Marci Vogel: California Poets Part 11, Four Poems

Marci Vogel

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

Marci Vogel

Four Poems

IN THE SANCTUARY STATE

of our inaugural winter day laborers are wiring home coins

in record numbers One of them abandoned an escape route

in the gutter This is not a fact but a supposition I make while

passing a note duct-taped to a utility pole — Found: Extension

ladder please call this number — Was it a power outage or sudden rain

the repairman deluged with fixing? The note does not explain

how long it takes to save for a ladder like that or who was left

holding the bottom rung while the other one climbed If lights

flickered when he reached the top Did the sky open? Did he enter?

TO THE WESTERN SYCAMORE WHERE THE FLEDGLINGS GATHER

                                                                                    — with an inscription by Paul Celan

between cloud & root

nestled in the crook

of a low-slung branch

studying tawny grammar

your leopard-spotted

sepia bark

trunk & limbs

shedding years

over alluvial root

who planted yours

urban riparian

woodland as the crow flies

over inland riverbed

stream-side concrete

graffitied whale out

of its depth & in a new

season velvet-green

broader than my palm

will ever be —

it's said your wood

is hard to work

good for buttons

tobacco boxes

utensils & barrels

your shade shelters

bodies of water

calm & troubled

disease by beetles &

spore slope your height

the young ones climb

in another version

an old man returned

from ageless wars

a message in a bottle

a shell of you inside

to hold very tight &

please start writing

again & let us have

something for our fingers

a talisman

a lifeboat

a poem

washed ashore —

IN CALIFORNIA THERE IS A NEIGHBORHOOD WHERE ALL THE STREETS ARE NAMED AFTER THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW                      

Van Ripper Court, Katrina Lane, Crane Drive. No horseman, but the only road

out is the only road in. SPEED LIMIT: 35 YOURS: 41. Young redwoods sentinel the

meridian. An orange earthmover readies for the semi-annual evacuation drill.

Expect delays Van Tassel to Ichabod. In another legend, goats devour the fire. Above

the valley, at the crest, a stone bench blooms lichen. Some tell of a secret culvert

into which someone has placed an egg. When the water comes, it rinses meadow

branches wrapped with silver. The Subarus, the Hondas, the Jeeps—all the Tundra

pick-ups carting wide planes of glass—charge past the herd breakfasting in the

school crosswalk. Careful, don't lose your head. If you tarry at the cut sycamore

just after Van Winkle, you might see one spotted fawn forage an heirloom plum

on her perfect, spindled legs.

LATE PANDEMIC BREAKUP WITH ELEPHANTS

upstairs my neighbor walks circles on the ceiling

broken unmasked on the porch next morning    

                                                asks How do you get through it

I can’t exactly say

we’re always in it One foot in front —

of another city I heard elephants trekked

300 miles north from a year ago March

nobody knows why at night they sleep with bodies touching

trunk to foot no tusks          

when one gave birth the entire herd waited

for months

through steady rainfall        

reports of blocked traffic smashed up barns

whole fields of corn consumed drunken pachyderms stumbling

through a fermented grain store

in the direction of urban streets

foraging for snacks trailing enormous night gardens

it’s said they visited the home of elders lifted a lost calf

out of the gutter devoured a truckful of pineapple

set out as lure & then continued their way          

researchers mystified Don’t trust anyone who gives you a very

clear response something like

elephants are thick-skinned mammals when the truth is

the skin of an elephant is sensitive (& like mastodons & Woolly

mammoths) prone to extinction

                        they can swim

they stand on their toes

recognize themselves in a mirror

remember sources of water

                                                along migration routes

use their trunks to greet & reassure

their tusks are (in fact) giant teeth &

like the teeth of new humans

fall out & then grow in again

without cutting

there is a practice used to break

a young elephant’s spirit bound with ropes & confined in tight

wooden structures starved & beaten over

& again with a sharp long-handled steel hook

even captive they remain wild

not immortal like the gods of Olympus

the god who takes the form of an elephant

is worshipped as one who clears obstacles

& paves the route to charge forward trumpeting

the prehistoric song-cure Let’s go this way

                                                                        my loves —

Author Bio:

Marci Vogel is a California-born poet, translator, and educator. She is the author of At the Border of Wilshire & Nobody (Howling Bird Press Poetry Prize); Death and Other Holidays (deGroot/Miami Book Fair Prize for the Novella), published in French as La Mort et autres jours de fête (éditions do; trans. Marie Chabin); and XENO» GLOSSIA: An Illuminated Study of Christine de Pizan (Parlor Press). Her work has received support from the Community of Writers, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, and the Camargo Foundation. The recipient of a Willis Barnstone Prize, her commentary series on translation and poetics is archived at Jacket2. A first-generation college graduate, Vogel served as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities and the University of the Future and teaches at the University of Southern California.