Category Archives: history and events

Paul Nelson

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Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo,
2nd Count of Revillagigedo

 

……y who is de San Juan after whom
……………….de islas de San Juan are named?
…………………………..& how did Spaniards

….get here and who, why, how
………………………………….did the blood stop
…………at one pig, how
…………………………..were the war pigs (for once)
…………………………………………………………………..denied
………………………………………………………………….(denuded
divested of covering
made bare?)

……………………………… Coulda been war, glorious
………………………………………………..here in Isla y Archiepelago de San Juan.

……………………………….Cannon balls and musket blasts
……………..to scatter the last of the Canis lupis
………………………….the Columbia Black-Tailed Deer, the
…………………………rare Northern Sea Otter (for whom

………..or whose pelt Quimper would trade copper
………..years before Filthy Jerry cd get his
………………………..filthy fingers on it.)
 
 
 
But there’s something in the Cascadia water wd
……………………………………bring out the noble in men
…………………..like Admiral Baynes who’d soon
………………………………………………………be knighted
…………………..who’d refuse Governor Douglass’
…………………………………….August 2, 1859 troop landing order.

………………Something that’d attract
……………………………………………..Spaniards like the Mexican Viceroy:

Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo

(Not the San Juan who’d be put in a cell not much bigger than himself. Not the one who’d see the union of jiwa and Divine in the metaphor of Holy Marriage. Not the one who’d write about how the bride hides herself and abandoned him in his lonely groaning. Not the one who’d feel the need to purge every last imperfection every last psychic typo every last lust urge every last of the dominator fixation not mitigated but transcended by The Fire to which Blaser wd allude. Not the he of a thousand graces diffusing, graces unnumbered, those that protect from the thousand cuts that come from conceptions of
the Beloved. Not the one whose metaphor’d bride’d leave his heart there in that lashed meat cage maintained by a bit of bread and salted fish. Not the one with the silvered surface who’d one day mirror forth. Not the one on the wing whose Beloved’d one day see the strange islands with the roaring torrents (Cascade Falls?) & whose gales would whisper amour, a love-awakening south wind not spewed by Spetsx who’d be the rain wind from the Southwest a two day canoe journey south of the present scene. Not the one whose Beloved bride from a mother corrupted would make a bed out of flowers,
protected by lions hung with purple and crowned with a thousand shields of gold. Not the one whose bride’d attract young ones & who’d commence the flow of divine balsam & get him pitchdrunk on fire and scent and spiced wine. Not he of all consuming painless fire drunk on pomegranate wine whose only job was amour. Not that San Juan.)

This Juan was a Cubano,
………………….born in La Habana.
……………………………………..The third Criollo Viceroy
……………………………………………………………….of Hispaña Nueva.

This Juan wd see
…………………the Capital (then Veracruz)
………………………………………………..as a slum, peasants
…………………………………..in thin robes, straw hats, trash
…………………………………..in the streets and the first flash
…………………of all those Rez dogs to come.

…………………………………………………………………………..This Juan
(el Vengador de la Justicia)
……………………………………he’d find & hang
……………………………………the outlaw gangs
……………………………………………………..of murderers

& clean the Viceroy’s palace.
………………………………………Light the streets of Ciudad de Mexíco
……………………….pave highways to Veracruz,
………………………………………………Acapulco,
………………………………………………Guadalajara,
………………………………………………San Blas y
………………………………………………Toluca

…………………………find the Aztec Calendar Stone & set
……………………………….the heavens on fire but found
……………………………………………..Cascadia

……………………………………………………………not worth the troops
………………………..it’d cost to own her,
…………………………………………………..settled
……………………………………………………………for leading the flock
………………………………..of 4.5 million future Mexicans
…………………………………………………………………he’d count and a few islands
…………………………to this day
………………………………………in one way or another
…………………………………………………………………..bear his name:

………………………..San Juan
……………………………………….Orcas
………………………………………………….Guemes.

………………………………Dots in a green landscape
………………………………………..as seen from Constitution
………………………………………………………….where the divine balsam flows
……………………………………………………by the kayaks
……………………………………………………………………….and the wind whispers

………………………………………………………………...Mary.

………………………………………………………………………………..8:49A – 2.24.13

“Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo” is from the Pig War & Other Songs of Cascadia.

 

 

SPLAB founder Paul E Nelson wrote Organic Poetry (VDM Verlag, Germany, 2008) & a serial poem re-enacting the history of Auburn, Washington, A Time Before Slaughter (Apprentice House, 2010) shortlisted for a Genius Award in Literature by The Stranger. In 26 years of radio he interviewed Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Anne Waldman, Sam Hamill, Robin Blaser, Nate Mackey, Eileen Myles, Wanda Coleman, George Bowering, Joanne Kyger, Jerome Rothenberg & others, including many Northwest poets. He lives in Seattle and writes at least one American Sentence every day.

Lenora Rain-Lee Good

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Little Boys and War

 

I was six; brother was five.
Papa was gone to war.
Planes roared overhead
Racing for the city,
Our farmhouse shook;
Dishes crashed on the floor.

Mama screamed and
Called us to her.
In the roar, we wouldn’t hear,
And rushed outside
To watch the show.

Could we really see the bombs
As they flew toward the city?
“There! There!” we’d yell
As planes swooshed low
And dirt blossomed upward
And lives and property
Were destroyed for our enjoyment.

And mama screamed
And called us to her bosom.
This time, we answered her tears with,
“Mama, it’s so exciting!”

 

 

“Little Boys and War” is reprinted from Cradle Songs, An Anthology of Poems on Motherhood edited by Sharmagne Leland–St. John and Rachelle Yousuf.

 

 

Lenora Rain-Lee Good lives and writes in Kennewick, Washington. She shares her abode with her cat, Tashiko Akuma Pestini and a small Chihuahua she calls her Pit Bullet. She has sold and published three Young Adult novels, numerous short stories, and poems.

 

Melinda Mueller

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SHE GOES UPON THE STAGE AS ROSALIND: Mary Darby Robinson
b. 27 November 1757? – d. 26 December 1800

… a wandering beauty is a blade out of its scabbard.
You know how dangerous…

–John Crowe Ransom, Judith of Bethulia

Enter Rosalind, with her legs unsheathed
Of their skirts. Every blade in the theatre
Stands en garde before “Ganymede” has breathed
A line. Such dangerous games are sweeter

The more dangerous. Does wearing breeches
Breach the gates of her virtue? The question
Profits the house. The Crown Prince beseeches
Her, with ardent letters, to indiscretion—

Which is his aphrodisiac. For love,
It seems, he will risk all. Ah, men have died
And worms have eaten them, but not for love.
He leaves her undone and penniless beside.

Beauty, though a weapon wielded by who wears it,
Proves a guardless sword that wounds her when she bares it.

 

***
Mary (née Darby) Robinson became famous for her beauty and for her performances at Drury Lane Theatre, particularly in “cross-dressed” roles such as Shakespeare’s Rosalind and Viola. She was mistress for a time to the Prince of Wales, who promised her an annual income in recompense for giving up her profession on the stage—and later reneged. Later in her life, after suffering an illness that left her partially paralyzed, she became known again; this time as a writer of poetry, novels, and essays (including several in defense of the rights of women, such as A Letter to the Women of England on the Injustice of Mental Subordination).
“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love” is Rosalind’s reply, in her guise as a young man, to Orlando, when he professes that love will be the death of him (As You Like It, Act IV Scene i).

 
Melinda Mueller grew up in Montana and Eastern Washington, and has lived in Seattle for 30 years.  She majored in botany at the University of Washington, where she also studied poetry with Nelson Bentley. She teaches high school biology, biotechnology and evolution studies at Seattle Academy.  Her most recent book, What the Ice Gets (Van West & Company, 2000) received a Washington State Book Award (2001), and a “Notable Book” award from the American Library Association (2002).

Tod Marshall

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Angry Birds

 

When the eagles leave, spawned out red fish
must be mostly eaten, finished with silt,
sand, and eggs, a genetic frenzied push
to breed here, now, with furious force. We will
ourselves into bed, away from Netflix, X-
box, the new astonishing app that counts
calories, miles to go, snowflakes, the next
minute’s number of moans: O happy grunt
that says hey-ho, this is done, pixilated
and, best of all, uploadable as a ring tone
that goes fishy, fleshy, fowl. Someone’s IPhone
measures the speed of a bird penetrating
the lake to seize a foundering Kokanee.
“So fast!” Not death, the connectivity.

 

 

Tod Marshall was born in Buffalo, NY.  He earned an MFA degree from Eastern Washington University and a PhD in literature from the University of Kansas.  His first collection of poetry, Dare Say, was the 2002 winner of the University of Georgia’s Contemporary Poetry Series. He has also published a collection of his interviews with contemporary poets, Range of the Possible (EWU Press, 2002), and an accompanying anthology of theinterviewed poets’ work, Range of Voices (2005).  In 2005, he was awarded a Washington Artists Trust Fellowship. In 2009, his second collection, The Tangled Line, was published by Canarium Books; it was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.  His third collection will be released in February 2013.  He lives in Spokane and teaches at Gonzaga University.

Richard Wakefield

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At the River

 

From Mary’s Peak the valley’s slow descent

to southward gave our river sweeping wide

meanders. Six or seven miles it went

to cover two or three, from side to side.

Around the stones and over fallen trees

I heard it breathe a languid vowel that fell

from snowfields, sounds suspended through the freeze

of winter, whispered now as if to tell

the secret cold to every lowland field.

Along the banks the trees in colonnade

traced out the vein of water they concealed.

On August evenings families sought the shade

to picnic there, and on the hottest nights

brought cots and strung their tents from lines between

the trees. I lay and watched their lantern lights

blink out upstream and down, then from unseen

encampments heard their voices droning low,

inhaled the scents of cattle, cedar, hay.

Beneath it all I heard the river flow,

forever saying what it had to say.

The farms where all the people lived are gone,

the people gone to graves – or town. The land

lies fallow. Yet the river murmurs on,

some days in words I almost understand.

 

Richard Wakefield has been a reviewer and critic for the Seattle Times since 1985 and has taught writing and American literature at various colleges in the Seattle area since 1979.  His first collection of poems, East of Early Winters, was published by the University of Evansville Press and won the Richard Wilbur Award in 2006.  His collection A Vertical Mile was published by Able Muse Press in 2012.  He and his wife, Catherine, live in Federal Way and have two grown daughters.

 

 

Student Poem

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Galileo Demands An Apology
by Sarah Groesbeck

 

“Eppur si muove: and yet it moves.”
– Galileo Galilei

How fickle and stubborn
you are. Once praising my telescope and
the celestial bodies uncovered,
now branding me a heretic
for going against God and His scripture by saying
we are not the center.
I set out only to discover the truth;
to follow the evidence
with a mind open to wherever it may lead.
You, however, carelessly dismiss my results
by thumbing through verses.
And yet it moves.
I implore you, open your eyes and look
to the heavens, to our sister Venus
and the revolving moons of Jupiter.
See what I see;
only then will you discover
the Earth is moving.

 

Sarah Groesbeck, a Seattle native, is a student at Highline Community College. She is going for her AA degree with an emphasis in Mathematics. She decided to be brave and took a Creative Writing class where she discovered a new delight in poetry.

 

 

Joan Moritz

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In My Kitchen

 

As I put away the butter dish,
I see my grandmother buried
in the plastic pleats
of a bread wrapper.

She often comes to me unbidden,
hidden in a flour tin, caught
in a curl of kitchen string, again
some unexpected place,

again her dark hair with its sifting
of ash, braided and twisted into a bun,
the lace collar like a benediction
on her old crepe dress, each

appearance a surprise, each ending
the same: she lifts unleavened eyes
to mine, rises from her hiding place,
and slowly steps into the oven.

 

“In My Kitchen” previously appeared in Drash: Northwest Mosaic.

 

Joan Moritz has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Born in New York City, Seattle has been her adopted home for nearly 40 years. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tilt-a-Whirl,  Blue Lyra, and Drash: Northwest Mosaic.

Nicole Hardy

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Mud Flap Girl on Teen Talk Barbie

 

Everyone knows I’m not into clothes, but
you go to the mall, girlfriend; knock yourself
uptown, little Ms. Bad Influence. What
else can you do when you’re pulled from the shelf

for expressing yourself. Here’s what I think:
math class is supposed to be tough. Take that
to any best selling, self-helping shrink:
she’ll say your stellar scores on the GMAT

and your supreme self-esteem can be traced
to childhood success at difficult tasks.
So when Jane’s math anxiety gets placed
on your plastic ass, remind them you passed—

and then pulled off a string of successes
in more careers than Skipper has dresses.

 

_________________
According to a New York Times article published October 21, 1992, Mattel’s Teen Talk Barbie was widely criticized by a national women’s group for saying “math class is tough.” The Barbie remained in stores, but the computer chip that randomly selected four phrases for each doll thereafter picked from 269 selections, not 270.

 

Nicole Hardy’s memoir, Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin is forthcoming through Hyperion/Voice in 2013. Her work has appeared in the New York Times as well as many literary journals. She’s the author of a poetry collection and a chapbook:This Blonde, and Mud Flap Girl’s XX Guide to Facial Profiling.

Gail Tremblay

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Meditation on The Dalles Dam
for Lillian Pitt

 

Electricity is humming in a spider web of lines
as copper wires cased in rubber cross the land;
what sorrow builds in this sound that only whines

where the thunder of water no longer combines
with a wild rush of salmon so close at hand?
Electricity is humming in a spider web of lines.

Where fish runs were rich, everything declines.
No one explains how a body can withstand
The sorrow that builds in this sound that only whines.

Fishermen stood on scaffolds amid the steep inclines
of rock; water foamed before the flow was dammed
so electricity could hum in a spider web of lines.

Rocks watched while men made strange designs
To swell the river to places no rush of water planned.
What sorrow grows when the new sound only whines?

The bodies of old ones wash out of ancient shrines—
how can the spirits of the dead learn to understand
the electricity that hums in a spider web of lines.
What sorrow builds in this sound that only whines?

 

From Wikipedia:  Celilo Falls (Wyam, meaning “echo of falling water” or “sound of water upon the rocks,” in several native languages) was a tribal fishing area on the Columbia River, just east of the Cascade Mountains, on what is today the border between Oregon and Washington. The name refers to a series of cascades and waterfalls on the river, as well as to the native settlements and trading villages that existed there in various configurations for 15,000 years. Celilo was the oldest continuously inhabited community on the North American continent until 1957, when the falls and nearby settlements were submerged by the construction of The Dalles Dam.

 

Gail Tremblay is a descendant of Onondaga and Micmac ancestors. She resides in Olympia, WA and has been an artist, writer, and cultural critic for over thirty years. She shares a unique vision through her multi-media visual works, art installations, her writing on Native American Art, and her poetry. She is a professor at The Evergreen State College, where she has mentored students in the fields of visual arts, writing, Native American and cultural studies. Her book of poems, Indian Singing, was published by Calyx Press, and her poetry is widely anthologized and poems have been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Japanese and published internationally.