statement of place: allison linville

I spent my entire childhood in Idaho traipsing through the Sawtooth Mountains and the Bruneau Desert with my family. My family also spent summers commercial fishing in Alaska, which meant my sister and I were allowed to explore with more freedom than we would at home. Sometimes we would find ourselves a few miles away from our island camp, narrowly escaping the rising tide.

After graduating from Boise State University, I moved to Montana and began working in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. From my childhood, I felt very connected to the landscape around me. After spending time at a remote fire lookout where my only companions were the landscape and the sky, I now feel connected to the land as though it is my closest friend. In times when I was hiking alone in the wilderness, or almost walked off a cliff in the fog, or saw a grizzly bear a little too close, I was not afraid of the land around me; I trusted it to take care of me, or at least know my place in it, large or small, safe or not.

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.

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.

statement of place: stephen page

I often ran barefoot through Michigan woodlands as I was growing up. I climbed trees, leapt over fallen trunks, and sludged through swamps. I learned to swim very young, so I easily forded rivers and swam across large lakes. My Aunt Dee and Uncle John instilled in me reverence for nature and respect for the land. They also taught me how to hunt, trap, and fish—but only for sustenance, not for sport. As an adult, after randomly wandering the globe and vocationing myself in numerous noble and not-so-noble positions, I found myself in South America, ranching and farming. I always ensured that a respectable portion of the land was kept fallow as a refuge for the local flora and fauna—equally as a morale obligation to the earth’s environment and its populace.