Twenty Years Minus One Day

 

 

QUETZAL
—Carol Frith

A snake? I've forgotten how to write
a serpent. Quetzal, with your feathered
    scales
and brother to the moon? A god, not
    quite
a snake. And I've forgotten how to write
about the moon, who slept with you, her
    light
a memory that all light somehow fails.
Bright snake, I've forgotten how to write
about you...Quetzal with your feathered
    scales.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 5/30/05)

 

 

 

 

ORNAMENTAL FROG
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

In a small green sink-jar
filled with water and
gray river stones
I keep
an old glass frog
with one foot missing—
happy there,
I think.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 6/24/05)

 

 

 

 

4.8
—Taylor Graham, Somerset, CA

Did you hear it? That rattle
of door against sill
as if cloud heaped on storm-cloud
upcountry too high/far off
for thunder, or fingers over the black
keys not quite touching
music. Silence. Did you feel
it? A giddiness between
steps, the earth not easy
in its glide underfoot.
Something sticks, an inter-
stice, as if you saw
the leaving of the fox, and not
the creature herself.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 6/28/05)

 

 

 

 

THE OFFERING
—James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA

Usually it is a field mouse, but once
it was a full grown rat, that I find dead
on my morning doormat, left there by Kitty.
My wife says, “Maybe she is trying to prove
that she is doing her job.” I smile and nod,
and go for the shovel, but really,
wouldn’t that imply that Kitty somehow knows
that humans expect cats to be diligent mousers?
Certainly I never asked that of her. I prefer
to think that she is seeking approval
for the justice that she has dispensed
upon the intruder. Or that perhaps
murderous Kitty has a compulsion to kill
that cannot be suppressed, and, not caring
for the taste of mouse, she comes to me
for aid in destroying the evidence of her crime,
aid that my shovel and I always provide.
Better still, it could be that Kitty, after being fed
by us for so long, is giving something back
to the family, bringing to the table something
of her own making. “Good Kitty,” I tell her
as I go for the shovel.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 6/6/05)

 

 

 

 

INVISIBLE
—Jeanine Stevens, Sacramento, CA

The day I became
invisible, I walked
into a small photo
shop, rang a bell
for service, no one
came. I stopped
to visit a colleague
on campus, students
swarmed around him,
I slipped out unnoticed.
Through glass, I saw
a friend engrossed
in a meeting. I left
with a cup of water
from the cooler,
then wandered
to a park, watched
ducks, an older
woman also sat,
bent, a spot of blood,
the size of a nickel,
seeped from her arm.
"I'm not hurt, just
old, my skin breaks
easily." I felt I tiptoed
at the edge of things,
anonymous, it was
somehow peaceful.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 6/16/05)

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
After you know my poems are not
    poems,
Then we can begin to discuss poetry!

—Ryōkan


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 6/26/05)

_________________

Today’s post is a collection of poems from the first two months of Medusa’s Kitchen, back in 2005. There were others, of course, but these names still appear in the Kitchen occasionally after all these twenty years—with the except of dear friend Carol Frith, who passed away in 2019, and Ryōkan, who passed away quite a bit before that . . . Anyway, many thanks to our SnakePals—these and everyone else—for sticking around!

And come by tomorrow for our celebratory poems! It’s not too late to send one of your own, a poem that celebrates something—anything—form or free verse—and I’ll post it tomorrow. (20 years! Amazing!)

_________________

—Medusa