Short Trip Back<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I wanted to place my foot
\nonce more on the burning sidewalk,
\nstalled in a Minnesota August,
\nthinned, pocked and feverish
\nwith adolescence, my disease.
\nI wanted to suffer those years
\nwhen I pottered around the neighborhood,
\na homesick explorer held captive
\nby the natives, worshipped
\nin outlandish ceremonies, kept celibate,
\nmy untranslatable messages
\nsmuggled out from the interior
\nby birds; held so long I became
\nlike my captors, simple-minded,
\nchained to the wheel of food and sleep.<\/p>\n
I was so far from my own country
\nI thought I had made it up:
\na temperate place
\nwhere even the speech was liquid,
\nwhere one\u2019s body was a blessing,
\nwhere I could put on thought
\nlike a skin and become whole.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Beth Bentley<\/a> has taught in the Northwest and elsewhere for over thirty years. Her poetry has been widely published<\/a> in journals and anthologies, including\u00a0The Gettysburg Review,<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>the\u00a0Atlantic<\/em>, the\u00a0Nation<\/em>, the\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>,<\/a> the\u00a0Paris Review, Poetry<\/a><\/em>,<\/a> and the\u00a0Sewanee Review<\/em>. Bentley\u2019s poetry collections include\u00a0Little Fires\u00a0<\/em><\/a>(Cune Press, 1998),\u00a0The Purely Visible<\/em>\u00a0(SeaPen Press, 1980),\u00a0Philosophical Investigations<\/em>\u00a0(SeaPen Press, 1977),\u00a0Country of Resemblances<\/em>\u00a0(Ohio University Press, 1976),\u00a0Field of Snow<\/em>\u00a0(Gemini Press, 1973), and\u00a0Phone Calls From the Dead<\/em>\u00a0(Ohio University Press, 1972). She has been living in Seattle since 1952. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Short Trip Back I wanted to place my foot once more on the burning sidewalk, stalled in a Minnesota August, thinned, pocked and feverish with adolescence, my disease. I wanted to suffer those years when I pottered around the … Continue reading