Georgia S. McDade

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Real Peace

 

Real peace means no war, of course.
But real peace demands so much more
……..than no war.
Though no war is an excellent
……..beginning.
Peace requires no fear of war.

The physical body must be safe.
There is more than adequate food,
……..shelter, attire.
And there is no worry that any one—not
……..to mention all three—will disappear.
This physical body gets preventive
……..medical and dental care and
……..treatment when needed.
And there is no worry that benefits will
……..be reduced or exhausted nor service
……..denied.

The mental body must be at least equally
……..safe; some might argue safer.
Peace provides space for education,
……..a good, solid education full of
……..knowledgeable teachers who
……..recognize the humanity of all and do
……..not see differences as inferiority.
……..Questioning without fear of
……..repercussion is ever the case.

Peace also allows spiritual development
……..of any and every variety.
Again there is no fear.

The stress created by the lack of any one
……..of the above can shatter peace,
……..shatter peace overtly or maybe simply
……..covertly, but shatter peace nevertheless.
……..And all of us are not always like the
……..oyster; the stress does not always
……..result in our creating pearls though
……..this stress may indeed make us shells
……..of ourselves.
Finally, real peace allows us to pursue
……..happiness as we see fit when that
……..pursuit harms no one.
And opportunity and justice permeate
……..this paradise.

The ever-present governor without
……..exception recognizes that no pursuit
……..of the ultimate personhood and real
……..peace diminishes another or the
……..other.

 

This poem was written for the Abe Keller Peace Fund, 11/22/12. “The Abe Keller Peace Education Fund was organized in 1998 to address peace-education needs in the Puget Sound community through fund-raising and grant-making for worthy peace-education activities.”

 

Georgia S. McDade lives in Seattle. The charter member of the African American Writer’s Alliance (AAWA) began reading her stories in public in 1991.  She regularly contributed opinion pieces for Pacific Newspapers, especially the South District Journal, and reported for KBCS (91.3 FM).  Emphasizing that “Good writing can force us to think and think critically; we can theorize, organize, analyze, and synthesize better,” McDade conducts writing workshops.  Her works include Travel Tips for Dream Trips, about her six-month, solo trip around the world; Outside the Cave  and Outside the Cave II, collections of poetry; and numerous essays and stories.

Jill McCabe Johnson

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Kitchen Waltz

 

We tilled our garden beds, making way for heirloom starts,
cuddled into careful impressions. The peppers we staggered,
left to right, front to back, and they did, in a way, resemble dance steps,

instructional patterns for those less nimble, like me.
I questioned the wisdom of eggplant near sunflower. He questioned
my carelessness: the brush against chickweed, launching seeds

into startled orbit. But then I brushed him, or he grazed me,
and we gathered sprays of rosemary, marjoram, thyme,
and a quiver of chives before stepping inside.

Something happened next in the kitchen, the alchemy of lovers,
where food as primeval as catfish finds sesame oil and tikka masala,
scallions and pecans. Greens melted in the pan, then on our tongues,

like our muscles later in bed. I doubt either of us dreamt of dancing,
but one of us said, “Turn,” in our sleep. Loud enough to wake us both,
but not so loud we could tell who had spoken. Two cooks,

one mind. A drowsy shifting under the covers. Two forks entwined.
A stomach pressed against a back, the other stomach unbridled and breathing.
I thought of quail—savory, delicate, and buttery—with fresh sage and arugula.

 

 

“Kitchen Waltz” is reprinted from Floating Bridge Review.

 

Jill McCabe Johnson’s first poetry collection, Diary of the One Swelling Sea (MoonPath Press, 2013), was inspired by the Salish Sea surrounding her home in the San Juan Islands. Jill is the founder and executive director of Artsmith, which provides artist residencies and other programs to support the arts. She earned her MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop, and will graduate in May 2014 with a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska where she pretends the acres of corn and tall grass prairie are another form of the sea.

 

Kim-An Lieberman, 1974 – 2013

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Kim-An Lieberman has left us too early. On the few occasions I met Kim-An in person or heard her read, I wished to know her better–warm, funny, and so so smart, kind, down to earth, generous. I knew her through her poems, especially her gorgeous first book, Breaking the Map (Blue Begonia Press, 2008).

I think most of us come to writing, at least initially, to sort out our own identities, and I felt that was so with Kim-An’s first book. Here were the two sides of herself–her Vietnamese heritage, her Jewish heritage, and the split between. She found rich material, for example, in her grandmother’s sudden and epic relocation to California from Saigon in 1975. She writes about this in the introduction to her wonderful poem, “Water Buffalo Tale” on the Poetry Northwest site. The surreal sometimes appeared in Kim-An’s poetry, surprising but perfectly at home, and seemed to grow up out of that split in her identity like a flower in a sidewalk crack.

I’m eagerly anticipating Kim-An’s forthcoming collection, In Orbit, which will appear from Blue Begonia Press early in 2014.  Jack Straw Studios will be hosting a reading from In Orbit sometime this spring.  Please keep an eye out for a date and help us celebrate her abiding talent and voice.  Find a beautiful tribute to her in The Seattle Times here, and another by poet Alan Chong Lau in the International Examiner here, and a third by local literary critic Paul Constant here.

A memorial will be held on December 30th at 3:00 p.m. in the Seattle Asian Art Museum. In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be made to the Kim-An Lieberman Memorial fund at The Evergreen School to offer financial aid for students in need.

Here is Kim-An’s beautiful and unexpected poem, “Wings,” from Breaking the Map.

Wings

It had been three years, maybe longer, and the map of his body
……….was etched
in her palms.  The stretch of his legs. The stiff, clean-shaven line of
……….his jaw.
His left ring finger, curved slightly inward.  So of course she made
……….the discovery.

The first feathers appeared in a pair.  She was facing him in the grey
……….wash of morning,
stroking the knoll of his shoulder blade, when twin quills broke
……….suddenly through the skin.
He locked himself in the bathroom for hours, cursing blankly
……….at the mirror.

They grew quickly, eclipsing his back like snowfall.  In the moonlight they
……….were lustrous.
she would brush them gently with a damp washcloth, gather loose
……….feathers in a basket.
Under their spreading canopy his muscles formed tight knots, pulsing
……….like fists.

He complained about their aching weight, how they poked holes in his
……….favorite sweater
and sometimes, of their own accord, began to flap and pull his feet
……….from the ground.
Just think of all the usefulness, she said, fan on a flaming night or extra
……….warmth in winter.

But he became sullen, took long walks alone after dinner, absolutely
……….refused to see a doctor.
He would not go to the beach anymore, even when she promised
……….a three-color sunset.
Can’t trust these things, he told her, and I’m not stupid.  I know
……….my mythology.

When he asked her to leave, it was another grey morning. He lay
……….sprawled on his stomach
at the opposite end of the bed. He gave no reason, but she knew it was
……….another woman
because their beauty was blinding. Even fully clothed he leaked
……….gallons of light.

In time she moved on, ripped up his pictures and set the ridiculous
……….basket of feathers on fire.
But some mornings she woke drenched in jealousy. Half-believing
……….she heard a rustle,
she would stare at her husband’s empty back and wonder if anything
……….would change.

 

Emily Warn

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Talking with the Gigantic Maple About the Dragonfly

 

Neither you
nor I
can mimic
a dragonfly
though your seed-wings
clack
like their wings
when they take off
in unison
to practice backflips
above the lake.

Nor can we balance
on a single blade
of shore grass,
admiring ourselves
to shame the lake
into polishing its mirror.

But we can be still
and hear the quiet
between
two echoing thrush.

And in the hush
of our leaves
and breaths
conjoined,
we can see
universes
in the dragonfly’s
eight eyes.

 

(from “Flowering Branches” in The Novice Insomniac (Copper Canyon 1996))
“I stood where you would not see me
And my armload of flowers.”

 

For Emily Warn, poetry links music and meaning every bit as powerfully and oddly as religious traditions do, inventing complicated, invisible relations. She moved to the Pacific Northwest 1978 to work for North Cascades National Park, and a year later moved to Seattle where she has lived, more or less ever since. Sherecently served as the Webby Award–winning founding editor of poetryfoundation.org, and now divides her time between Seattle and Twisp, Washington. Warn has published five collections of poetry, including three books: The Leaf Path (1982),The Novice Insomniac (1996) and Shadow Architect (2008), all from Copper Canyon Press, and two chapbooks The Book of Esther (1986) and Highway Suite (1987). Her essays and poems appear widely, including in Poetry, BookForum, Blackbird, Parabola, The Seattle Times, The Writers’ Almanac. She has taught creative writing or served as writer-in-residence at many schools and arts centers. She was educated at Kalamazoo College and the University of Washington, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

 

Jeanne Gordner

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River Float – 1950

Three Children and I on inflated mattresses
…….drifted Toutle River’s snowmelt water
…….eddied quietly to a narrow gorge where

the river narrowed between rocky cliffs
dropped steeply…… surged
… white water roiling and spinning
…… past boulders and downed trees.

Toutle’s steep descent tossed us
airborne into whirlpools…… under water and
above again ….in confined passage
between cliffs and reaching driftwood.

water’s roar and echo
. overwhelming our screams, hurled us
……over deep holes…… under tree limbs
………………………. like homing fish.

…….Half a mile downstream the canyon
…….opened and Toutle quieted to the percussion of
…….water against stony beach.

We waded ashore
…. heard nests of song in alder and aspen
.. . felt sun’s heat.

Elated with our venture
we trudged the road back to camp and
… abandoned ourselves again and again
…… to river’s icy race and swirl,
………. its fluid passage between rock and rock. Until

too weary to tramp the road again
we sat and watched water patterns
interlace and elongate westward
watched as sun slid behind trees
its last light dancing in the river.

 

 

(In 1980 Mt. St. Helens erupted, filling the gorge with muck and trees)

 

Jeanne Gordner grew up in Longview Washington, then enrolled in Reed College, majoring in Political Science.  Lloyd Reynolds introduced her to modern poetry, and she has been writing ever since. Eventually she became a teacher and taught for several years in Yakima, and then substituted in Oak Harbor schools when her family moved to Whidbey Island.  She returned to Olympia and was one of the original members of Olympia Poetry Network, which has enriched her writing life in many ways. Currently she lives in a retirement community and participates in a writing class. She has published three chapbooks.  

D. C. Miller

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Keeping Bees Since the Eruption

 

Since you found the burst of fireweed
where the scorched bear plied the chomping brook,
saw crimson blooms squeeze through rent cedar,
told the ladies there are flowers
tasseling for the rest of their lives,
bore them up St. Helens’ spine,
faced their doors toward morning sun
where guard bees wing the gray mist fleeing,
felt the singe of venom in your veins, imagined
fresh comb full-capped, plugged with honey,
interred the dead in ash, and set
her white mansions where earth fell apart—
you can wait with them for the dawn.

Since you were stung in the night,
each sting union and requiem—
you feel the earth’s spin,
understand the dance of bees.
You sense in every Apis mellifera
renewal and matriarch,
and when you push your way
through cheek-high flowers, the bees,
a galaxy of copper stars with frail wings,
the swarm is ether, zuzzing a new skyline.

 

“Keeping Bees Since the Eruption” is reprinted from North American Review.

 

D.C. Miller stumbles up to alpine country regularly, guides ocean kayakers to the B.C. coast, and sorely tries to avoid the ER, from close encounters with the teeth of his Great Pyrenees dog.  Although his commercial beekeeping days are over, he continues to urge small females to fly into his heirloom apples to lick flowers. When not writing, you can find him tethered to “Barkley”, dragged to new heights in the Columbia Gorge &  North Cascades.  He lives in White Salmon.

Tim Sherry

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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.

 

 

Leigh Clifton Goodwin

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the home place

 

some folks say
it’s where
when you have to go there,
they have to take you.

So that’s not wrong
so far as it goes
but it’s a bit unkind, maybe —
unprodigal.

I say
it’s where
when you want to go there
so badly you’ll give up your easy
anonymous wallow,
pick up responsibility again
put it on like a clean shirt,
accept the recognition
of your place in the sweet slow
mechanics of family —

it’s where
when you want to go there
so much you’ll give up
lifting nothing,
to regain the quiet beating weight
that’s everything —

they’ll bear you joyously
over the familiar threshold,
and only say
we’re glad.

We’re glad you’re here at last.

 

Leigh Clifton Goodwin has put in time as a bartender, a maid, a shipwreck victim and a very reluctant banker.  She has had poems published in Crab Creek Review, Drash: Northwest Mosaic, and A Sense of Place: The Washington State Geospatial Poetry Anthology. In early 2011, Leigh accidentally began writing a poem-journal of the cycle of a Seattle year, and has been observing developments with interest.

Debra Revere

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Drowning

 

First you hear the sharp crack of winter
splitting itself from itself. Then you hear the screams,
your brothers on the shoreline safe, frantic,
transforming into heroes. Then, silent, the quiet
underwater, the silence of a winter lake.
Amazing when you’re eight.

Falling through the ice, it happens suddenly and slowly.
You watch it all from a distance, like peering
around the corner late at night,
spying on your parents, on a separate life.

You think you’d like to spend more time down there,
search for creatures slowly breathing, hibernating, look
for the secret place turtles retreat to in the cold.
Find a place to sleep away your life.

But instead, you yell, you reach for the surface, hold
on to the jagged edge marking your path down. Hold on,
hold on, they call. They toss themselves onto the ice,
reaching, lashing you with their love.

 

 

Debra Revere is a Research Scientist and Clinical Faculty working in the field of biomedical and public health informatics at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. She is widely published in her research field which focuses on understanding the information needs of public health. Debra has been writing poetry since she was 9 years old. Her first poem was published in the Lawrenceville Elementary School newspaper, an ode to the Easter Bunny.  She lives in Seattle.

Kristen Spexarth

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Fisherman’s Terminal

 

A memorial sits
next to my favorite breakfast haunt.
It’s on a pier where rock songs blare
from a nearby speaker out to working boats,
moored, and waiting for the season.
Seagulls are soaring, circling,
searching for food bits and fish guts,
their cries, like homing pigeons
flying straight to my heart.
I have never been a sailor
but I come here and
fingers following,
touch the fish forever circling,
caught in cast bronze,
and stand, a shadow,
in front of names I never knew
and still they touch me.
Hopping sparrow, hoping for crumbs,
flies off in a hurry finding none.
Canadian geese, majestic, long-necked cruisers
on green effluent
reach out and gingerly nibble insects and eel grass.
Across the ship canal they’ll be scrapping for french fries
but here they float, regal.

 

Kristen Spexarth lives in Seattle and writes about love, loss and the world around as seen through the eyes of a gardener. She’s been writing a long time, has been published here and there and spends her free time working to help educate people about suicide prevention.