Seren Fargo

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Caught

 
 

Unnecessarily, the spider wraps another layer
around the motionless fly.

tangled
fishing lines—
again he tells me
he’s afraid
I will leave him

 
 
 
 

 “Caught” was previously published in A Hundred Gourds.

 

Seren Fargo, once a wildlife researcher with the U.S. Forest Service, is now a writer and photographer. She primarily writes Japanese-form poetry and is founder/coordinator of the Bellingham Haiku Group and teaches haiku writing to classes and private students. Her work has won several awards, including the Washington Poets Association’s Porad Haiku Contest, and has been published in many journals in the U.S. and internationally, including Clover, A Literary Rag. Her writing largely reflects her passion for the natural world and her struggles with chronic illness and loss. She lives in a poetic rural setting in Bellingham with her three cats.

 

Greg Bem

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talking out loud to yourself in the age of the common house terabyte

 

hey * hey * hey * hey
the sitteneth duckletto
beneath my belied-to belly
a bully, a block party?
or a cool whip tup mug shut?
hey * hey * hey * hey *
except the jello ain’t on
and the ear ain’t here there,
there, there, eggplant faceman
and the moon’s ant arcticking
slick hey * boom parade, kay,
and K blasting cod oil
oogle boa on Jackson goal
more foil ownering olly up
to the hay field barrel roll
double sided slickened OO
single split bit dough coil
fly mingle bubble treaty boy
made to move in circle list
F * O * R * M * A * T

 

Greg Bem is a Seattle poet and one of the Breadline Reading Series organizers. He’s also an organizer and ring leader at SPLAB with Paul Nelson and he works hard publicizing poetry events all over Seattle. His work appears in Elective Affinities.

 

Emily Van Kley

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My Dead Grandfather

 

My dead grandfather no longer lives in his apartment

though his last dishes are clean in the dishwasher,

though his leather gym bag lies unzipped in a grimace

behind the bedroom closet door. My dead grandfather

does not sit at his desk and write checks

to black civic organizations with his pen anchored

in agate. My dead white grandfather, whose skin

will not retain its significance, does not underline

scores at the tops of prisoners’ Christian curricula.

He neither shambles across the hall for one ex-wife’s pot roast

nor drives ten minutes over state lines to make claims

on morning coffee with his first ex-wife. When I open

the cabinets and every drawer in his apartment,

my dead grandfather does not prevent me from considering

the hand-held vacuum cleaner, the two small wineglasses,

the elegant hammer and book seal with his initials, also mine.

My dead grandfather stays at the church where he is boxed

in a manly crate of brass and satin. I am not afraid,

when we arrive, of his withered mouth sewn straight

over ceramic teeth, of the drill-row forehead unable

to imply a thing from temper to concentration, the hands

improbably folded one over the other, the knuckles

wax-museum pale. I am not afraid of the body

which has been through the busted-brick labor

of dying, not of its shrunkeness, its itness, its pall.

And yet a grandfather is a notion that does not ash away

like a last cigarette ground into pavement. My dead

grandfather, laid out in a fine blue suit at the altar

of Lansing First Reformed. Myself a child

who has touched his things.

 

 

“My Dead Grandfather” previously appeared in The Iowa Review.

 

Emily Van Kley’s poetry has won the Iowa Review and Florida Review awards, and is forthcoming in The Way North: Upper Michigan New Works, from Wayne State University Press. Though she grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, she now lives in Olympia, Washington, where she works at the local food co-op. Her work is included in Godiva Speaks: A Celebration of Olympia Area Women Poets.

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.

John L. Wright

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WHY I DISCARDED MY MANUSCRIPT ON WELLNESS AND THE PRESBYTERIAN BOOK OF ORDER

for Jack Cady (1932-2004)

I was well on my way to essays
when you unexpectedly assigned the class a poem.
A love poem, you said,
twenty-five words or less, don’t use the word god
or the word love, and make it honest.

As if conspiring, on the edge of vision a smudge
of green in a wooden bowl—
Granny Smith apples my wife bought for our son,
coming home from college.

Twenty-four words and three couplets later
you couldn’t budge a word or line I had scribbled
on that chalky green-board.

Then came the grateful lover’s remorse: Oh,
where have you been all my life?
Then poetry moved into my files, onto my shelves.
Then my obituary changed.

 

John L. Wright is a retired physician who wrote his first poem in 1988 at the age of 58. His poems have appeared in eleven anthologies including, Floating Bridge Pontoon Four, Eight,Ten and Review # 5. He has published three collections: Through an Old Wooden Bowl  in 1999 (The Swedish Medical Center Foundation); As Though Praying: Poems from Decatur Island in 2003 and The Beginning of Love in 2005, both self-published by Bluestone Press.  John and his wife, Lanita, have lived on two wooded acres in Woodway, WA. since 1964; here they have raised two sons, five dogs and too many cats to count; here, too, while gardening or landscaping many of his poems have had their beginning.

 

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.

Jess Walter

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A Brief Political Manifesto

 

I was driving around the packed Costco parking lot
looking for a space and listening to some guy
on NPR talk about America’s growing suburban poor
when I saw this woman with four kids—
little stepladders, two-four-six-eight—
waiting to climb in the car while Mom
loaded a cask of peanut better and
pallets of swimsuits into the back
of this all-wheel drive vehicle
and the kids were so cute I waved
and that’s when I saw the most amazing thing
as the woman bent over
to pick up a barrel
of grape juice:
her low-rise pants rose low and right there
in the small of her large back
stretched a single strained string,
a thin strap of fabric, yes,
the Devil’s floss, I shit you not
a thong, I swear to God, a thong,
now me, I’m okay with the thong
politically and aesthetically, I’m fine
with it being up there or out there,
or wherever it happens to be.

My only question is:
when did Moms start wearing them?

I remember my mom’s underwear
(Laundry was one of our chores:
we folded those things awkwardly,
like fitted sheets. We snapped them
like tablecloths. Thwap.
My sister stood on one end,
me on the other
and we walked toward each other
twice.

We folded those things
like big American flags,
hats off, respectful
careful not to let them
brush the ground.)

Now I know there are people out there
who constantly fret about
the Fabric of America;
gay couples getting married, violent videos, nasty TV,
that sort of thing.
But it seems to me
the Fabric of America
would be just fine
if there was a little more of it
in our mothers’ underpants.

And that is the issue I will run on
when I eventually run:
Getting our moms out of thongs
and back into hammocks
with leg holes
the way God
intended.

 

“A Brief Political Manifesto” originally appeared in The Financial Lives of the Poets (Harper Perennial, 2010).

 

Jess Walter’s work has been translated into more than 20 languages and his essays, short fiction, criticism and journalism have been widely published, in Details, Playboy, Newsweek, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe among many others. His nonfiction book, Every Knee Shall Bow, was a finalist for the pen Center West literary nonfiction award in 1996. His novel Citizen Vince won a 2006 Edgar Allan Poe award, and his following novel,The Zero, was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award. His most recent novel is Beautiful Ruins.

 

 

Koon Woon

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“A Season in Hell”

 

“When you come in to work each morning,
Remove your bodily organs and limbs
one by one. Hang them up on the hooks provided in
the walk-in box, then put a white apron
onto your disembodied self, pick up a knife,
and go to the meat block,” said Alex the manager.

I was also drained of blood and other vital bodily fluids.

After the morning rush preparing pork adobo and chicken curry, I
ate lunch with Fong the chief cook and Lee the dishwasher.

In the afternoon, I examined souls and kept their merits and demerits in a ledger.

For the three months I worked at City Lunch near the Bart Station,
I paid my rent and gradually became robust enough to walk to work.
The entire city of San Francisco swung with the rhythm of my walk,
and stars appeared in the middle of the afternoon with a sliver of the moon.

Meanwhile, at Fisherman’s Wharf, the stingrays came to the jetty
and whipped their tails against rocks; tourists paid me to dance on
the waves. I carefully tread water and remembered to breathe.

In the end, I was evicted anyway from my castle that glowed at night.
For lack of anything better to do, I walked from hilltop to hilltop,
burned newspapers to inhale the smoke, then climbed down to the water
beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and harvested seaweed.

I waited until one sunny day when the water was warm and calm,
then swam all the way to Asia and got replacements for my disembodied self.
I did not forget that I was a ghost. And
that was my first season in Hell.

 

 

Koon Woon, “paper son” name for Locke Kau Koon, is from Nanon Village in Guangdong Province of the PRC.  He immigrated to the USA in 1960 at age 11 from Hong Kong. He is fourth-generation immigrant to the USA from the Locke family. He owes his progress in poetry from the red dirt and the short pines he found beyond his second-maternal Uncle Li Gar Sum’s house in Bow Lung Village, and in America, the kettle moraines of Wisconsin where his dear friend Betty Irene Priebe helped him come back from the private hell of mental illness. Koon Woon’s first book of poems is The Truth in Rented Rooms (Kaya Press, 1998).  His second book of poems, Water Chasing Water, is soon available from Kaya Press (NY, NY), under the astute and kind guidance of his editor/publisher Sunyoung Lee.  He lives in Seattle.

Neile Graham

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On Skye

 

Hard to know the right madness here—
Skye’s hills have the twisted pine scent
of Montana, the air of Coyote’s

bitter-bright games—but here the road
crosses the bridge where Macleod
said goodbye to his faery wife

and leads to the ruins of Trumpan Church
where Clan Macdonald was burned alive
by Clan Macleod. The crofts crumple

like abandoned ranches, houses and barns
folding in on themselves, stones falling
one by one. Here it was not hard weather

that emptied the fields but the Clearances:
the landlords and everywhere their sheep.
Stacks and hills and emptiness. Stones

rearing to the sky: churches and brochs
bending stone by stone nearer the grasses,
castles full of nettles and sheep, weeds

growing right to the sea, and everywhere,
on church walls, sea rocks, corners
of the castle windows, a strange green fern,

bright with brownish stems, everywhere
springing from the cracks in stone.
I dreamt a dog whose hair was these

ferns, thick, rich, alive. Looking at her
I saw how the stones love this land,
how the rain and wind and tides love stone,

how the grass does, how the woman who once lived
in the fallen croft shaped scones
from flour and sang while her children—

who grew to leave for the New World—
woke to the sure rhythm of her work
and the haunting lilt of a piper’s tune

reeling in the righteous wind.
All this, with my fingers woven
into fronds on her back, moving from the cool

green growth to the warmth that rose
from her skin. And in the pause of flying home,
right at the Rockies’ feet, there she is again:

standing stiff in the wind as my plane
touches down on the runway right by her.
A wolf on the tarmac, the blowing snow

swirling around her feet like fog,
like the cold and deep warmth
of her feral, human breath.

 

 

Neile Graham is Canadian by birth, but has lived and worked in Seattle for over 22 years. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana, where she worked with Richard Hugo. Her work has been published in many American, British, and Canadian journals, and she has three full-length collections of poetry, most recently, Blood Memory. and a CD recording, She Says: Poems Selected and New. Her writing projects have been supported by the Canada Council, Artist Trust, and the Seattle, King County, and Washington State arts commissions.

Paul Fisher

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In My Father’s Absence

 

Men make women messy,
my mother loved to vent
while supervising pickups
of plastic soldiers from my room.
But I was six, too young
to count the dead,
too full of spunk to quake
before the high-pitched chorus
echoing each a cappella rant.
Perhaps the better half of God
once raised her voice
while ordering untidy worlds,
rewinding wind and whirlpools,
boxing ears and grounding boats.
I see her on the seventh evening
watching leaves and snow
descend in whorls like cereal and sugar
her ragamuffin children stir and spill
among the twigs and burls,
the wooden blocks and battle gear
she reads like bones,
then sweeps from forest floors.

 

“In my Father’s Absence” originally appeared in Nimrod International Journal.

 

Paul Fisher was born and raised in Seattle, and currently lives in Bellingham. He earned an MA in Art and Education at Washington University in St. Louis, an MFA from the Poetry Program at New England College in New Hampshire, and is the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Fellowship in Poetry from the Oregon Arts Commission. His first full-length book of poems, Rumors of Shore, won the 2009 Blue Light Book Award, and was published by in 2010. Recent poems have appeared in journals such as Cave Wall, Crab Creek Review, Naugatuck River Review, and Nimrod International Journal.