VOLUME XVIII . NUMBER 2 • SUMMER 1977 • $1.50

NORTHWEST POETRY + NORTHWEST

VOLUME EIGHTEEN NUMBER TWO EDITOR SUMMER 1977 David Wagoner JACK CRAWFORD, JR.

Four Poems...... EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS ROBLEY WILSON, JR. Nelson Bentley, William H. Matchett T wo Poems...... GAR BETHEL

Four Poems...... COVER DESIGN JOHN S. FLAGG Allen Auvil Plot To Restore Reason to the Chair 15 STEPHEN DUNN

Three Poems...... , Coverfrom a lithograph by Frank Charlie, JOHN ALLMAN

Two Poems...... a Nootka-Clayoquot artist and carver 19 from Vancouver Island, SEAN BENTLEY titled "Split-Wolf and Split-Moon" American Dream...... SANDRA M. GILBERT

T hree Poems...... BRENDAN GALVIN

Running......

BOARD OF ADVISERS GARY GILDNER

Toads in the Greenhouse. . . Leonie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman, STEPHEN DUNNING Stanley Kunitz,Jackson Mathews, Arnold Stein Dreams of Ducks 30 PHILIP FINE

Birds of Winter...... POETRY NORTHWEST S U MMER 1977 VOL UME XVIII, NUMBER 2 MARY OLIVER Two Poems...... 33 Published quarterly by the University of Washington. Subscriptions and manu­ JOSEPH DUEMER scripts should be sent to Poetry Northwest, 4045 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Univer­ Falling...... 35 sity of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105. Not responsible for unsolicited LAURA GROVER manuscripts; all submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed Calls from a Booth in Time's Square envelope. Subscription rates: U.S., $5.00 per year, single copies $1.50; Canada, $6.00 per year, single copies $1.75. CHARLES BAXTER Deprivation 38 © 1977 by the University of Washington STUART DYBEK

Dead Trees...... Distributed by B. DeBoer, 188 High Street, Nutley, N.J. 07110; and in the West by L-S Distributors, 1161 Post Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94109. MARKY DANIEL

T wo Poems...... PHILIP DACEY

T wo Poems...... 44 MARK ERCEG O V IC Two Poems...... 46 POETRY NORTHWEST DENNIS MARDEN CLARK S UM M E R 1 9 7 7 Knifing a Piggy Bank.... 48 GARY MIRANDA Lines for an Imaginary Son . 49 Jack CrauforrI„Jr.f DAN MINOCK Four Poems D riving the Interstate . . . . 50 GARY MYERS ALWAYS THE DOLPHINS LEAPING BEFORE L oss of a Satyr ...... 52 PETER DAVISON my daughter, studying this year in spain, Two Poems...... tells me she's staying with a certain PHILIP BOOTH T hree Poems ...... dona sanz. the home is two or three hundred years old. a marble staircase rises from the first to the second Hoor. up this she goes to her room. the room, at the back, has ceilings fifteen feet high! french doors twelve feet high open out onto a balcony from which she has a view of red-tiled roofs. below, a courtyard. birds sing. i think of her. i enter the front door, smile at dona sanz. my shoes click up the marble steps. her room is simply furnished. spartan, like yours, daddy! her letters come excited. she has good teachers at theinstituto. one is eighty-three. if you saw him on the street you might call an ambulance. he teaches a class in don quixote. in class his age drops away. he becomes a tiger, leaping about to illustrate a point­ Change of Address' a tiger for cervantes and quixote. brilliant, she says. i believe it. Notify us promptly when you change your mailing address. Send both the old address and the new — and the ZIP code numbers. every word l daughter, there. Allow us at least six weeks for processing the change. in fabulous spain. my tall blonde daughter. is it true that spanish men go for blondesP i' ve heard so. it was true that way! nothing matters but that the ship in mexico. i' ve written to her, of you glide the dear life. you are here. cautioning, fearful of machismo. ha! i brought you, in my way, with help of other. absurd progenitor! assuming i cannot save you from hurt. you' ve timidly your auctorial rights in her! known it — can take it. and will. but think ghost of polonius, dealing caveats! that those who brought you here, creative vicars, deaf upon the wind, owindy man. wanting brought you this long journey, long as all, for her, whole argosies out of the essence of whatever is, of this world. wanting for her nurtured you with ancient tenderness, the suns and moons. who wanted for her wanted for you always the dolphins always the dolphins leaping before her. leaping before you in the marvelous seas. who writes this private poem to tell her so. wanted for you in whose dear ship she moves, her spine all the argosies of this world. daughter, a mast on which her spirit blows. who is sailing there — your spine a mast my flesh, but all men' s. eve's. all. on which your spirit blows. more mine for having loved her and been shaped by her, and been a part of her shaping. o so lovely shaped, PAULINE daughter. your sails of spirit which draw you, tall and slender. for me i was but a child, and you­ you glide madrid! your tale of the bankers squat, thick, your tight-wound hair moved me to laughter! how they came out shot with gray­ to greet you — sorry your father's check were a distant aunt, with a cow or two. had not arrived. cheering you.five of them! hogs, horses. your chickens banco espanol. who came from their partitions pecking to pay their regrets. ordering with petulant beaks. some went pastries and coffee and chatting with you. cockadoodledoo! how could ibe annoyed, you wrote to me, and when you took the slop out, with such charming gentlemen! how crying Sooey! how the hogs came, could you, indeed! i am a pleased father. snuffling with their snouts, rooting you stand on spain. i stand here. they are in the roiled stuff, colors on a map. just as well that it slurping, grunting! magnificent! is spain — as greece or austria or italy. i loved to go beside your skirts, if you love it. and you do. deep your bucket slopping, to feed the hogs. into hispanic history, culture, art. i watched you by the hour. it walking among their romans and their moors. was heaven! you worked as if live with a fiery gentleness, my dear! live gods waited in the next room. as if with ardor! polonius, there were such purpose. as if you old fool! be at it now: telling her the energy in your fingers would weave forever. how to do it! live this way! live as if the butter foaming in the churn

POETRY NORTHWEST were sun and moon­ squat to watch some ants. they go slabbing it out with a wooden spoon. in single file, feelers out. legs your round face with a half smile on it. frantic. red. and a the barn, the smell of hay. chipmunk. and a purple jay the cows that chewed forever. the blue it is a misty place. another country. and gleaming horse. the green dew. i visit it occasionally. a strange cockaigne, o but how that iron stove an island somewhere west of spain. sang for you! no one lives there in the usual way. plying the flames with wood, the iron nor the horse, nor cow. nor that particular hay ringing. the homemade rolls you laid whose fragrance filled the rafters where sifting light in their birth dough in the tingling pan boiled with a beautiful dust. to slide them quickly in but it is vivid, and it had its day. with a thrust of your fist in a black glove. i have such tenderness for her sweat sprang in tiny beads and miles. and the rolls to your forehead and your lip, your face with their buttered bellies. and the ringing stove. flushed, seraphic. pauline, with her black glove, and the gorgeous jellies in their jars! thrusting in a pan of dough. her voice butter yellow in the rolls' bellies! murmurs. her spoon dips the floating butter. and uncle miles in his presidency, the chain rings in the well. the bucket splashes. his cheeks shining, as the food flew. it is a land in quaint suspension, miles: the proprietor a curious atlantis — sunken, muffled. of a country store with nails and shovels. but living — alive — with a life of its own. buckets, bins of stuff. and hers. and his. and mine. what a fragrance hung there! and those nails! did anything ever shine so! and their sharp points. how they glistened, all mixed, SETTING DOW N A FRIDAY FOOT in their barrels! the magic of it! and the kind cow in the meadow. and the horse that photograph of mars! i glistening. i could see it slipped'into a trance. in color. to see from my window. and ran out. it. the pink. the landscape. rubble on it. grasshoppers leaping in green terror. sweeps of it. to think: there it is! no how the breast of the horse shone! how it one's there. no little thing moves. no gleamed in the morning sun! porcupine. not even a skunk. at the well, pauline nothing's there. what is it slinging the bucket down. that attractsP it's like: the ringing of the chain — its tingling hum. there it is! a whole planet! un­ a moment — and the bucket splashes. stepped. no crusoe. no sucks in water. her hand on the handle foot friday. a cranking the bucket up, slopping a little. whole planet! dear god of mars! no she smiles at me. i foot upon it. vikings.

POETRY NORTH WEST shield. sail. nitro­ move. two auburn locks gen. how curl to lier scapula. her eyes are green. the mind gropes. how the ear strains embroidered butterflies hang on the wall. to listen. the mind his hands move in the mouth. the drill lopsided. swaying shrieks thinly. ceases. her eyes from leg to leg. a kind seem faintly mocking. my of stupefaction. a red knuckles tighten. a whine companion piece to earth. harmonic. a world appears in her opening lips to speak. of a place! surreal. magritte. thin fishes stir. later viking digs its hand i will firiish the article. i must know. into red oxides. shadows his hands are white. are there. the turning to go, she flicks sun. rubble. i her auburn curls. my jaws don't want to be so arrogant as to think hang wide with instruments. the last rocket if i pay taxes i own a piece of earth. i soars into the night. her want to be prepared­ movement leaves god of mars — to move on. the fishes stirring. ready — reincarnate, protean­ to set my friday foot on strange stone.

Robley Wilsors, Jr. Two Poems BLUE-GREEN LIDS THE DIVER hands tense, knuckles white. veins. a mobile stirring from the ceiling. made At the tip of the high board, looking down, I am not yet of thin metallic fishes. air concerned for the green water, fizzes in a tube, sucking, hooked inthe mouth. a paper cup not yet ready for plummeting hands first in fathoms of air, shot with water. a and if someone notices me as hiss. a drill whining. a she squints against the light storm shakes the atlantic, sinks rippling the flags of towels, a ship. i'd I am too remote to take her into accoimt. I s t and, loose, started the article in the waitingroom. nothing if not at total rest, one survivor. his raft peaking musing the length of my body fifty feet in air. the dentist so any looker-on might think moves his many elbows. his wife, from this posture I am a man petite, with blue-green lids, stands in the door. her lips praying. Appearances fool us. I am involved in myself, see

POETRY NORTHWEST the foreshortening of a man behind me on its steel hinge whose sweat jewels his chest, the thin board rocks me awake. whose trunks are a blue belt Plank-walker, pirate-of-air, holding body and its potency I throw my two fists forward, in a respectable compact; my thrust out from the tall tower thickened legs, as resilient just as it topples over. Un­ as the board they rise from, clenching the hot sky, I hurl sway my weight like birches. it over my head. One moment I am a man swimming the void; I inch forward, trembling in the next I am diver, graceful the shimmer of sky, a bird in his precipitous element. nervy on his perch the moment I wear the agile wind, I see before he flies; set my toes faces and bare white throats over the brink of the board, craned toward me, I dazzle curling them down as if they across the eyes of the girls. alone were all the grip a man My hands flash ahead of me should need on risky actions. to carve on this green Eden I can make out around the pool only my perfect turbulence. the figures and colors summer draws among the idle. I know every girl at her naked ease, THE BLACK CAT every miracle of smooth line, every tempering of blemishes For the time it takes me young bodies carry; I follow to smoke a cigarette the otter-heads above water, I have prowled this house. and the funhouse legs beneath. My wife in the big bed From such a height I can tell, lies cradling my pillow as from a cloud, the praises in the bow of her arms, I owe everything except soul, and she has no dream and when, an instant from now, that excludes me. My younger I bow my whole self-possession son has withdrawn himself outward and earthward, spirit to a far corner of the dark will turn me to angel over all. breathing untroubled music. My older son, the distant me The board under my movement I remember over and over, commences music, my muscles raises himself to kiss me beat countertune and my sweat while I settle his covers springs in the body's corners. between repose and the wind. Rhythm: t a t too of the blood Even the family cat dozes to the cushions of my feet; in the rocker, his claws

10 POETRY NORTHWEST unsheathed into the cushion. You push back your insulation; the forgotten air invades your vacuum. What hurried me home You swing one foot over the edge to them all was the absurd followed by its naked partner, fear they were murdered. then by the legs; the clothespin body Some blind animal lunged sits at fulcrum. A s if it were an army into my loneliness exercise,.you clamp a hand on each knee and showed itself; Death, and push upward like a seedling I whispered, calling the beast emerging from the frozen ground. by the most exciting name The mouth opens as if to scream. I could think of. Now Already you are taking the first step, feeling foolish and tired but nobody is taking your picture. I have ended my round to learn nothing but love. I read too much, perhaps, DRESSING or wish the wrong liberties, but I will sit for hours Lifting them off the hanger, at the window where light they rest upon your arm enters first, hurt by guilt as if you were a waiter and relief to watch the cat presenting a bottle of wine. go killing in his sleep. You prepare a stance for the daily balancing act: standing on one flamingo leg you fill down through the folded stem Ger Bethel Four Poems and quickly balance on the other aware of cloth against your thighs, feathers ruffling. RISING Then you start the printing of skin by pushing the waist button You don't realize what you' re doing. through its hole with finger and thumb, You' re up against it; it being yourself, the buckle's tine through not the mattress or the alarm, its tight fit, and the belt not the gray glow or the sulfur smell, into its flapless loops. but closer, your cage expanding, This daily passage ends your river bulging out of the hills with the roll of a snare drum, with dregs from the winter night. metal teeth biting into one another; Somehow it was going on all along, you zip up and close to meet the day. and now you have tomake polite conversation, respects to the family.

12 POETRY NORTHWEST COMBING for wading in a mountain stream, a patch of sun in a chilly room, It is time for the parting until the convergence of rim after the suds and shower. and mouth are joined But first you comb the tempest in a slight burning that trails into plowed fields of wheat; down through your core the teeth, like forks on tablecloths, sending streamers out to the skin move down toward your eyes making all pretense of beginning that crossing from the mirror lost once more in immersion. coordinate the hand in memory. You don't need to look or rather almost don't want to, noticing how far back the delta line recedes Jobe S. Flagg before you can part-in the river and bank its tributaries PLOT TO RESTORE REASON TO THE CHAIR to either side in smooth wet wings. But you know this ordered beginning, DeathP No problem. when another day walks out the door, Next item: Evanescence. will have taken the corners of wind Wait, no, sorry. and your scratches for an answer Next item not evanescence, and will have become random curves, sorry. Visitations. leaps, and rope ends, every follicle Point of order! standing in a half-pitch of space Hasn't opacity been where even your simple part ruled out of orderP seems to have disappeared. The minutes please. Etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., don't see where. DRINKING Your memory doesn't serve. Next item: Visitations. You test the dark water: Got to come out of salary. with index and thumb knot Point of order! Point you raise the cylinder to a plane of order! The government between the window and your eyes is disinclined to pay to scan mist rising from the lip; the taxpayer's money you cool it down by adding milk for your indulgences to the litmus taste of your eye so is the Corporation. and blowing the surface tension. Got to come out of salary. Bringing this contained warmth (Psst, this guy is a real up for the first sip, you know. How did he get to be you prepare your tongue you knowP) (He got to be

14 POETRY NORTHWEST because he is. Don't ask to nowhere, picked up a rhetorical questions. ) hitchhiker and stole his Timex, I demand to be recognized! left him in a cornfield. Why shouldn't this institution I wanted to sleep financially encourage but the ghosts slept with me. prostitution in whatever shapeP I wanted to love them Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman! so they would fall back (Psst, I see what you mean into their graves, though. And am inclined to think Oh I wanted to escape gunpowder may be the answer.) the sound of badminton being played by mutes in a backyard, that noise in my head. I put the pistol back StePhee Dune Three Poems in the glove compartment next to the tom map CONFESSION and the sleeping Cyclops of a flashlight, There was nothing to do made resolutions to seek help but keep driving, at the next Help Station, maybe stop in the woods but it hadn't been invented yet to count the bulge and I drove right past it in my pocket, into America and these but keep driving headlines. the ghosts away, those battered shadows of people who died in car wrecks, THE OBSESSION people who were always my parents. The ghosts I decided to call the dark liked my back, kept angels by its right color from my shoulders, so when it came down on us rode me or when it was in the house into these small crimes. I could say navy blue They were caught is upon us or obsidian has come in the stopped air before the windshield with its black ice, became their last meal; I could know the quality only fear, they said, of what touched us. could nourish them. So I knocked off a few It started as an experiment, gas stations on the way almost a joke,

16 POETRY NORTHWEST but soon I was wondering about dusk, a simple ride going nowhere'? trying to remember how often I am the South American revolutionary I'd driven home in it, biting his fingernails in a bordello. driven by it, shadow's breath, I am the French woman a weight that wasn' t who disappears in the lost embassies quite there. of love,dreaming of repugnance. I dimmed the lights in the living room, And this is my story, the one it couldn't be simulated; that would rather make itself up I walked out into it, than be anybody's delivered newspaper. a simulataneous goodbye I am telling it now, on a street corner. this is not me speaking.

The dark was less elusive. After all, the synonym for brain is grey-matter, and who isn' t Jobe Allmsae Two Poems the brain's amateur, dusk's confused traveler? I tried to adjust my eyes. NANA'S VISIT It was midnight, the midnight that has tried to myth us She hid her bottle of port into love or crime, deceive us in the kitchen washtub into not seeing it. and we'd catch her lifting I wanted to decide what part of the dark the porcelain lid, reaching in: is chilling, the correct color we heard a swishing, and remembered for desolate. the smell of wet newspapers You were with me. in her icebox; the hall toilet I was holding your hand; that gargled as you froze at another time of my life on the seat and strange footsteps we could have walked into the sunset. went past. And suddenly father was shouting. 0 his mother was drunk again, singing her old vaudeville songs, THE TRUTH unloosening her stiff legs. for Jeanne-Andree You could almost see the music hall lit up, the Indian clubs whirling My autobiography gets away from me, like a halo around her head, the details mix up went the left leg, up the right. with other lives I could have led We saw her steamer trunk, or have led, how am I the pleated panties like pink to be sure in this amusement park carnations, the sharp edges what's an accident and what' s of yellow contracts, a photo

18 POETRY NORTHWEST of her father, his white mustache hung like the cliffs of Dover. brows, who soothe like cellos in the great hall. We heard the men of Tipperary They know theyaccept everything. They know whistling would she do it again, you wake in your middle-age sweating, thinking and she did, against the painted scenery, of them. They smoke Lucky Strikes. They buy Wonder Bread. the flat trees of Eden shimmering in gaslight. Up went her skirt, out went her bum. We heard applause, Sean Bentley watched her kick off her shoes in grand finale. She snuffed out AMERICAN DREAM a row of candles with her naked feet. white line w h i t e line white li'ne white sheets line your city of sleep / YOU OWE THE M E V E RYTHING your eyes tour / your tires caress pavement like miles of sweet Their fingers numb in thimbles, pea beneath your foot the accelerator / eyes dim with hems, their front teeth gone, white line w h i t e line a language they mean well. You give them old lamps. of flat colors and lines arrows You give them the room over the garage. and curves ahead of your vision / They wash your kitchen windows, looking in. you focus on each red pebble in the street / They smile like maiden aunts with lace on each shred of glass each white line collars and hearing-aids. They nod like doctors. white line / your car peers over hills / You thank them for the years on their your wheels belly the road / lights light knees in office vestibules, the wrung-out hands, bushes at the verge / your hands grip the checks for your law books, the debts the wheel the sheet you roll over with / they paid with Irish brogues in old movies. and you hang a rachel / negotiate the curves / Even your Porsche coughs in their presence. Some of your children ask who they are teeth in front gnaw bugs from the air / and you speak of Slavic ladies in cabbage once they caught a warbler / held it fields, the Haitian grandmothers dumping ashtrays. hanging / the white lines flashing You name the widows with varicose veins in its dark eyes white line w h i t e line and prominent sons who visit twice a year; w hite line w h i t e line y o u chug-a-lug maids in Hotel Edison, connoisseurs have dreamed this / the whitewalls of abandoned wine; sisters of vaudeville stars. and hubcaps burn in to your eyes a corona / You hear their jangled nerves ring up in dry­ the mirror explodes with sun as you tip goods stores. You hear them praise children over a hill and no one behind you moved to Wisconsin. They are the lost nannies nor ahead the road clear as the fire in Victorian novels, the housekeepers with rings in the mirror that white line of sleep of keys, who put the cool cloth to hysteric pulling you on its thread through to daybreak you drive home the dark /

20 POETRY NORTHWEST Saedra M. Gilbert Three Poems On the third hand I play the piano of grass, and looped around cold fingers ON THE THIRD HAND I carry the green keys that unlock the door in the oak behind which my great aunts live smiling On the one hand in a parlor lined with glittering samovars: I am afraid. I wear a school ring. I prick my tender fingers, remember typewriters, with the third hand carry hammers. I turn all the handles, and once again the ancient tea steams out like rain. On the other hand I believe there's nothing to fear. SPINSTER I wear a wedding ring. I have pink fingernails. My skin is soft as vanilla cream. It's raining. She doesn't want to go home. We promise to watch from the window On the third hand to see that she's safe. It rains, I wear the rings of crystal and pollen and we watch from behind our house: and the rings the Etruscans fashioned from feathers, auguries, seeds, and her windshield wipers begin to beat­ salts of strange origin: clack clack, like lunatics. No one comes near. Rain, trees, sidewalks. these rings murmur in the dark, Nothing moves. Nothing talks. murmur and click in foreign tongues, keeping my cold third hand awake all night, But she idles her car promising pleasures unique as fingerprints, as if she wishes the engine would die pains closer to bone than skin. and a tall stranger with a face of Plato, a face of newsprint, The fingers of my third hand are green, they are yellow and green. a face of the Marquis de Sade­ Someone gave them to me in a dream and a trenchcoat and all that­ when I was twenty-nine. would rescue her with cigarettes and cocoa. She twists her fingers, rolls down the window, cries With the third hand I write letters to the world of glass, "I'm a shark, I'd like to eat everyone up." letters instantly read and memorized And we have to listen. by priestesses of light, letters swallowed We have to watch by emptiness, letters conveyed by silent messengers as her hands turn to string, all knots; to polar silences.(Somewhere in other words, they are well known. ) watch as her arms fall off, devoured by shadows,

POETRY NORTHWEST and her car explodes in the street; into the stones. watch as the strange face of Plato Then what was there to do but make the best of the surprising change, approaches her lips like the glistening snout of some night animal, be glad of charityP and the teeth of the Marquis de Sade For with the rooting came new shapes: close around her cold ankles. thighs, losing their softness, fusing

She screams, "It isn't fair!" into a round of power: 0 Plato, the blood is everywhere. arms not two but twenty, rising, stiffening, everywhere

DAPHNE against the god refusing I to lie still at her sides: Her father often said to her, "Daughter, you owe me a breasts crusted, belly scaled with armor: son-in-law; you owe me grandchildren." She, hating the thought of marriage as a crime, with her beautiful face and green tongues, tongues of her own tinged all over with blushes, threw her arms around her grown all over her father's neck, and said "Dearest father, grant me this in bursts of scorn­ favour, that I may always remain unmarried, like Diana." He consented, but at the same time said, "Your own face a mane of tongues flung from her arms! will forbid it." — Bulfinch's Mythology At first, astonished, how she must have clattered, hissed, seethed

2 in her new language: then­ I see it now: this is I know this now­ how it happened, this is how sighing, she relaxed into the whole the heavy bars of the sun of her different shape, felt fell on her: like thick hands the flood of alien sweet blood, seizing her breasts, her shoulders, and entered the secret network rocking her backwards, prying her thighs apart, of her other self — how far down announcing the searing tongue the nervous rootings reached, farther of the intruder- and she ran than her tongues could tell!

Swaying sucking leaning or tried to run into that hidden body, on feet suddenly melting and vague, at last she learned while the great heat knitted her

POETRY NORTHWEST the truth of the dark eating I'm not sponsored by the National that goes on forever, Park Service for your viewing pleasure, under the ground. have had shin splints, and suffer

3 permanently from Morton's Foot. Apollo stood amazed. He touched the stem, and felt the flesh Experts say any moment my spine tremble under the new bark. He embraced the branches, and may collapse from cervix to coccyx. lavished kisses on the wood. The branches shrank from his lips. "Since you cannot be my wife," said he, "you shall assuredly But look, there is heavy traffic of bees be my tree. I will wear you for my crown; I will decorate with in the burst willow catkins, that kingfisher you my harp and my quiver; and when the great Roman conquerors dips and rises over the marsh lead up the triumphal pomp to the Capitol, you shall be woven into wreaths for their brows." — Bulfinch's Mythology like a lesson in scansion, A month from here, swallows will loop and dive, slicing the air close to my doubling heartbeat, Breeze Gulein two months and a woodcock will sail through a steep RUNNING parabola ending in bushes.

Experts say for me to do it well I let a fly live completely a moment I should be forty pounds lighter in the dampening bush of my hair. or twenty-one inches taller, Rhythms are breaking, the last shred of so if I do it I'm a fool, human song just flew out of my head. fat fool if I don' t. Once I awaited adrenalin's uppercut under Dying of experts, I shuck off my limping heart, and paused like

home by the back door, a man in mid-celebration taking myself to yappers at heels recalled to final things Red fish and the nameless worst who may school up in the blood. Whatever I need,

break anywhere from bushes, there's no name for it, but we are my mind holding its hand, a naturally healthy people, telling itself the teeth of the unknown being of the Elect, so this must be

dissolve when confronted even in fear. somehow un-American. Any minute now, If you see me and toot, I may have Flab will dust me off with his Pontiac, only my middle finger for you: but here on the edge of energy

POETRY NORTHWEST I believe even the stumps will fly again. away by the quick What expert ever saw a hawk go before him sticky tongues of my toads, toward a quarter moon pale in the western sky, whom I also had affection for. or a random butterfly exploring the air Stuck, over bayberriesP All things are pilgrims, I had to keep the leaves except maybe the blacksnake soaking up breathing myself, washing them off with soap and water,­ asphalt's watery heat, who is only inertia telling the toads when they to be overcome. Shifts change in the blood, lumbered over to squat and watch but I'm breaking no records. By mile four that what they saw was what they saw. As always their faces I'm only the framework a breeze passes through. said: We are simply here — taboobeauties Bellies of gulls on the flats in a ioorld gone buggy. are lit like quarts of milk. This wobbling And so they continued to lumber over, keeping their mugs at the ready. under my ribs dessicates bad habits. I slow to a trot, to the least piper's Summer began to steady itself whistling, and my pulse begins its against autumn, my strongest spider moved slower and slower shorebird glossolalia. It says up in her corner, the ants dowitcher coot y ellowlegs seemed to have scrammed for good. br ant bufflehead knot Only the sluggish and slimy slugs, I thought, kept the toads going. I started leaving angle worms out on a piece of musty pine Gary Gilder they liked, making sure the worms were lively. These little squiggles, they replied, TOADS IN THE GREENH O U SE are adequate. Every night they' d When the scale were sucking either be perched on the pine, the life from my orchids, waiting, or hopping toward it. I imported hundreds I saw they were losing of lady bugs into my life,­ their skins, scratching at the tough blessing their tickle places it wouldn't come off. among the sobered, Then one night in a dream applauding the sparkle they revealed themselves as uncles, they rendered to wrinkle a wee bit hung over: and droop. But soon these honey bees, they gargled, ladies were snapped

POETRY NORTHWEST bring us honey bees. bobbing and nodding, ahve I ran toward them, my hands in the quiet surface of Mille Lacs brimming with mud, my feet freezing. splinters of daylight No, they said; the sweetness, coming through the blind t he sweetness. . . our feet firm in the ice

In the morning frost had come­ 2 and in the greenhouse, each to a pot, I awake to water so clear the toads had burrowed down stones, twigs, grains of sand among the roots; the grasses and the water ferns I saw their noses briefly­ are focused by early light. and then like deliberate Smells at the ends wonderful fish, of deep breaths, snow like prairie dogs, coming our way, and soon or like uncles who can't quit melted, bubbling paraffin chasing the ladies, for dipping the birds. they were gone. Father posed me in front birds on a stringer, him behind holding the gun, smiling down StePhen Dunning hand on my shoulder: Step back so you get the birds DREAMS OF DUCKS and Mother did, moving the Brownie up and down; side to side I finding the heap of blue-wing teal This dream recurs, ducks caught the canvasback shot by mistake by an instant freeze the mallards: a weight of ducks webbed feet firm in the ice hung on the stringer bodies twisting side to side bead-eyed birds, side to side heads jerking. The marsh grasses hanging from my belt. rice, cattails; cracks and echoes of shotguns far away 3 hunters invisible in blinds We fly patterns like birdshot drunks before sunrise, voices spatters of us staggering across the still silver v's and vague arrowheads of Lake Mille Lacs. The dream through the silver sky tries to divert me patterns skewed to the sun from ducks twisting to the warmth in the East side to side, father and me handfuls of us stiff in our boats, decoys loose in the grey-silver dawn

30 POETRY NORTHWEST beating our wings toward sloughs Behind me, your philodendron strews lush with grass and seed early birds flying south threadbare tendrils down the bookshelf, balks at renewal. With each shed leaf running at life you die again, and again I have failed you. to grass and to seed

Kindled in a corner, the Christmas tree the surprise weight brushing through feathers prickles with electric lights, syringes biting through skin sharp as the sting of the dialysis machine that wrung tides through your brackish sea. letting my warmth leak into dawn Beyond all that now, it no longer matters the weight eating but these effigy birds, more delicate into my heart breaking my beat in the wreathed boughs than kinglets, would have pleased you; as there is pleasure me caving in legs pulled tight, wings tonight, waiting up alone, to conjure, storm past, chickadees and finches stretching out for air to hold me folding, my whole self weaving songs through the branches tight for falling above your stone. for arcing down away from friends me pulled by the force Mury Oliver Two Poems deeper than flight my memory braces to hit the water WINTER SLEEP ready now the weight in my heart If I could I would Go down to winter with the drowsy she-bear, Crawl with her under the hillside And lie with her, cradled. Like two souls PhiliP Fice In a patchwork bed­ Two old sisters familiar to each other BIRDS OF WINTER As cups in a cupboard­ We would burrow into the yellow leaves for Sophia B. Fine To shut out the sounds of the winter wind. Storm night; and the pines spill shadows, the birdfeeder swings by its thong like a censer; Deep in that place, among the roots rain streaming down steamed up windows here, Of sumac, oak, and wintergreen, but in the city, you lie under snow. We would remember the freedoms of summer, And we would begin to breathe together­

POETRY NORTHWEST 33 Hesitant as singers in the wings­ JosePh Duerner A shy music, Oh! a very soft song. FALLING for Billy Felix Ayae 1953 1975 While pines cracked in the snow above, And seeds froze in the ground, and rivers carried Something told him, a voice A dark roof in their many blue arms, falling out of the sky like a shot bird, We would sleep and dream. that the moon was not We would wake and tell a hole in the sky How we longed for the spring. that he would never rise Smiles on our faces, limbs around each other, climbing hand over hand We would turn and turn on a spider's web, a strand Until we heard our lips in unison sighing of the moon-girl's hair into a new world. Inside The family name. the Blue Moon Tavern Felix Ayac ordered a beer. SMALL ANIMAL PATHS "The moon is a lump of rock. Raven stole it once, when it was bread, To be a small animal the first bread baked by woman. You must wake early in the morning­ The moon is a lump of bread Before the moon has climbed out of the pond turned into stone in Raven's beak. You must drink there, and leave I can hear A plain track in the mud his wings cutting the air." As you turn and vanish On the street things speak to him. In any one of a hundred Beams of headlights strike him: Fall down. Directions through the forest. The sidewalk speaks sweetly: Over here, And not even the owl, you can sleep over here. But faint stars tell him Flapping to his daylight bed, the moon is gone. Will frighten you, so well Acquainted with leaves, the deep The freeway calls itself a black river with snakes of light. Apple-core smell of earth­ On the empty bridge Everywhere, under the looped entrance of roots, Raven Bone Picker danced, The darkness offering shelter. Raven Moon Thief,near the edge. The eater of stones, dark of the moon danced with Billy Ayac who jumped

34 POETRY NORTHWEST 35 Someone is making love in your bed or fell and broke his body, To your husband, but I can't find it. shattered a windshield They say the chest of drawers died of broken ribs and sat beside the driver And your dressing table fell into its mirror but kept falling, fell But there is no clue here along the baseboards out of himself Why the phone keeps ringing and this strange hugging a stone through the black water Voice repeats that you are out for the time being. toward the stolen moon.

11 It costs so much to call and this phone booth Laura Grover Is shrinking — there is hardly room To move my lips. Last week a friend said I was getting hard to see now. CALLS FROM A BOOTH IN TI ME'S SQUARE You were two years disappearing Just a white blur on the last photographs, 1 And I keep watching my hands to make sure It's after dark — you should be home They are still visible because one foot The phone rings to the attic and back Has already dissolved into a begonia The wallpaper in the dining room is green And I have to wear more clothes to keep the sun The lawn is mowed and someone strange From shining right through my arms. Answers in a black-hat voice — tells me your I know when you start to go like that Walls are peach-colored satin There's no stopping and I' ll wake up You cannot talk right now Some morning and not be able to reach the floor. Because you are praying And your mouth has been sewn shut You melted into the grass. I think I' ll just Since February. While you were gone Hang on to a cedar tree at the last and Someone came and stole your room Live there for a while until the right I looked and there was only the shell. Bird comes along, then I' ll be its breath­ I made the walls for you six years ago Or perhaps I' ll become the salt in ocean water. When you had your little toe amputated My head could be the silica in stones, And stayed three months with gangrene. My eyes the ultraviolet in light and my hands Your husband made the ceiling before Might be the unexcitability of orchids But the floor got away — it had no signature But if I get to stay together I'd like to be And I suppose no insurance — though you seldom The indelible in trees — but I suppose you don't know Needed it. Now it's all there is to hold Exactly where you' re needed. The walls from leaning I can see the blue quilt through my hand now, mother. Toward one another. Their white panels And I just passed the mirror in the hall­ Gossip about the condition of your closet It was empty. Next week they will have to look Where the awful sound of your heart At the forest to see me at this rate. Still gurgles at night. The rug left Its ashes and that's all. I guess

NORTHWEST POETRY 37 Charles Baxter as the man stares passively while the leaves lift against his window DEPRIVATION and the disturbance rises The man who reads in frequency and pitch­ puts a beer nearby, a natural storm and feels, for just a second, of unreadable sound, and wordless light. his hands burn under the reading lamp. The burning hands lift Stlart Dybek one leaffrom the next, as the thunder deepens, DEAD TREES making light end-stops This one could father in the evening air. a race of scarecrows, Lightning like a typist's key appears and this one meditates on crosses and gallows with the briefest shiver in an orchard, on the power line, a clean cut and this one's so naked a clothesline tries that dims the filament. to flap wash The print flickers in an after­ across its bones. image as it says good-bye. Listen mice, tucked The man who reads is sighing in your roots, the tree in the common dark, rattles the armor of owls, astonished at how easily coat-of-arms the light abandons him, a lightning scar, twisted at how the one requirement like a blacksnake around its trunk. of what he wants is light, broken now by cracks When the forest is squandering that have no wire, no carrier. leaves The book slips down, who stands aimless,

38 POETRY NORTH WEST 39 a saint in a pewter field gun, silver birch, attracting beggars movie camera like the skeleton in soupP a cherry tree.

Boughs croak When the moon makes while windmills whip light snow silver to lard; this tree mistakes millstones grind, its shadow thunderheads ignite dry sticks. for the reflection Men flail their burning harvest. of a willow Jays fade. arched over a pond A wind of locusts, where two lovers a wind of dust from warring houses have agreed to meet shaking cellars inside out like pockets on foot, without horses in a dead tramp's trousers. or henchmen, you are one. Straw leaks from craniums, cornsilk from hearts, llfas ky Dassiel Two Poems horizon upside down­ a whipping line of trees, NAKED LADIES roots for limbs. Amaryllis, the belladonna lily, sometimes called the naked lady. — The Garden Encyclopedia Trees like yellow chicken claws. The prairie scrabbles. I saw them circling the porches A traveling salesman of forgotten houses, pink and common feels his way back through the henhouse. in their habit. Mother hurried past, A long-lost son, mouth prim, pulling me, saying she hated he's gazed at driftwood arms their bare-legged look, telling me the only name on tropic beaches. she knew for them. There were none in Mother's garden; no brazen trumpets, He opens his suitcase: no lolling tigers. In my starched pinafore, a sewing machine disguised sandals, long white stockings, as an elder, I scrambled by her side, clutching vacuum cleaner anelm, for her hand to keep in step.

40 POETRY NORTHWEST Rose-pink,fragrant trumpets I wait impatiently through July, summer; dormant spring. riding my blooded Quarterhorse The church is banked in pale madonnas. so hard his sweat makes curds We consider the wild lilies, which grow along the bridle reins. Ranch hands come in idleness, yet still are loved. to mow and turn the sweet alfalfa; Afterwards I walk, my silk dress heavy the baler binds it all for sale. in the August sun. In their overgrown garden, Seven of the best bales I save aside they nod to me. Their heavy perfume hurts in the hayloft. From a catalogue, I buy my mouth. In Mother's garden, the boxwood rules, a red plastic halter. Wild sunflowers bloom, green flanks against the bricks in formal pattern. the poplars stand up neon green Flowers there are clipped and staked; against a purple wall of thunder. trained up in the way that they shall grow. I swelter in my ornate church brocade. I forget, hurrying through October, breaking open bales to feed the work horses, Strap-like leaves late fall after their long teeth cut till frost. Divide infrequently. the pasture down to stubble. West wind I keep her garden ordered. Hoops of wire rattles seeds in the dry sunflowers, surround the baby's breath since spring. tumbleweeds bounce and sail, Their foaming summer bloom hides sewing their spines in the fragrant sage. steel stays, keeps stems from sprawling Like oriental spires against a wall of lead, under every rain. But these untended lilies, the poplars turn, and one afternoon tumbling among the twining honeysuckle, wilt I drop my mother's mirror: and sweeten without care. Kneeling here, It takes forever sweeping up. in my long skirts and emerald sleeves, which Mother would admire, I am breathless During an ice storm in December, before pink mouths gaping in the heat. the unicorn arrives, striking the fence Frosts were far too subtle this year. with one split hoof. He is rangy, thin, Much seems unseasonably green. with mangy coat and cockleburs snarling his mane. My halter misplaced, I run out with a rope to tether him. Among the poplar skeletons, BESTIARY FOR THE RANCHER'S DAUGHTER we look each other over. Sleet melts and runs on our faces. Wind whips us. I expect the unicorn in May, Escaping the weather for awhile, we skid crossing my father's pasture, through the green, across the frozen ground together to the shed, shin-deep alfalfa, past the wind-break poplars to see if there is still space mossy with leaf, to sit cross-legged among the milling, steaming herd. in the sage, combing my hair in the sun, watching myself in the mirror I borrowed from my mother's dresser.

42 POETRY NORTHWEST 43 philip Dacey Two Poems in the tiny windows roll back to zero, A USED CAR LOT AT NIGHT a spinning declaration of possibility. The cars Love has come shudder and die to the used cars. like one body The moon shines down a sexual spasm and changes their lives. releases. Under the sun they were hard, flawed, SLEEPING PARENTS, WAKEFUL CHILDREN a nervous tremor ran through the metal, When our parents were sleeping Each was separate We brought them gifts from each. Bu t now It was a whispering time community. They flow The great bodies lain down like water. They flow Upon the long bed away from their past The deep sighs adrift like a car veering Through the upper rooms to avoid the body It was a whispering time suddenly before it. When the gods slept Above them, the flags. And we made gifts for them All the long day, With paper, paints and tiny the bright triangles Scissors safe for us flapped in time Masks and rings to the anthems of countries Obscure, magical things men escape from by night, In the halted hour crossing a border. In the still afternoon Now the flags, their many The anger asleep colors become a single And the jokes we didn't understand color dreaming desire, The violent love hang perfectly still. That carried our weather The hearts of the cars All subsided to these have grown large and spiritual. Two vulnerable ones A pure blue Their hands and mouths moment wears the mask Open like babes' o f eternity. L o v e Their heads high has come down from the sky In the pillowy clouds and cooled the fever For all we knew dreaming us of the cars. The miles Sneaking in

44 POETRY NORTHWEST 45 Lest they wake and discover R UNNING WAR M O V IES BACKW A R D S Our love our fear How we thrill to propitiate, As we always suspected My sister and I those happy endings Approaching the border never last. The edge of the platform Where the gods murmured The anti-personnel bombs So precise in our placement we thought had blown to pieces Of these our constructions (we thought so often of Frivolous, fair being people ourselves) The gifts on the skirts pull themselves together Of their lives for surprise and plug their own open holes Then turning away sucking trees and cows back to place Lips and fingers a cross their shrapnel coming to a soft roundness When they woke and rising the idyllic path of lost balloons. They would never know how When or why Tanks and jeeps They would never know troop carriers and amphibious ducks Who we were retrace their treads and stall at the start of a slow rust their engines going as cold as the memories Afurk Ercegonic Two Poems children visit in war memorials Saturdays after the matinee.

KEYS Changing expressions as easily as changing shirts When the keys hang limp the enemy set down their weapons at the end of your chain like fingers or remove fingers from buttons you have lost in another life, and return home to argue (like us) asleep so long in the night among themselves at dinner tables. of your pocket their rattling withered to bone against bone, Those hard-boiled, military tacticians then you will be coming home lapse into a soft-shelled, second childhood with your collar up unlighting the barrel ends of cigars and your key pointing the way and inhaling smoke screens from reclining chairs to that house grown cold over too many years while our raw-recruit hero where this key fits its lock backs out of occupied territory like a knife in a wound and into the driveway of his small-town home and the night begins at your door (sleek profile unmarred) to creak on a hinge.

POETRY NORTHWEST 47 to resume that same job selling shoes once on the table, spin clattering to the floor, fall numb. for the rest of his flat-footed life. Some of your past adds up as you watch heads roll and snatch at heads of state you had forgot, so dumb And now the faces of peasants we need no longer care about. they are in their infinite trust in God and their own finite soul, The tears of their children no catch in the voices reciting IN Hoc sIGNovINGEs. withdrawn and unwept At large, E PLURIBUs UNUM chunks on your cents, paying toll. as they move over whole countrysides the wheels of their oxcarts You hatch DEI GRATIA REGINA and REx, who winks spinning like movie reels at LIBERTE E G A L I TE F R A T E R N ITE­ to theflopping up end and mortmain walks hand in hand with mortgage and thinks of an old beginning. you back to when you stole those; from an uncle, say a soldier or sailor, served in Europe, brought souvenirs back to Grampa's in a trunk you used to play Dennis Marden Clark was yours; you wonder if his children miss the lot, KNIFING A PIGGY BANK and it's as close to Europe as you ever got.

MAGYAR NEPKOZTARSASAG Your hand moves heads and tails into a babbling stack. — 10 filler coin The pig, speared with a butter-knife, jinks and charges back. ANNUIT COEPTIS • N OV U S ORDO SECLORUM — U.S. folding dollar lt's pretty hard to break your heart in faultless terra rima. Gary Miranda — Leslie Norris

You hold it upside down and stab it in the back. LINES FOR AN IMAGINARY SON It's something you kept coins in once, your savings, determined not to lose (once you forgot) a stack Today you occurred, perhaps for the first time, were born announcing how I've neglected you of price-fixed metal staggered like piled shavings all these years, steeped in mythologies of daughters. of Baal's heart on a formica table top, What did you do, you say, not to deserve even plunder at first of pop bottles, yield of slavings gratuitous loveP And I grope (let's say you are five) for answers, as though you had just asked me in neighbor's garbage, on roadsides where bottles stop, about sex (which you have) and wonder what the hell and lots spared by developers in your town; your mother (which you haven' t) would say. I say: later, odd change scavenged about the house and shop. Let's go for a walk.

Knifing the only pet that never bit — you found Outside, the October trees are raised fists, remnants it easier to feed — pays off: fat coins come of old losses dangling between their fingers. I think two at a time, caught between blade and spine, sound to you: Listen to trees! I say: Are you warm enoughP

48 POETRY NORTHWEST 49 I know: soon my answers will have to turn stark than sitting open-legged at sixty miles per hour as these trees. I try to remember what it was like taking everything for granted. Anyway being a boy and wish, in a weak moment, you might as any speedreader will tell you have grown up like me, afraid or perhaps too proud you needn't stare at words­ to ask anything, a briar root spiraling into itself. just a flash down to find a phrase I tell you a story: then back to the world from which poems like accidents come, breathing the line into your lungs, doing no damage. I had acousin once, older than me, who had a dog, a collie, that could find us playing hide-and-seek As for what to read, no matter where we hid, that dog smarter than any kid it is best to choose poems written after Henry Ford in the neighborhood. The cousin got killed in the war though there are exceptions like the work (except I know that isn't right because he wouldn' t of housebound Emily Dickinson­ b e old enough, but still. . .) they shot him down some poem anyway which turns in tight circles, in the cold Atlantic and no one ever found the body which you' ve never read carefully enough, it keeps shaking you off. (this is true) and I kept thinking: the dog, send the dog! At fifty or sixty or seventy miles per hour (Or was it my fatherP) you may be ready to move through it nearly as slowly as the poet did I shout then: Look, I don't mant a son, horn mould I knom or as others before you moved over this route­ horn to make you looe me! You are hurt. I want who walked horses, led mules through mud to make myself not to have said that, or explain, or say stopped for days numb beside a fire half out Now that I' ve said it everything will be all right. of the rain, who had to take wagons apart and lift them But you have already let go of my hand and are walking up a ridge. away toward the grey mouth at the end of this clutch of trees. I watch you go, wondering will you be warm When you get to enough, and why in hell did you buy that cap if you never where you are going you may put the flaps downP pick up a novel going five hundred words per minute, or have slow talk and think Dan Mil ock without the bitterness of roadside nettle dissolved in a blur. But for now keep the poem beside you, DRIVING THE INTERSTATE one hand on the wheel, the other marking the place. What to doP Save it for the open country, the cars ahead moving away, You can listen of course to the radio the cars in your mirror still miles back, no trucker beside you looking for skirts. but the music is not live and the news either moves so quickly you just can' t Off the road, lamps get out of its way, or so slowly keep lives going at night. you' ll catch up in an hour on Sunday. But you must remember your poem in the time without light, Aware of the risks of giving or taking advice everyone else home, the rain in slant lines, I say read poems. and you on the Interstate, Actually this may be safer trying to hold on.

50 POETRY NORTHWEST 51 Gary Myers I pursue the lurching shadow of my sweaty body back LOSS OF A SATYR along the newly crumbled tracks I slogged only an hour ago One would have towalk very deep into a cave to feel the sorrow, through the mirror-image pasture. and have light passed in by smooth stone (Polaris twinkled at my right, to understand the truth: his body, Orion teetered at my left; half bent into itself, half in depression; the moon, narrow as a candle, his head brotherly, as if listening to the age that stiffens in one shoulder. sparkled on smooth, blameless snow, a beach of diamonds. All his songs would have to be remembered Cedars were heaped with treasure by heart, and the vision of the nymphs, following­ among frozen cherry trees.) a belief that music was a youth of kinds. And one would have to listen closely Our sheep have all taken shelter to the trailing of his breath down the slender reed, beneath the black barn. that echo of the air at each hole, In the windless moonlight which is next to silence, next to stone. only an owl hoots against the cold

Arriving, like a premonition, while deer, silent among pines, his wind comes from as deep as one can imagine wait to hear my skis stop hissing and seems another form of dark, and the back door click shut and even then,a memory of the woods as small as the cave's distant entrance, before they wade toward the barn that single star that offers nothing to steal some hay. but the space it is.

THANKSGIVING

By the authority vested in me, a gift Peter Dauisoe Two Poems (in German, poison; in Swedish, a marriage), I write of journeys, landscapes, interceptions, expressions visible, alive, or dead. SKIING BY MOONLIGHT A milkweed pod atop its autumn stalk bulges from cold and flips itself wide open Orion reclines on his hip. to sprinkle flurries of snow among the grass. Polaris glares high at my left. They bloom, mulberry-like, for next midsummer, I glide my way homeward, nourished by milk no bitterer, no whiter a quarter-moon chasing me. than any I have tasted as a gift.

52 POETRY NORTHWEST to sail. She stories him what the cormorants told; Philip Booth Three Poems her voice spells a passage through days of fog, her hand sounds a cove quick with stars. As his mind CYCLE closes to pain, he opens every eye to remember: Stretching his ankles into high gear, the white birds come to the island stillness; from space the man commanding ten speeds pumps up beyond fogthey have flown toher hand. He hears his heart and lowers his head against against wind the distance she speaks from, yet all the north rain. He's riding into November, that earth, between them, established: how she will wait, miles from where he intended, years consenting, until his own consent is accomplished. from where he has been. Downhill now, he steadies himself on curves by how the thin wheels gyroscope; he leans NOT TO TELL LIES to feel speed, losing weight as He has come to a certain age. he settles his butt to pedal across To a tall house older than he is. the flats and outside the old suburbs. Older, by far, than he ever will be. Once he has left the suck of traffic He has moved his things upstairs, to a room which corners late sun. It warms a schooner model, the gravity of the hills gets to him: his daughter's portrait, the rock his doctor brought him he slows to how oaks cantilever, back from Amchitka. When he looks at the rock he thinks Melville; how spruce true themselves at right angles when he touches its lichen he dreams Thoreau. Their testaments shelve the inboard edge of the oak-legged table he writes on. against the sky. Gut, heart, toe, knee: He has nailed an ancestor's photograph high over his head. over and over he keeps instructing his body not He has moored his bed perpendicular to the North wall; to forget: this pumping is toward new country. whenever he rests his head is compassed barely west of Polaris. He believes in powers: gravity, true North, Magnetic North, love. In how his wife SHE loved the year of their firstborn. When­ ever he wakes he sees the clean page in For M.K.H. his portable. He has sorted life out; Attending the bed where he is near gone to ground, he feels moved to say all of it, consenting, in her high age, to every knowledge, m ost of it all. H e trie s she pulls back the tides and recalls them. to come close, he keeps coming close: he has She has kept the powers her whole life practiced: gathered himself an eye for cormorants rimming the outermost ledge, in order not waves she would read, and winds her whistle could call to tell lies.

POETRY NORTHWEST About Our Contributors

JAcK CRawFORn, JB., teaches at the State University of New York, New Paltz. Romxr Wn.soN, JB., lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He is editor of the North Amer­ ican Review. G~ BETHEL teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. JOHNS. FI.woo lives in Arlington, Mass. STRE'HEN DuNN's most recent book was published by Carnegie-Mellon Univer­ sity Press. He teaches at Stockton State College, Pomona, N.J. JoHN ALLMAN teaches at Rockland Community College, Suffern, N.Y. SBAN BENTLEYis an English major at the University of Washington. SANDRA M. GILBERT teaches at the University of California at Davis and edits California Quarterly. BRENnaN Gaz.vIN's new book, The Minutes No One Owns, will be published in November by the University of Pittsburgh Press. News for Contributors GARY GILDNEB teaches at Drake University. His latest book is Nails (University to Poetry Northwest's Donors' Fund of Pittsburgh Press). STEPHEN DUNNING is a professor at the University of Michigan and has edited POETRY NQBTHWESTreminds its readers that it is the recipient of a $1830 several anthologies of poetry. grant from the federally sponsored Coordinating Council of Literary Mag­ PHILIP FINE lives in South wellfleet, Mass. azines. Since that amount has been given to us in the form of matching MARY OI.IYER's poems have appeared recently in Prairie Schooner, Ironwood, funds, every tax deductible contribution in support of Poetry Northtvest CommonweaL,and American Scholar. from you, our readers, will be doubled until we reach that figure. The JosKPH DuEMER is a student at the University of Washington. CCLM rules stipulate that you should say you intend your gift to apply to LAuas. GROYERteaches at Seattle Central Community College. the matching-funds grant. We hope for your help. CHARLKs BAZTER teaches at Wayne State University. STuART DYBEK teaches at Western Michigan University. MARKY DANIEL is a graduate student at the University of Washington. PHII.IP DacEY lives and teaches in Cottonwood, Minn. MARKEBcaoovrc is an undergraduate at the University of Washington. DENNIs MARDEN CLARKis a librarian at the University of Utah. G~Y MIRANDAlives and teaches in Cambridge, Mass. DAN MINocK teaches at Wayne State University. G~Y MYERSis a recent graduate of the University of Iowa's Writing Program. PETERDAVIsoN s newest book of poems, A Voice in the Mountains, will be pub­ lished by Atheneum this fall. He is poetry editor of the Atlantic Monthly and director of the Atlantic Monthly Press. PHILIP BooTH s latest book of poems is Available Light (Viking Press). He teaches at Syracuse.