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).

Alicia Hokanson

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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.

 

Library Club

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by Craig Seasholes, Librarian at Sanislo Elementary in West Seattle

 

Cynta-Liyah has the touch.

Last year, early in second grade, Cynta-Liyah started stoppin’ by the library as others headed to the playground. She’d ask if this was a time she could stay inside to write a poem.

15 minutes later, as other kids were streaming in from recess, she’d quietly hand me a short piece she’d written.  Just picked. Fresh. Ready to be added to our poetry anthology. She’d smile, then slip ’round the corner and back to class for the final hour of the day.

Remarkable. And that was before she started bringing in the boys.

Boys whose names were heard as teachers raised their voices “Cut-that out-and-stoppit-NOW” levels. Boys who tied teachers in knots of frustration and sent them over the line and down the hall to the principal’s office. Boys who would look up from the chair outside the principal’s office while classmates went out to lunch recess and their teachers headed to the lounge to flush their frustrations with “I can’t believe he did it again” conversations over lunch.

But later at the start of our  short afternoon recess,  I’d see these boys with Cynta-Liyah. Coming into the library for recess, asking for permission to write another poem.  “Please?”  She’d plead, “He’s my cousin,” or “He wants to try.”  “OK?”

That’s how our Poetry Club began.
Cynta-Liyah taking boys under her wing.
Working together on a little poem.
Finding something good inside; going and growing from there.

This year other second graders saw what was happening and asked to stay in, too. Our poetry club was formally announced. Girls writing friendship poems to one another. Others began writing love notes, birthday wishes, Valentines and “things I love”  lists that capture perfectly their precious aspirations and emotions, preserved on paper against the amnesia of adolescence yet to come.

April arrived bringing National Poetry Month and Elliott Bay Books offered an opportunity for our poetry club to recite a few “Poems to Learn By Heart” for Caroline Kennedy’s public appearance in Seattle.  I spotted Janet Wong’s “Liberty” as a perfect group recitation, following the cadence and updating the sentiments of The Pledge of Allegience we recite at the start of each school day.

I pledge acceptence of the views
So different that make us America.
To listen, to look
To think and to learn.

One people, sharing the earth
Responsible
For liberty and justice for all.

Our poetry club kids took to it immediately, their faces and names reflecting beautifully the sentiments of the poem: Wang, Vu, Nguyen, Martinez.

I also spotted this as an opportunity for special students to shine before a large public audience. It was easy to choose two by Langston Hughes, including “The Dreamkeeper” for Quinton:

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

and “Dream Variations” for Cynta-Liyah:

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening…
A tall, slim tree…
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

A week before the event, I was informed that Ms Kennedy would like to visit our school, to bring media attention to the role of school libraries and to meet our student poets. Ms. Tsuboi’s first grade class came into the library with their classroom poetry notebooks in hand, and read several poems.

Then the poetry club kids came in, with “Liberty” followed by Quinton and Cynta-Liyah sparkling with irrepressible joy.

And when Caroline Kennedy asked, “Why do you like the library?” it was Quinton who busted out with the quotable quote, “I like the library because there is never someone mad here. Books make people happy!”

Photo Credit:  David Rosen, West Seattle Herald

Larry Laurence

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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

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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.

 

 

Terry Martin

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EVENING ON SCHULLER GRADE

 

Orange light quiets the sky.
Color stains trees
into lengthening shade.

Lean back in your chair,
feet bare in tickling grass,
while the sun sinks behind the hill.

Sparrows flit
from limb to limb
in the orchard.

The smell of apples
becoming themselves
can ripen you, too.

Feel the air begin
to cool your shoulders,
kissing your face, blessing it.

Catch the earth’s pulse
through the soles of your feet.
Listen to the dark arrive.

Fill your empty place
with this horizon.
Hold it all lightly,

like that. Just like that.
Sit here, home,
the taste of evening in your mouth.

 

Terry Martin is the author of The Secret Language of Women (Blue Begonia Press, 2006) and Wishboats, published by Blue Begonia Press in 2000, winner of the Judges’ Choice Award at Bumbershoot Book Fair. Over 200 of Martin’s poems, essays, and articles have appeared in numerous publications. Hiker, river-watcher, and lover of the arts, Terry lives with her family in Yakima, and teaches in the English Department at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. She is the recipient of CWU’s Distinguished Professor Teaching Award, and in 2003 was honored as Washington Professor of the Year by the CASE/Carnegie Foundation–a national teaching award given to recognize extraordinary commitment and contribution to undergraduate education.

 


An Invitation to Submit

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If you are a poet currently living in Washington State, and you have not yet been included in The Far Field online, I want to invite you to submit work. This invitation includes students (though I will publish poets under age 18 without a last name).

Send three to five poems in a single attachment, along with a short bio that includes your city, to poet@humanities.org. Previously published poems are preferred, but not required.  In fact, a growing list of poets count The Far Field as their first publication.  I’m very proud of that.  I can’t guarantee publication, but I would like to read your work.

Teachers, if you encounter a particularly excellent student poem, please encourage your student to submit it to The Far Field. I’ve received some wonderful poems that way.

My goal is to represent our state’s poetry communities in a very broad sense–so I am especially interested in voices that are un- or under-represented here.  I look forward to  showcasing unconventional poetry, spoken-word videos, poetry that verges on other genres (including visual art). And I’m hoping to hear from all corners of the state, and the big middle.

I am also interested in brief essays that relate to poetry in Washington State. For example, see Rebecca Frevert’s piece on her poetry kiosk in Everett, Jim Freeman’s shout out for Whidbey Island’s Poetry Slams, and Jim Deatherage’s description of an inspired collaboration between the Creative Writing and Photography classes at Richland High School.  Write to me first to inquire.

Thank you to all who have trusted me with your work already. I am privileged to read and publish poems that represent this thriving community of writers. I look forward to more poems and no repeats.  When my appointment concludes in February 2014, this site will remain as a resource, and let’s face it, a kind of brag. Look what our state’s got.

 

 

J. Glenn Evans

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AN OLD MAN’S WINTER

After Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

 

To take, to take?
I feel that mist.
As though my boiler was busted
I think my bones forgot.
Like half-gone love I hug my memories.
O for a vision of what’s to come,
Heavenly music across the bay,
Echo of the Lord’s message,
Full jolly, a string
Melodious and,
On the straightaway
Lost among the firs and wood songs
Wind flashes by
To hold conference with me
Where mountains converse,
And leap over shoulders,
Of an old man
Racing like a fool.
If only I could go back
To gather memories holding sway,
Coming back this way,
The passions of my day,
Floating on a sea of memories
In a house of beautiful memories
Now that time is gone:
I’m old and life is done

 
 

Founder of PoetsWest and Activists for a Better World, J. Glenn Evans hosts PoetsWest at KSER 90.7FM, a nationally syndicated weekly radio show, and is author of four books of poetry: Deadly Mistress, Window in the Sky, Seattle Poems and Buffalo Tracks, author of three novels, Broker Jim, Zeke’s Revenge and Wayfarers, several community histories and numerous political essays, co-produced a movie, “Christmas Mountain,” with Mark Miller, co-staring Slim Pickens, and is a former stockbroker-investment banker.  Part Cherokee, native of Oklahoma.  Evans has lived in Seattle since 1960.  Listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World.

 

 

Map of my Travels

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I just added another page to The Far Field: visit “Map” (on the menu above) to see a few highlights of my Poet Laureate travels.  Not nearly all–you can take a look at the “Archives” to see where I’ve traveled over the past year and a half.  But this map (which is a work in progress) is a good way to keep track of the geographical range of my events. It includes photos and links to poets and poetry. I plan to push a pin into all 39 counties before I turn in my Poet Laureate badge in February 2014.  KF