Editor POETRY gj „NORTHWEST David Wagoner
Coverfrom a photo of a storage facility on a farm VOLUME FORTY NUhtBER FOUR north of Stanwood, Washington WINTER 1999-2000
Jouv Bvnsro Three Poems
RoBEBY Hvasnos Three Poems
MAni KBAEBHAAB Three Poems 1.0
Buuov: Bosn Laster Yonng 12
ALLEN BI< JABOLo RA< ELIZABETH MGLAEAN The Tourist of Desire Photo by Robin Ssyfsisd To CHEBYL PENNER Periodicals postage paid at Seattle, Washinhrton, posvussvrm Send addresschanges to poetry Northwest, Trees 26 Ras 354330, Uniosrsiry of IFashingto ROBFRT Gittl«ST W I N T E R 19 9 9 - 2 0 0 0 Three Poems 30 TA«m Rvvrav kiy Father Wmtts Me To Buy a Telescope... VALFRIE L EOAII Six Postcards and an Observation . 36 John Bensko Three Poems Boa Baoors Three Poems ROBERT BE«SR ROTHKO Cherokee Removal. I. tstoLLT TE«E.'IBAvht I'<1 like to tell you a story, he said. What the Psychic Said • 42 He was sitting in his studio, you know how he was, KA«EA GLE«x past middle age and fat, his eyes behind Night Fishing 44 those glasses more anal more myopic. It's about a little girl, he said, Cuius DAHL and it has nothitig to do with why you' re here, The Governing Body . 45 nothing to do with art I mean. It's just a story. Emotion ssdthout image, at worst the wonder of sitting in an empty room. So he went on, and I was losing interest. Half the time, you know, he didn't make sense, like those dark paintings he dial before he died. You stare at them for hours and where does it get youp This thing about thc little girl, it was just about seeing her each day on his hvay home, how she was always skipping rope. II. One rectangle is blue, another red, another yellow. No, this sounds too simple. You can't do this and call it a lie. Are You Movingly if you wish to continue receiving your subscription copies of POETRY >SORT In the story, the girl is on a street corner. I loved them both, in sum wove a sound I thought of as the cloth of flowers. While beyond, the two hickering voices pORTnv N It was dark where she led me, both of us barely thirteen, to her mother's workshop. Rubber casts for plaster were heaped like an orgy ol'emptiness. Wet clay hung in plastic bags making heads more fearsome than the white deer which stalked the floor. Love at first sight. Her eyes met mine in the Mid-America Mall. Now, uncertain first moments, surrounded by silent covens of the nude, powdered forest. Ellen. I woulil never see her again. But we hid behind the oven still warm and touched as if we might feel a way to mold a life. The irish pointer, his body half painted, showed the way. A nearby gnome was shy, POETRY NORTHWEST Robert Hershon Three Poems LAST FAMOUS WORDS nobody realized the language A VOYAGE TO ATLANTA CITY would end — for Barbara Pucci like a dying sun some words are already gone Atlantic City is not in the Atlantic Ocean. the light gets weaker (If vou throw a blue chip into the Atlantic Ocean every day it just sinks, whereas a blue chip in Atlantic City silences grow longer may struggle for a few minutes first.) friendsmeet on corners and It is a different place from Atlanta, F<>ETRY NORTHWEST Mark Kraushaar Three Poems to another and I do not hold where he is wrong in his mind for I have had my own life TIIE NEIGIIBOBS — I of mingling in the wrong crowd plus I am not perfect and I had not loved On the most part I wiiuld anyone in the longest period. contribute this to Thanksgiving: Well, one day I had arrived at home cooking the tnrkey early which she to where he hail thr 10 POETHY NOBTHsvEST to keep his nose clean and he would be 3 gentleman entire lines he played; even music itself, in how it takes place, picnic, ride a boat, go out. his saxophone shushing the workl-shore, Well, that's shout it. Well, drowned in the sea of a larger music. as for me I keep myself as high as possible in excellent ntoral values With every spark that pinned a tie or cuff, and you would say I am lydng about my age. he wrapped himself in flash like a magician's disappearing act. Final days in a bed at the Ahdn, high above the riff of traflic, Bruce Bond it took a stack of LP's to put him under... that and the vide-eyed lights of the room. LESTEH YOUNG Death was a flair of embittered birds borne up Just why he flared his tenor to the side, by gravity. Who could hear him and not love head cocked, reed-clamp tvdsted in its neck, that sound, the way it lingers, hosv he raised why he bore the bell's weight in one hand a stamen at phrase's emh who wouldn't eat hours on encl he braced it there — as the other the lotus blooming there; with every record fluttered over the low valves, his cool a widened pupil falliug on its spindle. resolve flush with winrl...no one ever knesv. Sure, there were theories: for the timhre, the women; as he put it,for the birds. Each night his sax's bells dorma floated over the fire of tones he would never match, never could, however many reeds be cut; something in his tenor dreamt it was a flute, lithe aml buoyant, a horizon in his lips. And when he sank into solos, his head heavy, bemused, you could spot the black stones of his eyes, gin-soaked and gleaming; discouragement or desire, he drowned it in music: sluggish grains of jailtime, slip knots in a woman's gaze, one day's rhythm of Pall Mails and minor cash going through him, or the huge sums to young tenors who copped POFTRY SORTIIVVRST Alless Bradess Four Poems or like browsing a museum from the beginning when running the trap line was a gesture of love bet pozzur N D 8 T H It rests a paw heavy ovsrr your heart, Everything necessary to inaintain every foundation ever built so far a sign, you think, of threat or affection. is found simply by fondling the latch, It rests its jaw upon the other pillow as easily as recalling an unfond past, and growls premonitions of the north: and then by handling each orderly tray of tools too simple to call ban Dig much deeper to find those lining the bottom that fit the hands Jarold Ramsey perfectly of any man svho constnicts a reluctant living sssth his hands: the square a cluinsy booinerang SIGNAGE perfect at setting the recoril straight; a claw hammer meant to hammer On a Route 390 overpass whatever it can to your expectations, for all the northbound worM to see then claw them apart on second thought; in yellow three-foot strokes and finally, ultimately, the spirit level KERRY I LOVE YOU — MIKE with its single, jaundiced eye I love you both whatever happened leveled expectantly in your direction even if Kerry now takes another route and rolling whenever you breathe, to work and Mike now rues his reckless artistry the onlv bubble in the world hanging over the railing after midnight that won't burst at the slightest breath. painting his heart out upside down and baclnvards the true posture of love 16 POETRY N 0 R T 11SVE ST ElizabethjkfcLagan propelled by the long flex of the spine, why else does the violin, each stroke smoking with rosin, drive that music into THE TOURIST OF DESIRE our veins'? I wfll probably never be a whale, though I have seen them mating (you may have too), perhaps on Sunday nights, idly sipping wine and listening to musie, one of those pieces Tons Hansen for solo violin where Bach forgets his duty to God and lets the violin follow its intemperate longing. NO LEAVES The T.V.'s mute and tuned to PBS, where it's always Nature. Vehaleswere cows once: imagine them This time I promise. Not even one in the surf like a bunch of tourists, falling in love green on the tree or dead on the ground with the sea, and here they are, two shadowed immensities or midway almost suspended in air, slurring the light, ansi a third thing like a dark rope though it is October and cold and so full of vdnd the moon last night went to bed in the river, appearing between them. You wish you had popped in a blank and walking the dog this morning tape so you could savor the moment: it must have taken in the leftover dark before daylight hours, days of lurking under the wha)es, I heard the cackling crv of the dead salt sucking pores aml the hunran breath breaking with every blindfolded step. against them to capture this uncoiling. But I have promised. Not one. And in Prague at a monastery, books You are half my age and live in a country I have been exiled from, stacked to the ceiling, the room roped off, you can only gaze blankly at the ceiling fresco, where it is summer (july, I think) "The Struggle of Manldnd to Know Real History," and the fierce sun beats down, and of course vou want to know it too. In a side aisle or where it is no season ever, for weather is a religion I don't believe among shells and a desiccated turtle, the actual whalish thing: you observe: the wind merely udnd a long unjointed arm narrowed to a thumb. Form follows a joy,a nuisance — but never a messenger I'unction, and you imagine the moment: how it hesitates, sent to tell you what you are ready caresses, then levers across the mountainous flesh at last to hear. to find its little cave. Of course there's a sign (don't tsmch): For nmv I give you the slant light of autumn: can't you see the girls like startled swans hurrying past gold beaten so fine in clumps, the school boys smirking, what else whatever it touches secretly shimmers. to do but long to look and touch and be held, armless in It hangs in the air for one little moment, blue water, forever October. 18 POETttY NottTIlwEST Lynne Knight Three Poems LosT IHVEH TORY Another day. Eversehing's on the bed, the contents of her dresser, purse, ELEGY: PRELUDES the old rcd wallet that she shakes: ASHES, ASHES They'ce stolen ecertd blonmin' cent. Things fall out of the tv. Out of I tell her it's safer to keep the newspaper, the sugar bowl. money in the bank, then begin Figures rush from burning houses, putting everything away. She peers some without coats or shoes. as if I'm their conspirator, Viy mother's mouth craters with fear. whispers into her hand. She gdps the chair, her screams Ntcur Fooo undoing like rain in»ind. No rnatter I dream, needing to be where that it's a cahn spring afternoon, night is not. Shehas nn profile that the only threats lic within her, says the one beside me in the boat. old woman with dementia in a blue chair No one known by land. Someone inCalifornia. Thenews from there who feeds nse sweet milk, is the same: fear, ruin, the brain sings through my skin. running mtt on itself like someone running from a burning house, THE SEVERING eyes;dreadyfull of ash. When the dog brought the pig's head Rope Toss from the farm across the street and dropped it Mv mother stares out the high windows. on the back walk, it was mid-summer, warm Clou 20 POETRY NORTHWEST flies swirl up like smoke and settle back. WEIGHT The dog watched through a barely open eye. He was drawn by thc fire. A stupid dog, who the week before had herded He loved tl ie word inolten. the Hannos' cmvs onto the farmhouse porch, He didn't know what else to tell her. then sat and barked as they clattered back There would be work, people wanted railings, and forth, their blank eyes spinning wild. chairs, sconces. And there was power I poked some more and saw a pig eye in making it: 22 POETRY X 0 R T tt SY ES T Olirrer Rice Susan Blaciru ell Ramsey IIOW ETIqOLOCICAL ABE TITESE PILASTEBS POIrIEGBANATE Oh, Bebecca, heavy lady in the midtown throng, is what she told the painters hosv nostalgic are these facades, she wanted her dining room. Not cinnabar, these turrets and these porticos. not cowardly salmon or high terra-cotta. And they would go on trying till she got it. Oh, Charlie, missing person on the museum steps, heir to Georgian maxims and Bomanesque wiles, Anyone buying into this neighborhood how artifactual are these fenestrations, should insist on a clause which stipulates these llntings and these campaniles. the seller must move five hundred miles away, a ten year margin before she can return. Oh, Sean and Yoke and Ed, telecrew at the scene of the news, Instead, they move two blocks and monitor upon whom the annals have devolved, rococo and baroque, what She is doing to My house. how documentary are these totems of glass and steel, Conversely, new owners hardly cross the threshold these coppered finials and these gilded domes. before they lift a leg and mark it Mine Oh, Alicia, skipping rope in the indigent street, by stripping wallpaper, carpets, cabinet doors. receiver of fables, Ionian and Gothic and cubist, Interior decoration as aggression, how genealogical are these pediments, so administered and so received, these friezes of garlands and cupids, these comices and these balustrades. pacing in the granary, shitting upstream. So now, two families later, probably that dining room's declined to Whisper Beige, Baw Linen, Oystershell, Ahnond or Sand. Something understated, tasteful, safe. Two painters quit, one of them in tears, one went insane, one ran away, one die 24 POETRY NORTHWEST Cheryl Penner Trees and brooms are at yet another impasse Trees are tired of propping up your nostalgia TREES Have become tongue-in-cheek regarding snowfall Now see the sunrise as heavy handed Trees have become empty of meaning and messages Have given up their crusade for comfort They no longer nod as you trip up the sidewalk No kmger hend down with ofl'erings Have become simple-minded, bearing smooth lozenges rather than peaches Trees have forgotten how to measure the children Trees weep for other trees Trees are nearer than ever to the answer Have quit opening their heavy coats to the dishelievers Trees have removed their shoes at the door Have bent over backwards on your behalf Trees have forgotten your dreams Have used up their courage No longer refuse to lie down with their enemies Trees no longer remember what came before wind They can't recall the last time they gave birth Are ashamed to admit that they should have listened to the stars No longer ask to be told the story of oceans Would rather not give their blessing Trees whisper all night of when to set sail Trees tell themselves that meadows will always remember Have stoppetl washing their hair in the rivers Trees will no longer come back for you on the long quiet road Will no longer hush their rustlings before the rain comes klave given up svaiting for the party to begin Trees in their sadness tell the evening to get lost Disguise their longing by showing off their trinkets They no longer perfume your bed with their branches Have lost faith in steady rain They dream of sheets flapping in innocent breezes Can't bring themselves to make peace with water No longer cradle your aimless wanderings Trees can't help but envy your undisturbed slumber Have become clever, and lift up their dresses at a moment's notice 26 POETRY NORTHWEST Erin ilfalone Jnlie Lanos Two Poems POLICY FOR LONELY HEARTS THE LIST Please odoise us of yrasr progress. — Stare Farm iusurauee Those five nickels from her husband: each one minted in a differmit year Dear Owner, tlse year they met, the year they married, your house is in sad the good years which brought children need of repair. The porch railing what kind of a woman loses something like that? is missing teetlu and moss grows bright green Or loses the bleached-out bones of a scal from the shingles. Last year's leaves e white rib, a skull — washed up on the sand sag the gutters. Please cut away atNeah Bay,taken home for the mantel? all branches that snag How could those just disappear'? visitors, the loopholes The list grows to include the sound of their eyes. Your hedges are unsightly, lumpy cousins —we' ve noticed of niosing water, and to include precision, cats and squirrels for it is more precisely the sound of an ocean avoid them. Also, uinter promises which is lost, and then the taste of salt a nasty fall on someone's lips as well as the sense on those front steps. We'd advise of who that someone was. Soon the list that you take pains and scrape encrusted eggs fills a page, then pages: all thc lost items from Halloweens long past ofi' the robin-blue walls. Remember, are somewhere. Or no place at all, which is not where an)shing belongs. your home isyour castle. For coverage And ivhat kind of world is this, she wonders, to continue, you must where everything we look for is gone? show more care. Plant a red garden. Find a wife and spruce up the place with children. We don't believe COUNTING SONG there's time to spare. We don't believe in time alone. The ladder One sun. Two pillows on a bed. leaning forlonily in the eaves Three children grown depresses us. You are not yet and gone, their leaving left lost — see how the shells four-seasons-in-a-row of passing cars throw light in rows, left the table set off your rattletrap windows? foryears. Whistdo I do note? Floef ingers inode rs Itesrsd. Forget the body as a home, POETRY NOttTH4VEST forget the head. Instead, three illegal sets of studded tires. They snuffed count six beans sown, all your blue-glass 30 POETRy NORTHWEST Reaching as she had to like a supplicant GOLDEN ROD GALLS Who clearly understands what she's done Wrong, ours was the guilt of watching This aflernoon the stars are burning as ever. As ever Her in secret, lying in our bed. it's a long climb. Who wouldn't love once to hear After she pinned the last sheet, Pillow case, or stocking, she'd disappear the music of the elements, each absolute pitch, harmonies Into the barn. In her absence, we lay waiting defined by the ding Just now though I' ll take these small For nineteen yellow tuinblers. Somehow she'd hoist herself up onto the floor tokens: a downy ivoodpecker, a snowy field filled Above her bulbs, into ceremonious with stalks of goldenrod, and the swellings on the stalks, Cooing, into a bowing congress ol'pigeons. We said she must call first, Bere u;e go! tumors really, outsides tanned and shellacked In Dutch and pull a rope, spr!nbring against Afternoons like this we see them flicking through the stands of goldenrod, clinging to stems, taldng surveys of galls, servants to nothing but their own connoisseurship„ the wintry bou eating cake soaked in milk, and the holes the woodpeckers drill through to the chambers within are perfectly functional, as is the downy's flight, as is the music of feathers: such impeccable navigation, one golden gall to the next. POETRY t 34 POETRY NORTHWEST Valerle L Egar and bitter end. Sitting Bull died here. Ilis brothers follow. No question though from the radio: In Bennett County, the wheat SIX POSTCARDS AND AN OBSERVATION is ripe. A Cairo evening. In the souk, ilasks of perfumed oil. I hesitate. Is it open'? The girl has eyes ol'a child, but a White water lilies next to gutted fish. Overripe hotly ripe peaches till the air with a bloom of flies and siveet with puberty. She is wiping tables and has not learned rotting flesh. A dark man presses me, Look! Look! the look At the rugs. At the sirarabs. At the blind child at his feet. that imites. Her mother yells at her in Creole. The girl' s Every phrase of Arabic is a locked question. question is halting, in English she practices with the nuns. Will you How yiiu going to pay.' is the question. rest yourfeet p The car smokes at the side of aJersey road, Oil It is morning, too early for my feet to be tired hut I sit, order slicks the pavement. He leans on the truck, stares at his feet, sweet waits for an answer. I'm a stranger, stranded and ripe croissants, cafe au lait, Already the day is awash in sun aml for the taking. Visa. Atastercaril. I open mywallet. Look. tanning oil. He lowers the hook. The breeze from the marsh smells sweet. From thc air, it's a different view. Oil refineries, lit like Piano and trumpet swells spill into the street. Siceet amusement parks. Ripe Jesordt Saturday night in Key West, Tonight, every question garbage b uges skinuning sweet water like bugs. People is a question for tomorrow. Thc sax sounds fine. I look disappear. I look through a cracked window. A girl dances. Her siveat is oil at an abstract 30,000 feet below and like the angels, of sandahvood. Every spin throws a trail of ripe haven't a question. suggestion at her inan's jitterbugging feet. Malaise and the headache that comes from being 12,000 feet above sea level. I sip tea made with coca leaves, ssweet with honey. Cuzco, Peru. inca stronghold... ripe... silrer... gokl plundered... Piznrro. Not one rpiestion for the gnnde. I hear her words through a coil of dnigs and fatigue. But when I see the Quechua woman, I look. Drive through the Pine Ridge Reservation aud look at the fatal accident signs that line the highway. One every few feet. X marks the spot. The men drink ivood alcohol, «nti-freeze, oil of turpentine, and fly like eagles to meet a fleet POETRY NORTIIWRST Bob Brooks Three Poems amazing how many nouns conic swarnlnlg like kids to the ice-cream truck HORUS NON NUMERO NISI SERElVAS at the sound of a single attractive adjective. Most sundials are flat discs Hut she wouldn't just let it with a prong sticking out, slide out like that: she' d a gnomon, a shadow-caster at anv given moment put a pause in, preventing that moment a hesitation. She'd be at from seeing the sun. nlol'e pales to sholv nle how the words have awkxvard, Most suns are spherical gaseous uncomfortable edges. flow they could flalne-storms in whose light catch in a person's throat the sundial is obliged to teach by darkness, and whose heat prevents close argument. WH ILE YOU WAIT Most arguments, like most sundials, A new book's always stick up for themselves. corning out as if Othelsvise, where would they be? last week's won' t Most are circular: work now. About hop in anytime. Hop in an>svhere. how to breathe. About cats. Insatiable appetites you might say THE WAY THAT YOU SAY IT but what other kinds are there? Or should be. Too snlooth, she s;ll's, Or obsolescence. As if as speaking of the chicken sausage, soon as it's in h ow it's ground too fi n print it begins e good sausage ought to have degrading: tule. That some variation in it, telephone books appear some coarseness of texture no more than yearly's merely an artifact but I think for a moment ofreproduction she means something else: Ditto the dictionary. the waiter, the udne, both A stricture electronic syrupy, the music listings are not oozing out of conceahnent subject to. Where in the ceiling, the marriage; formerly, delete one POFTRY N 0 9 T 1 1lv E 3 T 39 name from a page Robert Bense or add one and it' s cut and paste; four names in sequence, CHEROKEE REMOVAL bang goes the book. The brain can open Rattle of broken milkxveed pods. room up and close Frosted squash rennes. space as fast as Soldiers rasping hands thought or better: overfire. Tamped earth, vdthout thought. Almost red dust silting the pine. so 'too the processor'. A nation taken prisoner. Being nonmechanical. Five tribes stockaded. In the cokl No stones, no trees. cattle aml horses stiffening. No changes to breathing Soldiers in the rearguard or cats have occurred torching house and bann in recorded memory, Timbers sparking high only approaches to, in the night sky. Lame horses. the writing down of, A partial trust in the upturned codification. Which faces of oxen. itself promotes. Dogs in a sniff hnnting Unwritten laws last food. Fighting off buzzards hest. Write it, regret it, along the trail. The dying Regret it, reidse it. and the dead dropped off, Give baby a name. «Tapped in blankets. Relax, my xvife says. Soldiers riding escort. I am relaxed. Like the cat: The living will ivalk just look at him. Don't touch. a thousand miles, marched to the river, and Green's Ferry. To the slow beginning west. Ice hanging in the trees. A y'rl who wasthree years old writing in a book of remembrances at Cape Girardeau I cried only once I think. They took my father. Hou to forget, I'm almost the lost. Winter of 1838 swallowed in the hugeness of America. Blind gut of the river. The river remembers nothing. PORTHY N 0 8 T it SV E ST Mol/y Tenenbesum from the entry closet and button it upp He gave vou a pin of kissing faces moliled together, gloisdng on the collar. You must be either completely alone or wholly one with another. WHAT THE PSYCHIC SAID Ytthite smuilgy bloom on purple grapes, the drizzling roses. This is not your era. If you are a moon and empathy is light, You are kneeling in a garden. how I'ull before yim breaky Yet, you' ve more to le;un from him. In the house, the sun spools everywhere, and you coulil sit In the dou>way of a house you stand, not rich or poor. in one place forever, no hours passing. Solitude blurs edges, I can't see Money is irrelevant, and this is why the day if someone else is there. you enter, house-door pressed shut behind you, feels abstract, lines draivn with straight-edge, protractor. This is not your era, that's why Except your high school geometry teacher you can't find a job. said steakineat and raisin for statement and reason, Behind wasdng grapevines, foreground dazed so your answers taste like mince. udth roses, your shirt's work-blue Solitude is a castle — whether you' re rinsing slivers up and down, the lush closing over. the dishes or kissing yi>ur love, ahvays you walk You grow wider in empathy, straighter in reason, on the ramparts, eyes brushed by night's rushing wings. but these are not your trne directions. Gold rooms and dim ones parquet the house, You belong >vhere you can step and far, through the honey of dust-crusted windous, from the house in your bathrobe, ripening skyscrapers sway, silver horses. grapes at your cheek, roses Say he never came back. Would you still in lullabies soft at your shoulder. love to be alone' ? A figure stands l>y you, the shape of a man, but you see grass through him, You should have lived in thc 30s, 40s, I'm not sure, but back he has never grown real, and this when women coulddo what they wanted when no one was looking. is your lifelong sorrow, Now everyone looks all the time. You cannot sit anywhere for long, time simmering The job was tn boil summer jam. sunsets in shatters. God's roiling voice The job ivas to gather windfalling walnuts, fruit and hips boinneil 47 POETRY NORTIIWEST 43 Karen Glenn Chris Dahl NIGHT FISHING THE GOVERNING BODY Lantern scans, a searchlight Tonight the Chinese emperor will sleep over water. My father and I vdth the 47th concubine. The night after, are floundering. I am twelve. the 54th. He's just retun>ed frum war games Two court la>lies in Japan. YA>esvafk trail bushes through special red ink in Neuse River water, metal gigs and fro»u> over their task of scheduling. in hand, searching for the tell-tale shapes There is magic to consider, of flounder. For camouflage, they bury pregnancies, the monthly bleeding themselves in sand. Still and the compounding of the yin essence their outlines give these fish away, through the proper ratio (concubine like a girl's small breasts to 3rd wife, 2rxl, consort) against an outgrown sweater. required fi>r the emperor to honor the empress I feel lost. He's been gone on this month's ruost two years, is as strange to me auspicious dav. as the metal poles we carry, poles designed to stab. The emperor broods over the silence of the general he's sent to Ha-rien The >vind is hot. The stars to suppress the uprising. outline the sky in constellations. Two eunuchs in his bedchamber shake out I am al'raid. I don't want the straw n>atting and arrange to find the fish. I would not have the heart silk covers. Entering her bath to lift the gig. I scuff the 47th concubine dreams through water, stirring sand. she will please the emperor, will be favored. She pinches My father sees. He starts her crooked tooth to sing. He kicks up bet>veen her knuckle and thumb. No matter sand like I do. He takes how often she tries. it will not t>vist straight. my hand. I>Ve splash, we shuffle Still, she is almost beautiful, her hair throngh the s>wirling water. rnffling ala>ut lu r face with the a>vk>vardness of a young crow. The fish are safe. And I am safe, One of the lucky ones The moon shines. The lantern shines. she has already slept >44th the emperor Tbe water shines. My father and I once this year. Sbe was a virgin then, are going home. a young girl just sent 44 POETRY NORTIIVVEST from the newly conquered Northern province. leaving the candle flickering. Since, she has studied The young eunuch opens carefully the small box the manual of various positi<>ns, kisses. where he kei ps his most She wonders if she' ll be brave enough precious treasure: the dried l>uttims to try the butterfly caress of his testicles and penis. He satisges himself on the emperor's male member. he will be buried as a ivllole Illall. The emperor rubs at his eyes with the pahns of his hands. In Ha-rien the general has been slaughtered He would like to sleep. and the army retreats. But he must see to this border agreement The 4 r th concubine steps into an empty corridor with the northern horse people. And decide on her way to climb what to send the King a vermilion staircase. of the southern peninsula in return for the royal elephant. The re The younger of the eunuchs lays out thc sleeping robe while the elder, udth great difficulty, pees through a quill. The younger runs his hands over intiuiate stitches. Seventeen women and half a year's time to suggest the subtle passage of ilragons from faded earth to the deeper blue heaven of the euiperor's shoulders. The 47th concubine rises and extends her right hand. She receives a silver ring to ivear into the bedchamber. Tomorrmv it will be moved to her left hand. IF she conceives, she may replace it with gold. She could give birth to the next emperor! The emperor sighs and ivalks toward the far room POETRY NORTHWEST About Our Contributors Juua Brt sxo tcachcs at the University of Memphis. The University ol'htassa chusetts Press published his The tvatermmt'.s Children in (994. Rosy!w Haasuots lives in Brookhm aod edits )lang(ug lxuxse. His latest book of poems is The Genuau Luaaric (Hanging Loose Press, 1999), M ms Kau!sussa lives in hladison, %viscous(a. Bat!ca Boun directs the Creative kvriting Prugrau! at the University of North WE NEED YOUR HELP Texas and is the poetry editor of A au rinm Lite rani Rcr icu. BOA Editions published his lludiography in 1997. Asses Basuru lives in Puyallup, Washington. Poetry Northwest is in i t s f o rtieth year of u n interrupted publication. Unlike a distressingly large number of American literary Jaaoox Rsussr lives in Rochester, New York. ( lis most recent book is Hand Sitadcua (Quarterly Ressew of Literatare, ) 989). magazines, it has not disappeared, ahered its format, or curtailed its quarterly appearances under the stress of increased printing costs and Emzxus'rn htcLsoxu teachers at an alternative high school in Porttaud, Oregon. higher postal rates. It continues to publish the best poetry it can find. The University of Washington is supporting it to the limit of present Tost H.susen teaches at Northen! State Uuiversity in Aberdeen, South Dakota. resources, but in spite of our increased circulation and a recent LYN!ss KNlutlr lives in Berkeley, California. Her Erst book was Dissolriag increase in our subscription price, there remains a substantial gap Borders (Quarterly Ressew of Literature, (996). between our income and our expenses. Our readers have helped Ouvra Rtcz lives in Naples. Florida Hc is a former program director 1'or the generously in the past. Their contributions have kept us going.,Won' t Peace Corps aud the Ford Foundation. you please join them? Gifts to Poetry Northwest are tax deductible. Susxa Bxxcxusu. Rxxtsay works as a bookseller in Kalamazou, Michigan. Cavan. Pruxra lives in Seattle. For the sake of our bookkeeping, if you are making a contribution Eaux MA!.ous has n!oved recently from Colorado Springs to Seattle. to the magazine and at the same time are renewing your subscription or subscribing for the first time, would you please make out separate Jun z I.smos is a graduate student iu the Creative Writing Program at the University of VVashiugton, checkso Thank you Roaaar Gacusr teaches at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Mim!esota. Western )vlichigan University's New Issues Press has just published his Thc David Wagoner Smnllext Bird ia North A!nerica. Editor TANIA Rt;NYAN lives in Northbrook, illinois. VALEalf L. Eoxa is studying screenusiting at The New School in Nexv York City. She lives in Titusville, New Jersey. Boa Baooxs lives in Concord, Massachusetts. Ruav!sr Batssa lives in Doylestowu, Pennsylvania. Mol.la Tatssuaxust teaches at North Seattle Community College. Her By a Thread wall be published soou by Van tvcst tr Company. Kxllru GI,FNN lives in New York Citv. Coats Danu lives in Olssupia, tvashingtou. Stillwaters Press published her chapbook Mra Dahl 1!i the Seasonof Cuh Scouts.