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EDITOR POETRY g + NORTHWESTDe~id Wagoner
rhIANAI:Irs<.' EDITOR
Robin Seyl'iicdVOLUME THIRTY-SEVEN NUMBER ONE
SPRING 1996
EDDoniat. Cousoirsnrs
Covrn DEsioNAllen L. Ausil
Cat'erf><>m a photo ufdr)'fttcorl at Dungeness Sl>ii
Robert B. Heilman, Stanley Kunitz, Arnold SteinRobert Fitzgerald, 1910 — 1985
Nelson Bentley (1918 — 1990b William II. hiatchett
BOARD OF ADVISt!RS
JOSIE KEARNSNew Numbers
KATNLEEN LYNCIITwo Poems .
BRUCE MACKINNONFour Poems
CULLEN BAILEY BURNSContrition
OUvrR RICETwo Poems .
Tnost WARDWhere I Work Is Your Street
ANSIE BAIRDBelieve It
ALESANORA vAN or. KASIFIn the Porcelain Gallery: A Study of Figurines ..
JEFF WORLEYWalking through a Spiderweb.
JQAN SWIFTOphthalmologles .
10
12
17
24
POETRY NORTHWEST SPRING 1996 V OLUME XXXVII, NUMBER 1
Published <luarterlv by the Un ice ra i tv of Washington. R<x>m 201B Ad rnini<tratiou Buildinr, Bus 351240 Seattle, WA BS145-1240, Snl>script i ons<mal > rum u scripts ah enid lx senttn Po<Y oi Nort iucr >I, 4045 Bmokl)n Avenue NE, Univ< r<ib <>f trash ington. Seattle, WA<SS105-0261. Nut rcspuusible for unsolicited nmnuscripts; all submissions must heaccompanied by a stan>ped self-addressed en<elope. Snb<eription rates: U.S.. SIS.OUl>er rcmr single copies S» 00; For< ign arul Can ad i m, 91 TS)0 ( US. ) per year singlecopiesSSSO (U.s.).
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Pnbli<hed bc the Lini<ersib of Washington
LYNN MARTINWoodwork.
MAC Hast)rounThe Wishbone
KEVIN CaarrTwo PoemsISSN: (S)32-2113
Pi<oto ixr Hrri>in Srrfrsr d
PAUtANN PxrsassnTwo Poems
Davto MoocrENBee
StcuAN ByaoTwo Poems
WEmar McNaiaTwo Poems
WiLUAst AmauTwo Poems
ParrtANN RocsasFour Poems .
.. 35
32P OE T R Y N O R T H %' E S T
SPRING 1 9 96
Jos/e Kefsrns
NEW NUMBERS
Kisuaa
As kids we always told the storyof Barbara Mullhall going down morethan three times at Myers Lakeand how her toes pointedto the July sun like the mastof an astrolabe, her body,watery yacht below.Then she rose like some bloatedundead, face red, heaving regular air.
Are You Moving?
First Kisura.
Kisura is the lazarus number:deus ex machina, the cavalry,breath in stone.The dead one comes.Kisura.
But Kisura can even be TV.Burgess Meredith as Bemisin the Serling episodewhere atomic bombs explode
If you wish to continue receiving your subscription copiesof POETRY NORTHWEST, be sure to notify this otgce in advance.Send both your old address and new — and the ZIP Code numbers.
POETRY
while Burgess/Bemis lies safe as a C-note asleep in the bank vault.Celluloid Kisura.
Or the real man, 1859, who lived through nucecrdente, the "glowing cloud" of MontPelee, rocketing its sulphur and pumiceskyward while lava plugged all the mouthed0's, thick as wet cement, save this man,convicted murderer, in a sealed jail cell.He survived to become a missionary.
I heard my mother's voicewhisper in my head like a fugue.Personal Kisura.
Kisura is the second parachute openingthe empty .45 chamber, the failsafe.Coma hea*and failed kidney pumping.Second chance.Take it.
Historic Kisura.
I' ve known it, too, saved whenI was seven by some older boymy mother screamed at onshore:"Jesus! She's drowning!"And the two men I turned awaylike peddlers in the dark-finned Chevy.Driver flicking his Camelthe backseat guy opening his door to melike the lid of a navy cofFin."Hey, little girl."But I spun aroundstraight into a policemanwhom I didn't trust. either, walkedall the long way home, eyes overmy shoulder like a darting shark'smy head the antennae cage on radarevery half-block.Childhood Kisura.
I was born in the perfect decadeof Jonas Salk and redemption.Surely, that was Kisura.Kisura says, "It just so happened.. ."
that the paramedics packed my blood typewhen they came to get methat when I slammed down hardon linoleum slats
CaLLaRUM
This time when you cross overthe fieldstone bridge
reaches up, beckons or wavessome hazy signal like a fogged lighthouseand you notice the bluish glintinglike a cloudy zircon facetof your mother's engagement ring, now scratchedwith dough-kneading and the grinding of meathis left eyethe only good onein the six a.m. sunbeam juts outof a parting nimbuslike an ice floe into the mindof fifty party-gears on the Titanicthat first, throat-tightening staticky anxiety.
You wonder, if you were walkingslowly, not driving, whether you wouldgive him coins, the Susan B.'s you' ve been hoarding.Carrted like taliswomenagainst some secretyou want to forget you knowyour mothers deathP your child taken away?you wonder if he's beckoningbecause someone else is there with himunderneath his granite canopy,
the homeless man underneath
POETRY NORTHWEST
HYSTRasome human or pet obscuredas he asks for help, or if the wavewas merely a reckoningof your uninterrupted glaze, like a laserover the heart of the highway.
And if he has waved or beckoned each timebefore your blue Mercedes or six-pistoned Chevywent barreling past, sure torpedo, but not pastthe Andrea Doris doomthe water full of silly planktonlike this man, orange-earmuffed and fatiguedby Army surplus and circumstanceand he's just tired and pissed offthat you haven't exactly seen himuntil this time, Callarumlike the instant you finally noticea grasping, when your sister tells you she hassold the zircon, broken down the settingand settled for a pinkie circletdarker, less worthy stone of topazthe jeweler told herwould lighten in time and this is the time, Callarum,that you are careful not to say the value of nothing.
Callarum is how many times you pass unnoticedyourself and how many times unnoticing.
This is the place-hokler:the cache of souls unopened,Bernadette's letter sealed.
Choosing the day I'd live over is simple:my mother's 39th birthdaywhen I rode my Schwinn like a schoonerdown cracks of breakneck driveways,
A continuum of ladder and hinge:what swings there
knows the end of
A» isotope zerowhere yourfused and unfused lifebecomes matrix
Evening in Paris, Tigress, Ambush, Tabutitles as dangerous as the 7-Up and chablis mixshe sometimes let me sip at partiesas she would this night
not coen the moon
six streets over to the Ben Franklin'sto buy with my own dollar the thin, glass-blownchalices, one-use-only "Fragrances of the World":
Callarum is until.
Callarum comes for youlike an iceberg or missilelike the man under the bridgeor the frame of the Hindenburg 16mmreplayed a Callarum number of timesuntil you realize thatit's not the zeppelin singed like hairnot ring or bridgebut one man's disaster:combustible, incendiary.
as a plutoniumzeroas a cascadewooen by the dead
where mounds of potato salad and rhubarb pieand the blueberry cake Aunt Ann baked that daywould greet her with my steplkther Ray's giftof the double-sink kitchen cabinets when we shouted
"Surprisal" and her loam-brown eyes
NORTHWESTPOETRY
misted over and I was stillnine or ten
your priests compartmentyourfrdse wall, hidden spnngsuroioal kit
an airlock wheellike a pressure caine
on a submarinein a language as foreign and majesticas Lima, Peru, I learned about that morningsecond hour geography class
and the cards of canasta and gin rummythe Old Grandad whiskey bottle, never empty(by which I mean Itay did not drinklike my father)
The last Chinese boxin ihe long tradition of boxes.The door that is a box.
my brother-in-law and stepfather sittingat the yellow and chrome kitchen tableand the lumber soon to be painted"redwood" stacked outside like bondsto ensure a future of perfect fences
rough diamondsin the 1930's coat sleeoelined in black taffeta
that night I dreamedmy bed was the shape of Perulandlocked, yet water keptseeping in, monsoon
the bubble of timebetween moments,the planck numeral
In the middle of that nightunder the table they almost1066
Nooember 22, 1963Cinque de Mayo
didn't find me
2001 Thrsst Hystra the trapdoorHystra the dicein your unbroken life.where it fell to these men, white
T-shirted and overalled, to pound in the polesof that fence as if this life would staywhere we put it.
as if I'd disappearedthrough a doonvayinto now,
The Secret Annexnecerfound
And I fellasleep that night underthat same table listening to the grindingof stories my aunts told, voices weavinga thick canopy, lifting me toward sleep
NOBTHWESTPOETBY
Katbfees Lynch Two Poems Writing these words across the street map.Where you are an X on a black line.It is an abstraction. It is my destination.
This is how I love you. Bravely.You will never know how brave.The car shudders and grinds forward.
SUB URBAN LOVE NOTE
The Rapid Transit car does a slow lurch,then stops. In a tunnekUnderground.
Under the city.The city I am trying to reach.In which I do not live.
This is how I love you: like a traveler.Transported. A natural alien.Afraid to go but going anyway.
A slight delay they say.No explanation. Am I the only one pretendingnot to shriek and claw my way outP
I can smell their breath. Their bodies.The fact is we are trappedin a metal canister beneath tons of earth.
Don T mony, a young man pipes to his girlfriend,his laugh light and high.Just above us — the city. Air everywhere.
Buildings splashed with light.Sharp breezes when you turn the corner.Clumps of strangers crossing when the lights change.
Trust everywhere.I want to be there. There.Which is a place you say we can never reach.
You say, Be here noio.Which is where I am. In a transit carstuck under the city. Trying to come to you.
WAITING FOR RESULTS
Right now it is happeningand it seems colors are allthat come to mewhen there is not enough air
and the phone won't ringuntil the doctors close your bodyand reveal what grays and greensand dark masses
have grown there. Here the kitchenis cleaner than it needs to beand from the window the verbenais an almost hurtful purple.
Heavenly blue morningglories seem surreal with their mutewhite throats shriveling shut in the heat,Hot-orange gladiolas attract
huinmingbirds shot with gold.Pink Breath of Heaven is in bloom,the wide green lawn intensely green,the air hot and still as held breath.
Practically nothing movesbut the birds, some smaller thingswith wings, and the gray gr yellowlizard on the ledge. It shunts
lo POETRY NORTHWEST
from shade to sun, sunto shade, regulating its bodytemperature, knowing what it needsto know, in control
of its perfectly acceptable life,
Bruce MacKfnnon
you hear somewhere between the bands of statictbe waves make, the sheets make, she makes as she moves,rolling between planes, fingernails long and red as poppies,as your bodies rise from the waves of sheetslike the backs of dolphins, beyond the black rocks,or the blink of the lighthouse down the coast,a warning rising up against the sky for shipsto come no farther, that beyond that point,they must not go.
Four Poems
THE KISS
Wait. The chapel angel will be with you,he said. for the next three days, justkneel and pray and meditate. Cleansingis what he calls it, like a cold that burnsaway the dross, like the sun that burnsaway the morning mist. Wait. But the streamdoes not clear. The mad monkey runsthrough the house. The great whale swimstoo deep. A light comes up from the chestand then dims again. The chapel angelwhispers, but its holy breath soundsonly like air conditioning. Sleep.You are not this, not that. Lines intersectlike telephone wires that grid the city,like a spider web built to catch a fly.Your sad father walks from his endof the glass hallway. It's no one's fault,your mother says, as she prepares youfor the white hospital gown and the slippers,for the shoulders beginning to hunch.Happiness, your father's told you,is the key, and you wonder just howthis can be found. He is less strong,you think, his muscles, he must not bedoing his isometrics here, he must not be...what can he be doing to fill the days,is he reading Moby Iyick again, is he
ATLANTIS
How is it she comes back, resurrected,always rising like the corn, her body like yoursspread across the motel bed, the ocean still outside,the rain mapping the sand, the doorway open,pelicans and gulls drawn in gray and blue. The waveswhisper outside the doors, where desire undresseseach one slowly, first curling as far and as slowas the eye can see, then building power until the horizoncomes closer, is there at your feet, where you growout of the ground, rooted a moment more, before you gowith her and everything tastes of salt and honeysuckle,the one drop from each bitten, cream-brown liower.Her legs are here and then there, the nape of the neck,ihe shoulders, the grains of sand, clear and whiteas sugar that roughs the skin, that bruises the soft insideof a thigh, the goddess reclining like tbe historyof the world. And then the instant it takes to see flowrrson the table, Queen Anne's lace and black-eyed Susans,a thousand eyes bring you into the room,where the mist curls as she looks up, her hands behind her,over her head now and beneath a pillow as if graspingthrough the clouds for something just beyondthe headboard and through the wall in the next room,where mermaids become human with desire, and Atlantislies buried. You' ll soon see if the mist rolls off,if the announcer gets it right, the one whose blurred voice
POETRY NORTHWEST
A HUNGER ARTISTworking on his pottery, will they let youbring your guitar here next time sothe two of you can sing togetherp Youcan do anything you want to do, bornat mid-century, born on the daythe god of the well looks up and beginsto climb, as the earth, the hemispherestirs, hears the trumpet call, asthe great cave bear feels wakening hunger.Failure, he says, is a gift, the hangedman, the body turned upside down, the kissof Judas without which there is no next act,it's Genghis Khan dragging the quickeningfuture with him, the murderer who meets Buddhaon the road, Saul knocked from the horse,spirit and flesh fused as hammer and nail,father and son join at the center of tbe cross.
On the path through the woods: a photograph, polaroid nearly in the water, as if it fell from someone's pocket, of a young girl, maybe sixteen,naked, lying on a bed, her hands over her breasts, her right leg crosyedover her left leg, her flgure full, her olive skin smooth, her eyes lookingaway from the camera as if she didn't really want this picture taken, as ifthis kind of guilt went beyond lying there, maybe on her parents' bed, inthe late morning or early afternoon — you can't tell from the picture,only the figure on the sheets, a dark wood headboard behind her, blankwhite walls, and a nightstand with a white telephone that seems about toring. You don't see all of this immediately. You pick the photo up andput it quickly in your pocket, wondering as you do if this is a trick, likethe wallet on a string your friends dangle across a sidewalk every AprilFool's Day, snatching it away from greedy hands, the group of themhanging from their office window and braying. But the woods are empty;you can easily see through the winter trees, the leafless branches, andthe dog you walk is not often surprised. her sense of danger more primitive, or momentary, than yours. You think you will burn it, or tear it up,but you feel an undertow, thinking of her crossed legs in your pocket.Later, sitting in your car with the engine running, you' ll think about thesky above the ice-skating rink where your son goes round and round, theevergreens that sweep the air, and then about Kaflca's story, wonderingabout how much is enough, the artist's death, ribs poking up through thestraw, and the second ending, the panther in the cage, the raw meat.
BORED
Tonight I'm lying on the railroad tracks,the Virginia stars fixed uncertainlyin the black sky, my buddies beside me,the three of us, who tomorrow the engineerwill say looked like cardboard boxes,and we' re almost sure that the trainwill pass over us — as why wouldn't it?And if it doesn't I guess it won't matter.What else is there to do, the summer so deepand greeny Some might wake up tomorrowand think us foolish to lie down betweenthe '.racks, to hold our breath, to sinkas far as we can into the still warm gravel,wishing ourselves below the rails.And the whiskey makes me feel the wayI did when my father used to pick us upand spin us dizzy, whirling us around andaround like two hands on a roaring clock.
14 NORTHWEST 15POETRY
Olltser Rice Two PoemsCullen Bailey Burns
thousand nnuu sotua I haec been."
CONTRITION"What ts there to mgretP... if I had to be born a thousand ames agatn, I reotdd be a
— Naus Barbte
DOMESTICITIES
I. THE ANTIQUE LAMP
Mere light was never quite the pointA flaming stick will open up the darkness,or oil from the blubber of a whale.Still, she was once the latest thing,the envy of the candles,with her adjustable wick and her glistening chimney,her porcelain chamber for the kerosene,charmingly rotund,delicately flowered,and her porcelain shade to match.Even now, rudely converted,trucked out with bulb and cord,she casts a tasteful ambience.And that is all very weg.
He had to say that. He had to say that.Had to. See how the leaves have yellowedand begun to clutter the sidewalk like something importantparked behind the car, like Maggie's trike.A logical place to park, really,until I pulled AJ. Foyt backs out of the drivewayand can't apologize enough. But he couldn't say,You children can't possibly understandwhat I'm about to do. Better to take itas a job well done. My girl never stepping in the pathof a car, say, or hating me somedayfor the ways I' ve erred. And I have, oh,taken her perfect arms and said,You must put this shirt on, or I'm gonna swatyour butt, or Why are you so goddamned stubborn.And ten million apologies won't change my carelessness,my hair-into-the-wind stomp on the accelerator,pushing the bike all sideways on itself,that tiny metal crunch. She might have been on it.And whose children were they, rolling off to campswith names like china breaking — Treblinka, Bergen Belsen,Dachau; children waiting for their big teethto grow in like white kernels of corn,bone chips, the ridges for cutting through gumsstill to be worn down and sifted away.He had to say he'd do it again. No otherlife could forgive him.
One wishes to be of use.
But one is, indubitably more than that, a presence.One has a certain vintageOne does disdain the vulgarities that come and go.To the cultivated,true bearing is its own reward.
2. THE Toot, Box
In this congested working-class enclave,their manners are abrasiveand their outlook repressed.But they are hardened to the jostling and jabbing,the closing of their door upon the larger world,by a code of survivalthat reaches back through the lineage of their tradesto the Stone Age.Tr'ue, it is a mean and menial existence,
16 NORTHWESTPOETRY
narrow, obscure, and unhygienic.True, they submit to the indignityof saving us from our ineptitudes,of repairing a faucetor concocting a sandbox.But notice their demeanor,cool, competent, adamantly aloof.They are a caste apart,quite possibly a fifth estate.They remember, if we forget,that they were instrumental at Karnak,at Westminster, at Los Alamos.And they will surely be called to Armageddon.
as if in his consuming and compulsive fantasyhe is always poised to leapinto an arena or a pulpit,onto a high wire or a stage.
At the cue, he goes into his shtick,exuberant, prodigious, and slick,
With a sweeping flourish, he wraps upand exits to a burst of silent applause.
Out of the public eye,notoriety vibrating in his bowels,he immediately begins gearing upfor his next appearance.
We understand.
But that is not their need.
3. THE Auczsraat. Poaxaarr
The Hove of Madagascardigs up his dead relatives once a yearand fetters their legs.
These specters in their comical garbpursue us into our very recreations.Their relentlessly poignant eyes penetrate even death.
We could evade them,if they would confine themselves to admonitions,to carping about the hours we keepand moralizing about the way our money is spent.
What they wsut,now that they know how everything turned out,now that all else has been reduced to vanity.is the answer to one inaneand irretrievably ultimate question:What was the meaning of lifep
5. Tux Baav GasNO
Not more than the saxophone, of course,it is endearingly grotesque.Heart, soul, and psychomotor facilitiescommingled in one deft casket,as if to have done with the temporal from the start,it stands on three discreet legs,hunched against the prosaic world.A fourth extremity attaches its sensibility to its toes,weight enough,
Parting its lips to converse,it reveals its most striking feature,a marvelous smile,its keys gleaming with expectatton.Although it grows sullen if long neglected,it is convivial by nature,amenable to every mood.
Most fortunately, to occupy its idle hours.it has the gift of nostalgia,of recalling in vivid auraits many dialogues with Chopin
4. TRE VAcuust Ctxauxa
This is your master exhibitionist,forever costumed for an entrance,
18 NORTHWESTPOETRY
and Debussy and Liszt and Papa Haydn,even a few of the moderns.With the proper persuasion,it will repeat them word for word,sometimes quite eloquently.
GETI'ING A LIFE
No, no, from out of town.Yes, yes, new paint, low rent,
butdo these walls despise ignoranceP
Is this a doorway
and a brush or two
6. UNDER THE SINK
No doubt the house has truly dark secrets,stowed among the cast-off toysor cleverly disguised as ducts for ventilation.But here, with disarming candor,is congregated the evidenceof lesser, more admissable faultsa disposition to soil and mess,which requires a touch of soap
an occasional lapse into sloth,which tolerates the rag unrinsed,the trowel uncleaned,the can unsealeda rare susceptibility to microbes,yes, even vermin,for which a politely packaged corrective is expocreaturely failings, all,well accepted and under control,not one a cause for shame or fear.
And perhaps soalthough it is a I otably shadowed place
can I resurrect myself
but
Please leave me here alone.No, no, until my syndromes have tried the light.
from which unthinkable words might be spokenP
No, no, self-employed.Yes, yes, the bus stop, the market,
in this mirror
from the rubble of sleepPWill the flashbacks find their way?
Do I detect an odorof the collective angstP
sed
with no name.
20 POETRY NORTHWEST
Arash Ba& dTbosss Ward
BELIEVE IT
My friend from St. PaulDrives all the way toSt. Louis to see the sunEclipse the moon orThe moon eclipse the sunI forget which one.
Oblivious I switch onThe electric light andKeep on writing whileMidday slouches asideAnd my desk shrouds itselfIn sudden dusk
My specific sun reignsRight where it always doesIf I happen to glance upAnd that cool slipperyMoon stays casually slappedFlat against black.
No doubt each orb cutsLoose from time to timeWhen I'm not checking.Good luck to them. GoodLuck tn all of usWho flail and spin
In transitory lightBut stay the course.
WHERE I WORK IS YOUR STREET
although, each day around noonas small kids twist in ropes and a sirenclips the tops of maples, it's mine too.I wear a coat but no watch,eat my lunch on a benchin the middle of the playground:spray paint, wooden towers,the perfect diamonds of link fences.
I haven't seen you by the copper beechor among the men without jobswho find shade enough to laugh,leave cans and sharp bottles.You aren't on the asphalt, brightwith scalloped glass and boysshouting, shooting rainbow jumpers.
This bench has iron feet.I have bologna and cheese.The longer I sit, the further I movefrom what I know, whichis nothing of you, or the windfilling the whittled groovesof obscenities and hearts.
NORTHWEST 23POETRY
Aft:xartdra vatt sge Knmp
— Zwinger Palace, Drenten, 1094
IN THE PORCELAIN GALLERY: A STUDYOF FIGURINES
Could life ever be this delicate, this carefully positioned?
Two lovers, the woman with a birdcagein one hand, the man poised
to ldss her, straddle a dogcurled on the ground. The dimple of air
between their lips reveals the polished corridorsof a museum, a guard tipped
against a chair. Outside, noonis a hectic yellow
through which tourists glideacross the evenly cut lawns of the palace.
And these lovers? They stand on a verdant islandsmall weights almost capable of pinning
with musical notes inscribedupon their sleeves
pirouette on a table,a man and a woman
kiss
their cheeks made onein the flow of the porcelain. Things swish past
their definitions, fly bitterlythrough us. The body ages by accepting
almost anything. I want crispness,the confident lines of journeys
already written. These shapescalmly brilliant: a man leans over a table
a pen in his hand as he writes acrossa shellacked page. A mint-green river wanders
down this vase as aJapanese woman staresout her window: two men fish, blue mountains
pierce the distance — each color, iridescent, residueto what lies beyond vision.
And I have seen August eveningssaturate trees with rosy-wet light,
blouses on the line billow outempty in the wind, sculpting the shapes of the lives
that have used them. A life seepsinto its details,
we use what is near to navigatethe unfathomable.
the boundaries
of the day down. Fixed, forever in place,they are tha knoum,
alongside which the unknoumcan happen. For instance, you, shutting the door,
shrinking the spaceI can see you by
until only book spines and wallpaperpersist in the visible. Two jesters
POETRY NORTHWEST24
Jef j'Worley Joan sssrd+
WALKING THROUGH A SPIDERWEB
I believed only airstretched between the dogwood
and the barberry: anotherthoughtless human assumption
sidetracking the best storythis furrow spider knew to spin.
And, trying to get the stickyfilament olf my face, I must look,
to the neighbors, like someonebeing attacked by his own nervous
system, a man conducting an orchestraof bees. Or maybe it's only the dance
of human history I'm reenacting:caught in his own careless wreckage,
a man trying to extricate himself,afraid to open his eyes.
OPHTHALMOLOGIES
l.
The one that grows a horticulture on its retinasweet peas, anthuriums, morning glories, the strange rootof the rutabaga, spadixes, cymes, pinnately delicateleaves that drift on the wind of those cells called conesdropping from the branch of my optic nerve cokir color.A rain of detritus awash in a vitreous sea.The inflamed nest the lens flew away from,sweet crystalline protein gatherer of light.Not these inflorescences he can't even imagine,wanting me to count fingers which are for touchingwhile the vines of injury climb into my brainthrough the caves of its cortices, right and left,so I will never see or think the same way again.
What does the ophthalmologist see when he looks in my eyeP
2.When I am strapped and draped, he cuts the conjunctivawith a pair of scissors. Bee sting. Snake bite.Then with a blade he skates over the white of the sclera,clear thin corneal ice. It is here he enters my eye,that globe that snows everything upside down.I think I am crying but it is only the waterof the river where the tiger iris opens so wideits dream rushes out, the one about deer and birds.I stare at the surgeon. He stares into my headto see how the displaced lens dies under its skinof light and the wall goes up between himand the darkness that keeps my life remembered.The lens has an equator he pierces with an emulsifier.He sucks away its fullness like a cup of milk.
3.Lightning striking my retina's sky, zig-zag boltsand the streak of a pitcher's 95-an-hour sinkingfast ball. Glisten of dew drops along the rim
26 POETAY NOATHWEST
like suns moving across a mid-winter Arctic horizon.And the crow's wing flaps down, feather of blindnessbeating on my optic nerve. With his speculumhe opens my eye. He has forceps too as if an infantwaited to be born, the one called sighthe holds with a Dacron suture so that my retinaonce again cries for its images. But only memorylifts the pine needles from their blur, a focusof mind the yefiow finch and the varied thrush,while the ciliary muscles shrink and my eye is a beggaramong branches, seeking the world.
of nmls. Then the bmlder lundlywalked away. Said he'd be back.The man kneeled. Leaned into his saw.
When this ives all you could have:warehouse pellets, railroad ties,scorched heartpine, green,falling-into-the-rivsr birch.
"Now imagine," said the builder, "findinga form so perfectly joined, you couldtake it home and live with itlike a well-made thing."
Scorched heartpine. Green,falli ng-into-th e-river birch.
Lyttrt Pfasyfrt
WOODWORK
After so many years you learnedthe nature of the work.When this ives all you could have:scorched heartpine — tongue andgroove. Abandoned, oak barn boards.Sioeet-scented, blood-red cedar.
Once a builder told me this story.A man came looking for workHe had a hammer and a rustyhand-saw. It was a local jobsidewalks for the neighborhood.Simple form work to hold the mixuntil the concrete set hard.
Backwoods,fresh milled poplar. Chestnut.
drying for a hundred years insomeone's catch-afi shed.
So the builder gave the mandimensions, a pile of boards, a bucket
ltfac Hammond
THEWISHBONE
It was not a family feast, just the two of usPicking at the carcass of a fowl, a henOr rooster, baked and cold from the fridge.It was not an anniversary, no time of goodHope for years to come, no summing up, noResolution~ a o rdinary day, work done,The children overnight at Grandma's. YouLooked tired still, six months from my lastBreakdown. I carved the chicken, served youThe front end of the breast, that small partWith the wishbone. After dinner, tearsStood in our eyes, as in a ballet we pulled,Wish made, at the wishbone. I wishedTo be done with the re-enactments ofChildhood. I think you wished for my return.Snap, and I still do not know which endWins, the shortshank spindle or the club.
Walnut — stacked and
POETRY NORTHWEST2S
Two PoemsKevfss Crng
Sturdiest of consonants — oak of the forest,clap of the hand, flying buttress
at the back of the throat. As uprightas a monk in a garden hoeing corn,
tending rows of new tomatoes, shovelingdung in a cowshed done milking the cows
at dawn. Potash of flue dustmelted into glass. Salty cant of sailors
in the harbor at Tyre. Fulcrum,pivot, ricochet — sheer
kinetic fury of hot gas — the bigbang in kosmos, silent prayer in kneeL
Kingmaker, capstone, coral reef,sand bank where waves break in long lines
off the coast. Reassurance in OK, swiftjab and black-out in KO.ln heaven, cumulus; kilometer on earth.Worth its weight in gold, pearl, salt.
Clap of the hand — coldest of zeros
it still throws
it used to be disaster.
SOLAR PROMINENCE
There is a way the starsfigure in desire,but it's not what you think.That one planetor another winks out the nightyou are bornmeans little anymore. though
Now when the sunenters one house no one bothersto pick up after it — the leaseis month-to-month.The sun doesn't mind.Consider: it's never led a spotless lifeto begin with.Tenant to whichever sign
the same dazzling weight around.Now that's desire the darkthat forms a rash as cooler currentscross its facemarks the surge and crashingend of one stupendousarc of flame.
that slows the restless atom to a halt.
30 POETRY NORTHWEST
Paufann Petes sen Two Poems
COLLISION
In the corner of my dreaming eyeI spot a carspeeding streak of red
intent on me — in timeto hit the brakes, breaking the sweetescape of a Sunday's
stolen nap. Thunderclap
slams me back. Alive and it' s
still Sunday,the day I should seemy mother who's been stalled between
dying and deathfor two motionless, unspeakingunspeakable years,
her closed-eye,then open-eyed hoursalike: one great unshaken sleep
of hairline luck
than I dtd at seventeen drvrmng lyncsof some dreamy song,mnung sts words for a clue
That whole batchof hotcakes I ate too fast,a breakaway breakfast because I seldom
fix just for myself is stilla dull clumpcaught in my chest. I'm stuck
with stubborn lodgersin my body, struck with the thudof what awaits,
but spared yes saved and nowwildly awakes bride of narrow escape.
A VAPOR, IT RISES AT WAKING
Here, you are no age,none at all. The tense is ever present, ts is all thereis, you are simply,presently you.
Your face — if you couldsee its calm, or knitof puzzlement, knot of fearis indeed your face,the same moon of shadowed fleshyou litt into the air,not the mirror's flat imagewaiting to catch youoff-guard regardless of
whose dreams or dreamlessnesslies beyond detection,beyond my most fervent call.
The phone call I m ore than half hopedwould interrupt my napone from the man I'm sure
isn't right for me
of love and me and men
your pose.
The house you findstill hasn't come. I have no more notion
32 POETRY NORTHWEST 33
David befool'tenyourself wandering inis the home of your life,both new and familiar.Each doorknob, each knick-knack uncanny yet true.The child-lingers aliveinside your handsremember each shape.
You see your mother— immutably deadstir and smile. Her lipsdefy all law to forma sound so longed for, so clearit disappears. What risesfrom your body at wakingis simply her voicespeaking a wordshe chose at your birth,breathing outyour name.
BEE
A bee has become trapped, collidingWith a window screen it can't bringItself to believe in — what with a full moonAnd the torrid smell of honeysuckleIn the August grass. As if stungA man feels his memory swellWith another night like this, only long agoAnd thus far different, when his handStrayed from one breast of his wifeTo the other like a bee between poppiesWhile a real bee skidded on the ceilingWith a muffled hum he mourns nowMore than the idea of his wife moving on,Of loss, of losing, of having lost.To grasp her absence he must ransack himselfLike someone trying to stay awakeIn order not to miss how much he missesThat other house in whose starlightHe saw a furious welt rise on his palmBecause he tried to free what seemed inconsequentialBut alive. How often he has tried sinceTo let go of suffering. But detailsAre the past — all that ever leaves himTinier than grief, enough to breezeThrough the holes of that sieveLike a window screen he calls perception.Comfortably, unnoticed, they escapeLike wind or the breath of sleep, until one dayAs he pops out the screens and screws inThe storm glass, he' ll have his peace,Which is the tranquility of total lossWhen even the buzz of strained, old loveWill fade like summer into the smallDry husk he sweeps from the sill.
POETRY NORTHWEST
Two Poems A LITH E SHUT-EYESfgettettt Byrd
RETURN OF THE ASTRONAUTS
You measured the earthshimmying in its veil of interminable weather.You brought back the moon's fabledfromageand held it up for the mawof crowds and whirring cameras,
Up there that pure, umbilical airfed you whole nebulas of shiftand revelation. A black shadowseeped through your visoras if to say: Weicorne,yoa haue arrived at iuhere you iuere gA ng.I iuas beginning to miss you.
So what the hell are you doing now holding up that gold card on TVP
without it, you say.
0 astronauts of the one true evening star,how seldom I think of you, how seldomand alwayson a night like this one,when the Montclair Plaza Mall waxes full,when wallets slip out of pocketsand purses open,and each one of us holds in his hand,as you have shown us,this promised number like a destination,like a prayer to Godtravelingthrough a glittering heaven.
What a relief it would bel No more greasing upfor the dawn rodeo, inspecting of vital signsfor the souvenir ticket stub that meansthis life to me. I could dozetill donuts or turnips are served, all the whiledreamily confident, confidently dreaming that I wastaking part in some clandestine commencingof tall events. I yawn and a Senator sharpensthe gnawed nub of his pencil. I flufFmy pillow and a secret, life-saving serum isunearthed in an airport bathroom. I roll overand shut my eyes... You get the picture.I have discovered one has to be careful. One has to walkwith eyes open through a final backyard of ultimate firein which one's neighbor stews a questionable broth,and his wife struts over, red hot ember that she is,her heart unbuttoned, unclenchedat this alfl tude known for its touching nosebleedsand avalanches. At least that's howthe mystics of old Lithuania explained it to me,tired mystics catnapping after a hard day's workin their lofty, ergodynamically designed coffins."Even asleep we partake in the becoming of the world,"Milosz said, and I knew thenit was in my best interest to believe this rustic saying.I threw another one of those handy, machine-tooledquilts over my knees, readyfor whatever vvould happen next.
We mustn't leave home
36 POETRY NORTHWEST 37
Two Poems THE PUPPYWesley dfcNnlP
From down the road, starting upand stopping once more, the soundof a puppy on a chain who has not yetdiscovered he will spend his life there.Foolish dog, to forget where he isand wander until he feels the collarclose fast around his throat, then ciyall over again about the little spacein which he finds himself. Soon,when there is no grass left in itand he understands it is all he has,he will snarl and bark wheneverhe senses a threat to it.Who would believe this smallsorrow could lead to such furyno one would ever come near himP
WHY WE NEED POETRY
Everyone else is in bed, it being, after all,three in the morning, and you can hearhow quiet the house has become each timeyou pause in the conversation you are havingwith your close friend to take a biteof your sandwich. Is it getting the wallpaperaround you in the kitchen up at lastthat makes cucumbers and white bread, the onlythings you could find to eat, taste so good,or is it the satisfaction of having discovereda project that could carry the two of youinto this moment made for nobody elsePEither way, you' re here in the pleasureof the tongue, which continues afteryou' ve finished your sandwich, for nowyou are savoring the talk alone, howby staring at the band of fluorescent lightover the sink or the pattern you hadn' tnoticed in the wallpaper, you can seewhere the sentence you' ve started, lineby line, should go. Only love could lead youto think this way, or to care so littleabout how you speak, you end up sayingwhat you care most about exactly right,each small allusion growing largerin the light of your friend's eye.And when the light itself grows larger,it's not the next day coming through the windowsof that redone kitchen, but you,changed by your hunger for the wordsyou listen to and speak, their tastewhich you can never get enough of.
POETRY NORTHWEST38
Wifffrsm Areas Two Poems or like birds that crash into bam windows,wishing to light in some dark interior,and rarely die at the foot of stained-glass windows.
Lions and dogs cannot whistle, only small birds.And we, who have this difference from animals, and walkslightly abandoned by ourselves,like Narcissus at the clear pond's edge,watching his lips, not his lashes,who died with his hands to his mouthof the unrequiting echo.
WIND
I remember learning to whistleat the dark windowpane of the barnthinking cobwebs might be like crystalwaiting to shiver in the spent joyof the first wind under my control,like the primal anvil of Cod ringingthrough the bulging universe,to capture the brief attention of girl or taxi.
How many birds have cleft the airand come to rest under such a window,the delicate blue of the dove's closed lidslike lentils in abbey kitchensand the four rose tines of its feetthe color of pursed lips workingin the ovoid trying silly facepouring out mirth and ruebefore its decline from freckleto age spot to lichen, awaiting the altered breaththat would change the mouth, face, day.
They tell me when monks give up their diariesa wind sweeps through their bodies.as when Gwen Huffel signed awayher pony, her albums, her braceletsand another blue got into her eyes
in the maund of the day-white lineaments spreadon the spartan sea of her bed.These are the great winds. I was just trying to whistle
with blown cheeks and troughed tongue,like a long-distance runner among brown bags at the finish,or my grandfather breaking the hearts of Clevedon in 1896 —".. . a most diverting performance," the Clarion said
WATCHING A MURDER MYSTERY ON TV
I would not sit down to eat if I were not hungry.I would not lie down to sleep if I were not tired.But I watch a stoiy unfold that does not interest meafter the day has scattered us so far.
Like the corpse on the rug I lie in bed,my legs and arms at rest, my eyes wide open.It is your presence here beside me, against thenarrative of death, that feeds the mystery.
Tomorrow we will wake against each other,the birds singing, the moths heading home,and we will arise to another day without clues,swathed in a lack of credibility.
And then we will take the side streets homeand settle down once more to the mystery.The ads come on, and we talk of the likely suspectsstirred by the prospects of a sweeter life.
Often I start to drift away before the last discovery,when all the evidence points to only one.I snap the light on my table before that revelation,turn on my side toward you, and fall asleep.
rinsed like a fuller's cloth
40 POETRY NORTHWEST
Pattfann Rogers Four Poems
PARTNERS
l.
close beside me under the covers in bed.It's so placid, still and sturdyin its slumber. It tolerates my kneehooked over its flnely lathed middleand the way our ankles and feetcouple beneath the blanket.
Without attention or liberty (unlikewindow or mirror), it withdraws whollyand satisfactorily into the tightoak of its own parameters.
Hardly restless, it never resistsitself or cants recitations to makeror scholars. Its respiration is a lastinglullaby, more predictable than my breath,its heart less phantom, more upholdingthan my heart.
During winter snows, I seek it,I cradle it to my bed, I tuck it.We somnia close, belly to bellyall through the night of the night.
I like sleeping with the old table leg
The light of its fragrant coilsis the silver of its lovely residue:dried spittle, fish flakes, moon oil.
With its head-end like a thumbstuck in my mouth in the dark, subsumed,I suck the salt-jack of its prehistoricwaves and currents.
3.I take the carefully tuned guitar alongto sleep with me at night. Wroughtbelow the frets with ivory crescent moonsand their ebony crescent shadows,it reclines best on its back, keepingto its own pillow, keys restingagainst the fringed satin.
With a mere accidental brush of my handacross the center of its nakednessin the dark, I feel the two of usand the entire bed, springs and boards alike,become a humming, six-stringed doxology.
The guitar surrounds a hollownessas desperate as my sleep insideits framework, as immeasurable as the nightinside its boundaries, as possibleas any truth inside its fabricationand sings the same.
2.I like sleeping with great-uncle' ssea-crusted rope. I wind it in the familiarroute up my legs, round my waist, betweenmy breasts, a repeated necklace.
My sleep composes to its spirals,follows its blind underwater passages,the lines of its many past knotsloosened and lost.
of the well
PARALLEL UNIVERSES
There is one eye
eye for the moon sickleabove winter and one eye below one
one ear
at the bottom
in the peal before the casting
42 POETRY NORTHWEST
of the bell one hand to gather
seeds at the bottom
one ice tongue to lick
stellar
of the bottomless
the sickle ear shining
in a crescent sky one thread
through a bottomless blue
like winter
of spider pealing
spring one sun sewn inside
REMEMBERING THE PRESENT TENSE
Before I was a ghost, I was born.This event was continuous — as the separatingand peeling away of beetle and barnacleshells, birch-leaf and curl-leaf from the sunis continuous, as the unraveling of sage,salt cedar and thrasher from the day
stellar hand below
of a spring
sickles one philosophy
one gospel for the breathfor cellar seeds
of sickle rootsone lover's eye above one casting
one cellar spiderof gospel within one gathering
For the green stained root tips
of a bitter pear one sown seed
needle on mouth against
of one siclded pear one breath of one lover' s
threading the blue eye of a green
the bell
word against one ear one theory
one eye
for ice
the green heart
is continuous.
I was born a ghost, There were noboundaries between me and the fragrancesof wild grape and licorice. The lightof Firefiea, fox eye, dropseed, candelabratree, all entered me freely. I gazed myselfwithout shape or name right into the hardglass monocle of the moon, descended bodilessthrough water into the fibrillating blackdollop ol' tadpole. I penetrated the bollof the buckbrush, merged with the thumpof the bushtit. In one sudden openingof layered clouds, I became all the momentsin a moment of summer night.
I was a ghost forever before I was born,bearing in the presence of what was to comethe entirety of everything that had been all pastholy distance and data of now held in the ovaryof the great-granddaughter of a son's unborn son.
Whm I was born into death,I was a living ghost, being the only spiritof Rogers, the sole shock and rushingspell of river litany, the animus of ponderand strain. I was the abstractionof my lips against his, the whimperof longing, the revenant of hope. Rebornand reborn, I was over and over the savagesoul of slaughter and consume.
I was born becoming the beginning
moon one star seedfor the bitter bottom of the heart
one tongue threading through
NORTHWESTPOETRY
of a ghost dying. This finality was continuousthe collapse of thunder into shinglesof rain merging into cactus canyons fallinginto the gray claret of evening into the hollowbreath of the mud swallow disappearinginto the hall yard of night into curseand its only other vanishing whole and powerfultogether into their emergence.
white needles in a pine foreststraining through river fog.
It perceives the core of its nameas a wheel held by the hands, turnedfull circle one way, then the other,the range of its dominion as a wheelspinning water, a rattling millwheeling wind, prophecy spinninga fate, earth spinning the wheelingproperties of night.
Its most jolting connection to Godis head-first off rocks downinto the pummeling pressure and suddensuffocation of a cold surf.Its most complete connection to Godis its naked feet cradled and kissedby the most loved of lovers.
And when the voice of the onelover is at its ear whisperingdevotion and possession, tellingtruthfully of such fictions, the soulthen believes with all of its bodyin its own immortality.
THE IMMORTAL SOUL
It longs for the spine-shuddercoming with an October persimmonsucked clear to the seed. Legs,thighs wound together in bedmean everything to it.
It craves pipe and whistlemusic played in neon reflectionson night rivers, seeks cello soundsinside tangled sycamore shadowsat dusk. It falls-in with the confusionof waxwings and red ash disappearingand emerging together in shiftingself-definitions of their own making.The poverty of its isolationis the royal totality of a crowheard once at dawn callingacross the horizon.
Its first five ways are the firstfive fragrances of bog and boothwillow, beaked sedge, blue clover,blue-grasses, encountered in the firstthaw of spring. The ten directionsof its faith are its tive hands spreadbefore a blue-yellow flame burningin the snow. The ways of its passionare all the directions revealed by wet,
POETRY NORTHWEST 47
Buffalo..
Sterna Bran lives in Austin, Texas.
About Our CorsgrsbistoraJoste Ksasus is a teaching assistant in the English Department at the University ofMichigan.
Kartusr u Lvucu lives in Pleasanton, California.
Baucx MscKIsmon teaches at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland.
Cuusu Bsrsrr Beaus lives in Minneapolis.
Ouvsa Rtcx lives in Naples, Florida.Tnou Wean lives in Palmyra, New YorkAusts Benin is a poet-in-residence and part-time teacher at The Buffalo Seminary inBuffalo, New York.Atnxaunaa Vsu De Ksus is living and teaching in Madrid.
Jess Woatsr lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His first book of poems, The Only TtraeThere hn was published in 1995.Joan Swtrr was a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for the third time in 1995.She lives in Edmonds, Washington.Lvuu Mamru lives in Faber, Virginia.
Mac HAMMoND is a professor of English emeritus of the State University of New York at
KEYIN Casrr is an acting instructor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Pautauu Psrsasxu lives in Portland, Oregon.Davm Mootrsu is a physician employed by the American Red Cross in Philadelphia.
Wmtsr McN*m teaches at tbe University of Maine at Farmington.
Wtu.mu Atxsu works for low-income housing projects in Appalachian Virginia.
Parrtaun Rocsas lives in Castle Rock, Colorado. Her Firsksspsr, New aud SelemsdPoems, was published by Milkweed in 1994.
THEODOIIE RoETHKE PRlzE: $200
RicHARD Huco PRIZE: $200
BULUS-KIZER Palzpx $200
and Four Poems (Autumn 1995)
Cathleen Calhert for Two Poems (Spring 1995)and Lynne Kuderko for Three Poems (Spring 1995)
Keith Ratzlaff for "Die Winterreise" (Vtiinter 1995-96)
MAGLEOD-CIIOBE PRIXE: $500
Kimberly Swayze for Three Poems (Summer 1995)
Poetry Northwest Prize Awards, 1996
Jesse Lee Kercheval for Four Poems (Autumn 1995)
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