Category: Washington

the poet visits

by Louis Moreno

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

statement of place: eugenia hepworth petty

by Louis Moreno

I have only lived in central Washington for the past few years yet have felt an affinity with the landscape that surprised me, though in truth it makes perfect sense. As a child, I spent many winter and summer holidays in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and on the plains of southern Kansas, and these landscapes never left me, particularly my love of flowing mountain streams and the changing of the seasons. I was born in Texas, but spent most of my life living near the Pacific Ocean on the central coast of California, between Santa Cruz and the East Bay. I earned a bachelor of arts in English from Mills College in Oakland, and a master of arts in Poetics from New College of California in San Francisco before serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a rural village in Western Ukraine. My experiences in Eastern Europe, in landscapes more akin to central Washington than the California coast, inform much of my art today, so to be back among snow, sunflowers, and koza feels like a homecoming to me. I am cherishing the fields and hills of my new home: mist rising off marshland in autumn; herons watching from cattails and iris; raptors sitting atop craggy trees like sentries guarding a mystical underworld. I still have much to explore in Cascadia and the Pacific Northwest but am grateful to be in, as David McCloskey stated, “a land of falling waters.”

the lost man leaves a will

by Louis Moreno

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.

statement of place: jennifer boyden

by Louis Moreno

I used to climb a pine tree just to have a quiet place to read, and I looked forward to the Minnesota winters because the snow makes the world so intimately silent: You can hear your heart, see your breath pushed out just in front of yourself, and then walk through it into another breath. Growing up with many siblings and a small house put me on an early path of pursuing silence and privacy, those places where I can hear the rhythms of my mind and feel word shapes take form, build, connect, and become ideas. I need a fair amount of space and quiet for this to happen. Living in the inland northwest at the edge of the Blue Mountains for the past fifteen years has provided plenty of such spaces: rolling Palouse wheat fields, thick forests, scrubland, and a river with its many tributaries. Oh, the river: I grew up in water, and so it has always been a companion that shares a need for both the hidden and the surface flash. I have lived too many very different places to say with any kind of authority where I am from (Wichita, Kansas; Boston, Massachusetts; southern Oregon, China, etc . . .). But I know what I am from: Lynch Lake, Mill Creek, apple and oak and pine trees, granite and basalt, and grasses . . . . I believe I can claim the what of place more than the where, making my homes among those things where there is potential for recognition of a mutual residence within.

david on the phone

by Louis Moreno

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 Louis Moreno

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.

postcards to cascadia: eileen walsh duncan

by Louis Moreno

Duncan Postcard One Back 3

 

There Be Fiends: Dear Mom, / You gave me your truth, warnings / that skitter out of my satchel, / zing my spine. / If I’d known anything, / I would have asked for tools, / and ditched the dress, the lipstick, / all edible markings. / Tools I collected out here: / When cornered, / do not meet their gaze, they / thirst for your retina’s quiver. / Watch the shoulders, they / presage the strike. / To be invisible, / synchronize / each intake of breath. — Eileen Walsh Duncan

View postcard image: The Wizard of Oz

where the water is

by Louis Moreno

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 Louis Moreno

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 Louis Moreno

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

sketch of a fig tree

by Louis Moreno

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 Louis Moreno		

			


	

		




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.






			


	



			
				



		
	

		
statement of place: tammy robacker

				

			 by Louis Moreno		

			


	

		




Currently, I live, work, and write in Washington State and have called it home since I moved here at twelve years old. My connection to the natural realm and climactic nuances of this area in the south Sound is a constant source for inspiration and poetry. The ever-present rain; the locality and accessibility of the Puget Sound; the epic, oceanic beachheads; the damp, lush landscapes; and green, rustic foliage are a constant mirroring of my own meandering poet’s mind and my observant, deep, and concerned moods that change like the weather. For me, living in Washington is like looking into a lake every day. You see yourself reflected back, but it’s always through the fluid, changing water.




			


	



			
				



		
	

		
owen beach aubade

				

			 by Louis Moreno		

			


	

		






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 Louis Moreno		

			


	

		






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 Louis Moreno		

			


	

		






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 Louis Moreno		

			


	

		






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 Louis Moreno		

			


	

		






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.