Jeremy Voigt

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After Looking at Paul Klee’s Ad Marginem

 

The owl was eating something I could not see.
I had come out early and it was time to go back.
I wanted one more turn where the trees opened
in their damp, green glaze to the flat tongue
of field. My feet on the gravel path felt good
and the day, to be sure, would be difficult.
I made it within five feet of the bird before it looked
at me and I thought it would lift, but it remained
faithful to its indifference.
………………………………….Out of an old chaos
through the trees and sun his mate arrived
and landed ten feet above. They did not care
if I moved, or breathed. I was lost trying to keep
my eyes. He finished the meal and I left
to return later that week, searching beyond the edges
of trails in the leaves and mud for the orb
of what was eaten—the impossible to digest.
I want to cut it open as I once did in a classroom,
to see the inside of what was on the inside.
I find nothing. When I look up I cannot see the sky,
just boughs moving from green to green to black.

 

 

 

 

Jeremy Voigt has published poems in Willow Springs, Beloit Poetry Journal, and recently in Post Road, as well as in the chapbook Neither Rising nor Falling. He is the editor of Cab Literary Magazine, a philanthropic literary journal, and lives with his wife and three kids in Bellingham, WA.

 

Donald Mitchell

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BEAVER SIGN
(for my brothers)

We can smell them
long before we see
the fallen cottonwood
on the other bank,
or the pale bones
of chewed stumps.
It’s a blend
of resin and musk,
stronger than any church incense.
More like a song
it drifts against the wind
following the steelhead
upstream. Such places
obey different laws
than we obey. Our father
taught us
to be taught
by signs like this.

 

Donald Mitchell live in Deming, WA on his family’s 130 year-old homestead. He is a self-published poet and his works include the collections Signs of Faith, The Shark Skin Man: A Story and Poems, and Hello Eternity. Raised by a preacher who was also a woodsman and fur trapper, he found an early draw to the soul of the woods and streams of the Nooksack River watershed. This attraction led him to interests in biology, anthropology, comparative culture and religion and the perilous art of making poems.

Anita K. Boyle

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When I Went Past My Prime Last Wednesday

 

Oh, sweet dove, the morning is mine
today. You’re cooing in the wrong window.

Every day, you look more like the swollen hands
of one who’s pared the peels off a hundred

and sixty-three potatoes forty-five minutes
before dinner. Take a seat.

“These days” you say, “are dangling tomatoes, ripe
yet frozen on the vine.”

I’m standing alone on the alpine heights,
echoes engraving the stones.

You can ride my blind horse
far as she’ll go, but then get off,

let her come home.
Just leave my dark mules alone.

 
Anita K. Boyle is a poet, artist and graphic designer, and the author of What the Alder Told Me (MoonPath Press, 2011) and Bamboo Equals Loon (Egress Studio Press, 2001. Her poems have appeared in Conversations Across Borders, StringTown, The Raven Chronicles, Crab Creek Review, Clover, Spoon River Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is lucky enough to live near an inspiring pond outside Bellingham, Washington with her husband, the poet James Bertolino. This fall, they will spend a little time in Italy, where they will see the small Alpine town where Jim’s grandparents came from (Locana), and which will be her first adventure outside of North America.

Carlos Martinez

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In the imagined forests of El Yunque
…..The tropical forest of Puerto Rico

 

Where I’ve never been. Where I will never go,
except in dreams on hot nights, windows

cranked as open as they will go, where ghost frogs,
the famed coqui, will make its little sound, like

sparks being struck from stone by teeth. There,
where it is humid, every leaf unidentifiable,

dripping with metronome regularity, is where
I go, when I fall asleep, old head, gray head,

nestled into old pillows that have come
through all of these years with me, alarm clock

set for early, I wouldn’t want to miss anything
in what time remains. I wake on the other side,

native, young, before the time
of the great wooden ships that appeared suddenly,

not today, but a yesterday, long ago when steel helms
almost rusted through cut through jungle foliage,

swords in air weaving back and forth, the sound
of feet running into jungle, deeper, into darkness

and history. I am there, genetic memory, made so
by the high Indian cheekbones of my mother,

now dead, who drifted across open water
to bear me, one night, in a New York as gone

as the jungles in which, when asleep, I run.

 

Carlos Martinez is the author of the chapbooks Meanwhile, Back in Kansas (Finishing Line Press, 2007), The Cold Music of the Ocean (Finishing Line Press, 2004), and The Raw Silk of the Dark (Finishing Line Press, 2008). He was born in New York City and worked for many years in King County government before leaving to teach poetry and literature at Western Washington University. He lives in Ferndale, Washington.

Kelly Davio

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Sorrow

 

I have considered the following tattoos:
A skull with a little flesh left on, dagger
coming through the eye socket: back of the thigh.
A crown of leaves circling shoulders instead
of my head. A carrot sprouting from my sternum.
Blue flowers uncurling from stems
like old memory. A skull without any flesh
left, dry bone cracking: palm
of the hand. A scatter of fennel: left wrist.
Sparrows carrying blue forget-me-nots.
Rope of vines at the belly. A blue
banner with the text: forget. Scissors
poking a hole through the sternum. A skull
broken to pieces, eye sockets gone: side
of the throat. Blueberries with puckered necks
ragged as old memory, a skull
with a dagger coming through the eye socket.

 

“Sorrow” is reprinted from Burn This House (Red Hen Press, 2013)

 

 

Kelly Davio is the author of the poetry collection Burn This House (Red Hen Press, 2013) and the novel-in-poems Jacob Wrestling (Pink Fish Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, and others. She is the former Managing Editor of The Los Angeles Review and a current Associate Poetry Editor of Fifth Wednesday Journal. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, and she teaches English as a second language in the greater Seattle area.

 

 

Ronda Broatch

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ANATOMY OF A NATURAL DISASTER

 

Call yourself crazy, but these swallows in the eaves speak
of arriving, of settling in like flames.
…………………………It is midnight when you steal

with your daughter into the garden, blessing
a nursing bra, holey pair of panties. How you stare, amazed
…as people grow from the ground, shimmery

in prom fronds, tuxedos to praise the raging body
of what moments ago you called your home, gaping
…windows keeping nothing sacred. …Morning you return,

…………………………………………………………………..your house a post-
holocaust sanctuary, plastic hair brush grafted to the altar
of your vanity. Fascinated, you see in the sodden marriage

of your photos a glue no prying will undo: wife to husband,
the mouth of your child an O against the ear of a relative
whose name escapes you. ….All the next year

you dream of flight, of burning and birth. ….You find
a looseness in this, and you sleep more and longer.
….wandering often
…………………… amongst the ashes where you haunt
the ghosts of your belongings: knitting needle stuck
to the baby’s doll, the hearts of sweaters eaten away by mice.

You admire charred trees for their audacity
to reach beyond earth, think of planting beans, of attaining heaven
…by climbing. You pine for simpler things,

whole days outside. Blood, as a method of expression, not a map
of your years. In the soil you find another piece of glass
…and your eyes burn –

pollen, or the low morning sun – you’ve no time to question it now,
what with these seeds to tamp down, one more year rushing by
………………………………………………………………like a house on fire.

 

“Anatomy of a Natural Disaster” is reprinted from Linebreak.

Ronda Broatch is the author of Shedding Our Skins (Finishing Line Press, 2008), and Some Other Eden (2005). Nominated seven times for the Pushcart, recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant, and finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Book Award, Ronda is currently Poetry Editor for the literary journal, Crab Creek Review. She is also a photographer, and samples of her work can be seen on her photo blog, Ronda Broatch Photos.

 

Pat Hurshell

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Vienna Charm, Vienna Smiles
And the Gargoyles

 

In Vienna all the other Americans (not the Brits, not even
……..the Canadians) were and are light-
hearted, delighted by Viennese charm. They love the operettas,
……..the funny dialect songs, the operas
that make the audience always cry while they cheer and they
……..love the wine, of course.

Also the schnitzel. Viennese street-smiles are never shy,
……..greetings forever nice welcomes-filled
charm–beams so you know Vienna means Good Will, Jolly Folks,
……..Friendly Facts (except on the buses —
never on the buses – where Viennese faces stay blank, defenses
……..high the way they’ve been taught in
the old carefulnesses, cautious as raccoons crouched bland
……..against strangers, those others riding
too who might know some secret the rider should maybe hide).

In the wine-houses – their name Heureigers – or This Year’s – lets
……..you know these wines are brand new,
freshly pressed for now-imbibing – no bad memories hang around
……..with the grapes for those who don’t
like much to remember what went on before. It’s not as hard

for survivor Jews who came back home to live as you might think.
……..They know what they know, just
like the stony heads of the high-up gargoyles still staring down or
……..out over passersby in the silence

that hovers over all the visitors who marvel at this still-ancient baroque
……..in always-present modernity where
I myself lived once. How odd to think about South Africa and Germany
……..neatly adjusting to their own pasts.
My mother never forgot how she went once to some women’s club
……..In Seattle where Eleanor Roosevelt
explained to the women (I think this was around 1942) that Jewish
……..refugee children wouldn’t really feel
at home in the States so really it was better for them to stay over there
……..with their own families. My family
didn’t take a child either. I was sitting in a Viennese synagogue when
……..I remembered that.

 

Pat Hurshell, U.W. Ph.D. in English, has received Ford and Woodrow Wilson grants for her research on Jewish women and the Shoah;  When Silence Speaks, When Women Sorrow: Rue & Difference in the Lamentations for the Six Million won the U.W. Engl. Department’s Robert Heilman Distinguished Dissertation Award. She taught for the U.W. English and Women Studies Departments from 1978-1997 and is the founder and coordinator of the U.W. Jewish Women’s Lives Project [1986- ]. Seattle-born, in her first life she sang for 26 years in European opera houses  (Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, plus those in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and Seattle). Her poems have been heard on Oregon radio’s Literary Café, & published in a variety of journals, including Best American Poetry, 2009. She is currently translating the German Shoah poems of Gertrude Kolmar, Hilde Domain and Rose Auslander as well as preparing a book of her own poems.

Betsy Aoki

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Speaking Language

I am not speaking English now.
The lightest word will alter our trajectory.
The slightest touch, and another marvel
of translation blows itself to feathers,
to pieces of paper fluttering in a cracked wall.
I am trying to tell you. Listen to the faucet.
Hear what I look like. Imagine

the dark-haired phrase you fell in love with
during a sixth grade picnic. Now give her
eloquent eyes, a slender body, a new name.
Her syllables roll over your tongue,
skate over breaking ice. Words do that well.
White grains, small grains,
long grains scattering on linoleum. What
language looks like: a woman unafraid to eat.

The lake is breaking. Underwater
swims a long black fish, a sleek diver.
She is not speaking English now.
She sends meanings to the surface
in white bubbles, in pearls. They roll
up the sides of your face, in laughter.
They break against the glass.

You say she is that kind of woman. You slur
the night with her. She leaves behind
no letter, no predictions. You have not heard
the diction of her face for weeks. She has
given voice to me. And I am not speaking
English. Listen harder. Tell me
what I look like, once you’ve looked away.

 

 

Elizabeth (Betsy) Aoki completed her MFA from the University of Washington and has received fellowships from the City of Seattle, Jack Straw Writers Program, and Artist Trust Foundation. In addition to various academic literary journals, her poetry has been anthologized in Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian American Women’s Poetry and in Fire On Her Tongue: an eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Her chapbook, Every Vanish Leaves Its Trace was published in 2009 by Finishing Line Press.

Mike O’Connor

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THE HUMANIST
—In Memoriam, T.G.

 

At Sea Breeze Trailer Court
(in mill-smoke range),
my friend, the old professor states:
“TV’s my babysitter now;
please, take a seat.
I’m always glad to see you.”

Wrapped in wool sweater
on a wooden built-in couch,
legs draped with blankets,
oxygen tubing curled at his feet . . .

“I’m breathing better now,”
he says. “My mood improves, but
I can’t sleep. Whatcha
been reading?”

Heart surgery, arthritis, pleurisy—
he declares he misses coffee
with the writing gang.

“Oh, you’ll be back,” I tell him.
“We all expect it.”

The trailer’s light is dim
as on a trans-Pacific flight.
I fetch a cup of soda for him
and a pill.

Remote in hand,
he changes channels.
“Here’s the Discovery station,”
and I look:

a pride of female lions
(muscled, eager)
splits off a bovine
from a grazing herd.

“Cats right out of Gaudier-Brzeska,”
I observe.

Terrified, the ox
brandishes its horns; then turns
and tries to lumber off,
its big hindquarters
easy for the cats.

One lion springs upon the ox’s withers;
a second climbs its haunches.
Both getting teeth and claws in,
ripping chunks of flesh and hide.

A third tears at the ox’s underbelly;
a fourth, bounding ahead,
seizes the ox’s snout
(briefly, we see the ox’s eyes)
to suffocate it, as the beast
is ridden to its knees
in the sub-Saharan grass.

It will take some time,
notes the narrator,
for the ox to die
while it is being ripped apart alive.

Some of the hunt is shown again,
and in slow motion
when a point of science
merits emphasis.

I see now at the end,
the African sun setting
on the scene, forming silhouettes
of the statuesque cats
as they finish eating on their prey.

Some folks speak coolly of “things as they are”;
others, like Jeffers, of the “beauty of God.”

But the old professor—
incorrigibly humanist—
changes channels

and remarks, “If I were God,
I would have made things differently.”

 

Mike O’Connor, a native of the Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, is a poet, writer, and translator of Chinese literature. Beginning in the 1970s, he engaged in farming and forest work, followed by a journalism career in Asia. He has published eleven books of poetry, translation, and memoir, including Unnecessary Talking: The Montesano Stories; Immortality; and Where the World Does Not Follow: Buddhist China in Picture and Poem. O’Connor is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature, an International Writers’ Workshop Fellowship (Hong Kong), and a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship.

Sarah Galvin

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The Sign with Nothing On It

This blank sign in front of the motel was my favorite object in the neighborhood as a child. It is shaped like it outlines words, but it has been a solid gray-green for as long as I can remember. “Look, it’s the sign with nothing on it!” I yelled to my parents when we passed it in the car. After much thought about why a blank sign existed, I decided it must be art.

My uncle said, “Paintings of the crucifixion can be beautiful. That’s the difference between a real crucifixion and a painting. That’s why people make paintings.”

The night my mom drove her car into the front yard, my uncle came all the way to our house. I was standing alone in the kitchen with the lights off, and he picked me up. My uncle who used to put his fake teeth in his belly button and make it talk to me.

I imagined crucifixions were the popsicle truck colors of the neighbors’ weathered plastic Jesus, and smelled like adults’ coats after some event where it was necessary to sit down and be quiet.

 

 

“The Sign with Nothing On It” is reprinted from Io.

 

Sarah Galvin is the author of The Stranger’s “Midnight Haiku” series, which are neither haiku nor at midnight. She has a blog called The Pedestretarian, where she reviews food found on the street. The thing she loves most about reviewing discarded food is receiving text messages that say things like “I hear the bus stop on 3rd and Union is covered with ham.” Sarah is poetry MFA student at University of Washington, and her poems can be found in io, Proximity, Pageboy, Dark Sky, and Ooligan press’s Alive at the Center anthology.