Category Archives: now

Jeanine Walker

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I Become a Nest

 

One must have a mind heavy in thought
to gather shadows like eggs in an apron.

Captured, they yield: I move to quash
their gloomy nature. Slatted cupboards,

mouse holes, knots in trees, vineyard arches
now pull in light like a poem.

But no––it’s just fantasy––shadows
secure a propensity to multiply, whether

I wrap them up or not.

One must have a mind heavy in thought
to keep shadows like eggs in an apron. 

Shadows wet the ground they walk on;
anguish makes an apron damp.

But for me, I find true,
when I shoo dark shapes into my folds

like children beneath an attic’s eves
I become a nest for the resting shadows.

They crack; they birth in me; they fly away.

 

Jeanine Walker holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing & Literature from the University of Houston. She has been the recipient of a Donald Barthelme Memorial Fellowship and an Inprint Brown Fellowship. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, Narrative, and Web Conjunctions. She has worked as the Writers in the Schools Program Manager at Seattle Arts & Lectures since 2009, has been a member of the Seattle performance poetry groups The Four Horsemen and Re Drum Machine, and she writes, sings, and plays trumpet for the country music duo The Drop Shadows. Jeanine also teaches poetry classes at the Richard Hugo House and serves as the emcee for the Cheap Wine & Poetry reading series.

 

Anastacia Tolbert

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How to Comfort & Say Goodbye

 

if you were a lost bobtail
i could easily calm you with
warm milk & a ball of yarn
let you get distracted by heat
& color & action
if you were a shiba inu
i’d find any object & throw it
far enough to watch you run
but close enough for you not
to get discouraged at the distance
of the thing you want the most
if you were my baby/us tied
by a bloody chord of spirit &
sacrifice i’d hold you close to my heart
& let you hear something familiar,
something true
let the thump surround sound
you. watch your lips pleat
into a smile.
but you are fear & i don’t know
how to stop your grinding, gnawing
gnashing—as there is no comfort
for separating a thing from its
maker.

 

 

Anastacia Tolbert’s work is a trellis of twilight, ultramarine ache and lowercase loam. She is a writer, Cave Canem Fellow, Hedgebrook Alumna, EDGE Professional Writers Graduate, VONA alum, creative writing workshop facilitator, documentarian and playwright. She is the recipient of the San Diego Journalism Press Club Award for the article “War Torn.” She is writer, co-director, and co-producer of GOTBREAST? Documentary (2007): a documentary about the views of women regarding breast and body image. Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction have been published or is forthcoming in: WomenArts Quarterly, Specter Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Everyday Other Things, Women Writers in Bloom, Saltwater Quarterly, The Poetry Breakfast, Things Lost, Midnight Tea Book, Reverie, Alehouse Journal, Women. Period., The Drunken Boat, Torch and many others.

Anastacia Tolbert features at Seattle SPIT + OPEN MIC @ Wildrose, 1021 E Pike pm Thursday, January 10 at 8:30 – 10:00 pm.

 

Elizabeth Myhr

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you are a boy on your small mare searching

 

but neither of us can find her

in the oysterbed of hoofbeats and wind

in the torn light between grasses and dunes

 

the lost sword washes up on the sand

 

I urge the white horse of memory

with a whip and a branch of heather

your wildest sorrow wet and bright

 

racing the cloudy stallions of afternoon

 

but inside the bedsheet’s dry white tent

you hold in your face the salty blade

and I wear by your tears’ consent

 

her wet crown and the pearl at my neck

as over your shoulder great and riderless

he comes for you snorting with loose bit

  and reins trailed through hoof gouged moor

 

his saddleless highbred back soaked to one long muscled darkness with rain

 

 

Elizabeth Myhr is a poet, editor and publisher. She holds a BA from the Evergreen State College and an MFA from Seattle Pacific University, has served as artist-in-residence at Centrum, and is a Milotte Foundation scholar. In 2010 she co-founded Calypso Editions, a virtual, cooperative press that specializes in literature in translation and emerging writers. Elizabeth currently serves as an editor and manager for Marick Press and Calypso Editions, and has served as editor at Web Del Sol Review of Books, Raven Chronicles and Shining Horns. Her book the vanishings & other poems was published by Calypso in October, 2011, and was listed by Christianity Today as one of its three notable poetry books of 2011. Elizabeth lives in Seattle with her family.

Mary Eliza Crane

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FRIDAY NIGHT

 

With a flash of light
an eagle splits
the seamless gray
of sky
and river in the rain.

At your house
the key sits on a dusty beam,
the kettle steeps with tea.
Coals in the stove stoked
with white grain alder
uprooted in another winter,
dried to perfection
in a blazing summer sun.
Quiet taps of heat expanding glowing flames
against dark red walls
burn deeply into blackness of the night.
Clothes peeled,
two more blankets piled on my side
burrowed down with steaming mug and book
into soft gold light.

I dissolve into the echo of the rain upon the roof.

By what unlikely stroke of grace
does this define a life?

 

“Friday Night” previously appeared in At First Light (Gazoobi Tales Publishing, 2011).

 

Mary Eliza Crane is a native New Englander, transplanted to the western slope of the Cascade foothills east of Duvall. She weaves together the personal, political and natural world. A regular feature at poetry venues in the Puget Sound region, she has two volumes of poetry, What I Can Hold In My Hands, and At First Light, both published by Gazoobi Tales.

 

A K Mimi Allin

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1
this is a self portrait
about what constrains me
what keep me from my happiness

i’ve been at peace in a balanced place
& i’ve been wildly happy when the scales were tipped toward paradise so long as i have something to explore

2
i’m chasing a certain kind of knowledge
a certain kind of awake

the art of living
will flower from me one day

3
no matter how sparse it seems
i can alter the world to get what i need

what constrains me
is the doubt of no reply
i’m having transparent dreams again
it all means nothing

4
my view of myself is distorted
but perhaps distorting is defining
& defacing can unveil

5
sustainable
what does that mean?

food water purpose
that’s what i’m looking for

the buddhists ensure me
i come readymade with purpose
but sometimes it seems unso

6
no is not a happy place
no is a hole in a trampoline
yes is about freedom choices time
yes is an engine

7
what keeps me from making
the work i know i need to make?
the inevitable thing?
the only thing? the way forward?
confidence single mindedness definition

8
lack of focus holds me back
20 things i feel lukewarm about
or the one thing that sets me on fire
i try to listen to the nagging thing
mongolia mongolia mongolia

9
since wealth denies me
poverty will have to define me
without money i make different art
use fewer materials
an artist doesn’t need to make a thing
an artist can suggest a thing
i’ve learned to be suggestive
to take people partway
which leaves them work to do
for which they must move & grow

10
what do i fear?
i fear getting rid of everything
& walking away like a penitent
so that’s exactly what i want to do

i fear stasis & wasting time
& that is not what i want to do
but i know it is good for me
boats grant me that
so i have a boat

i fear not being brilliant
& there is no cure for that

11
i want to have nothing to take
so i have nothing to lose

boredom is also freedom
but boredom is a luxury
that must be bought

12
i want the freedom that comes with poverty i want a red sweater & time to see it unravel one peach should matter more than a crate full of peaches

13
i make meaning to correct the world
does it need correcting? no
what needs changing? i do
what resists change? i do

14
when i feel myself getting diluted by society i retreat & ask myself who am i? what do i want?
i quickly realize i do not want
what others want
this helps

15
what stalls my art?
a never ending trip to the mirror
trap doors falling floors
the committee of should
expectations lovers nostalgia misunderstandings these same things drive my art

16
i do not wish to make of my art a business i can live without everything but meaning though i do need to see a dentist

17
to what am i bound? on what do i rely?
where are my buffers? am i too comfortable?
ease heat music walls the known thing.. get rid of these

18
the stuff i found in the center of my spirit took away my reasons for making art for 6 months i made nothing why would i do this or that superficial thing when i knew what i knew about spirit?
it might be good & clever but who cares
this isn’t about clever
this is about growth

19
my art
is it pure?
is it relevant?
does it change anything?
what needs changing? i do
what resists change? i do

20
i have trouble making connections
between my emotions & experiences
there are no real lines between money & work a vocation is a vocation is a vocation

what constrains me defines me
thank you for seeing this

 

 

A K Mimi Allin has twice crossed the Pacific Ocean by boat, has worked as a climbing ranger on Mt Rainier and has served in the Peace Corps. Allin lives and works as an artist in Seattle WA. She holds an MA in Writing from The City College of New York. Her performance-installations have premiered at the Seattle Art Museum, The Olympic Sculpture Park, Bumbershoot, Smoke Farm, Tether Gallery, Artscapes, ArtSparks, Arts Crush, Guiding Lights, ACT Theatre and Litfuse in Tieton. In 2006, Mimi became a household name for her yearlong project “The Poetess at Green Lake.” In January 2010, she fulfilled a self-designed residency at NBBJ Design & Architecture Firm to become the nation’s 1st Corporate Poet. And in the summer of 2011, she drew a line around 14,410′ Mount Rainier with her body to effect “Tahoma Kora,” a 36-mile, 65-day prostrating circumnavigation. At the heart of Allin’s work is the pursuit of home and the search for the sacred. She is interested in the potential of ritual, inquiry and quest to act as catalysts for personal growth, inviting her audience to transform by transforming herself. Her art often takes her outside and involves physical labor, time spent inhabiting, activating, redefining spaces. To sate her desire for feedback, and because she believes it is through the community that we know ourselves, she builds triggers into her work that ask the audience to speak and participate.

Olivia Dresher

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Ten Moments

 

Breathing in the space
that doesn’t need to be filled,
breathing out what cannot fill me…

* * *

I am here
hearing the stones speak
as rain falls on them.

* * *

Self-portrait: the look I have
on my face
when no one’s looking.

* * *

Between memories and forgetting
the forest of nostalgia
with no trails.

* * *

Moments pop up everywhere. Here
comes another one, there goes another
one, now they’re all blending together.

* * *

I’m not sure what her face
is saying, but whatever it’s saying,
it’s really saying it.

* * *

A purr plays with
the bubble of silence,
a meow bursts it.

* * *

Where the wind comes from
and where it goes…
It’s the same for all of us.

* * *

He’s staring at me.
He’s daydreaming his mind
into mine.

* * *

So, nothing lasts. Now what?
Just this…and the moon
growing brighter each night.
OLIVIA DRESHER is a poet, publisher, editor and anthologist living in Seattle (Wallingford) since 1981. She is the publisher of Impassio Press and the founder/editor of FragLit Magazine, and in 2012 was co-editor of the online magazine qarrtsiluni for the issue on fragments. She is also co-founder and director of the Life Writing Connection. Her poetry, fragments and essays have appeared in anthologies and a variety of online and in-print literary magazines. She is the editor of In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing and co-editor of Darkness and Light: Private Writing as Art: An Anthology of Contemporary Journals, Diaries, and Notebooks. She has written thousands of poetic fragments at Twitter, spontaneously, and is currently working on a selection of these for several in-print collections. Her complete Bio and select writings can be found at www.OliviaDresher.com.

 

Brooke Matson

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Twilight

 

The cold brass of sun slides

the evening leaves.

 

Star magnolias spin

on the surface of the pond

 

like a tattered gown.

The moon slips

 

from night’s fingers

as a broad-winged crane descending—

 

no more reason to hold herself

so far above the world.

 

“Twilight” is reprinted from The Moons (Blue Begonia Press, 2012).

Brooke Matson was born and raised on the rural side of Yakima, Washington. She attended Gonzaga University, where she received her B.A. in English and her M.A. in Educational Leadership. Her work has been published in the Blue Begonia Press anthology, Weathered Pages, in 2005. Her first book is The Moons (Blue Begonia Press, 2012). Matson lives in Spokane where she teaches at a small experiential high school.

Dana Dickerson

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Barcelona, Spring of ’93

He sits in the smallest room of a three bedroom apartment on Carrer de la Garrotxa. He has been left behind by his Brazilian roommates, who could no longer stand the cold Latin stares on the subway. He looks at his body like a machine, nothing more than an object composed of organic systems and chemical reactions. Outside his third floor window, women push their children across the courtyard, they gather under shade trees, smoke cigarettes and gossip in Catalan. He watches alone, aware of his every movement, his every spoken word, as if they were being compiled and documented. He considers the implications of an unspoken conspiracy. “The power of suggestion. Functions so innate, they are taken for granted.” He catches himself, unsure if he’s spoken the words aloud. He imagines Dostoyevsky in the moment before an epileptic seizure, he remembers the electric blue circle which surrounds his rolled back eyes at the moment of orgasm, he wonders at the blissful surrender of self to the dusk between sleep and dream; moments of suspicious clarity and connection with every thread in the web of life. He wants to dream in lucid reality, he wants to verify his isolation tactics, he wants to escape the Christ incinerating machines. His only guide is a map, left in a drawer, from 1963.

 

Dana Dickerson grew up on the mean streets of Phinney Ridge in Seattle, WA. He spent his summers covered in the fine dust, raw  wit and ancient wonder of the Colville reservation. He graduated from the Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. He also received a scholarship to attend the Naropa Institute summer writing program. In 2001, he graduated from the Evergreen State College. His poetry appears in Volt, microliterature.org and New Poets of the American West. He lives in Olympia with his girlfriend and their three cats.

 

 

 

 

Joannie Stangeland

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The Lake Makes a Mirror

 

She sees herself on the surface, a little wavy,
as though looking through old glass.

The wind arrives, ruffles her image, rustles
through willows along the shore,

each leaf turning like another page
and she sees the plots unfold

in shifting currents, the water’s texture
becoming a scheme she can open

like the paper fortune tellers
she folded as a girl. Here,

she writes a new future without worry,
chooses a villain

who makes a suave entrance
and looks nothing like a crab.

Evasive, the lake’s face hides
the light she knows will come

when this weather has done its work.

 

 

“The Lake Makes a Mirror” previously appeared in Into the Rumored Spring, Ravenna Press, and in The Midwest Quarterly.

 

Joannie Stangeland’s third book of poems, Into the Rumored Spring, was published by Ravenna Press last fall. Her chapbook A Steady Longing for Flight won the inaugural Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, and her chapbook Weathered Steps was published by Rose Alley Press. Joannie’s poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Floating Bridge Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Many Trials to the Summit, Fire On Her Tongue, and other publications. Joannie was a 2003 Jack Straw writer, and she serves as poetry editor for the online journal The Smoking Poet.

 

READING:  Joannie Stangeland will be reading from Into the Rumored Spring at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, tomorrow, October 13, at 5:00 pm.  Poet Marjorie Manwaring will join her with poems from her new chapbook, What to Make of a Diminished Thing.  

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.