night will know us.

The moon was lifting itself
Away from me and the windows
Next to my bed and I was swept
With a deep longing, full of quiet
And a clock ticking. Not too far away.

Tower Bridge from the Train, Sacramento

BREAKING THE SEAL

I always thought no one could
Touch me here where I
Am able to stand and speak this way.
It was a prayer.

I held a broken circle in my hand.
I would walk through the garden
Holding onto it as hard as I could.

I was never that delicate.
I could never control what
I imagined was true love.
This is it. I’m sure. Isn’t it?

You became a flock of birds.
Swallows in the last light of day
Swirling and darting through my bloodstream.

Mikey and Eva's Front Porch

ELECTROCUTED

I live alone.
I loved you when you told me
That you didn’t know me at all,
That you didn’t expect to find
Me standing at your door, knowing
What abandonment meant to both of us.

It was like a season of the year
Pouring out behind both of us.
You could see it and touched
Me. I had thought that I was dreaming.

I heard the chords beginning
To fall into place behind me.
I looked into your eyes.

For one long moment I was there.
Still, I could not lift my arms
From fear and ideas I did not even own.

If you stay here with me, you can hear
The gunshots and see the flights
The birds make across the moonlit air.

I have no instructions for you.
I will hold your hand.
We can walk through these
Doors understanding only
That we will remain fire.

The beast will not recognize us,
It belongs to the rooms
Where all of the music is made by strings.
That creates a buzzing in its head.

We shuffle our feet
As if we actually had feet.

This is a song of ghosts.
I’ve gone and opened my mouth
Once again. I can no longer
Say I’m sorry. Forgive me.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

IN THE WIND

The trees in the wind
Have mouths and their branches
Scream into the air.

Even the birds are afraid.
They sit on the edge of buildings
Staring into an unknown.

______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner for today's fine poems and pix, including some from his recent train trip to S.F. And check out www.sacbee.com/news/local/history/article20472876.html for yesterday's Sacramento Bee article about Locke (D.R.'s home) and its 100th anniversary celebration today.

—Ink Drawing by Breanna Chan
(Courtesy of D.R. Wagner)

Jane Blue's mother, Jane Eshleman Conant,

at the Abbot murder trial, Oakland, 1955

DREAMS OF MY MOTHER
—Jane Blue, Sacramento

She shows me a room in her chalet––
the bed, the high pine ceiling
fit for a giant; a headboard

padded with golden cloth; a stream
opens in it, then a waterfall, then
a torrent she can no longer ignore.

I'm high in foothills, no trees, just orange
dirt around the house and snakes
of roads coiled below. I call my mother

on a black rotary phone to come
and get me. "I'm afraid you'll get lost,"
I say. I myself am hopelessly lost.

I'm sitting at a long picnic table;
someone comes to tell me my mother
has died and I burst into tears.

Suddenly she is there beside me
tall and silver-haired, and I say:
Why did no one tell me you aren't dead.

______________________

THE MOTHER AS KOMODO DRAGON
—Jane Blue

They call me Ora, mouth. I am solitary
I am lizard. I am scaly and large.

I am afraid of nothing, except the scream
of the volcano, the smell of fire, and you tourists.

When the man wants me, he tramps out
of his hiding place on the other side of the island.

He presses his snout against me, flicks his tongue.
He is asking a question. Am I receptive?

If the answer is no, I inflate my great hinged neck
and hiss. Would you like to hear me?

Unlike your man, he takes no for an answer.
When the answer is yes––when volcano, fire

and you threaten our very existence,
I lay 20 or 30 eggs in an abandoned turkey nest.

No one ever asked me why I had so many children.
No one ever asked me if they were all his.

No one ever asked me why I move from place to place.
No one ever asked me to join the PTA.

No one ever blamed me for eating some of the eggs.
No one ever blamed me for my shark teeth

or for the deadly bacteria that lives in my mouth.
No one ever blamed me for preferring solitude.

No, not at all. They said it was my nature
and placed me on the endangered species list.

(first pub. in Mamazine, 2005)

__________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Jane Blue for today's fine Mother's Day fare!

—Anonymous Photo

Grace

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch, CA

GOLD SPUN ELEPHANTS
—Rhony Bhopla, Sacramento

Mini gongs, heaving ceiling hung bells
Bharatnatyam dancers flood the milk soaked floor

       Mother: binds sari, sky blue silk, gold spun elephants
       I hide between soft ruffles—forehead against her knees

Dances spin about this musk filled morning
and soft child hands, simply follow arcs to song

       Mother: mixes liquid butter, bubble pop vat
       her arms pull her body everywhere with the ladle

Dancing children sweep the landscape, darting
from statue to adorned statue in temple

       Mother: Her silver anklets summon me
       eyes directing, watching her child stand awkwardly

Free from the scene, I move with no cadence
palms together, open, then over fire

       Mother: washes my face with its heat, all eyes closed
       into the bronze plate, a coin falls, clink—one less thing

Love, soon to extinguish the butter lamp
we are severed again, both pushed-pulled

       Mother: dips our hands into saffron blushed water
       it splatters us—nature reddens our lips

Word Key:

Bharatnatyam = Indian classical dance
sari = 6-yard fabric worn by women from India

Happy Tree

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

BAX: WB AND IRELAND
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

“The Wanderings of Oisin”: one quarter-turn
of the cover you make strain from its spine,
bulging the inelastic dust jacket. Next,
a quickly creasing turn past table of contents.
Now, young Bax, you are lost, oh, lost entirely
in epic headlong chaos, spearsmen and riding,
barley, honey and wine in and out of their proper
barbarian bowls. Forever captured for rapture:
kidnapped, beamed up to the island we now know
is an alien space vessel. Soon you will rise and go, and go

to Donegal, to Connemara, go to Aran, go
to Cork and Carna and Dublin. You will know
in the flesh the bard of that most special verse-legend,
you’ll meet the woman of his frustration and desire.
The great man will even praise you for a poem
of the Easter Rising—all this lovely approbation
from Yeats, from Æ, from Padraic, from composer
friend Moeran, so many men; and it’s true,

you’re a good and masculine elf-friend
to men. You identify with Cuchúlain, drawn sword
swordblading against the humankind ocean:
indifference to genius, rapture, and unsolemn instinct.
And Cuchúlain is WB himself, and the sword is words; but
what really softens your heart is the egret swivel
and torque of the graceful neck, the gliding-winged hips,
of a girl. And not even this the melting that takes you
farthest: witness your permanent and total dissolve

into a liquid medium of late twilight over West-of-Ireland
ripple and raindrip—so shot through with gold
and silver intonations, you could write it in short score,
the infinitely far language of a mother beyond
your lovely human mother: matriarch of your spirit-race.

Just one trace element in you, one wee fragment
of peat lodged like a microchip in your heart,
makes you yearn for the firelit hovel, the ungainly
room-filling smoke-smother a summons for Dana,
Eire’s paramount velvet-green goddess.

'Most Home

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

I WAS NEVER HERE
—Robert Lee Haycock

Time sits in my favorite chair
Space sits in her lap
Ignoring me

Turtle dove is here again
How lovely it all is
She cries

_______________________

IN PARADISUM
—Robert Lee Haycock

Sidewalk wet with lies
Lurid suns will dry them
Who shall remember

I am not afraid
What was not given
Cannot be taken

_______________________

UTTERLY
—Robert Lee Haycock

No magic in the words
Until we uttered them
Water turned to wine
Lead became gold
Nothing we feared
Mattered after all

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

OF SLEEP AND CAPRICE
—Robert Lee Haycock

The Dawn had her reasons
Though we thought them capricious
She rolled over and went back to sleep
Today would just have to start without her

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's fine contributors!

Below and Above

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

BIG MAMA LAUGHS

Big Mama laughs
and points her hand.

Her pretty laughter
shoves the air between.

Her flirting eyes
grab everyone.

Her dangling ear rings
dance and shine.

Her dark, blue-satin coat
shudders and clings.

She laughs
and laughs.

She is a happy woman
all the time.

_______________________

FLAPPER

Long ago my mama danced the shimmy—
shook her shoulders under sweaty lights
that whirled and glittered, the music loud and tinny.

She shook her hips and shimmied away the nights;
her hip-beads would swing and click against her skirt.
Her legs were pretty. She even caused some fights—

she couldn’t help it that she loved to flirt.
She drank and laughed until the years would spin—
as if to hold away all future hurt—

the tears to be—the way it all changed when
the carefree jazz was traded for bad news,
brought by some man she loved. But until then,

she danced the shimmy-shimmy—not the blues
she’d later dance—in sadder dancing shoes.

SWEET JAZZ

I’m driving along
to sweet jazz.

Sweet Mama!

Driving along.
Sweet jazz on my radio.

Sweet Mama . . .

How you loved to drive
your little car . . .

all those years and miles ago.
You had no radio.

________________________

IN SUMMER RAIN

Mother, I made you dance with me in the rain.
“Come out and dance with me,” I said,

and you stared at me as if I was crazy,
or just young, which I was,

but the day was warm, and the warm rain fell,
and I wanted to dance in it, but not alone.

“Let’s put on our bathing suits,” I said,
“and dance in the rain.”

“Oh, come on, Mama,” I begged.
And we went dancing in the rain.

BIRTHDAY POEM FOR MAMA

On the eighth day of March we got very drunk
with you. We sang happy birthday and you sang
with us, and you blew out the one candle of your
cake, making some wish as one is supposed to do . . .

And this time I did help you with the dishes, and
we were good friends, and the one who was ill
among us watched us with brooding eyes, and
thought, perhaps the birthday was his . . .

But this is the way we blunder, forgetting what
those who cannot celebrate cannot remember :
Love becomes many years away from its first
person. The one you care for daily has forgotten
how to love you, but we were there to tell you
that we do, and that we remember . . . .

(first pub. in Kansas Quarterly, 1973-74)

_______________________

TRAVELING WITH MAMA

The grief is hunch-hearted in my dark. 

My eyes are stones.
How they hurt in the lack of tears.
How my silence weeps
reaching for its peak.
No midnight or dawn can
make me speak its word.
I am mute.
I am lost upon myself like a folded map.
I cannot travel here.
The road is finished
and the little inn is closed.

My patient car is waiting to unlock.
How bright its wheels will be
when we embark
because we must, again
because we will, again.
The travel signs have lied.
They all end here.
The nighttime noises creak
and scrape and rustle
while the windshield stars deflect
and burn my cold.

MOTHER, IN THIS LETTER

I tell you all the news I would not tell you yesterday. It’s
warm for March. I’ve taken on too many things to do.
My housework suffers. I barely cook a meal. Have put on
weight. Don’t care. Or if I do, put it aside for later. You
know me and my good intentions.

You have become my angel. Did you know that Mother?

Why do I call you Mother now? I always called you

Mama—even when old. But formally I address you in this
letter from the years we’ve been apart. The years that blur
together with no need for counting, only that I make them
sadly plural.

Today I stared out of a moody window and thought of you.
And more and more I smile at you in my mirror—hold the
look a long while and say, “Hello, Mama”.

It all goes where it goes—time and its slow followers. You
went. I stayed. But you are here—isn’t that funny? It makes
me think of God or something like that—a chance religion
that I might inherit from your irritating optimism. How I
used to argue that with you. Your foolish hope and what you
bet on it. And you were right. It’s better to hope and believe
in what we want and need.

Oh, Mother, Mama, how my love for you has grown. I treasure
it as something good in me. You loved me well. It made me
have a lightness that despair can never quite bring down.
(No suicides for us, eh? No fatal flinging-off-the-edge of life,
which gets so awful sometimes.)

Mama, Mother, how goes it with you now? You grew so small
and tough. And so resigned. And even then you ruled. I fussed,
and then obeyed. Each time I came to you in Canada I came as
daughter, not my other self, and allowed you every little thrust
and parry that I knew so well; I climbed the same old angry

wall you always made me climb.

Oh, Mother—what a sad cliché. Such a little thing to fret about.
Then or ever. You made me good. I never doubted your fierce
protective love for me that I so frequently abused…my im-

maturity…my selfishness. And just before you died—your last

admonishment: “Now I don’t want you grieving over me . . .”

“Yes, Mama. I won’t. And I do.” With all my love, your loving
daughter.

ALL THE NEWS IS GOOD

Mama, all the news is good.
You were right to be
an optimist.

I have filled the little cup
with life
and I am here
with all my blues
sewn to a morning dress.

I sit at the window
and watch the birds
who know me now.
Their shifting songs
wash over me in happiness.

I say to you,
I love those birds.
My dress of blues
fits me like words.

I think I know your secret now.
God bless.

(first pub. in One Dog Press, January, 1997)

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

MAMA, I HAVE A CAT

We could be sisters now, my Mama;
we are the same age now.

I sit here and talk to you in your picture—
the same age now—grinning at each other.

________________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for her divine prestidigitation in the Kitchen today! Our new Seed of the Week is Waiting; send poems/photos/artwork on this (or any other topic) to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs.

—Medusa

Lupine, Folsom Lake

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

—Photos by Stacie Sherman, Orangevale, CA

THE HONEY ROOM

Brother Al, in his hood,
is out in his field
making love to his bees.
From my room I can see him
move through his hives
the way people should move
among people.
The bees give him gold and the gold
turns orange in the jars
that he sells in a room
near the door of the abbey.
The Honey Room, everyone calls it.
Besides Brother Al, only I
go into that room full of honey.
I go in there and bend
and look through the jars
on the shelves and the sills
till there in the orange I see Sue
standing straight
in a field of her own
with a smile
for our garland of children.

______________________

SO FINGERTIPS KISS

Five kids, eight years.
And then one day my wife
shouts to me on the tractor
roaring in the field:

“I’ve had enough.”
And like a ballerina,
she rises on one foot, sole
of the other foot firm

against her knee
and with arms overhead
so fingertips kiss,
she smiles,

pirouettes,
and then like a helicopter
lifts into the air,
whirls over the garage

and keeps rising.
I can do nothing now
but curse
and be proud.

As if at the ballet,
I applaud from the tractor
and blink at the inferno
as she hits the sun.

______________________

MISS CAROL'S DUMPLINGS

Every month or so
on a Sunday afternoon
I skip the football game
and get in my truck
and drive out from the city
into farm country
to visit Miss Carol
and get my hands
on her plump dumplings.
Biggest I've ever seen.
Best I've ever had,
terrific with her
legs and thighs.
When she lays out
her chicken dinner
on that white tablecloth
I start drooling before
I even get a hand on it.
A farm girl, she says
she's never met
a man like me
so nuts am I
about her dumplings.
Usually, she says,
men like breast meat,
when it's moist,
and I allow how I
like that as well
but not as much
as her plump dumplings
on a Sunday afternoon
and her pluperfect
legs and thighs.

KALEIDOSCOPE AND HARPSICHORD

As I've told my wife too many times,
the meaning of any poem hides
in the marriage of cadence and sound.

Vowels on a carousel,
consonants on a calliope,
whistles and bells,
we need them all
tickling our ears.
Otherwise, the lines
are gristle and fat, no meat.

Is it any wonder, then,
my wife has a problem
with any poem I give her to read
for a second opinion, especially
when the poem has no message
and I'm simply trying to hear
what I'm saying and don't care
if I understand it.

The other night in bed
I gave her another poem to read
and afterward she said this poem
was no different than the others.
She had hoped I'd improve.

"After all," she said,
"you've been writing for years
but reading a poem like this is
like looking through a kaleidoscope
while listening to a harpsichord."

Point well taken,
point well said.

But then I asked her
what should a man do
if he has careened for years
through the caves of his mind
spelunking for the right
line for a poem

only to hear his wife say
after reading one of his poems
that it was like
"looking through a kaleidoscope
while listening to a harpsichord."
What should he do—quit?

"Not a chance,"
she said this morning,
enthroned at the kitchen table,
as regal as ever in her fluttery gown
and buttering her English muffin
with long, languorous strokes
Van Gogh would envy.

"He should write even more,
all day and all night, if need be.
After all," she said, "my line
about the kaleidoscope and harpsichord
still needs a poem of its own.
It's all meat, no gristle, no fat."

______________________

MINGLE

Tomorrow morning when I wake
it’ll be the nurse who’s crazy.
I’ll heave my body up
on its elbows and yell
in her ear, “It’s time for your pill.
Get dressed. Breakfast is ready

in the Day Room. Juice, rolls, bacon, eggs.
You’ll find a tray with your name on it,
faces you know, a chance for conversation.
Eat each meal at a different table.
Mingle. Before you can get out of here,
you have to love all the faces you hate.”

LINES FOR A FEMALE PSYCHIATRIST

Perhaps when I’m better I’ll discover
you aren’t married, after all,
and I should be better by Spring.

On that day I’ll walk
down Michigan Avenue
and up again along the Lake,
my back to the wind, facing you,
my black raincoat buttoned to the neck,
my collar a castle wall
around my crew cut growing in.

Do you remember the first hour?
I sat there unshaven,
a Martian drummed from his planet,
ordered never to return.

With your legs crossed,
you smoked the longest cigarette
and blinked like a child when I said,
“I’m distracted by your knee.”

The first six months you smoked
four cigarettes a session
as I prayed out my litany of escapades,
each detail etched perfectly in place.

The day we finally changed chairs
and I became the patient
and you the doctor,
you knew that I didn’t know
where I had been,
where I was then,
and even though my hair
had begun to grow in
how far I'd have to go
before I could begin.

_____________________

IN BREAK FORMATION

The indications used to come
like movie fighter planes in break
formation, one by one, the perfect
plummet, down and out. This time they’re
slower. But after supper, when I hear her
in the kitchen hum again, hum higher,
higher, till my ears are numb,
I remember how it was
the last time: how she hummed
to Aramaic peaks, flung
supper plates across the kitchen
till I brought her by the shoulders
humming to the chair.
I remember how the final days
her eyelids, operating on their own,
rose and fell, how she strolled
among the children, winding tractors,
hugging dolls, how finally
I phoned and had them come again,
how I walked behind them
as they took her by the shoulders,
house dress in the breeze, slowly
down the walk and to the curbing,
how I watched them bend her
in the back seat of the squad again,
how I watched them pull away
and heard again the parliament
of neighbors talking.

MOSTLY BASIE WITH A LITTLE BACH

Whenever I see a new woman, I know
I should look at her hair and her eyes and her smile
before I decide if she's worth the small talk
and the dinner later
and whatever else she may require
before she becomes taffy,
pliant and smiling.
But that never works for me.
Whenever I see a new woman,
what matters to me is never
her hair or her eyes or her smile;

what matters to me is her saunter
as I stroll behind her.
If her moon comes over the mountain
and loops in languor, left to right,
and then loops back again,
primed for another revolution, then
I introduce myself immediately
no matter where we are,
in the stairwell or on the street
and that's when I see for the first time
her hair and her eyes and her smile
but they are never a distraction since
I'm lost in the music of her saunter.

Years ago, tall and loping Carol Ann
took a train to Chicago,
found a job and then one summer day
walked ahead of me on Michigan Avenue
while I surveyed her universe amid
the cabs screeching, horns beeping,
a driver's middle finger rising.
Suddenly she turned and said hello
and we shook hands and I saw her smile
dart like a minnow and then disappear
as she frowned and asked
why was I walking behind her.

I told her I was on my way to the noon Mass
at Holy Name Cathedral and she was welcome
to come along. The sermon wouldn't be much,
I said, but the coffee and bagels afterward
would be plentiful, enough to cover lunch.
And Jesus Christ Himself would be there.
She didn't believe me, not at all,
and she hasn't believed me since.

That was thirty years ago and now
her smile is still a minnow
darting here and there but now
it's more important than her saunter
which is still a symphony,
mostly Basie with a little Bach.

And I no longer traipse Michigan Avenue
as I did years ago looking for new moons
swirling in my universe. Instead,
I take my lunch in a little bag
on a long train from the suburbs
and I marvel at one fact:
It's been thirty years since I first heard
the music in her saunter
and Carol Ann and I are
still together, praise the Lord.
Who can believe it? Not I.
Carol Ann says she knew
the ending from the start.
Lord, Almighty. Fancy that.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

PEACE FOR ME NOW

after Baghdad

On the table by the window
balanced on its spine

this leaflet
butterfly open

and still as a
butterfly.

Peace for me now
zephyr through leaflet.

Peace for me soon
caribou and snow,

loping caribou
and caribou reclining.

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to these contributors for today's ambrosial offerings!

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

A NEW WORLD

Those wild strawberries
in our cool hand
which keep us in sweetness
on May's long airy days
we hike on Concord trails
ablaze the meadow flowers
in well-worn denims
through kicking a ball
by cypress
catching my breath
over tall grass shade
against the west wind
of swarming hum of bees
by Walden Pond
reading to a circle of students
overcoming the pine combs
on common ground
over Indian blankets
of spreading light
all of us in turn
reciting words from Thoreau
everyone responds with perception
among the relentless sunshine
on these dales and hills
as nature reveals
the same language, love, nature
that the songbirds call.

________________________

MAY MORNING

Who astonishes the sea
along the ruddy shore
like a May morning
in view at a port of entry
from my new sun shades
setting out like Ulysses
unshaven as Whitman
asking a boat-motioning sailor
from the Azores
with a rose of Lisbon
in his girlfriend's clasped hands
if he could help me
with the anchor from my kayak,
telling him
in my limited Iberian speech
how last week a kindly Greek soul
aided me with the same request
as he lifted a softly painted image
of his jostled gaze
from his embraced lover,
following my helpless shadow
in a yellow raincoat
hovering in the high tidal waves
which rock his ditch water arms
that my back is not as strong
nor is my neck as smooth
as his young figure resembling
the curved lines as a man
in the Medusa's raft of Turner
against the showered heat
and boldly in one swoop
he cuts the anchor loose
as the hour is redeemed
against the flaming sky
along a surge of the dark sea.

A VETERAN EXPERIENCE

We did not expect
fresh snow showers in May
in northern California
or in leafy Maine
for Whitman also marvels
as he leaves a windowpane
in a border state
to travel and comfort
young soldiers wounded
against a tree of life,
there are no limits
to nature or love
when young death voids
the living harmony of our day
yet out of funereal ashes
that are always around us
we are provided with love
under a fire escape
or fierce blood moon
under explosions or mishaps
on fields of cypress and hyacinth
near open thresholds
of reborn wild roses,
for suffering cannot turn us
to earthy uniform headstones,
nor measure our life
by terrible civil wars
in the span of season or time
but in fate's new buds growing
as we visit a battlement veteran
on leave of the neighborhood past
looking forward to a soul mate
born twice to laughter
who understands his acquaintance
with shy departure of friends
remembering at first light
there is joy in each impression
on a riverbed of flowering waters
from a Cezanne blazing sunflower
in the cedar forest woodland
there is always a sailing memory
of the Seine in each face
and a cathedral veil of a ceiling
at every standstill house
painted along the dusty road.

______________________

RETURNING THE FAVOR

Six seconds
as blue jays appear
in the museum courtyard
awaiting Picasso
and the Old Masters
in our white sneakers,
our own drawing easels
expanding their imagination
in the hill background
of our jostling the crowds
expecting artistic recognition
in my sequence of words
being the fourth in line
quenching my verse's thirst
which follows my proliferation
of exercising words.

SAINT-JOHN PERSE ON ME

Music thunders at me
sponsors my invading step
standing in for verse
after a night dream
in young French
born out of St. John Perse
out of my binoculars
at my tremulous reading
in his soft-leafed slim volume
of pocket wandering sadness,
at the local French library,
a hard-hitting school reporter
with broken sunglasses
asks me if he's my icon,
I'm telling him Perse is one
of the first fervid poets
who flooded my soul
with a sponged volume hid
for years in my old pea-jacket
now caked with its corners
in a phosphorescent mud
taken with me cross-country
when constantly wearing
a blue beret and handkerchief
my mother gave to me
on her day
as she was want to do
which I proudly wore
along the Charles
on every crew race in May.

______________________

A BEAT PLAYS SAX

Chased from notes
trending now
my fingers are lucid
for words like salt
making no promises
on a cool edge
feeling like an Icarus
who swims and drowns
on my mouth's sensitivity
my introspective wounds
are bandaged
on scaled mountain images
as riffs in pages of shadows
play out its lingering voices
in cabins of disarray
and moments of blues
from cherished B flats
in luminous memories
from reeds of the unseen
hearing Scriabin
in a piano sonata
mingled in my fathomless
captivity to art
when a liquid sun shines
outside my alto range
as the sea swells
outside the club on Thursday
I make waves.

LAUNDRY LIST

There is no chore
in store
for a laundry list
you swore to remember
here on Saturday midnight
from tired sleep
you close the light
in the rush
for your Sunday best
moving my wrist
the water gushes
in the moving shadows
near your tired feet
drying out your list,
we know a poet
only urges to be kissed
clothed by the Word itself
in his refuge below
the huge dark cellar,
as the drip flows
through the window
among the vapor's universe
you dryly walk away
reciting your stellar verse.

______________________

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI'S DAY
Born May 12 (1828-1882)

There was always light
in your woodland drawings
hovering from reshaped colors
of playful joy that we escape to
in your bailiwick's landscapes,
invited to be guests
to your Beata Beatrix
under white museum walls
of the preRaphaelites
which disarm dark nights
to escort us as swans
over the sea and tall towers
to illuminated nascent dawns,
your adjacent canvas of flowers
excavates my transfixed soul
drawing in an ethereal breath
of luminous consciousness
unhindered by post-Elizabethan
and modernist time
after a Fine Art's museum visit
to view your paintings
along the Victory gardens
over the Fenway's city limit,
we had a repast
of French bread and salad
over the park bench's tall grass
at outdoor Sunday's poetry,
arts and musical recitals
in lyrically painted afternoons
watching flotillas of sky divers
by parachutist's flyovers
we walk in a hurry with kites
on paths of capsized balloons
over glad day Esplanades
by easy greensward boundaries
along vivid sunny dunes
in aromas familiarity of nature
as birds circle the spring orbs
leaving us at a miracle sunrise
by showers that made us shiver
like a new May leaf
giving us a flowered surprise
and thrill at grandiose roses
on the very greenest hill
covering a public art exhibit
and privacy view at a bas relief
by the last pine cone and twig
to face the desires of the day
in a narrative's belief at nature
from Dante Rossetti's goodwill.

GETTING METAPHYSICAL

Battering my soul
among new green buds
on leave from the world
carrying a Sunday knapsack
of dry fruit and yogurt
watching roads into blue hills
getting close to river beds
where we once scouted
for an avid labyrinth
of neon and gold butterflies
surprised by unnoticed orioles
from the mouth of the sky
running to view a seagull
by the dock's wharf
my sheepdog companion
watches over me by red tulips
and blazing sunflowers
rests on my shadowed expression
surprised by the living aviary
yet acquainted with birdsong
in the cool delta's air
of a woodland mirrored journey
in colors of a wellspring paradise.

_____________________

JOHN MILTON'S MASQUE

At college, John Milton
with truthful knowledge

as youth expresses
his own addresses

you were cleverly named
not ever shamed "the Lady"

being the Puritan guardian
of the sectarian and virgin

putting on your play
with Henry Lawes music cast

in your own Comus
your character's masque

holding your heavenly laurel
the press harassed in a quarrel

in their laughter's pit
you turned your back

wishing for a gold crown
in a divine celestial life

God has ordained
for a trained poet

of being put on trial here
but not in the hereafter

not defiled by your own
fair skin and limbs

but wise in a long hymn
to the lost paradise.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

A POET'S WAITING

Waiting for that first line
of a sestina's space
as a Provençal troubadour
to splash over me with grace
longing to shine once more
along waves familiar commotion
pinned down on my poem's face
writing along the ocean shore.

_______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's fine, fine contributors!

Love In My Cup

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

—Poems by William S. Gainer, Grass Valley

READING FOR BURNING MAN

The bar was loud,
some guy was dancing
to the light show—
blue dots,
no music,
alone,
he had the moves …
The kid in the Army suit—
with the little
branding irons
brought his machine
inside.
It was like hearing
a jet plane
when he fired the thing
off.
The sound system
had its problems
Jesse tried,
several times.
He tried.
I cut the reading short,
about half.
When I was leaving
the guy working
the door said,
I really liked your stuff,
Ed.

________________________

TEXAS FIREFLIES

You saw them?
I'm jealous.
Did you let out a gentle
sigh,
lean up
against someone—
a little closer?
Set your iced tea down—
leave a cool evening kiss
on warm cheek.
Fireflies
do that
to people,
at least they should …

________________________

ONE TEAR AWAY

She had that smile,
you know that smile,
the bad news smile.

She told me what they said
the best results
possibilities
things they could try.

I wanted to say
I’ll miss you
but you don’t
say those things
at least
you’re not supposed to.

We set close
one tear away
from screaming

wanting to know
why
and hoping
goodbye
takes a long time
to say.

_________________________

THE TREE TRIMMERS

The Mexican kids
showed up
to trim the trees
from the power lines.

They did it
very gently.
The jays and sparrows
didn’t seem
to notice.
Even the young oaks
didn’t act scared.

Twenty minutes later
the squirrels returned
to their gossip.

Two houses down
the work continued.

________________________

AN EVENING IN KANSAS

The tornado—
twenty minutes
in the storm shelter.
Climbing out
she falls to her knees
screams thanks
to a vengeful god
the kids
cling
scared.
The old man
surveys the damage
in a low breath
mumbles
Christ
I just mowed
the lawn.
None of it
makes sense
not even
the quiet.

_______________________

KAE ST. MARIE IS AT IT WITH COMCAST:

They want to raise the rates,
but with that
you get the improved package—
it includes a home security system.
She says
if it doesn’t come with a drone
she doesn’t want
anything
to do with it.
I am with her on this one,
it would be nice
to buzz the neighborhood
a few times a day.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

ENOUGH TO END ON

As long as I got
a couple of bucks
can sniff out
a warm bar stool
have the strength
to tell one
listen to one—
another lie
wander home
and dream
they were all true—
the lies.
That’s enough.

_______________________

Our thanks to today's contributors, all of whom will be included in the new issue of Rattlesnake Press's WTF! which will be released at Luna's Cafe this coming Thursday night, 8pm. Editor frank andrick is in Sutter General Hospital right now, though (Rm. 5414, Bed 2) after having surgery following some complications from his kidney biopsy. He's hoping to be home in a day or two, and to be hosting at Luna's on Thursday. Think good thoughts for him.

This is a very busy weekend in NorCal poetry! Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box) on the right for details of the many readings.

______________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Wendy Rivara, Sacramento

Lion Dance, Locke

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

“WHIZ DUMB BRIDGE”
—William T. Wiley

If these words begin to say
Something, it will be untrue
And this blanket that I wrap them in
Will be a brilliant blue.

Things will go without a name
To keep away from time,
A broken glass, a wild lament,
The lighthouse searching the sea,
One never speaking a word
While preparing food.

It makes a coarse and ugly
Garment despite the diamonds
Laid across the skin.
It will offer you a million doors
Yet not one of them leads in.

The outside disappears
When the lights are on.
The surface becomes hard
And cluttered looking.

We glide across the line
Hoping we will reach the end
Before we become totally confounded.

CHINESE SUITS

We were invited to the trial
But somehow the children got confused
Or were unable to handle any information
That came from the world outside
Their heads. We were sorry for them.

The entire field became transparent.
There were guardians dressed in Chinese
Suits and carrying huge swords.
They probably wouldn’t have hurt
Anyone, but there was no way to be sure.

Headlights flooded the sides of the road
Near the bridge. Even this far back
We could hear the tires squealing and
See the blue smoke. The sound of metal
Crunching sounded like someone eating.

Reflections began popping back and forth
From the shields carried by the servants.
They had their own concerns and we were
Just as dreamers to them. Whatever
We did, whatever we decided, would
Seem as nothing to them. They gave
Us jobs to keep us busy. The children
Sat and watched us as if they could learn something.

Garment

THREE BIRDS

There wasn’t anything left
That I could touch.
Christine came in with three birds.
“Here," she said, "try these.”
But when she opened her hands
They flew away. One of them hit
The window, but that didn’t
Stop it from fleeing.
I was getting anxious to put
My feet back on the ground.

“You must be dreaming,” Ramon said.
He was sitting in the crotch of a tree
Very far above me and was shouting.
“How did you get up there?”
I called to him.

“I was thinking deeply about things
And I fell into a well.
When I woke up, I was up here.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,”
I called.
“Oh yes it does,” he said, but
The tree was growing very quickly
And I lost sight of him before
I could reach a conclusion.

“I can’t possibly live like this,”
I said aloud to no one in particular.
“But you are doing alright now,”
They answered.
“Many swim and some are
Able to cover great distances.
A few even reach the horizon.”
I felt comfortable for a moment,
Then the wind started again.
What happened? I was so
Involved with the moment
I didn’t see what happened.

A man with translucent hands
Began to speak to me in
American Sign Language.
I think it was Borges.
He wanted me to get him
A glass of water.
That is how I got here.

Cenotaph, Legion of Honor, San Francisco

THE RULES

Not to break the rules, we take the train. The rails sound like
glass sounds when it opens to its sand, to the fact that it is glass.
“Why must it be this way?" she asks as the train strains toward
the sounds of the sea.
I know now I was wrong when I went to stand in the street
only a breath away from death. Cars flashed past me. I started
to sing a song.
“Shut up! Shut up!” she screamed. “This is not what we came
here for.”
I dragged my feet back to the curb. “Why do you want to go
where there are dogs?" she asks, as if it was even close to the
truth.
Each day is like this. I hear the rails click-clack. My ears will
not hear her anymore. She fills a glass with ice and puts her
feet up. My skin begins to itch. It is like this now, a sore on
the soul that makes a vile sound. The train does not help. The
train did not work at all.
I stare out of a hole in the side of the train. Time leaves me.
This is the rule now, I think. I say to her, “This is the rule.”
She laughs and tells me to try to sleep, that we will be there
soon.
I start to dream in words and say them over and over so they
can no longer carry more than breath. I want to spit, but have
a beer just to be a smartass.
“Why do you do this?" she says.
“I am very strong,” I say, “like stone.”
She looks past me and laughs as the scenes rush past the train.

Hollyhock

FAULT LINES

Sometimes the fault line, sometimes the fault.
There will be consequences for all the actions
Taken here, the wind, the rain, the mornings without
Incident when we neglected to differentiate between
One day and another, believing each day was just
Like another because our surroundings remained
The same. One cannot trust to consciousness

To explain change. People die totally unnoticed.
The kind of music they loved may appear in a dream,
Shifting between call and response, Ol’ Hannah,
Then that sound of hammer against huge steel nails.

We struggle and swim ashore. “Are you having
A good time?" The ground beneath our feet
Opens and the tectonic plates move slightly,
Not much, just enough to bring down Los Angeles.

Our feelings are electric. They belong to the realm
Bounded by animals, guarded by animals, surrounded
By others who bear a resemblance to ourselves but who
Will always remain other. We still choose to call them
Brother, afraid that if we do not, we will no longer be able
To read the book, stand in lines with them waiting to get in.

This is a form of praying, or so I am told by the swirl
Time puts on our presence here. There will be
Consequences for all the actions taken here.
Sometimes the fault line, sometimes the fault.

(first pub. in Medusa's Kitchen, 2010)

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

A LITTLE FROG

A little frog
Has been swimming
In my bloodstream.

He told me all my
Blood vessels had names
With street-signs.

He was swimming near
Alpine Way and Minotaur
Court. Things were
Lovely there, he said,
But there were no flies,
So he had to leave.

_________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner for today's delectable magic in the Kitchen!

Graffiti, Fourth & J Sts., Sacramento

—Anonymous Photo

ELIS
—Georg Trakl (1887-1914)

Perfect is the silence of this golden day.

Beneath ancient oaktrees

You appear, Elis, at rest with wide eyes.

Their blue mirrors the slumber of lovers.

On your mouth

Their rosy sighs were stilled.

At evening the fisherman hauled in his heavy nets.

A good shepherd

Leads his flock along the forest's edge.

Oh how righteous, Elis, are your days!

Softly the blue silence

Of the olive tree sinks near the naked walls,

The dark song of an old man dies away.

A golden skiff,

Your heart rocks, Elis, on the lonely sky.

A gentle glockenspiel sings in Elis' breast

At evening,

When his head sinks into the black pillow.

A blue prey

Bleeds softly in the thornbrush.

A brown tree stands in isolation there;

Its blue fruits have fallen from it.

Signs and stars

Sink softly in the evening pond.

Beyond the hill it has turned winter.

At night

Blue doves drink up the icy sweat

That flows from Elis' crystal brow.

Along black walls

Forever drones the lonely wind of God.

(trans. from the German by Robert Firmage)

______________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

WAITING ROOM NOIR
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

After things had quieted
down outside the window,
I looked back
to see that her seat was empty.
“Must have gone in
to see the doctor,” or so I thought.
I checked the magazines.
All from this century, but just barely.
I waited some more.
After giving a good bit of thought
to starting the copy of H.G. Wells’
Outline of History there
on the coffee table, I decided to check
with the receptionist instead.
“She left. You’ll forgive me
for saying this, but with your face looking
like it does, I thought it was you
coming in for treatment. I’m sorry, sir. No, wait.”
The other guy had looked worse,
but wasn’t feeling things anymore.
Which is why it seemed like a good time
to visit the doctor. Still, I should have counted
on her to have still yet another agenda.
Outside, the wind had picked up again.
I stood for a moment letting my eyes adjust
to the darkness, pulled the Borsolino
down carefully so as not to dislodge
any of the stiches or bandages, and began walking.
There were two ways I could go:
I could spend hours checking every dive
on the Southside, or I could go back to
The Sandman’s apartment just to see.
Besides, somebody
was going to have to let out his
Rottweilers and feed them anyway.

—Photo by Katy Brown

RIGHT-BRANCHING SYNTAX
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

for composition teacher Peter Elbow

So many influences, elbowing in, I see:
your expert book, Vernacular Eloquence;
song-phrases of Arnold Bax, transforming, right-branch
themes, his grammar through seven symphonies;
Sam Johnson’s rightward-tendriling Big Sentence.
Such systems are taxonomies of sense,
but also springs of streamline and of pounce,
not hesitance. Put these in place, to entrench
our thoughts in memory—we move ahead by traceways.
First, knowledge we know, then newness. Test by lips,
teeth, tongue, and voicebox. Echoes in the ear
turn night-vision lenses. Cop-probe each room. Clear!
Confident minds can speed (old-new!) vast spaceways
no moonblock obstructs. Star-radiance, not eclipse.

(Like Finnish: all stresses first-syllable, hammers like laughter.
We won’t lose big things in small sounds that come after.)

_______________________

FOR A CIVIL UNION
—Tom Goff

Every love generates tension and strains
into balance. A desire, a question: What can we
hope for from Love? Love instantly retorts:
What can I hope for from you both?
Different these two demands, desires, both
valid, each as righteous as the eyes that meet
till the blended gaze turns unbearable. Outside
your smallest possible human circle
where four hands join, life’s hurry,
the aggression of work, the potential for love
in the going and doing. Inside,
stillness, affection, and quiet. Outside, commotion;
inside, communion. Happiness, arriving
in its one lonely way,
here now.

—Photo by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

DRAFT
—Taylor Graham, Placerville  

Six black horses in a field. Draft horses, a matched hitch of six. They graze apart on this halcyon Monday, blue sky verging to platinum at the horizons, the edges. In our world there’s always an edge, a fence. Perfect specimens of myth and legend, a child’s dream. Creatures to bear an armored knight into battle or on to peace. Earthly Pegasus, a star on each dark face. The poundage of their hooves! They gather closer to me, curious. I have nothing. One after another leaves, resumes grazing. A single stays, its soft breath through chainlink fence. What message passes between? what petition? First draft of a poem waiting.

_______________________

TATTERDEMALION
—Taylor Graham  

His medium is muck & smatter. I spent Mother’s Day burning papers—a bounty of outdated news scrapped & blended with puppy poop, stuffed into bags & waiting till I had time to sanitize the deck. Eight pups lived in squalor (a mother’s term), squealing in play, then comfort-piled one atop another, asleep. Seven pups are gone to new homes, new mothers. Sunday I burned & scrubbed; laid down narrow strips of linoleum unearthed from the shed; cardboard & fresh newsprint for Scout—my one pup remaining—to smirch and splatter. No complaint, I smiled at how neat & tidy for the moment. Just wait! A solo patter of pawed feet, papers scattered across scrubbed redwood. Scraps & tatters. Scout. His tail sports a new ring of shiny black finesse—first hint of grown-up guard-hairs. Before I know it, he’s an old dog too creaky to make mess.

______________________  

KEEP-AWAY FROM TIME
—Taylor Graham

Morning mist breaks to blue-blanket
clarity, a stringer of heirloom vines along
the county road—the road itself a stringer,
fault-line between ranches and encroaching
town; a slow-down curve to circumvent
this hold-out homestead.
As if a dance, your pup leads mine
under a 1930s gate toward the old stomper-
barn—echoes of polka, schottish, Ländler—
mountain-hideaway of Frisco bohemians.
Rusting metal dragonfly has lost its lacquer-
gloss but still presides over the grassy swale.
Our puppies dash apart on whimsy
sketches of adventure, then bunch together
like camp-kids to Kool-Aid—a sprinkler’s
sprung a leak. Beside what used to be
pond, a small stone frog like a temple
keeps the waters and the days.

Zelda and Scout

—Photo by Taylor Graham

Today's LittleNip:

After a long winter, giving
each other nothing, we collide
with blossoms in our hands.

—Chiyo (trans. from the Japanese by David Rey)

_______________________

—Medusa

Hollow Point Stumblers at UC Davis, May, 2015

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

HE SLEEPS AND DREAMS HER
(after "Arab Song, 1932" by Paul Klee)

It is late afternoon. The colors of the room are dim-
ming to a soft haze. She is hiding in the curtain.
She closes her eyes to mask her fear. She does not
belong here, but here she is, waiting for his dream to
release her. There are spies everywhere; they lurk and
listen for her breathing; the corridors are full of them.

The hours slow and thicken. Still he sleeps, holding
her fast in his dream. She gropes and gropes at the
folds of the curtain that twines and twists around her.
The light in the room is almost gone. He watches
her through his sleep. He keeps hiding the door. The
window is a mirage. And in the mirage is the curtain.

_______________________

THE WAITING DAY
(after "Summertime, 1943" by Edward Hopper)

What is left for the young woman
of yesterday to do

but go on waiting, poised and ready
to step down from the stair.

But she is held by something :
the sun on her face—

her hand on the white pillar,
perhaps to balance her indecisiveness.

The door-shadow behind her
seems to draw her back,

an open window-curtain
sucks in.

Her white dress
flattens against her.

Wall-shadow stays perfectly still
as soft green sunlight swiftly changes

to the harsh light of the lengthening hours
while she still stands there, as if frozen.

LOW WINDOW LIGHT

The window used to hold her there,
standing and watching the day change,
her eyes holding the vague eye of distance.

However far it was, she was patient.
The room darkened behind her, the window
glinted, caught the last of the sunlight.

She grew timeless then. The waiting
never ended. The patience understood

There was never any end to the story.

______________________

WAITING ROOM

Russian wolfhound outside the window,
small black birds pecking at cement—
things to ponder in times between.
You—so sad you start to cry,

asking if truth is worse than lie.
Things to ponder in times between:
small black birds pecking at cement,
Russian wolfhound outside the window.

PRIVATE WOMEN IN DOCTORS’
WAITING ROOMS

these women in
Doctors’ waiting rooms
some complainingly
some with good humor
some with
terrible quiet
on their faces
one woman
with a baby
caught all our attention
became the one
to watch
she never
looked at any of us
her eyes phrased past
into her own shadows
which were everywhere
she was mysterious
unattractive
mussed and
common looking
her child
wore only a diaper
and squirmed on her lap
took the bottle
she offered
lay back in her arms and
looked up at her
her only
direct look
was at the child

AS IF I AM THE IMAGE OF REGRET

the rush of wings
through a fast mirror
made of air;

as if I am the waiting glass
for the escape of
something wounded—

a word of long ago,
finding me here for its use,
and I am blessed—

as if I am the certainty
of wisdom . . .
to let all this happen,

even as I hold my breath
through the forgetfulness of others.

Poems on the wall,

as on the wind,
poems written in passing,
waiting to be read by
lonely strugglers of life
—on their way
to exile, or to
unknown destinations
—oh, through all weather
and stories of strife
—oh, limping and falling forward
into time passing before them.
And there I am.
Waiting—
having left my words
in little time-cracks—whisperings
that faded there, holding
the thoughts I had to leave,
dateless now, and viable,
though very hidden
under shadow-dust and grime.
And it is for this that we say such things.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

PERSPECTIVE ON WAITING

Time is
too short—too long,
too measured by
itself—too much a part
of slippery timelessness.
Here. Then gone.

_____________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's tasty poems and for her photographic raindance. Wouldn't an inch or two be great right now?

While we're waiting, our new Seed of the Week is County Fair. Tell us about sights, sounds, smells, and other nostalgia of ferris wheels and livestock and cotton candy, and send your poems, photos and artwork about this or any other subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs.

—Medusa

Keely Dorran, Sacramento

meteor IX

The Pellegrino has gone to my head.
I’m quite sure there’s a baby in there.

Little one, I just turned 40. Don’t come
knocking on my door, begging for me to

find some kind of lover. It’s the middle
of the night and only thieves are awake.

____________________

california drought

five-minute shower every other day.
dusty, pollen and spore-covered car;
lungs tight. dishes done in tepid grey-water*,

and in the best neighborhoods:

the vast lawns and golf courses
are as green as emeralds.

[*grey-water is water that has already been used for another purpose and is being re-used to conserve]

__________________________

good-bye haiku

15 years ago
you asked to meet at a cafe
then never showed up

on my way home
i saw you with your wife
in a restaurant

that is why
i love you like a friend
and always will

__________________________

good-bye two

if i could remember the seasons
i could forget those rains
that came down when she kissed you

_________________________

no such thing as color

No such thing as color, all too red.
Dark as night and black inside, all too dead.

When his heart grows cold as ice
The power goes to his head

No such thing as color, all too red.
No such thing as color, all too red.

White like the light but it's all lies,
All the things they did and said.

Like his father, like his pride, so well-fed.
No such thing as color, all too red.

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

tea house

a serene garden
is cultivated over time, with great
mindfulness

________________________

Our thanks to Keely for today's poems and pix! Keely S. Dorran is a poet and artist active as such in the Sacramento area since the late 1980s. She studied Painting & Drawing at Sacramento State and Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Her art and poems have been shown and performed throughout California, and published in journals nationally. They also reside in private collections, archives, and special collection libraries nationally and internationally. She recently completed a BA in Art History at Sacramento State University. For more, see Keely's website at www.KeelyDorran.com And watch for more of Keely's work in the Kitchen in the future.

Keely is one of many poets and artists to be featured in the latest issue of Rattlesnake Press's WTF! which will be released at Luna's Cafe tomorrow (Thursday), 8pm. Editor frank andrick and Co-Editor Rachel Leibrock will be co-hosting, as contributors to the issue read their work. Be there!

_______________________

—Medusa

—Portrait of Keely by Esteban Villa

B.Z. at Good Harbor Beach

—Photos by Denise Flanagan, Newton, MA

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

WAITING ON A PHRASE

When will understanding
mend our wronged lives
a poet waits on a phrase
with his words landing
from an instructive sail
on a morning's longed-for map
over our chilled Coast
after a dawn's brief nap
as in a moving equation
adds up to a verse's line
may suddenly surprise us
by its bird song brevity
and make our praise
the most minimalist
on such glorious May days
such as this shine,
knowing as former formalist
in my profession
and briefly academic
make a confession
who someone who turned
completely Beat at sixteen
going to his reading
as James Dean
on a motorcycle
then insisted on a most informal
sun-flowered reality
drove me as summer seer
and wine drinking urbane poet
to seek his own nomenclature
with a sleek urban partiality
as a Whitman city slicker
with an A personality
in a contrary nature free of care
to that which the critics expect
on a bar of selections
to choose a cask
of a different liquor,
as a glancing free spirit
with his own resonant sect
shadows my own predilections
in a masked conduit of taste
not asking any favors
but what proverbs asks us
in a semblance saves us
from a wasted sunrise
along the dunes meadows
holding onto a sheepdog
from the highlands
his orange kayak
plunging into the sea
without a seersucker suit
by the islands to compose
playing a viol and flute
at last feeling to be free.

_____________________

MONET

Your light captures
enraptures us
by the horizon's rays
of a May's dawn
then is gone
at sunrise
plays on our day's prisms
of our impressionism
and quickens as a jazz riff
in a sandstorm of time
or grain
on an open field
in Northern California's plain
shaken and gone as breath
dazzles our landscape
shapes our way
in wings of a swan
waters our eyes
like rain sings outdoors
among the crocus
and drops into oblivion.

Flowers

WAITING ON

Those mornings
waiting for a line of bass
or any fish to appear
losing no time on the tall grass
by the dock and deck
admiring the black swan's neck
in the springtime of adolescence
after our papers are examined
and our moving eyes
stop to look at the clock
when the academic year
is through for vacation
we flee to our passions
wishing to ride out early
in a rowboat or kayak
over the motionless shore
on the Pacific Ocean waters
to catch up to our poetry
and complimentary love life
with a fearless conscience
embracing an opening wave
by a school of salmon
in frenzy then motionless silence
of too much cool memory
already tasting the filet of sole
cooked along the sea.

_____________________

AN ACTOR WAITS FOR GODOT

To locate my part
along the bare stage
in a windowless studio
to find his lines
standing in a circle
motionless for his helplessness
murmuring in gestures
before we go on stage
not forgetting Beckett's words
or nuance
just to have a chance
to take in a part in summer stock
to survive the clowning reasons
for several dress rehearsals
and to live in another's soul
for an open air season
by the ferryman and south shore
out by nature's scythed grass
for scenes in the park's theater
is to be once again alive
expanding my portfolio once more.

B.Z. on Ben Bench

DANTE ALIGHIERI'S BIRTHDAY

May 21, 1265

Wherever sealed
in a waiting room
shading in a portrait
or fading out of love
my Latin returns
of your verses to me
or watching a Saturn sky
having lost hope
from my old telescope
of viewing
a meteoric pattern of stars
of my own visibility
here in Manhattan
writing in nine circled bars
for sax and orchestra
by leading a comic, satire
or a satyr play
your words still enthrall
here on your birthday
along the sea shore
fixing my friend's oboe
and I call on our Abba
to rescue me
as only you know
reading of your journey
through stories
of love poets
trembling in awe and majesty
of undone absurd times
over weird griefs
treated to middle-aged
bruised law's iniquity
that through your harmony
of verse we are free
to share our beliefs
my friend, Dante Alighieri
with an open window
of nature's spring relief
in an upstaged conduit
of mythical divine
or diluvian sights
scuttling our awkwardness
of veiled or impaled
mystical reflections
from a horizon of delights
with no directions
away from empty dark nights
to recover our souls
as an exiled refugee
in a concealing purgatory.

_____________________

ROBERT CREELEY'S DAY
May 21 (1926-2005)

There were two of us
who spoke together
of Martial
after your shielded reading
during your partial recital
when time came to a stop
and soon were translated
yourself to passing glances
in a memorial
on a free-wielding
rush of your words
by keeping the lamp
of dancing verse
of our blushing flames going
in a changing season
by a college room fireplace
of a strong voice aiming at
swaying your delightful
flirting audience
suddenly all
in inescapable silence
as if to say, Robert
only in taking off
all our night shirts
for your love poetry
can still make my day.

Glory Cloud

JOSEPH BRODSKY
May 24 (1940-1996)

How you learnt English
from the Russian
you told us it was Auden
who made you modern
after "the bronze horseman"
of Pushkin
in the land of Lenin,
how you wished to emigrate
after reading
"Notes from the Underground"
and we signed petitions
to the new heads of state
and waited for years
until you came
appearing to be our emigre
reaching out to us
suited for us in grey
to teach us by our shore
in newborn smart verses
you held us captive
as a sounding millstone
took your enlarged heart
only too soon leaving us
as we translated
and celebrate your day
in a nightfall you depart.

_________________________

EMERSON'S BIRTHDAY
May 25 (1803-1882)

We stood on the rude bridge
you wrote verses about
on the same earth
under the soft blue sky
by red-winged blackbirds
on the Evergreen and Elm
as if they sing out
your very words and sentiment
on the branches above us
as kayak riders on riverbeds
with their freshened white oars
waving to us as amazed students
over the sea passerby wind
circles us from down below
on the Concord riverbank shore
the scent of lilacs overwhelming us
my faithful eyes in silence
at your buried back of history
comes alive as a hall of mirrors
of the sun's floodlights reflections
we take out your poetry, criticism
devouring lunches from our knapsacks
and relax on the May tall grass
in spring's full-flowered accord.

_______________________

A POET'S COMMANDMENT

You may look back
in distracted sentiment
offering a poet's
enacted commandment
by living freely
in our universe,
or you may choose to curse
some of your past verse
or bottle it as milk
for nature's sake
as in a robin's red breast
or take on Daphne under a tree
and make words come alive
from a dictionary's treasure chest
of silk or at a measured snow
or target a free verse phrase
and fly with St. Sebastian's arrow
as in a somersault of Apollo,
there is always tomorrow
to take cover in the rain
words are often contrary
from the finest brain,
you may choose directions
on any page
for a new collection
as you relax with a latte
on a repast
over tables of confections
with any number
of cucumber sandwiches
or with watercress,
so put on your flowered laurel
with poetry as a lasting prize
or quarrel with an eidetic critic
at Browning's monologues
with an empowered surprise,
you may be blessed
in an ecumenical sharing
on altars of bread and wine
and learn in a searching dialogue
calling on the rabbinical divines
with garments of cassock
reciting in a church, mosque
or synagogue,
we remember to earn our paradise
from our language vaults
in all the shamrock of years
that from our last venal penalty
is to seek to alter and pardon
when our venerable imagination
does not yield or falters
its garden's flowered vegetation
as Shelley said of poets
we are the unacknowledged
legislation of the world.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

WAITING BY BIRCHES

Ski season is over
by the birches' branch
in Mount Snow, Vermont
the borderline wind wants
to make us cold
when we are told
of the disordered avalanche
from the hilly ranges
near the emboldened rescue
everyone is a friend
in the whitened frenzy
there are no strangers
in the craggy bends
that we know.

______________________

Our thanks to chefs B.Z. Niditch and Denise Flanagan for today's contributions, and a reminder that there is a lot going on today and tomorrow in NorCal poetry! Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box) at the right for all the details.

—Medusa

B.Z. at the Poetry Wall

Now Is Here

If We Will Only Listen

Out of the Closet

That River From The Heart

Moms

Catching the Sun

The Music Inside Her

A Song of Ghosts

Mother-Dreams

Of Sleep and Caprice

Sweet Jazz, Sweet Mama

Caribou Reclining

Getting Metaphysical

Love In My Cup

Sometimes the Fault Line...

Perfect Is The Silence

Inside, Commotion

Mirrors Made of Air

All Too Red

The Unacknowledged Legislation of the World