Category Archives: poem

Lorraine Healy

Posted on by
Reply

Ode to the Palouse at Harvest Time

The Palouse, Eastern Washington State

 

In the beginning the sky
was blue and wheat was yellow,
the clumps of sage were their exhausted green,
and so the farmers said
let the barns be red, and the barns
were red.

Today the wheat is ready, a thread
beyond golden
except a summer storm rages in its mess
of purple clouds and stops the day.

The old Danes and Swedes
are in the Farmers’ Cemetery
where death suits their natural reserve.
Grey slabs for Petersens, Larsens,
for every blessed Hanson.
And here and there, a perfect garland
surrounds a lovely, tiny marble lamb—
splurge for a child of wheat-like hair,
stolen by diphtheria.

The afternoon leaches
the rust of rain out of everything,
until the dry stubble
bursts with cricket and grasshopper.
Again the world a spark away
from wildfire, one unconscionable
flick of lightning touching down,
one idiot match flung out
a car window and why
do we call them wild
these fires arsoned by thoughtlessness,
ours, God’s?

Come sunset, an almost solid haze
rattles everything from here to the horizon:
the chemical ghost of weedkiller,
dust from ten thousand fallow fields,
over the silos, over the Quonset huts,
over everyone’s sins.

 

Lorraine Healy is an Argentinean poet and photographer living on Whidbey Island, Washington. The winner of several national awards, including a Pushcart Prize nomination, she has been published extensively. The author of two published chapbooks, Lorraine is a graduate from the M.F.A in Poetry program at New England College, New Hampshire, as well as from the post-MFA Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her first full-length manuscript, The Habit of Buenos Aires (Tebot Bach Press, 2010) won the Patricia Bibby First Book Award. Lorraine’s newest chapbook, Abraham’s Voices, will be out in October from WorldEnoughWriters Press.”

Cheryl Waitkevich

Posted on by
Reply

Before Everything Happened

 

 

before everything happened

the kids ran steps 2 at a time

laundry was folded regardless.

roses bloomed lilac colored,

trumpeted dawn and daylight.

before everything happened,

we rode our bikes past noon

the sun burnt the backs of our necks

we fell into the moon.

planets aligned for a moment

Jupiter filled the heavens.

swans swam in ice covered ponds.

before everything happened, I still lied.

you still hit me with the baseball bat

before everything happened

it had all happened, though we hid it.

pretended the dog ate it  even though it was

too large for a mastiff to swallow.

the regurgitate was there

under the trampoline and we all saw it.

the moon wept while the red roses bloomed

you were sweet on me once,

I too was on you.

before everything happened.

 

 

Cheryl Waitkevich lives in Olympia with her husband, 2 chihuahuas, 2 cats and 4 chickens. She writes, “I am a poet–but find it difficult to say that word, never mind print it. I write for people I love and as a way to capture my memories and feelings. I work at a local hospital…. It helps me take myself seriously when I dare submit a poem.”

 

Student Poem

Posted on by
Reply

The Windowsill

 

 
In a great blue house there is a woman
looking at the ocean
longingly.
As if strings are holding her back
and the windowsill is as far as she can go.

She wishes she could feel the cold sea,
let the cold ocean breeze touch her,
walk over sharp rocks
avoiding cuts in her feet.

She wants to feel the grass tickle her,
to see the big evergreen trees,
to smell the ocean,
to be a part of it.
But the strings are holding her back
and the windowsill is as far as she can go.

She wishes to swim away in her daydream as a fish.
She wants to cut those strings,
break the window,
and fly away free as a bird.
Away to her wishes in the sea.

 

 

“The Windowsill” was written this year by Lucy, a fifth grader at Whittier Elementary in Seattle. Lucy worked with Writers in the Schools writer Erin Malone, who visited Lucy’s classroom many times over the course of several months with challenging and engaging poetry lessons. “The Windowsill” is an ekphrastic poem, written in response to  Edward Hopper’s painting, “Cape Cod Morning.”

For examples of WITS poetry lessons and poetry by students, please peruse the WITS Blog.

 

Paul Nelson

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Jane Alynn

Posted on by
Reply

Hummingbird

 

She remembers how he entered the flower,
keen on the honeysuckle
that fluttered itself,
enamored of red—
his brazen body, hovering,
darting in and out,
interrupted, now and then,
by the humming
of a nectar-seeking rival,
equally as beautiful.
Then with the flush of spring
he turns a coppery back to her
ascends, slowly, to great heights
and dives on whistling wings
in a giddy twist toward her, tail on fire.
She’d like to get used to this.
But such displays are short-lived.
Given to being alone,
never alighting—or not for long,
ever a flitterer, he buzzes off
to the next flower
as she knew he would,
leaving her the nest
and a hunger
greater than her tiny body lets on.

 

“Hummingbird” is reprinted from Necessity of Flight (Cherry Grove Collections, 2011).

 

Jane Alynn is a poet, writer, and fine art photographer. She is the author of Necessity of Flight (Cherry Grove, 2011) and a chapbook, Threads & Dust (Finishing Line Press, 2005). In addition to winning Second Place in New South’s 2012 Poetry Contest, she received a William Stafford Award from Washington Poets Association in 2004. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals as well as in many anthologies. Recently, her poems, written in collaboration with visual artists, have been exhibited in galleries, a synergy she also explores in her photographic artwork.

 

Lenora Rain-Lee Good

Posted on by
8

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

Posted on by
Reply

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).

Alicia Hokanson

Posted on by
Reply

Teaching Homer to Eighth Graders

What appeals to them most is that Odysseus
was one horny guy
moving from goddess to nymph;
not that he kept his vision
of Ithaca like a flame in his gut.

And Telemachus – that wimp –
turned out to be okay,
he could have strung the bow
if his dad had let him.

Argos, on the dungheap, rolls
his eyes and dies,
joy in his doggy heart
when he hears his master’s voice.

And Eurylochus-–a fool to eat those cattle–
got what he deserved.

Nausicaa? An idiot
to let a naked man
from the bushes by the river
nearly hug her about the knees.

With what glee they read
the bloody battle in the hall.
How cool that Antinous
got it in the throat
and that Melanthius
was strung up on a brutal wall.

How far we’ve come when they begin
to feel the complications of return
to greening Ithaca, and kneel in the orchard
with Laertes weeping. The old guy
fooled by a son just beginning
the ship-wrecked journey home.

 

Reprinted from Yalapaloosa Review.

 

Alicia Hokanson’s poetry collections are Insistent in the Skin (Brooding Heron Press, 1993), Mapping the Distance (King County Arts Commission Publication Prize, 1989), and Phosphorus (Brooding Heron Press, 1984).  She lives in Seattle and teaches at Lakeside School where she holds the Bleakney Chair in English.

 

Larry Laurence

Posted on by
Reply

INCLUSIVE OF HELLO AND GOODBYE
for J.W.

 

Three angels manifest themselves at a bar. They make it known
to the mind of the bartender, This day is our birthday.

No. Three baleen whales, a gray, a blue, & a humpback,
swim into a bar. They sing in high-pitched vocalizations & clicks,
This day is our birthday.

No. Three rocks, an igneous, a metamorphic, & a sedimentary,
roll into a bar. In Morse code they knock against themselves
to the bartender, Today is our birthday.

No. Three weeds, a sheep sorrel, a redstem filaree, & a Canada
goldenrod, seed themselves at a bar. Utilizing the slight air
currents available they rustle to the bartender, Today’s. . .

No. Three trees, a Jenny sycamore, a paw paw, & a blossoming pear. . .

An anaconda, a coachwhip, & a Texas blind snake. . .

OK, a swift, a chicken hawk, & a blue jay. . .

OK, OK. Three subnuclear particles appear & do not appear
simultaneously in various unknowable interstices of realities themselves
barely conceivable at the bar & outside the bar. They harmonize

in vibrations at once audible & inaudible to the bartender
in such a way to at last, at long last, prove senseless the dichotomy
of the observer & the observed, Today’s our birthday!

No matter, says the bartender. We, all of us,
gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

 

 

“INCLUSIVE OF HELLO AND GOODBYE” originally appeared in POOL, A Journal of
Poetry.

 

Larry Laurence lives in Seattle and works as a rehabilitation counselor. Books are Life  of The Bones To Come, Black Heron Press, (a National Poetry Month selection by NACS, National Association Of College Stores) and Scenes Beginning With The Footbridge At The Lake, Brooding Heron Press. Poems appear in the anthologies How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets, Roundhouse Press, Jack Straw Writers, Jack Straw Productions. Awards include grants from Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture and Artist Trust plus a residency at Squaw Valley Community Of Writers. He studied poetry (and growing up) under Philip Levine.

Caitlin Elizabeth Thomson

Posted on by
Reply

The First Night

 

How strange it felt, to pile leaves on top
of my wool sweater. Tie orange sleeve to orange sleeve
before laying my head down.
My brother covered my body with leaves and needles,
so I could be nothing worth notice
and warm. Food was hard to find
before we discovered roots for winter,
rosehips for spring. In the summer and fall
bounty overwhelmed us. The longings we once held
for mattresses, refrigerators, lamps,
replaced by lakes and loons before the sun rose.
Knitting scraps of wool into sweaters.
Praying every day, earnest words
to the God we could all now feel coming.

 

“The First Night” is reprinted from Labletter.

Caitlin Elizabeth Thomson is a Canadian who married an American. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous places, including: The Literary Review of Canada, The Liner, Echolocation, Labletter, and The Moth. Her second chapbook Incident Reports is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press. She lives in Bellingham.