<\/p>\n
My Mother, Fetching a Switch<\/p>\n
\nBy now she knows that just because it\u2019s thin
\ndoesn\u2019t mean it won\u2019t hurt, that green is better
\nthan dead & dried. She needs to choose
\nbetween the hot sting of a wasp, or a dull
\ndeep ache that lasts for days, bruises the color
\nof certain pears when they ripen. There are the canes
\nof big leaf maple, willow, alder, the straight suckers
\nfrom apple or plum in the orchard. She knows to peel
\nbark from the wand & shave the nodes flush
\nto the stem with whatever knife she\u2019s given
\nfrom pocket or kitchen drawer. Her first switch
\nleft her bloody, left a web of tiny white scars fine
\nas lace in the doilies her sisters sometimes helped her
\nmake. Once she brought her father a long whip
\nof pussy willow with the soft toes of catkins
\nleft on. He laughed so hard he let her off. A second try
\nmade him madder. Once she split a thin strip of cedar
\nfrom a shake bolt, lighter than lath; her mother used the edge
\nlike a dull blade. She knows to lift her dress waisthigh,
\noveralls unsnapped & dropped
\nto her ankles. Her father likes her
\nfolded across a single knee & only strikes
\nthe cheeks of her fanny. Her mother takes her
\nstanding, feet apart, & whales at any skin
\nshe sees: calves, her inner thighs. She knows
\nif she cries or squirms the blows come faster, last
\nlonger, how anger travels into rage. She knows
\nexactly how long she has to find & shape
\n& fetch a switch to its waiting hand.
\nMy grandparents think she\u2019s learning
\nthe wages of backsass, what happens
\nwhen you ride the stubborn donkey of disobedience,
\nbut she is learning how short the pleasure is
\nwhen she flushes a rabbit from the brush,
\nthat there isn\u2019t quite time to wholly peel
\n& eat an apple before someone will come
\nlooking for her, that no joy lasts long,
\nthat\u2014father, mother, lover\u2014it is painful
\nto be alive. All she can do is choose
\nbetween one hurt or another.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Samuel Green<\/a> was born in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, and raised in the nearby My Mother, Fetching a Switch By now she knows that just because it\u2019s thin doesn\u2019t mean it won\u2019t hurt, that green is better than dead & dried. She needs to choose between the hot sting of a wasp, … Continue reading
\nfishing and mill town of Anacortes. After four years in the military, including service in
\nAntarctica and South Vietnam, he attended college under the Veterans Vocational
\nRehabilitation Program, earning degrees from Highline Community College and
\nWestern Washington University (B.A. & M.A.). A 36-year veteran as a Poet-in-the-
\nSchools, he has taught in literally hundreds of classrooms around Washington State. He
\nhas also been a Visiting Professor at Southern Utah University, Western Wyoming
\nCommunity College, Colorado College, and served nine winter terms as Distinguished
\nVisiting Northwest Writer at Seattle University, as well as nine summers in Ireland.
\nPoems have appeared in hundreds of journals, including Poetry, Poetry Northwest,<\/a> Poet &<\/em>
\nCritic, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, <\/em>and Puerto del Sol<\/em>. Among his ten\u00a0collections of poems are Vertebrae: Poems 1972-1994<\/a><\/em> (Eastern Washington University Press)\u00a0and The Grace of Necessity<\/em> <\/a>(Carnegie-Mellon University Press), which won the 2008\u00a0Washington State Book Award for Poetry. He has lived for 29 years off the grid on remote\u00a0Waldron Island off the Washington coast in a log house he built himself after living in a\u00a0tent for three years. He is, with his wife, Sally, Co-Editor of the award-winning Brooding\u00a0Heron Press,<\/a> which produces fine, letterpressed volumes. In December, 2007, he was\u00a0named by Governor Christine Gregoire to a two-year term as the Inaugural Poet\u00a0Laureate for the State of Washington. In January of 2009, he was awarded a National
\nEndowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and was a member of the NEA\u2019s poetry
\npanel for the 2011 fellowships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"