coyotes on the edge of town

by sean arthur joyce


— New Denver, BC, March, 2014
 

Crisp March night
under half-moon sky.
Coyotes on the edge of town
throating the song of the forest—
fluted, wild as an icy crag,
flawless ease
of ancient lore,
all the dogs silent.

What shivers
is the sub-zero night.
Moon-carved shoulder
of Goat Mountain
an eerie resonator.
Cobalt blue of winter sky
brilliant—stark against fir
steeped in black.
One thing is sure
amongst so much doubt—
a voice
calling out mastery
from the dark

exhibit: in the woods, outside duncan, british columbia

by renée sarojini saklikar


That a bomb is made. That is known.
That the bomb is set off, that is known, in the woods, outside Duncan, cousin-town
                        to the village Paldi.




*



Of all the locations in Empire, real and imagined, past and present,
                        It is here: June 1985, 
there are no straight lines— 




if there is a man, he is making detonation—
                        Time loads up incident.
                        In recounting there is implication. 
                        Describe all particulars.


                        Piney scented,
                                    the woods.                    Where is
the past 
                                    also present


we never speak of it

 


“Exhibit: in the woods, outside Duncan, British Columbia” was previously published in children of air india, un/authorized exhibits and interjections, (Nightwood Editions, 2013)

the poet visits

by eugenia hepworth petty


Itinerant in the Northwest each summer
he plays  sevillanas on the porch
and argues about the use of language 
to describe the rap-poets' hubris

He lives twenty feet above the San Lorenzo
high in the watershed	
where the water runs narrow and shallow
between the banks

At night, roosters, doves and guinea pigs 
sleep in cages in the safety of the house
            the ferret passed away in the spring
miniature horses entertain the children 
of Indian families in Sunnyvale 
on  Ratha Yatra and Diwali 

He recalls the story of when he was 86'd 
from the artist complex in Santa Cruz
"I wasn't being belligerent
 I was being a poet," he says
pacing back and forth

the lost man leaves a will

by jennifer boyden


To the wind, the fullness of my mouth, juice
of my openness. To gnawing things, the osseous fists
of my bones’ rebinding. I want the earth
to accept my head. I have wanted to be held
by something my entire life, something that demands
all of me to answer back with holding.

To my gone children, all I cannot say without
my tongue. I call you in silence. You answer
in kind, and are counted. To birds, a nest of hair
and threads for the wobble-necked and pink-bodied.

I give the trust of grass to bear and raccoon,
to the crepuscular world who pauses before taking,
whose staring eyes give back the light of cars
as if to fix the breakage of air
before the great coming down upon them.
I have been broken. I
have been broken.

My walk from one place to this did not leave
a trail: I walked my route only once, and once-
forward is not enough to be remembered by grass.
My path is where I column into my own shape.
I give space to air with my leaving.
I give space to flying with my leaving.

I ask for nothing in return. I have received more
than I asked for, and worse: the world afloat; answers
at once and for nearly everything; animal bellies
untethered and dragging.

To the leaf, serration of my teeth.
To water, ice of my witnessing. It will need it.
To deer, asking and then emptiness before slaughter.
The grass should take my memory. But to the trails worn
by the escaping many, the mud of unknowing.

Here is what I know for now: worms,
I have loved you rightly
since I learned that dirt holds secrets blind and dependent
on whatever mercies we are willing to gift. I gave you names.
I counted your rings, measured your body-yawns

toward darkness. Worms, you are better than stars
because you are here.

Do you remember
how my mother stitched her people’s names
to my cuffs and then disappeared? The birds left
before the people did, but you, you worms, you stayed.

To the worms, my thanks. I ask you to make me rich
within yourselves: you stayed. While the earth
was fleeing itself, I named you, and you answered
to the place of my naming, and remain.


“The Lost Man Leaves a Will” was first published in The Declarable Future, © 2013, by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reprinted by permission of The University of Wisconsin Press.

david on the phone

by jennifer boyden


David sober says to feed the bear
who’s eating the birdseed in our front yard.
Says we must, for him, feed it so we’ll earn a badge
under the god he’s wearing lately. God with eyes.
God who sleeps a lot when David needs him most,
and whose waking patience is thin
as the bear’s winter cells. This God of tallying
and disappearances is called upon by David most
in the time of morning vapor when it’s hardest
for David sober to believe: whole day stretched
in front of him like paint thinner, each cup a cup
which is to be used for coffee only. Feed the bear,
David says sober though alone at his end of the hour
when god might wake for him. David says
it would go well for all of us if we pour milk over bread,
honey over meat, and then carry out the bowl.
But lock the door when you’re done, David says
sober, because the source is always sweeter
than the meal. He says the bear’s salvation will be heard,
and might speak for him at the end of his need.

And with what sweetness on the tongue
will it urge the god of that single cup awake?
And with what honeyed breath will it seek
us out again, small gods terrified of the asking?

 


“David on the Phone” was first published in The Declarable Future, © 2013, by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reprinted by permission of The University of Wisconsin Press.

sea smoke

by judith skillman


As far as winter
stretches, I am alone
on this cliff
staring down at what
could be fog or steam or mist.

The whisper of reeds recalls
a wound I barely remember,
a figure who could be . . .

As far as we are apart,
as old as that
and more, our differences,
the complaint you mustered
upon finding heat coalesced
into a lump.

The body, cremated, can be compressed
to diamonds. Stroke of gray
on a gull, prescience,
hull of the boat that might have saved Icarus
when he came of age . . .

As far as the dead are concerned,
the sun is smoke
the moon milk,
stars salt. With seared eyes
the dead see the living,
hunched figures
who find by dreaming
what it is they are looking for.

A glimpse of cloth,
bone of hanger left between a coat
torn from its closet
and the marred dowel
from which hung
garment bags. Mothballs
of ancient Styrofoam,
the insects have eaten
through silk, cashmere, linen,
and more.

Hat that should have been worn
in minus centigrade—
the dead see
our flesh in tatters
and the foreshortened days,
foreshadowing.

 


“Sea Smoke” was first published in Heat Lightning New and Selected Poems 1986–2006, reprinted by permission of Silverfish Review Press.

driftwood blanched

by allison linville


Bristle tea and rosehip teacups.  
                           Visions include walking among stalks of vegetables.  
                                                     Stalks that grow down, stalks that grow up.  

                                        Growing lemonade, are you?  

Today, thimbleberries widen 
              in the cracks of tables, 
                           the cracks of watered down wood.  


Eating gardens of gardens of gardens and your mother never called you back.  

                                        Set your latest whipping almonds aside 
                                        for future garnishes; 
                                        you have so many beads 
                                        already, darling.  

              You never want 
                           your celeries to be lavish or cold.  
                                                     Running on apricots.  

Would you ever have thought our letters 
              would spontaneously grow themselves?  


              Hurry over now, you say, 
              you don’t want to be reading to yourself.   

Someday, you will have a child of thorns, you hear.

twenty seven

by allison linville


Driving from the big sky to the desert 
                                        sky is impossibly grand for this life.  

I have never thought that everything starts 
             when people say it does.  

It starts now 
it seems 
ends soon 
I can feel it, and 
I will go ahead and 
restart it after that.  


There was snow and in the kitchen, we could talk. 

Tomato soup.  
The art of nice; 
             the brevity of low.  

In April, the desert welcomed 
                           us with its warm, 
                                         dry nights and we heated 
                                         and walked and learned the 
                                                                                value of sunrise.  

Sunrises away, sunrises over lakes.  

I never knew it would be so heavy 
                           to run.  

And despite your unending effort, 
             we still moved south 

                           and it hurts, and it hurts.

coordinates

by allison linville


I am unwittingly cold 
                                        every night you have a hold on the doorknob. 
             Lamps offer light 
from propane, 
wood convects to add warmth. 
 
                                        I cannot explain to you the morning,
                                                     in the morning.  
             Where emptiness of air 
                                        is the only thing that could fill you up.  


Required distance 
             descendent of thunder 
                           wearing bolts of fabric. 

I do not record that which I love.  

Rain splatters down the fry pan 
                           you exhale abruptly at the sparks.  

Flowers puff into fire; 	
              a new way to fold paper. 
                           Static blows through treetops.  

We are so accompanied by our worries.  	
                                                                  Wooden spoons hit bottom.   
                           So that your fingernail might cover the place you wish to be.

telling

by allison linville


Frigid pots, 
lonely itches 
under rugs and 
end tables tipping 
sadly over.  

Long before 
              you went home, 
                           waiting for things to get longer but 
                                                     you really couldn’t wait.  

Not for buses or ripening 
              lemons on the tiny tree or the sun 
                           to rise earlier or the hay to dry 
                                        or the empty box car to stop right in front of where you stood.  

                                        You know the smell when you open it?  Let that slide.  


All the juice, all the juice, all the juice.  
                                                                  This is clementine.  

Slowly glide toward citrus fruits from earlier years, 
              joining up!  

Left behind a steaming
              jade plant, followed by 
                                        the ocean’s best seaweed and 
                                                                  the old insulation puffing out.  

                                                                  Creased buttercream.
  
You say:  pies are only made in the daylight, 
              when your eyes are roughed up and your floor 
                                        walks in front of you.  
                                        So much to tell, to tell, to tell.

low tide

by diane tucker


low tide, and everything hidden
is now uncovered: the black weed, certainly
but also the upright fields of barnacles fighting
for space with the black mussels, these
gathered like a thousand shiny goat hooves
tied up and down the oily piles

the air is not their native habitat
in the breeze they clamp tight shut
nothing moist and pulsing
must be open to the sunlight

and we admire their defense, breathe
in sweetly their walls’ salt smell

when the tide lowers around our own
wet hearts there is no shield to slam
no doors we can clap closed around it
like the lid covers the glittering slick eyeball

no dreaming in briny bone-cells
for our washed up, low tide hearts

while the sun shines, they must lie
still in it, let their tissue-thin skin crack
and curl open, gasping in the open air

tides change
turn and return
barnacles and mussels, even the black
weed crunched in the sand, know
the tide will miss them and come back

our hearts, baking in their cracked-up
hides, lose all knowing, can breathe only
shallowly for reasons they cannot remember
trying not to lose what’s left of slippery life


“Low Tide” was first published in Bonsai Love, by Diane Tucker (Harbour Publishing, 2014, www.harbourpublishing.com) and is shared here with permission.

blue melodica

by diane tucker


The wet-felt overcast air packed
into the August afternoon is scattered,
cooled by your melodica and your voice
in old French song.

The humidity gathers itself
into raindrops and rushes to you.
It throws you all its tiny silver coins.

All the damp sweaty scurriers,
tourists and shoppers, be damned.
You are going to sing.

Thank you for your blue-boxed breath,
your thin paisley dress dripping
bohemian beside designers’ doors.

At the rushing hour of the afternoon
you pull harried ears to the curb,
bring into focus the waiting bench
and the fresh tree. Your song’s
momentum speeds us into stillness.

vancouver dry-dock

by diane tucker


The gulls’ shadows, temporary crows,
rush up the dock’s rust-stained sides,
meeting their white-as-angel selves at its lip,
all under the gaze of two yellow
tyrannosaur cranes on their bee-striped feet.

Some of the black bird-shapes are real crows
and the rest are seagulls’ shadows, wider,
their wings narrower and knife-shaped, gulls
trying to paint themselves up the vast grey
building’s side. But the image never sticks
and they fly by again: living, rising brushes.

The crows are smaller and smug in the distance,
racing up and meeting their shadow-selves
in the sky. But they can’t streak it either, great
horizontal slab a block long, metal tunnel
disgorging ships, wall of wind gathered and pressed
flat and swung up perpendicular to the water.

Into this both crows and gulls slam their shadows,
scrape them up its sides, sweep them back down
again, day after day of invisible avian ink making
time itself the paint against the wall, a streaked
and graven web of swift calligraphy.

morning meditation

by ingrid wendt


Tiny as an infant’s fist, a yellow-bellied Banana
            Quit is flitting all over this 
                        simultaneously blooming and 

fruit-bearing palm, right next to
            my rooftop terrace: first one
                        I’ve seen in the two whole blessed

months I’ve been here.  Too fast 
            for me to snap 
                        a photo, it lands 

on a frond, looks around, 
            is off again. 
                        Just like my mind.

Meanwhile the Great-Tailed Grackle lords it
            over the jungle from whatever high peak 
                        he’s found. 

Meanwhile
            the Mockingbird pours out its whole long
                        repertoire to the deaf, rising sun.

Twelve years after her death I put it together, what
            I have known, all along, this morning remembering
                         (I saw a little birdie go hop, hop, hop)

one more song 
            my mother taught me
                        (Kommt ein Vogel geflogen)
	
before things got tough between us.
             (Now the sun is in the West, and the birds
                        have found their nest. 	

Twelve years.  
            “We must say our prayers,” they say,” “thank our
                        Father for this day.”)

Three songs, 
            three birds.  My mother’s lap.
                        And God.

a valentine for akumal

by ingrid wendt


Verde, que te quiero verde
— Federico García Lorca
 

Oh, how I love your ever-green jungle, everything blooming
Or bearing or ready to be born, sometimes all three at once
On the same delirious plants: your coconut palms, for instance,
Under ever-sashaying fronds, five or six clusters of fruits

And flowers in all stages of production, year-round. How much
I learn from them. And from your birds. I love their constant mating
Ballets. How do they keep at it all day? Every day? Waiting
For them to cease and desist would be like waiting for the sun

To eclipse the moon. Your cocoa brown doves do it
On the one bare branch in all that berry-filled tree next to my
Balcony, shamelessly. Oh, so much fertility! My eyes
Have died and gone to Heaven, and that’s not even to begin

Naming what’s in your Eden under the sea. Look, Valentine,
See? I’m blossoming, I’m bearing, even as I speak. Be mine.

statement of place: ingrid wendt

Born in Aurora, Illinois, of a father born and raised in Valparaiso, Chile (into a German-speaking household) and a mother born and raised on a fruit farm in southwest Michigan (into a German–speaking household), I moved to Eugene, Oregon, more than forty years ago, to pursue my master of fine arts, not speaking a word of German (though I do possess school-learned, conversational Spanish). I have lived here ever since. (And have, by now, acquired conversational German, as well.)

With the surname Wendt, meaning “nomad, wanderer,” I fully expected, from earliest childhood, to do what my parents had done; my destiny, like theirs, was to some day make my life somewhere else. Two of the main themes, then, that weave throughout all of my work are my search for the meaning of home and the clash between our human need for roots and our American sense of “manifest destiny,” with all of its noble as well as ugly manifestations. This theme first appears, though in its infancy, in my first book of poems, Moving the House (chosen for BOA Editions by William Stafford, 1980), its title intended to work both as an understated metaphor for our “American condition” as well as a reference to an actual event: my husband’s and my buying from MacDonald’s Hamburgers, in 1972, an old bungalow scheduled for demolition, and moving it to a vacant lot halfway across Eugene.

Another main theme in my work—the result of values instilled in my early years in the Midwest, which matured, as I matured into adulthood, in Oregon, as well as during considerable travel over the years, including brief periods of living and teaching, as a visiting writer, in other states in the American West as well as in Europe—is of the countless ways our lives here at home connect to a larger, global, infinitely fragile, human community. My next four books—Singing the Mozart Requiem (Brietenbush Books, Winner of the 1987 Oregon Book Award), The Angle of Sharpest Ascending (Word Press, winner of the 2003 Yellowglen Award), Surgeonfish (WordTech Editions, winner of the 2004 Editions Prize), and Evensong (Truman State University Press, 2011, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize)—each contain poems set in Oregon, as well as other states in the American West and/or in Europe.

There is yet one other way I have, for many years, related to the place I live and the places I have visited: as an observer of the delicate environmental balance that exists, wherever I am, and of the ways in which it is threatened.

Not all of my work of “place,” however, carries these overarching themes. As in some of the poems I submit today, I often find myself, when living or visiting places new to me, responding in a wholly subjective way to what I find there, be it glorious or despicable or something in between.

where the water is

by lauren lockhart


men with their mile counting and their maps
            maps with their measurement and

lines,
a curious violence.

the Aspen bends where she wishes, stooping

to touch a white rock
nameless
I am surprised to find that she touches me first

and the Hackberry tree advises
that I follow the bird.

I know which one she means,
the one that fits inside my eye

which means
go where the water is

which means
name your daughter before the men begin to measure her.

anatomy of the profit

by lauren lockhart


one day
while I was floating inside her
my mother gave me a story

with her blood she gave it to me—
a transfused history which has removed my marrow
and replaced it with

fibers from a Douglas Fir.

born from one womb to enter the next—
Earth wounds me and heals me in the same breath.

her story opens
with a perverted momentum—
acres of clear-cutting
which is unlike the cycled fires,

and I do not want to trade my blood.
our infections are each a gift but I can trade my name
as a prelude to forgiveness.
            maybe.

when I am spine down on the ground outside,
I am home.

and I can hear my body’s wooden voice
which is her voice
which is the voice of this place, still

I cannot decide whether to sleep
outside with a spade
or in the basement with the mold.

medicine moves down

by lauren lockhart


weeping,
the water drained from hawk’s belly
rolls down,

sweet like
milk in the sun

the stream collides with all three parts of my
mind and lulls the inflammation there into a

weighted peace.

It begins with the center-

my heart knows it is my organ
and my nest
it knows it is a borrowed comfort

like a sudden breeze through the window

amber liquorish root
shining in the glass

the malingerer

by stephen page


The gaucho who has not worked
For three months because of a nail
In his ankle, who has not lived
On the estancia since I became patrón,
Hobbled in behind me on one of my walking
Rounds. He hopped the front gate after I
Passed, limped and crouched along a high weed ditch, kept to
The shadows of the trees until I was safely away
From my ranchhouse and on my way
Out of the casco and on to paddock eight before he exposed
Himself and shuffle-skipped across my yard to knock
On the back door and ask my wife for his pay.

The Tattler says he never worked, laid animal traps,
Cut down Teresa’s lemon tree.

the horse thief

by stephen page


You left on vacation the day we threw the Rustler
off the ranch, your taillights brandishing out
the front gates, and for ten days peace settled
upon the ranch, the mockingbirds nestling inside
the casco, the cows cudding, the bulls feeding
on lot #10, even the sheep not baa-ing, and except
for two of your mongrels loosing themselves from
their tethers and breaking into the henhouse, the sun settled
red and rose yellow; even the weekend rain plithed softly
into the soil, regreening by Monday the dormant
winter grass.

You are the Accomplice, the one who the Tattler told us
helped the Rustler, the one who lives near the back gate,
the one who sleeps all day and nightly visits the neighbor
riding roan horses that no longer exist.

A thunderstorm rivered the road on the night of your
return, preventing you from driving out the main
gate at your leisure, and when we locked the back
gate, it disallowed cowardly exit. The new working
hours I set confined your family’s laughter to
the kitchen, which, by the second day was locked inside
a corner cupboard, becoming cobweb. You stood outside
my casco at predawn and belligerently questioned
my order of the day, unhorsing you. You threatened
to quit, which I granted permission, which pressed
your lips together and skulked you toward the firewood
piled next to the barn, where you picked up an ax, glanced
at me, then turned and stared beyond your unsaddled horse
at the new calves watching you from within
the Santa Ana fenceline.

sketch of a fig tree

by kelli russell agodon


Halfway through the day with the sun like a halo
over my neighbor’s house, I think about God
and time and if it’s possible to feed my soul with a pen
and ink drawing I saw at a museum by an artist
whose name I didn’t recognize.

Somewhere across the country my house is falling apart,
or maybe it did years ago, returning to my old neighborhood
to realize the streets were never as big as I thought
and the house I lived in was not as nice
as the house down the road, but I was never allowed
to walk that far.

I’m older now and what’s falling apart is the sunset
I try to watch from my office window
where I’m surrounded by books
and it doesn’t matter how much the fog moves in
or if there’s a neighborhood where kids fight

about the color of poppies. I think back to the fig tree
that grew in my yard and how the leaves always reminded me
of being somewhere else or in the middle of a Rousseau painting
where the jungle was a prayer and everything I needed
was above me and all I had to do was reach up,
all I had to do was open my hands.

writing studio d: a retrospective in spring

by kelli russell agodon


— Port Townsend, Washington

Imagine this: it’s the day before Easter
            and beautiful if you love sun 

and birdsong and egg hunts, but not 
            if you’re wishing for rain, if you think Jesus 

is a distraction from real life and birdsong 
            is the unexpected alarm now waking you 

before 6 a.m. But it is, beautiful, the day before 
            Easter and you have to drive forty-five minutes

to watch your daughter at a two-minute Easter egg
            hunt, but that is three hours from now

and right now, you’re in a room typing a poem.
            Imagine this: It’s the week before Easter

and you’ve planned a writing retreat with friends, 
            to go to a haunted apartment to write

for five full days, five full days, because there is
            nothing more you want to do 

than lose yourself in your words. But you’ve 
            learned to stop saying “retreat” and use 

the term “residency” because others
            think you’re on vacation, some sort of

girl’s weekend with wine and pedicures. No, 
            this is where they’ve become confused.

This is where a friend says, It’s so nice 
            your husband can watch your daughter

as if he’s not related to her, as if he’s not 
            responsible for her care. And there was

this week I found myself
            annoyed because my daughter’s teacher 

wrote me after my husband went
            on a field trip with her class:

Your husband was a wonderful chaperone.
            Thank you for sharing 

him with us. And I wanted to hit
      reply say, Dads get points 

just for showing up. Imagine 
      the teacher ever writing 

my husband to say, Thanks for sharing 
      your wife with us. Thank you 

for not only being a dad who showed up, 
      but also a Filipino dad, 

you’ve added so much diversity 
      to this busload of white kids. 

Imagine this: It’s the day before
      Easter and I’m beautiful 

and not bitter that my generation is still
      stuck between women who live

for their men and the girls who expect 
      more. Maybe they will resent 

their husbands for caring too much
      about hairstyles, for using product.

There’s an Easter Egg hunt in less than 
      three hours and I’m frothing 

about relationships, about already having drank 
      my first cup of coffee and it’s empty, 

instead of realizing I’m still here, in this
      room looking out to a forest 

of blackberry bramble, of trees with moss
      on the north side, just like

in the Camp Fire Girl book I had as a child
      when I believed that good deeds

created beads and patches and I could rename
      myself Kekoa because it meant

Brave One, because I would grow up
      to be thankful for my ability to start

fires when the other girls fumbled with their flint.
      And while in this town, Jesus is a distraction

because he’s walking up the street in a tiny toga
      with an Elvis in wings

singing, Hunka-hunka burning love during the Easter
      parade because it’s hippie-dippie here.

I know where I reside best and how I can leave 
      last minute from a beautiful day-before-

Easter-morning to arrive back into my life of family 
      members who forget to drag the garbage 

down to the corner and be thankful I only start fires
      because someone needs warmth

but otherwise, I can leave the flint in my pocket and
      no longer create spark just to prove I’m the best.

owen beach aubade

by tammy robacker


— For Tim
 

Much like the greatest sea treasures
we set out to comb, you arrive to me
broken. An old green wine bottle that
no longer remembers what filled it before
or how its vintage was spoken; it chooses now
to be repurposed. To be tossed in tide violence.
To be knocked silly by indifference. To be left
alone. Then, woken up polished as a trinket.
Divined amidst wet rockweed and foul wrack
and renamed mine and fit to my hand.
It is much like love at our middle age,
how the turned out jellyfish does not amaze us
because it was once beautiful or swam. We recognize it
now because it stings. Because high tide pulled out
hours ago, and there it shines. Alive and bubbling
on the pebbled beach. That moony clear bell
still continues to beat, plump and smooth
as a young heart, braving the brackish shore.

crossing bone river

by jed myers


The bay widens and welcomes
more light onto the road.
It’s all silver, and then
back into the conifer greens and blues,
the silt-brown rain-swollen creeks,
moss-mottled alders, windless
ponds and their nibbling geese.

And the memory of arriving,
driving in the other direction, toward
the city where the kids would be born.
I’m not leaving—I’m returning,
to the beginning of who I’ve become,
the beginning of this long rainy season,
its leaks in the roof and walls,

mist-walking in the mud of the creek
in the shadows of the ravine, small hands
in my hands. Those young
who arrived through the body of the one
woman I married, they’ve flown
out of the rain. I’m still arriving.
The bay is quiet over the oysters . . . .

signatures

by joannie stangeland


1. Water stares back

Here, a thicket
of Nootka rose,
salal clouding low.

Here, a stand of alders.
Each tree a moment.

The forest stories,
writing on the ground,
sound puddled.

The pond opens, a door.
Sudden gold surfaces.

A sunlight knife.


2. The knife writes

The hand signs its name.
Two cup for water.

Sunlight streaks the knuckles.

A palm, a psalm,
another dusk.
My kingdom for a thumb.

In the hand, a glass,
wine darker than blood.

Hands carve the soil, 
plant calendula, 
tomatoes, peppers, kale.

Sun on dirt.
Iron residue.
 


3. Far from Ypsilanti

Noise for the eyes,
the wind clapping,
slim shivers.

Each leaf shimmers its notes
without sound.

I write around the pool’s verge,
stack my little words
like a city built of toothpicks,

empty matchbooks.
Without light.

I leave out
the hard parts,
but I do not leave.

Each silence glints, another knife.
Each cut mutes and opens,
a bad mouth gulping.

Syllables chuck
in my throat, in mud,
on brambles.

Empty pockets.
Raw.

I want to give you a white horse,
a slap on its rump,
a clear path out of here.

I want to give you a glass of wine,
fish and spinach.

I don’t want to watch you 
through that door.

down the road toward tekoa

by kathryn rantala


Something for a moment
further on

strong
or windward
gulch or photographic hills

and in the creek
or wash
the furred the feathered dead

on or on past
Pedersen and Garn
names so certain
as to write on posts

residue
as I am
on these rolled mounds
the worn away
in seams
with plastic

 
What the guidebook says to bring
off-road
may be extinguished

and sometimes that is hope

from here
the signs say
South

 


“Down The Road Toward Tekoa” initially appeared on the JB Stillwater site.

of cascadia

by sam hamill


I came here nearly forty years ago,
broke and half broken, having chosen
the mud, the dirt road, alder pollen and
a hundred avenues of gray across the sky
to be my teachers and my muses.
I chose a temple made of words and made a vow.

I scratched a life in hardpan. If I cried
for mercy or cried out in delight,
it was because I was a man choosing
carefully his way and his words, growing
as slowly as the trunks of cedars
in the sunlit garden.

Let the ferns and the moss remember
all that I have lost or loved, for I carry
no regrets, no ambition to live it
all again. I can’t make it better
than it’s been or will be again
as the seasons turn and an old man’s heart

turns nostalgic as he drinks alone.
I have lived in Cascadia, no paradise
nor any hell, but both at once and made,
as Elytis said, of the same material.
A poor poet, I studied war and love.
But Cascadia is what I’m of.