Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Two Poems by Sandra Alcosser
What Makes the Grizzlies Dance
June and finally snow peas
sweeten the Mission Valley.
High behind numinous meadows
ladybugs swarm, like huge
lacquered fans from Hong Kong,
like serrated skirts
of blown poppies,
whole mountains turn red.
And in the blue penstemon
grizzly bears swirl
as they bat snags of color
against their ragged mouths.
Have you never wanted
to spin like that
on hairy, leathered feet,
amid the swelling berries
as you tasted a language
of early summer — shaping
lazy operatic vowels,
cracking hard-shelled
consonants like speckled
insects between your teeth,
have you never wanted
to waltz the hills
like a beast?
Spittle Bug
I watched an insect dive
upside down in a crystal bowl.
Magnified, it resembled
a friend’s identity crisis —
red eyes, amorphous body
arched like a scorpion.
Probing the water with an iris stem,
I rescued the swimmer,
helped it crawl to the vase lip,
then complimented myself, as if
the bug were my own invention.
It rested on the flower’s parchment,
hyperventilating, while I went off
to a day’s work. When I returned
it had climbed higher, slathering
purple flesh with froth. Stalled
in one spot like an indulgent head
lost in shampoo, it had taken
the sweet petals with it,
rolling them in babble,
till they were stunted and scabbed.
It looked so harmless at first
roiling in its own spit,
I think I shall call it
gossip bug.
Sandra Alcosser, Montana’s first Poet Laureate, collaborates internationally with conservation biologists to celebrate — through poetry read by millions of people each year — the tribes and species of the world. She is the founding director of the MFA program for Creative Writing at San Diego State University and divides her time between San Diego and Florence, Montana. These two poems are from her collection Except by Nature, which was a National Poetry Series Selection and was awarded the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. It was published by Graywolf Press. They are reprinted by permission. The author’s photo is by Philip Maechling.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Two Poems by Sandra Alcosser
Two Poems by Sandra Alcosser
What Makes the Grizzlies Dance
June and finally snow peas
sweeten the Mission Valley.
High behind numinous meadows
ladybugs swarm, like huge
lacquered fans from Hong Kong,
like serrated skirts
of blown poppies,
whole mountains turn red.
And in the blue penstemon
grizzly bears swirl
as they bat snags of color
against their ragged mouths.
Have you never wanted
to spin like that
on hairy, leathered feet,
amid the swelling berries
as you tasted a language
of early summer — shaping
lazy operatic vowels,
cracking hard-shelled
consonants like speckled
insects between your teeth,
have you never wanted
to waltz the hills
like a beast?
Spittle Bug
I watched an insect dive
upside down in a crystal bowl.
Magnified, it resembled
a friend’s identity crisis —
red eyes, amorphous body
arched like a scorpion.
Probing the water with an iris stem,
I rescued the swimmer,
helped it crawl to the vase lip,
then complimented myself, as if
the bug were my own invention.
It rested on the flower’s parchment,
hyperventilating, while I went off
to a day’s work. When I returned
it had climbed higher, slathering
purple flesh with froth. Stalled
in one spot like an indulgent head
lost in shampoo, it had taken
the sweet petals with it,
rolling them in babble,
till they were stunted and scabbed.
It looked so harmless at first
roiling in its own spit,
I think I shall call it
gossip bug.
Sandra Alcosser, Montana’s first Poet Laureate, collaborates internationally with conservation biologists to celebrate — through poetry read by millions of people each year — the tribes and species of the world. She is the founding director of the MFA program for Creative Writing at San Diego State University and divides her time between San Diego and Florence, Montana. These two poems are from her collection Except by Nature, which was a National Poetry Series Selection and was awarded the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. It was published by Graywolf Press. They are reprinted by permission. The author’s photo is by Philip Maechling.
Comments