Tim Sherry

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.

 

 

Graham Isaac

A Tool Breaks Its Promise

 

You tricked me, leafblower! out amongst
the lawns, admiring my own arms for

their usefulness, peeled bark, owned houses,
guidelines toward mulch. I wanted you

to be the wind, harnessed, I wanted
you to make me God. But like the firehose

or blender or hangglider before you, this is a
clumsy toy, a dignity steal for men in buttoned

shirts even on their day off. Listen: my home
is my castle and the lawn is my moat and the

leaves, they are alligators, even in the fall.
You’ve punchlined me, set me to the neighborhood

council in apology rags, contrition tie, shame loafers.
I drive back, my satnav malfunctioning, Joe,

over there, on his riding mower, grinning,
near asleep in his beer.

 

“A Tool Breaks Its Promise” is reprinted from Wonder And Risk. 

 

Graham Isaac is a writer and performer living in Seattle, Washington. Previously he lived in Swansea, Wales, where he attained a Masters of Arts in Creative and Media Writing from University of Wales Swansea, and co-founded The Crunch, an open mic for spoken word. He co-curates the Claustrophobia reading series and was one of the organizers behind the Greenwood Lit Crawl. His work has appeared in various journals, including Licton Springs Review, Your Hands Your Mouth, Hoarse, The Raconteur (UK), Beat the Dust and more. He is allergic to cats.

Martha Vallely

Volanding on an Updraft

 

He said you are a lovely lady.
She thought that he was joking.
She said she saw a butterfly
red ziggy zaggy
with half a hind wing ripped off
volanding on an updraft
a little lopsided what with half a half a wing gone
but moving still
from a near place to a far.

Painted ladies fly across the Alps she said–
don’t you want to do that?
Of course we’d have to eclose first–
don’t you want to eclose?
It would be sweet to spend five instars–
don’t you want to be instar?
motionless in a pupa
become liquid
have all your cells rearrange while you hang.
I want to be mother-of-pearl morpho iridescence.

You are lovely as mother of pearl he said,
slipping it into the conversation when she wasn’t looking.
I will follow painted ladies across the Alps with you,
chase morphos into the heart of Brazil,
go to Papua New Guinea in search of the Queen Alexandra’s birdwing,
go anywhere everywhere whicheverwhere,
if there you will know that you are loved
and let me touch you.

 

“Volanding on an Updraft” is reprinted from Windfall.

 

 

Martha Vallely lives in Seattle where she has worked as a legal editor for 36 years.  Her poetry has appeared in The Smoking Poet, Menacing Hedge, Windfall, Motel 58, and the anthology 31 (Crane’s Bill books).

 

 

Student Poem

 

Syzygy
by Nathan Cummings

 
Like syzygy, we collided
in the darkness, ricocheted,
twirled, aligned
(helped along by gravity?)
and were gone when the moon showed its face.

I told you the word at dawn,
and had to write it on a notepad
before you would believe me.
Many things sound impossible
before you put your tongue into them.

Listen.
Feel it in the roots of your teeth.
Let the zy and gy crackle
like the static on an old TV set,
turning sound galvanic,
making atoms tremble in ecstasy
until they leap skyward,
form rows and hang in the void to hear
the planets sing with one burning voice.

Let consonants carry you away.

 

Nathan Cummings has been appointed the West Region’s National Student Poet for 2013. This is the highest honor in the United States for youth poets presenting original work. Nathan currently lives in Mercer Island, a community which has afforded him many opportunities in the arts. These include playing the clarinet in marching and concert band and serving as the editor-in-chief of his high school literary magazine, Pegasus. Nathan is also a reader for two national teen literary magazines, Polyphony H.S. and The Adroit Journal. His experiences with Polyphony and Adroit, as well as his time spent at the Iowa Young Writers’ studio, have introduced him to a remarkably close-knit and supportive network of teen writers from across the nation. Nathan also participates in cross country and track and field at his school. Some of his favorite poems originate from ideas that first came to him during long, solitary runs.

 

Nathan Cummings pictured at the White House with Mrs. Obama (Nathan is just right of her) and his fellow National Student Poets.  Read more about this excellent program here and here.

(This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.)

 

 

Poets In The Park from Alliance for Young Artists & Wri on Vimeo.

John Olson

Inventing Emotions

 

Sometimes I invent emotions. I make them out of neon and punctuation. Semi-colons, for instance, are seminal to an understanding of linen.
Commas are drops of hesitation. Colons are bold.
Somewhere at the end of a sentence, I rub the night. Sparks fly. I follow a pain to the end of time. I live in a palace of thought. Everything is composed of butter, chlorophyll, and the ancient molecules of midnight.
I have a Cubist tongue and a Dada nose. My haircut used to be a garage. Next time you see a ghost at the supermarket it might be me. Then again, it might also be Thomas Paine, or Pablo Picasso.
I define pain by its weight. Paintings hanging crookedly on walls.
I watch The Kinks on YouTube, and redeploy them as a proposition.
Each day I run past the house of the symphony conductor I see him holding a glass brain with a fugue in it.
Music does this to people. Makes them wonderful and cogent, like the smell of dirt in front of the radio station just after the pansies have been watered.
Do you see the way the earth grips a tree? It is actually a tree gripping the earth.
I do not yet have a name for this emotion. The emotion itself is incomplete. But what emotion is ever whole and self-contained? Ask that woman over there, laughing and eating popcorn. She will tell you that the caliber of all emotions depends on the diameter of Tucson. But that’s only because she is from Tuba City, and is watching a movie about blank-eyed underwear-clad zombies.
I hate the fourth of July.
I prefer Halloween.
Which is why I’ve never been to Texas.
But I ask you: what are your specific needs? Say anything you want. I can always use a little ambiguity. I love ambiguity.
Emotions are difficult to pin down because each word has different properties. In the Museum of Invisible Injuries, for instance, the word ‘cook’ actually means ‘combination.’ And if you say the word ‘bone,’ an Iranian woman appears from the shadows with a huge gem on her finger, a ring that symbolizes the disembodiment of gherkins.
An emotion is thick and puzzling like a forest. It takes a long time to fully feel it. What is the point of becoming president if all you feel is power? Even lawn mowers feel power. Power is not where it’s at. Where it’s at is infinity. The exhilaration of light amid the pornography of black.

 

“Inventing Emotions” is reprinted from Larynx Galaxy (Black Widow Press, 2012).

 

John Olson is that author of eight books of poetry, the most recent of which is Larynx Galaxy, which Black Widow Press published in 2012. He published Backscatter: New and Selected Poems in 2008. He is also the author of three novels, including Souls of Wind (Quale Press), The Nothing That Is (Ravenna Press), and The Seeing Machine (Quale Press). He is the recipient of The Stranger’s genius award for literature in 2004 and three Fund for Poetry awards. In 2008 Souls of Wind was shortlisted for a Believer Book of the Year Award, and in 2012 he was one of eight finalists for the Artist Trust 2012 Innovator Award. He is currently at work on another novel tentatively titled My Other Car Is A Bed In Paris. His blog, Tillalala Chronicles, may be accessed at www.tillalala.blogspot.com.

 

 

 

Betsy Aoki

Speaking Language

I am not speaking English now.
The lightest word will alter our trajectory.
The slightest touch, and another marvel
of translation blows itself to feathers,
to pieces of paper fluttering in a cracked wall.
I am trying to tell you. Listen to the faucet.
Hear what I look like. Imagine

the dark-haired phrase you fell in love with
during a sixth grade picnic. Now give her
eloquent eyes, a slender body, a new name.
Her syllables roll over your tongue,
skate over breaking ice. Words do that well.
White grains, small grains,
long grains scattering on linoleum. What
language looks like: a woman unafraid to eat.

The lake is breaking. Underwater
swims a long black fish, a sleek diver.
She is not speaking English now.
She sends meanings to the surface
in white bubbles, in pearls. They roll
up the sides of your face, in laughter.
They break against the glass.

You say she is that kind of woman. You slur
the night with her. She leaves behind
no letter, no predictions. You have not heard
the diction of her face for weeks. She has
given voice to me. And I am not speaking
English. Listen harder. Tell me
what I look like, once you’ve looked away.

 

 

Elizabeth (Betsy) Aoki completed her MFA from the University of Washington and has received fellowships from the City of Seattle, Jack Straw Writers Program, and Artist Trust Foundation. In addition to various academic literary journals, her poetry has been anthologized in Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian American Women’s Poetry and in Fire On Her Tongue: an eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Her chapbook, Every Vanish Leaves Its Trace was published in 2009 by Finishing Line Press.

Bridget Stixrood

Mad lib beet powder

 

There are these little _______(color 1) bugs you see in the summertime that are attracted to ______(color2  you want to put with color1) things.

In the sun they appear ______ (adverb +verb) on the _____(color2)  making you ______ (verb) your ______(body part) in confusion.

_______(common saying) or too much ________ (element) and you are seeing ______(psychedelic plural noun).

Soon you’ll see they are all over the _______(something you are proud of noun) tracing your art. You have to be careful not to smear their ________(color1) bodies all over your work. It’s better to _____(physical movement) and let them ________(satisfying word). While they are working you will want a perfect ______(a noun you love) of something. A(n) ________(green food).  A ________(color1 food). You’ll like a(n) ______ (color2 food), u will like ______( the dish you just made), u will like ______(what you drink it with), ull like _______(verbing), ull like _____(verbing), like ______(verbing). ___________ (sometimes, anytime, always, never) it takes that much.

 

Bridget Stixrood recently moved back to Seattle after 7 years on the East Coast, where she received a BA in poetry at The New School in 2009 and co-ran the historic 1796 Fitzwilliam Inn and Cheshire Tavern with two other women in their twenties. Bridget Stixrood’s work spans poetry, performance with video, and food.

Christine Robbins

Waiting-for-a-Diagnosis Suite

1. Burn Pile

Trees speak the language of your silent wood.
Ashes are meant for everywhere and set
a wing-dust on the leaves, enough to fill
the empty lines of another’s fingertip.

2. Loam

There are weeds in the garden
and your diction’s gone.
Relax. There is nothing here
that won’t eat you – that would not
take you up against itself.
All that’s housed under the slice of moon
wears the lobster bib, for no part of you
isn’t full of sweet white meat.

3. Night Storm

Air rises to a pitch
that sticks in the throat.
Wind is sharking the huge pine
that leans toward the roof, and you wait
for the snap. Then, the soft rain.
It all falls in time —
another air, another weight,
another voice.

4. And After

You will open either way
to find what your sore arms
can bring, like a warm
golden orb against the chest.
The answer is nothing,
a nameless stagger
and a voice going silent, less yours
with each day. You will always wait
for the right word.

 

“Waiting-for-a-Diagnosis Suite” was first published in The Georgia Review.

 

Christine Robbins grew up in Northern Virginia and has lived in Olympia,Washington for most of her adult life.  She is a graduate of The Evergreen State College and received an MFA in creative writing from the Rainier Writing Workshop in 2012.  Her poems have been published in The Georgia Review, Talking River Review and the And Love… anthology (Jacar Press).

Greg Bem

talking out loud to yourself in the age of the common house terabyte

 

hey * hey * hey * hey
the sitteneth duckletto
beneath my belied-to belly
a bully, a block party?
or a cool whip tup mug shut?
hey * hey * hey * hey *
except the jello ain’t on
and the ear ain’t here there,
there, there, eggplant faceman
and the moon’s ant arcticking
slick hey * boom parade, kay,
and K blasting cod oil
oogle boa on Jackson goal
more foil ownering olly up
to the hay field barrel roll
double sided slickened OO
single split bit dough coil
fly mingle bubble treaty boy
made to move in circle list
F * O * R * M * A * T

 

Greg Bem is a Seattle poet and one of the Breadline Reading Series organizers. He’s also an organizer and ring leader at SPLAB with Paul Nelson and he works hard publicizing poetry events all over Seattle. His work appears in Elective Affinities.

 

Raúl Sánchez

Euphoria

 

Tonight

I feel like Huracán Ramírez

Blue Demon, Lucha Libre champions
slamming rudos at the Coliseo

I live for a noche de tango
and red wine, vino tinto
singing with Carlos Gardel
milongas with versos
de Neruda whispered
in the ear de la mujer

the woman I love,

que yo más quiero

I feel like a kid skipping
down rain soaked sidewalks
I feel like sitting on white porch steps

cigar in one hand

Cuban rum in the other
 

I don’t care about piñatas dangling

sticks batting the air

no candy tonight

All the children

safe in bed
 

Running scared from the sacred

called and recalled

I am alone at last

tonight

 

Raúl Sánchez lives in Seattle, where he conducts workshops on The Day of the Dead. His most recent work is the translation of John Burgess’ “Punk Poems”  and his own debut collection, All Our Brown-Skinned Angels, released by MoonPath Press 2012.

Raúl will be reading from All Our Brown-Skinned Angels at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle on Friday, July 27, at 7:00, along with John Burgess and Lana Hechtman Ayers.