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Jill McCabe Johnson

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Kitchen Waltz

 

We tilled our garden beds, making way for heirloom starts,
cuddled into careful impressions. The peppers we staggered,
left to right, front to back, and they did, in a way, resemble dance steps,

instructional patterns for those less nimble, like me.
I questioned the wisdom of eggplant near sunflower. He questioned
my carelessness: the brush against chickweed, launching seeds

into startled orbit. But then I brushed him, or he grazed me,
and we gathered sprays of rosemary, marjoram, thyme,
and a quiver of chives before stepping inside.

Something happened next in the kitchen, the alchemy of lovers,
where food as primeval as catfish finds sesame oil and tikka masala,
scallions and pecans. Greens melted in the pan, then on our tongues,

like our muscles later in bed. I doubt either of us dreamt of dancing,
but one of us said, “Turn,” in our sleep. Loud enough to wake us both,
but not so loud we could tell who had spoken. Two cooks,

one mind. A drowsy shifting under the covers. Two forks entwined.
A stomach pressed against a back, the other stomach unbridled and breathing.
I thought of quail—savory, delicate, and buttery—with fresh sage and arugula.

 

 

“Kitchen Waltz” is reprinted from Floating Bridge Review.

 

Jill McCabe Johnson’s first poetry collection, Diary of the One Swelling Sea (MoonPath Press, 2013), was inspired by the Salish Sea surrounding her home in the San Juan Islands. Jill is the founder and executive director of Artsmith, which provides artist residencies and other programs to support the arts. She earned her MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop, and will graduate in May 2014 with a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska where she pretends the acres of corn and tall grass prairie are another form of the sea.

 

Kim-An Lieberman, 1974 – 2013

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Kim-An Lieberman has left us too early. On the few occasions I met Kim-An in person or heard her read, I wished to know her better–warm, funny, and so so smart, kind, down to earth, generous. I knew her through her poems, especially her gorgeous first book, Breaking the Map (Blue Begonia Press, 2008).

I think most of us come to writing, at least initially, to sort out our own identities, and I felt that was so with Kim-An’s first book. Here were the two sides of herself–her Vietnamese heritage, her Jewish heritage, and the split between. She found rich material, for example, in her grandmother’s sudden and epic relocation to California from Saigon in 1975. She writes about this in the introduction to her wonderful poem, “Water Buffalo Tale” on the Poetry Northwest site. The surreal sometimes appeared in Kim-An’s poetry, surprising but perfectly at home, and seemed to grow up out of that split in her identity like a flower in a sidewalk crack.

I’m eagerly anticipating Kim-An’s forthcoming collection, In Orbit, which will appear from Blue Begonia Press early in 2014.  Jack Straw Studios will be hosting a reading from In Orbit sometime this spring.  Please keep an eye out for a date and help us celebrate her abiding talent and voice.  Find a beautiful tribute to her in The Seattle Times here, and another by poet Alan Chong Lau in the International Examiner here, and a third by local literary critic Paul Constant here.

A memorial will be held on December 30th at 3:00 p.m. in the Seattle Asian Art Museum. In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be made to the Kim-An Lieberman Memorial fund at The Evergreen School to offer financial aid for students in need.

Here is Kim-An’s beautiful and unexpected poem, “Wings,” from Breaking the Map.

Wings

It had been three years, maybe longer, and the map of his body
……….was etched
in her palms.  The stretch of his legs. The stiff, clean-shaven line of
……….his jaw.
His left ring finger, curved slightly inward.  So of course she made
……….the discovery.

The first feathers appeared in a pair.  She was facing him in the grey
……….wash of morning,
stroking the knoll of his shoulder blade, when twin quills broke
……….suddenly through the skin.
He locked himself in the bathroom for hours, cursing blankly
……….at the mirror.

They grew quickly, eclipsing his back like snowfall.  In the moonlight they
……….were lustrous.
she would brush them gently with a damp washcloth, gather loose
……….feathers in a basket.
Under their spreading canopy his muscles formed tight knots, pulsing
……….like fists.

He complained about their aching weight, how they poked holes in his
……….favorite sweater
and sometimes, of their own accord, began to flap and pull his feet
……….from the ground.
Just think of all the usefulness, she said, fan on a flaming night or extra
……….warmth in winter.

But he became sullen, took long walks alone after dinner, absolutely
……….refused to see a doctor.
He would not go to the beach anymore, even when she promised
……….a three-color sunset.
Can’t trust these things, he told her, and I’m not stupid.  I know
……….my mythology.

When he asked her to leave, it was another grey morning. He lay
……….sprawled on his stomach
at the opposite end of the bed. He gave no reason, but she knew it was
……….another woman
because their beauty was blinding. Even fully clothed he leaked
……….gallons of light.

In time she moved on, ripped up his pictures and set the ridiculous
……….basket of feathers on fire.
But some mornings she woke drenched in jealousy. Half-believing
……….she heard a rustle,
she would stare at her husband’s empty back and wonder if anything
……….would change.

 

Emily Warn

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Talking with the Gigantic Maple About the Dragonfly

 

Neither you
nor I
can mimic
a dragonfly
though your seed-wings
clack
like their wings
when they take off
in unison
to practice backflips
above the lake.

Nor can we balance
on a single blade
of shore grass,
admiring ourselves
to shame the lake
into polishing its mirror.

But we can be still
and hear the quiet
between
two echoing thrush.

And in the hush
of our leaves
and breaths
conjoined,
we can see
universes
in the dragonfly’s
eight eyes.

 

(from “Flowering Branches” in The Novice Insomniac (Copper Canyon 1996))
“I stood where you would not see me
And my armload of flowers.”

 

For Emily Warn, poetry links music and meaning every bit as powerfully and oddly as religious traditions do, inventing complicated, invisible relations. She moved to the Pacific Northwest 1978 to work for North Cascades National Park, and a year later moved to Seattle where she has lived, more or less ever since. Sherecently served as the Webby Award–winning founding editor of poetryfoundation.org, and now divides her time between Seattle and Twisp, Washington. Warn has published five collections of poetry, including three books: The Leaf Path (1982),The Novice Insomniac (1996) and Shadow Architect (2008), all from Copper Canyon Press, and two chapbooks The Book of Esther (1986) and Highway Suite (1987). Her essays and poems appear widely, including in Poetry, BookForum, Blackbird, Parabola, The Seattle Times, The Writers’ Almanac. She has taught creative writing or served as writer-in-residence at many schools and arts centers. She was educated at Kalamazoo College and the University of Washington, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

 

Jeanne Gordner

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River Float – 1950

Three Children and I on inflated mattresses
…….drifted Toutle River’s snowmelt water
…….eddied quietly to a narrow gorge where

the river narrowed between rocky cliffs
dropped steeply…… surged
… white water roiling and spinning
…… past boulders and downed trees.

Toutle’s steep descent tossed us
airborne into whirlpools…… under water and
above again ….in confined passage
between cliffs and reaching driftwood.

water’s roar and echo
. overwhelming our screams, hurled us
……over deep holes…… under tree limbs
………………………. like homing fish.

…….Half a mile downstream the canyon
…….opened and Toutle quieted to the percussion of
…….water against stony beach.

We waded ashore
…. heard nests of song in alder and aspen
.. . felt sun’s heat.

Elated with our venture
we trudged the road back to camp and
… abandoned ourselves again and again
…… to river’s icy race and swirl,
………. its fluid passage between rock and rock. Until

too weary to tramp the road again
we sat and watched water patterns
interlace and elongate westward
watched as sun slid behind trees
its last light dancing in the river.

 

 

(In 1980 Mt. St. Helens erupted, filling the gorge with muck and trees)

 

Jeanne Gordner grew up in Longview Washington, then enrolled in Reed College, majoring in Political Science.  Lloyd Reynolds introduced her to modern poetry, and she has been writing ever since. Eventually she became a teacher and taught for several years in Yakima, and then substituted in Oak Harbor schools when her family moved to Whidbey Island.  She returned to Olympia and was one of the original members of Olympia Poetry Network, which has enriched her writing life in many ways. Currently she lives in a retirement community and participates in a writing class. She has published three chapbooks.  

D. C. Miller

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Keeping Bees Since the Eruption

 

Since you found the burst of fireweed
where the scorched bear plied the chomping brook,
saw crimson blooms squeeze through rent cedar,
told the ladies there are flowers
tasseling for the rest of their lives,
bore them up St. Helens’ spine,
faced their doors toward morning sun
where guard bees wing the gray mist fleeing,
felt the singe of venom in your veins, imagined
fresh comb full-capped, plugged with honey,
interred the dead in ash, and set
her white mansions where earth fell apart—
you can wait with them for the dawn.

Since you were stung in the night,
each sting union and requiem—
you feel the earth’s spin,
understand the dance of bees.
You sense in every Apis mellifera
renewal and matriarch,
and when you push your way
through cheek-high flowers, the bees,
a galaxy of copper stars with frail wings,
the swarm is ether, zuzzing a new skyline.

 

“Keeping Bees Since the Eruption” is reprinted from North American Review.

 

D.C. Miller stumbles up to alpine country regularly, guides ocean kayakers to the B.C. coast, and sorely tries to avoid the ER, from close encounters with the teeth of his Great Pyrenees dog.  Although his commercial beekeeping days are over, he continues to urge small females to fly into his heirloom apples to lick flowers. When not writing, you can find him tethered to “Barkley”, dragged to new heights in the Columbia Gorge &  North Cascades.  He lives in White Salmon.

Tim Sherry

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Word Game with a Little Boy

 

To let him win,
or to play the big word
with five letters and a Q
on the triple word square
is too much ethics to decide–
and I make ON
up in the corner.
We show our left-over letters
and subtract the points.
He beats my by 8,
throws his hands up in the air,
and smiles all the victory
of a little boy
who doesn’t need to learn
so much about losing just yet.
When we are putting the game away,
he looks at me
and asks if I let him win.
Inside the box
there must be a big word to answer;
but I say no,
and he looks at me as if
he is adding up in his head
what just happened.

 

“Word Game with a Little Boy” is from the full-length collection, One of Seven Billion, which will be published in the spring of 2014 by Moonpath Press.

 

Tim Sherry, a long-time public high school teacher and principal, lives in Tacoma, Washington.  He earned a BA from PacificLutheranUniversityand an MA from the Universityof Chicago.  His poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, The Raven Chronicles, Interdisciplinary Humanities, and Seminary Ridge Review among others.  He has been a Pushcart nominee, and most recently his poem “Of Fires” was a finalist for the Rash Award in Poetry and published in the Broad River Review. His full-length collection, One of Seven Billion, will be published in the spring of 2014 by Moonpath Press.

 

 

Debra Revere

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Drowning

 

First you hear the sharp crack of winter
splitting itself from itself. Then you hear the screams,
your brothers on the shoreline safe, frantic,
transforming into heroes. Then, silent, the quiet
underwater, the silence of a winter lake.
Amazing when you’re eight.

Falling through the ice, it happens suddenly and slowly.
You watch it all from a distance, like peering
around the corner late at night,
spying on your parents, on a separate life.

You think you’d like to spend more time down there,
search for creatures slowly breathing, hibernating, look
for the secret place turtles retreat to in the cold.
Find a place to sleep away your life.

But instead, you yell, you reach for the surface, hold
on to the jagged edge marking your path down. Hold on,
hold on, they call. They toss themselves onto the ice,
reaching, lashing you with their love.

 

 

Debra Revere is a Research Scientist and Clinical Faculty working in the field of biomedical and public health informatics at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. She is widely published in her research field which focuses on understanding the information needs of public health. Debra has been writing poetry since she was 9 years old. Her first poem was published in the Lawrenceville Elementary School newspaper, an ode to the Easter Bunny.  She lives in Seattle.

Gary Lemons

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Snake’s Karma

Why this be as it is he wonders.
Questions boundin round inside
His tube like echos in a sewer pipe.

Why not some better endin
For everything—why we got to bring
Down the whirlwind on ourselves,
Past and present rubbed together
Til the future’s set on fire?

Why can’t we do this simple
Thing—love one another, love the land
Includin the land of one another
And the planet where it happens?

What keeps us from gettin it right
And makin peace with death so as
We don’t fear it so much we be invitin
It prematurely into our hearts.

Snake thinkin about this but all the time
He’s salivatin bout the good taste
Of a bone still got some of the critter on it.

 

 

“Snake’s Karma” is reprinted from Snake, Red Hen Press, 2012.

 

J. Gary Lemons writes, “There is tradition but there is also freedom from tradition.  Meaning really there is just freedom.  To look–to see the invisible lines between things, to color the world with thought and paint its huge relevant inexpressible ironies with the tiny brush of personal devotion.  The choice is the gift.  The rest is practice.

I want to be at that place where individual memory and collective memory intersect. Like a scientist picking the fragments of mesons and quarks left after a high speed particle collision,  I want to rake through the details of bones, of threads and odd symbols and mirrors every human being leaves in the safety net below them.  I want to draw attention to, perhaps even comfort, the trembling pieces as they begin to fade.”

His poetry collections include Fresh Horses (Van West & Co., 2001), Bristol Bay: And Other Poems (Red Hen, 2009), and Snake (Red Hen, 2012). He lives in Port Townsend.

 

Lily Myers

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On Loneliness

I
Last night I fell asleep reading One Hundred Years of Solitude
while my roommate and her boyfriend kissed on the bunk below me
which is to say,
lately I’ve been alone.
Claustrophobic in the small room of my own body.
I wonder what it would be like to have another person’s wrists.

II
All the nothing days—
beer in a friend’s garage, teeth chattering
not quite inhabiting this envelope of skin

Sitting next to myself on the morning bus ride
moments hanging in the air like ghosts,
forgetting to pass.

III
This afternoon the sky was yellow.
Patches outlined in light blue cloud.
Rain started falling from the middle of the sky.
I stood still. Stared fully. Felt nothing.
Was not a body.
Was part of the air underneath the loving yellow sky.

 

Lily Myers is a poet and a Sociology student at Wesleyan University, where she competes on the Slam Poetry team. Her home is Seattle. She is convinced that by sharing and listening to each other’s writing, we can better understand and thus humanize each other. She loves poetry for the way it makes us honest and vulnerable. She is looking for poetry submissions for her feminist blog: http://shapeswemake.tumblr.com

 

Ann Batchelor Hursey

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Made by Hand

My thumb loops yarn, inserts
……….the needle’s tip,
pulls yarn through each stitch: right
……….to left, back
to front—worked-in, slipped-off
……….my needle—
I purse my lips and knit
……….this prayer shawl
to warm a friend’s shoulders.
……….My son appears
to say, Knitting makes you
……….look older.
Startled, I think: Is this
……….the first time
he’s seen gray on my temples?
……….Is it the way
I squint beneath the lamp?
……….My needles slide,
knit three, purl three—and then
……….reverse the row
below; a three-beat seed
……….stitch, trinity
of healing thoughts. As fingers
……….move I tell
him how I cast sixty stitches,
……….like my age—
My needles slide, knit three, purl
……….three—three beat
trinity of healing thoughts—
……….Me, thinking when
was the first time I thought
……….my parents old?
Unobserved, I used to watch them
……….sitting, side by side—
their eyes on strangers— and me
……….wondering when
did they put on weight, when
……….did their shoulders
soften? My son speaks again,
……….would I listen
to a Haydn solo, the piece he
……….needs to learn
next week? He leans against
……….my knees, catches
the shawl, now falling off
……….my lap. My
hands graze past his unkempt hair
……….as we listen to
this floating melody, this
……….slow concerto.
It’s then I start my final row,
……….turn all that
length now gathered on the floor—
……….consider skills
of binding-off. Remembering
……….do it loosely.

 

 

“Made by Hand” is reprinted from Fire On Her Tongue: An eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry, Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy, Editors (Two Sylvias Press, 2012).

 

Ann Batchelor Hursey’s work has appeared in the Seattle Review, Crab Creek Review, Poemeleon, Chrysanthemum and Persimmon Tree, among other publications. Besides collaborating with artists, musicians, and community gardens— she has written poems about fair trade and handmade things.  She holds an MFA in creative writing from the Rainier Writer’s Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Born and raised in Ohio, she’s now lived longer among Firs and Cedars than Sassafras and Buckeyes. She lives in Mountlake Terrace.