Emily Pérez

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Advice to my Younger Self:  Winter

 
One night you will learn you are soon
to be abandoned, cast outdoors.

This news may cause you some alarm.
Swallow it and savor those last hours.

You’ll have years to assign the anger, blame.
For now hold them close. They’ll keep you warm.

The day will start with a long hike. You’ll receive
a crust of bread, an afternoon’s low fire,

and you will take a nap, a few hours to believe
you are still loved, and maybe you misheard—

But night falls, and it’s certain. You’re forgotten,
left to freeze, starve, be eaten alive by wolves.

Allow yourself a moment’s grief for all that’s gone:
your cat, your clothing, your warm bed.

You may shed some tears,
but don’t cry loud or long.

The cold will come; you’ll need energy.
It helps to have a plan before you leave.

On your voyage out you can collect,
then drop along the road

the smoothest stones, the ones that reflect
moonlight, make a lighted trail home.

Or, as the story goes, you could crumble
up your crust of bread and leave a map

sure to be consumed by birds.
It hardly matters. Either way

you’re lost. Either way
you’ll wander into deeper woods.

 

Emily Pérez is the author of the chapbook Backyard Migration Route (Finishing Line Press). Raised in south Texas, she earned a BA from Stanford and an MFA at the University of Houston, where she served as a poetry editor for Gulf Coast and taught with Writers in the Schools. Her poems have appeared in journals including Crab Orchard Review, Borderlands, The Laurel Review, DIAGRAM, /nor, and Nimrod. She teaches English and Gender Studies in Seattle where she lives with her husband and sons.

 

Brian Culhane

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The King’s Question

 
Before he put his important question to an oracle,
Croesus planned to test all the famous soothsayers,
Sending runners half around the world, to Delphi,
Dodona, Amphiarius, Branchidae, and Ammon,
So as to determine the accuracy of their words;
His challenge: not to say anything of his future

But rather what he was doing in his capital Sardis,
(Eating an unlikely meal of lamb and tortoise,
Exactly one hundred days after messengers had set out).
This posed a challenge, then, of far space not of time:
Of seeing past dunes and rock fortresses; of flying,
Freighted, above caravans and seas; of sightedness,

As it were, in the present construed as a darkened room.
Croesus of Lydia sought by this means to gauge
The unplumbed limits of what each oracle knew,
Hesitant to entrust his fate to any unable to divine
Lamb and tortoise stewing in a bronze pot.
When only the Pythia of Apollo at Delphi correctly

Answered from her cleft, her tripod just the lens
For seeing into the royal ego, she put his mind to rest,
But not before speaking in her smoke-stung voice:
I count the grains of sand on the beach and the sea’s depth;
I know the speech of the dumb and I hear those without voice.
We know this because those present wrote it down.

Of the King’s crucial question, however, there is nothing.
We have no word. The histories are silent.                                                                                                                                                  My analyst,
Whose office on Madison was narrow as an anchorite’s cave,
Would sit behind me as I stared up at her impassive ceiling,
As the uptown buses slushed all the way to Harlem,
And I would recount, with many hesitations and asides,

The play that I was starring in, whose Acts were as yet
Fluid, though the whole loomed tragically enough.
She would listen, bent over knitting, or occasionally note
Some fact made less random by my tremulous soliloquy.
When much later I heard of her death after long cancer,
I walked across town and stood, in front of her building,

Trying to resurrect those afternoons that became the years
We labored together toward a time without neurosis,
When I might work and raise a family and find peace.
Find, if not happiness exactly, some surcease from pain.
What question had I failed to ask, when the chance was mine?
When she, who knew me so well, could have answered?

Let just one of those quicksilver hours be returned to me,
With my knowledge now of the world, and not a boy’s,
With all that I have become a lighted room. One hour
To ask the question that burned, once, in a King’s throat:
The question of all questions, the true source and center,
Without which a soul must make do, clap hands and sing.

(After Herodotus, Histories, 1:46–86)

 

“The King’s Question” is reprinted from The King’s Question (Graywolf, 2008) and originally appeared in The Hudson Review.

 

Brian Culhane was born and raised in New York City, the son of a legendary Disney animator. He attended the City University of New York (BA), Columbia University’s Writing Program (MFA), and the University of Washington (PhD), where he studied epic literature and the history of criticism. His poetry has appeared widely in such journals as The New Republic, The Hudson Review, and The Paris Review. He has been an Inquiring Mind speaker, lecturing on Frost and Thoreau for Humanities Washington. In 2007, he was awarded the Poetry Foundation’s Emily Dickinson First Book Prize; his winning manuscript, The King’s Question, was published by Graywolf Press in 2008. Also in 2008, he received an Artist Trust / Washington State Arts Commission fellowship in literature. He received a MacDowell Colony fellowship in 2009. He currently teaches film studies and English at Lakeside School in Seattle, WA.

Susan J. Erickson

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Blue Ghazal

 
She redesigned her aura. Updated its faded fresco blue
with a sexy shade that matched her eyes; Marilyn Monroe blue.

Easter Sunday, Assisi chapel. Anchovy-packed pilgrims.
Is that St. Francis, high above, blessing us with Giotto blue?

The feathers of the Steller’s Jay are not intrinsically blue.
It is light refraction that turns them braggadocio blue.

Her brows grew as one. A mustache appeared, then a monkey.
This can happen to you. Paint your house Frida Kahlo blue.

Vincent writes to Theo, “[I] am … looking for blue all the time.”
Then paints himself in a straw hat and smock of Van Gogh blue.

Lord Rayleigh said light collides and scatters to give us blue skies.
He’d know why I, Susan, covet a sky of New Mexico blue.

 

“Blue Ghazal” is reprinted from Cascade: Journal of the Washington Poets Association.


Susan J. Erickson encountered the ghazal early in her poetic life and has been a
fan every since. Currently she is working on a manuscript of poems in women’s
voices—mostly in free verse. Susan was one of the founders of the Sue C.
Boynton Poetry Contest in Bellingham, Washington where she lives. She also
helped organize The Poet as Art reading series.

Linda Strever

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Watching a Gull at Cannon Beach

 

You stick your beak into everything:
wave-darkened pebbles, grayed scraps
of litter, drying carcasses, just in case

there’s a soft spot, an organ you can pluck
and swallow down your narrow throat,
something, anything to make a dent

in your hunger. You peck everywhere
along the beach, among things that defy
naming, among your own feathers

until you draw blood. But look,
there’s a pool of sunlight on the sand,
yours for the having, no need to poke

anywhere, just move your craggy feet,
your ruffled wings, lift your head
and draw the sunlight in. It’s a different

kind of emptiness than the one you fear,
a place to rest, to feel warmth on your
back, no need to tuck your wings close

to your body. Instead, spread them
a little. There’s no one here to begrudge
you, to list all your failings. Here

there is only you and sunlight, blinding
and beckoning, a spot of heat
on a stormy beach. You’d be crazy

not to give up the hope of some stagnant
morsel in favor of fullness that cuts
like grace through the clouds. You’d be

crazy not to take your scaly feet and
lopsided wings, your empty belly, your
sharp beak and step into that circle of light.

 

“Watching a Gull at Cannon Beach” is reprinted from Crab Creek Review.

 

Linda Strever’s poetry credits include Crab Creek Review; Spoon River Poetry Review; CALYX, a Journal of Art and Literature by Women; Beloit Poetry Journal; Nimrod, Floating Bridge Review, and others. Winner of the Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize from CALYX Journal, her work has been a finalist for the Spoon River Poetry Review Editors’ Prize, the Crab Creek Review Poetry Award, the Levis Poetry Prize, the Ohio State University Press Award in Poetry, the A. E. Coppard Prize for Fiction, and the William Van Wert Fiction Competition. She has an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and lives in Olympia, Washington.

 

 

Mercedes Lawry

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Whatever the loneliness, drawing closer

 

The French teacher remains unemployed
and yet committed to a daily excursion,
able to walk past any shop, open or closed,
carrying linens or sleek shoes or pears.
Reading the encyclopedia in dim light,
a kind of swimming or prayer. No pets,
no children either and no regrets.
The neighbor notices much of this
but fails to muster compassion,
turning back to the long howl of the blues
and his own preoccupation with philately.
No one is traveling in the corporal sense.
Thin trees cast shadows on the avenue,
suggesting incarceration or clever design
or even a cast of pencils about to scribble
the ultimate piece of fiction, where everyone
is saved, the teacher given gainful
employment and the neighbor, a valuable stamp.
Eradicating loneliness as a sweet rain
begins to fall, amid echoes of the dead, passports
clutched in their shivery hands.

 

“Whatever the loneliness, drawing closer” is reprinted from Happy Darkness (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and originally appeared in Seattle Review.

 

Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in such journals as Poetry, Rhino, Nimrod, Poetry East, Seattle Review, Bellingham Review, and others.  She’s also published fiction and humor as well as stories and poems for children.  Among the honors she’s received are awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, Hugo House, and Artist Trust.  She’s been a Jack Straw Writer, held a residency at Hedgebrook and is a Pushcart Prize nominee.  Her chapbook, There are Crows in My Blood, was published by Pudding House Press in 2007 and another chapbook, Happy Darkness, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2011.  She lives in Seattle.

 

Laura Gamache

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INDIAN GRAVEYARD,
DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

“Aesthetic distance
can save your life.”
-Mark Doty

Skull Point bone sand
pebble baby teeth
under the gibbous moon.

How will your children
decorate your sugar skull?
Blue icing lips to kiss them with.

Mist kisses the moon –
Makes it disappear behind
the mountain with Scottish name.

 

“Indian Graveyard, Dia de Los Muertos” appeared in Floating Bridge Review.

 

Seattle poet and educator Laura Gamache has poetry appearing or forthcoming in Clackamas Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Pontoon 7 & 10, South Dakota Review, and online journals Avatar Review, LocusPoint: Seattle, and Menacing Hedge, among others. She has published essays in Teachers & Writers Magazine and the anthology Classics in the Classroom, as well as fiction in North Atlantic Review. She was chosen as a Jack Straw Writer in 1999 and 2002. Laura teaches throughout the Northwest, including for the Seattle Arts & Lectures’ WITS and Sprague Williamson Writers in Residence Programs. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in 1993, where she directed the MFA Writers in the Schools Program for ten years.

 

Connie Walle

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Withholding of Love as the Ultimate Violence
From Battery, Robin Morgan

 

No curl was set correctly, no
movement was graceful
or complete. No silver shined
next to the washed dish.

The silence of her lips,
the sight of her back left me
empty handed. The moon
always shrouded in veil.

Ripples of her judgment
could drown me in despair.
She peeled layers
from me year after year,

until reaching my hard core.
That she could not destroy.
That I polished like crystal.

 

Connie Walle, residing in Tacoma, Washington, is President and founder of Puget Sound Poetry Connection where she hosts the “Distinguished Writer Series”. Connie also founded Our Own Words, a Pierce County Wide teen writing contest.   A few of her publications include Floating Bridge Review, Raven Chronicles, Tahoma’s Shadow, and Cradle Song.

 

Jodie Marion

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Marriage Proposal

 

Woman, I crossed twelve borders to bring you this grilled cactus drizzled with fire,
this body covered in sawdust, this altar of saltwater framed with barbed wire.

I’m a stranger everywhere, so we’ll have to make our home in no-man’s land.
You booby trap the borders with cow bells, and I’ll build the Forbidden

City and a pole to hang our rice paper flag. When the rain in June chews
through it, we’ll draw lines in the sand, and hang another, never lose

our earthly bearings. Watch me chase away mountain lions with mime.
You can tend the fire in your suit of mud, plaster the walls with lime.

I’ll cook up some pearlash and make you glass to shatter when I’m a beast. I’ll atone
with my tongue, sweep the shards and become the moon, your own glowing stone

slurping at the tides. Hurry. Say yes. I want to stuff you with sugared almonds.
The mice are chewing through the bag of birdseed. The sun burns high. Holland’s

almost underwater. Make your life with me. Let’s build it tall and wide,
set it ablaze, and forget to reproduce. Say yes. A quick nod is fine.

I want to wear you like a second skin. Look, here, at the dark spot, you
unzip. Say yes, woman, then lay with me in the shadows of this old yew.

 

 

“Marriage Proposal” is from Jodie Marion’s forthcoming chapbook, Another Exile on the 45th Parallel (Floating Bridge Press, 2012).

 

Jodie Marion’s chapbook, Another Exile on the 45th Parallel, is forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press in October 2012. Recent poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2011, Narrative Magazine, and The New Guard Literary Review. In 2010 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She teaches writing at Mt. Hood Community College and raises four wild children with her husband in Vancouver, WA.

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.

 

Caleb Barber

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Beast in Me

 

When I said I would take you swimming,
I meant we would drive out
to the reservation and I’d say
it was too cold to take our clothes off.

When I said I would take you camping,
I meant I would wait until you went
away to Spain, then go to the hills by myself.

When I said “Yes, I will definitely be
at that show,” I meant I would
show up late, with a can of Rainier
in each of my pants pockets,
then leave once they were empty.

When I said we should maybe just
keep this friendly, I meant
I wouldn’t be calling you again.

And when you reported all this
to my best friend, he agreed with you
I was unkind, and listened
while you complained
two hours on the bar bench.

Honey, I was only a few blocks away,
putting the moves on someone new.

 

“Beast in Me” is reprinted from Beasts and Violins (Red Hen Press, 2010)

Caleb Barber earned a BA from Western Washington University in English/Creative Writing, and received an MFA in poetry from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, based off of Whidbey Island.  He currently lives in Bellingham, WA, where he works at an aerospace machine shop. His poems have been most recently published in Rattle, Portland Review, Los Angeles Review, Makeout Creek, and New Orleans Review, as well as a feature in Poet Lore. His first book, Beasts and Violins, is available from Red Hen Press. The title poem appeared in Best American Poetry 2009.