Category Archives: mortality

Emily Van Kley

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My Dead Grandfather

 

My dead grandfather no longer lives in his apartment

though his last dishes are clean in the dishwasher,

though his leather gym bag lies unzipped in a grimace

behind the bedroom closet door. My dead grandfather

does not sit at his desk and write checks

to black civic organizations with his pen anchored

in agate. My dead white grandfather, whose skin

will not retain its significance, does not underline

scores at the tops of prisoners’ Christian curricula.

He neither shambles across the hall for one ex-wife’s pot roast

nor drives ten minutes over state lines to make claims

on morning coffee with his first ex-wife. When I open

the cabinets and every drawer in his apartment,

my dead grandfather does not prevent me from considering

the hand-held vacuum cleaner, the two small wineglasses,

the elegant hammer and book seal with his initials, also mine.

My dead grandfather stays at the church where he is boxed

in a manly crate of brass and satin. I am not afraid,

when we arrive, of his withered mouth sewn straight

over ceramic teeth, of the drill-row forehead unable

to imply a thing from temper to concentration, the hands

improbably folded one over the other, the knuckles

wax-museum pale. I am not afraid of the body

which has been through the busted-brick labor

of dying, not of its shrunkeness, its itness, its pall.

And yet a grandfather is a notion that does not ash away

like a last cigarette ground into pavement. My dead

grandfather, laid out in a fine blue suit at the altar

of Lansing First Reformed. Myself a child

who has touched his things.

 

 

“My Dead Grandfather” previously appeared in The Iowa Review.

 

Emily Van Kley’s poetry has won the Iowa Review and Florida Review awards, and is forthcoming in The Way North: Upper Michigan New Works, from Wayne State University Press. Though she grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, she now lives in Olympia, Washington, where she works at the local food co-op. Her work is included in Godiva Speaks: A Celebration of Olympia Area Women Poets.

Judith Azrael

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Alone

 

The wind is cracking branches

in its teeth

It is running after me

I am not afraid

We are all going

to the same place

whoever  gets there first will have to wait

 

“Alone” previously appeared in Rosebud.

 

Judith Azrael received an MFA from the University of Oregon and taught for many years.  The teaching included a three year position at Western Washington University  as visiting writer and  at other colleges, community colleges and art centers.   Her four volumes of poetry include:  Fire in August from Zeitgeist Press,  Fields of Light from Cassiopeia Press, and Antelope Are Running and Apple Tree Poems from Confluence Press.  A collection of her stories and lyrical essays,  Wherever I Wander, was published by Impassio Press.  Her work has appeared widely in magazines including  Harvard Review, The Yale Review, Shenandoah, The Nation, The Sun, Rosebud, Humanities Review  and The Christian Science Monitor.

Student Poem

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Stranger at a Funeral
Eliot Johnson

 

Who was this guy? And why
am I at his funeral? Some friend
of my grandfather, godfather of my uncle,
whose name I hadn’t heard until yesterday
when my mom searched my closet for a dress shirt
because my dad wanted me to see this.

We stand in the back with the less-related, the second class mourners,
nearer to the daylight and the fresh air. Someone passes out candles. In the front,
the priest, obscured in thick smoke, recites verses in Russian,
or Latin, or something, the auctioneer for the corpse. A woman in a pink shawl
whom I caught a glimpse of as she disappeared behind the stage
cuts into the priest’s recitation with disembodied chants.
As he talks, the priest swings his incense ball on its chain
like an exterminator fumigating an apartment. The smoke holds back
whatever light penetrates the thick curtains and obscures
the saints staring vacantly from the walls. Was the church always
this dark, or did years of incense leave stains like cigarette smoke?
(When was the last time they aired this place out?)
The dead man in the open box barely registers as
a sideshow against this smoky cave they’ve put him in.

There are no stories, no memories, just the smoke, the blue hands crossed
on the motionless chest, and the quiet sobbing from the first row.
The bereaved file past the casket and kiss the metal icon
laid on his forehead. The priest asks us to pray that the dead man
chooses not to become a ghost. The woman in front of me
crosses herself for the hundredth time. Then, finally,
it’s over. We blow out the narrow yellow candles, the pallbearers load the coffin
into a scuffed black hearse, and the mourners disperse, squinting, into the grey
Seattle drizzle. Everything appears normal again as I slide into my dad’s SUV,
and we leave the church behind to go see Nana at the hospital.

A moment important for those close
just sort of sailed by me, noted, but without impact,
another death on the news.

 

Eliot Johnson is 21, lives in Okanogan, and is earning a transfer degree at Wenatchee Valley College in Omak. Eliot writes, “I’ve messed around writing fiction for most of my life. I actually started this poem several years ago after the funeral of my uncle’s godfather, but didn’t make much of it until recently, when I re-worked it for the poetry component of a creative writing class.”

Mark Anderson

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For Connor

This is a poem for Connor
Connor who I have never met,
Connor who I may never know:

For two whole hours I listened to his girlfriend’s mother
as she talked behind me in a strip mall coffee shop
about the boy whose soul she was trying to save.
It was 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning
and this is how I had always needed to learn about holiness.

She says “Connor has a good heart
but he was never taught to use it.”
And I think to myself,
what funny things we overhear
when we are always listening.
From what I gather the problem is this:
her daughter is a meek white lamb
from the land of picket fences
and Connor is what is born out of adrenaline,
reformed and settled at the bottom of his stomach
but still not converted.
And as for myself,
I have been caught sinning so few times in public
that there are fools who have mistaken me for holy.
But at that very moment,
I had been through something
very recently, which was
very similar, and which ended
very badly for me.
So I feel for him,
and I press my ear so far into that lady’s throat
that I can hear her breathing above the espresso machine.

Because Connor and I
are the same shape
of wide eyed wishing wells
who want love
more than any other form of redemption.
But at that moment
love was falling through for the both of us.
So I swallowed my coffee slowly,
and I listened as hard as I could.

Because that morning
the only thing that could save me
was to feel just a little less alone,
which is exactly what his story did for me.
I should mention
if I hadn’t been listening then
I might not still be standing here
to speak to you.
So I wonder what makes an angel.
Does it have nothing to do with wings?
Before they have their wings
do they come with names like Connor?
Do they suffer like the rest of us?

And this is not a poem.
This is just a thank you note
to Connor who I have never met,
Connor who I may never know.

 

Mark Anderson puts together the Broken Mic poetry open mic (and, according to its Facebook page, “emotional spaceship ride”) each week at Neato Burrito in downtown Spokane. Age 24, the Inlander recently described him as the “grandfather” of Spokane’s poetry scene. That’s because he’s fought to keep performance poetry alive in Spokane through Broken Mic and poetry slam competitions. Recently, he was awarded the Ken Warfel Fellowship, for poets who “have made substantial contributions to their poetry communities.”

Sarah Cohen

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The Heart

 

It was born of a spark it never knew,
and raised alone indoors.
Like a bear in winter
it must dream cave dreams.
Sage of interiors, it might travel
in a trance to other realms.

Even in rest
its vigilance can never falter.
Even in paradise
it would be striving, blind.

A girl bends over a sewing machine,
her stitches tiny and flawlessly even.

Imagine never taking a minute’s rest
for decades, then resting forever.

 

“The Heart” is reprinted from Pool.

 

Sarah Cohen’s poems and other writings have been published in The Paris Review, Threepenny Review, Boston Review, and many others. She teaches English at the University of Washington and lives in Shoreline.

Laurie Lamon

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The Beginning and the End

 

 

What do we make of the God of vengeance, the bloodshed of kings,

  the women running from homes without

preparation; what do we make at the end of astonishment’s

    glance without preparation for darkness, and afterward,

darkness? What do we make of the landscape where stone begat stone,

   where soil was lifted and carried, and the cell’s

transparency was lifted and carried; what do we make of the feathers,

   the imprint of glass, the black weather swept

into floorboards; what do we make of the twenty-seven bones

    of the hand, the clod of dirt, the ring?

What do we make of the son replacing his meals with mourning,

   his evening run and the hour of bedtime reading

with mourning? What do we make of a father’s wristwatch, a hospital

   window, sun-splintered; what do we make

of the driver’s license and telephone number, the heart’s

   empty quarter, the history of voices, birthplace and geography,

the blurred eye, the shoelace pulled from the shoe?

 

 

“The Beginning and the End” is reprinted from Without Wings (CavanKerry Press, 2009).

Laurie Lamon’s poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New Criterion, Ploughshares, Arts & Letters, Journal of Contemporary Culture and others, including 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Ordinary Days, edited by Billy Collins, and the Poetry Daily and Verse Daily websites. In 2007 she received a Witter Bynner award, selected by Poet Laureate Donald Hall.She has also received a Pushcart Prize. Lamon holds an M.F.A. from the University of Montana and a Ph.D. from the University of Utah. Her two collections of poetry are The Fork Without Hunger and Without Wings, CavanKerry Press (NJ), 2005 and 2009.  She is a professor of English at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington.

 

READING:  Laurie Lamon will be reading from The Plume Anthology of Poetry, 2012 at Elliott Bay Books on Thursday, November 1, along with poets James Bertolino, Brian Culhane, Tess Gallagher, and Richard Kenney,

Thomas Brush

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The Shrew

 

I found him dead
In a cold corner of the garden, between the rock
Wall and the spring that never goes completely
Dry, his small hands soft as a child’s lost gloves, his blind eyes
Closed to the wet earth he came from where I returned
Him with only two turns
Of the shovel. Now, in this quiet house,
While my wife and son sleep and wind brushes the cold
Floor of dawn, with the year nearly gone, I wonder
How we got this far and why
Our fathers pitched their tents under the old threats
Of storms and floods, cut sod to make roofs, outlasted
The winter, dug deep for water in summer and stayed
Alive so far from here. And why the stars still cross
The crooked sky and why the fox flashing in the fairy tale returns
To me tonight like the dreaming face of the shrew and the narrow tunnels
He must have made, here, with the first month of winter buried
In leaves and rain and waiting for snow to fall again
Like the light of that small heart that just went out,
And the larger one that pauses and then goes on
Of its own accord, waiting for the first slight song
To rise from the blue edge of the world, greeting the New Year with love
And hope because our fathers came for the dream that wouldn’t leave
Them, put candles in the greased paper
Windows of those first houses so the lost could come home,
And prayed for the dead because they were.

 

“The Shrew” is reprinted from Last Night (Lynx House Press, 2012), winner of the Blue Lynx Prize.

 

Thomas Brush’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, Mid-American Review, Crazyhorse, North American Review, and many other journals and anthologies.  The quality of this work has been acknowledged by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Artist Trust, and the Washington State Arts Commission. He lives in Seattle.

Laura Gamache

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INDIAN GRAVEYARD,
DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

“Aesthetic distance
can save your life.”
-Mark Doty

Skull Point bone sand
pebble baby teeth
under the gibbous moon.

How will your children
decorate your sugar skull?
Blue icing lips to kiss them with.

Mist kisses the moon –
Makes it disappear behind
the mountain with Scottish name.

 

“Indian Graveyard, Dia de Los Muertos” appeared in Floating Bridge Review.

 

Seattle poet and educator Laura Gamache has poetry appearing or forthcoming in Clackamas Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Pontoon 7 & 10, South Dakota Review, and online journals Avatar Review, LocusPoint: Seattle, and Menacing Hedge, among others. She has published essays in Teachers & Writers Magazine and the anthology Classics in the Classroom, as well as fiction in North Atlantic Review. She was chosen as a Jack Straw Writer in 1999 and 2002. Laura teaches throughout the Northwest, including for the Seattle Arts & Lectures’ WITS and Sprague Williamson Writers in Residence Programs. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in 1993, where she directed the MFA Writers in the Schools Program for ten years.

 

Boyd W. Benson

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The Department of Licensing

 

The large woman who squints up
from behind her desk, her coffee and computer,
and the photos of the smiling family,
asks if I’m an organ donor
and then if I’m a registered voter.
Behind me, across the disinfected
waiting room, a child coughs
whose mother once had someone needle
into the upper, fleshy part
of her breast the name “Mark,” now
yellowed like an old newspaper headline,
who would not vote for me, or me her,
neither of us desiring anything
of the other’s organs.

For a moment, in this glow
from the large window (that should be
a wall) overlooking the parking lot
and my old truck — the light
spilling in upon the polished floor,
the white stucco walls — and for all of us
resigned to the strange need
to license ourselves,
to squint at one another
and cover our coughing mouths
for the betterment of the general public,
this is how it is.

 

Boyd W. Benson spent his youth in Everett and Whidbey Island.  A semi-professional musician, he moved to Idaho in his early twenties and ended up in Clarkston, Washington, where he spent over two decades.  He has recently moved back to Everett.  He’s most comfortable as a cook, but he’s dabbled at many roles.  He taught writing at Washington State University for a decade.  He’s currently trying his hand at freelance writing and, likewise, playing music in Everett, and looking for employment.  All in all, the game of poetry has been very good to him, enabling him to meet and converse with poets and writers he’s always admired, and he would like to thank the various editors and committees that have supported his work.  Since poetry has little or no economic value in a capitalist society, he believes in it highly, and remains humbled by all the poets of Washington.

 

Jesse Minkert

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CHARCOAL IN THE MILK

 

Collector of time and twine camping in the pantry
flashlight in an underwater cavern walls all look
alike. What you hear above the clatter:
what can’t exist can’t make demands.

Once these places were one place. Engines
carried us to knowable destinations. Corners
stand now on toes. Jobbers glide past our lips.

Let chance decide. Let rivers flood
the neighborhoods. Let floor lamps
pretend to be bonfires. Mats and napkins
beckon; gestures on the glass.

Master of time and isotopes. Half this life
is half enough. Brother under skin healing
in the dispensary. Neutrinos in the nursery.

Sutures over eyebrows. Sweet sleep
on fresh sheets. Sweat on the face.
Blood in the stool. Clusters of cells
deforming midnight to dawn
Hair grows on the mask.

Once this was all one place. Motors carried us
we didn’t care where. Feathers filled our pillows
pheasants basted in wine pretended to embrace
the fate of many slathered in the same sauce.

 
Jesse Minkert lives in Seattle. He has written plays for theater and radio, short stories, novels, and poems. Wood Works Press published Shortness of Breath & Other Symptoms, in 2008. His poetry appears or is upcoming in Floating Bridge Review, Harpur Palate, Aunt Chloe, Raven Chronicles, and Naugatuck River Review.