Frankétienne ~

 

Frankétienne

Frankétienne was born Jean-Pierre Basilic Dantor Franck Étienne d’Argent on April 12, 1936, in Ravine-Sèche

d. 2025

GENE HACKMAN ~

 

T H E   O T H E R

G E N E   H A  C K M A N,

A C T O R

  1930 ~ 2025

LAURA ULEWICZ ~

 

California

Sun was an enemy in the last garden. 

It blotched the mountains yellow, scorched thru the Redwoods,

The Madrone. Mesquite grew stiff, shiny-leaved

Against it. Liveoak leaves went tough and black.

Everything foreign, being tender, died.

So irrigation plotted itself in my tendons. . .

Dogdays we'd slouch a mile through stickburrs and lizards

Down the 101; then sitting on gunnysacks

We'd scud across the hot knocking rock-slide

Into the creekbed. Wallowing along it, half

For the cool, half to avoid Poison Oak,

Rattlers. The mocha dog nudging and biting

The minnow-augured water. Brambles fruited

In the one place shaded all day by the cliff-hanging.

I thought with my spine, while up on our waists in water

We hunched there like brown bears to eat the berries . . .

Five years rose up and went down. More and more

I lived by silences, by hibernations.

I woke at dawn. At dawn with a shotgun I woke

To watch in morning fog from my porch a tawny

Mountain lion come down in morning fog

To kill my chickens. I chose against those chickens.

_____________

Laura Ulewicz

Why It Is I Chose To Be Alien

selected poems

Delete, 2022