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P POET RY + NORTHWEST VOLUME EIGHTEEN NUMBER ONE

EDITOR SPRING 1977 GWEN HEAD Four Poems . JAY MEEK EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS Two Poems...... 10 Nelson Bentley, William H. Matchett ROB SWIGART Bone Poem.. .. ., ...... JOAN SWIFT COVER DESIGN Plankton...... 16 Allen Auvil DOUGLAS CRASE Three Poems...... 17 J OHN HOLBRO O K Coverfrom a photograph of the entrance to Starting with What I Have at Home 19 a dude ranch near Cle Elum, Wash. MARK McCLOSKEY Two Poems...... 20 D IANA 0 H E H I R F our Poems...... T he Leaves. . . 24 BOARD OF ADVISERS ROSS TALARICO Leonie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman, T wo Poems. . . ,Jackson Mathews, Arnold Stein WILLIAM MEISSNER D eath of the Track Star...... 28 T. R. JAHNS

T he Gift...... 29 I'OETRY NORTHWEST S P RING 1977 VOL UME XVIII, NUMBER 1 DEBORA GREGER Published quarterly by the . Subscriptions md manu­ Two Poems...... 30 scripts shonld be sent to , 4045 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Univer­ LINDA ALLARDT sity of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105. Not responsible for unsolicited

T wo Poems...... manuscripts; all submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed 31 envelope. Subscription rates: U.S., $5.00 per year, single copies $1.50; Canada JOSEPH DI PRISCO $6.00 per year, single copies $1.75. T he Restaurant...... ROBERT HERSHON © 1977 by the University of Washington We Never Ask Them Questions .. Distributed by B. DeBoer, 188 High Street, Nutley, N.J. 07110; and in the West KITA SHANTIRIS by L-S Distributors, 1161 Post Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94109. Monomony . 34 JOSEPH BRUCHAC P O E T R Y N O R T H W E S T Clear Cut ...... DICK HAMBY S PRIN G 1 9 7 7

Two Poems...... 36 ALBERT GOLDBARTH What They Don't Say in the High School Text

on Spontaneous Combustion...... 38 STUART FRIEBERT Your Mother, the Alcoholic ...... 39 Gwen Head Four Poems JOHN DELANEY

Typographical Signs...... 40 THE TEN THOUSANDTH NIGHT GLENN ARTHUR HUGHES

Advice to An American ...... 41 Prince, this is my last story. L i s ten JACK BUTLER Beefeaters Make Better Lovers of God, or See! See Where to the din that screams through clenched teeth into your ears. Christ's Blood Streams in the Cheeseburger...... Feel the hot grit scour your eyelids, and the force W ILL W E L L S that lifts and whirls you through thinnest air to the uttermost

Two Poems...... 43 edge of the world, effacing all inscriptions, RAEBURN MILLER as the djinn's furious breath sputters and stops. Paranoia...... 44 MARK VINZ This is the last oasis. An obsequious vapor Resolution . 44 hovers above the sandstone spines of palm trees ROBERT LIETZ and their hacked, bedraggled foliage. Restless among them, F ather: Second Thoughts, . . . behind them, grimy silhouettes you guess RACHEL NORTON as camels, cattle, hinds, black goats, pass Echogram...... 46 and repass, their fabulous colors crushed to dun. JULIE MISHKIN

For All We Know ...... 47 The hidden water jangles like a miser's purse, MEKEEL McBRIDE and you enter the last palace. Erected this instant, Mangoes and Clean Water . . 48 or coalesced, it has been here always, crumbling, or heaped up again,a dune formalized.

One for the Deer ...... 49 Pass, prince, through the intricate portals that clamp shut EDWARD HIRSCH as the glittering passages pale and narrow, while Apologia for Buzzards. . . . 50 the dust you tread turns ever whiter and finer, ROGER GILMAN desert skin no sun touches. Two Poems...... 51 VERN RUTSALA Now gloat over your last treasures: c orroded chests Two Poems . brimming with the mild rainbow eyes of victims, HAROLD WITT the stolen glare of diamonds; and lamps to whose spouts

H ot Air Balloon ...... 54 you lean without touching, listening RONALD WALLACE for the voice of murderous wind, and the vast Triumphs of a Three-Year-Old conspiracies of shipwreck. Scuttle over this wealth though the tongues of my whole zoo rattled like clappers, and fall, drowned and gasping, into the final though by then I had perfected all my little tricks of dentition, room. You are marooned in hollow glory and my bones — this is prophetic! — functioned like slide rules. carved by a giant tongue. The grandiose spiral of your life narrows to thirst. Before you, veiled, Just when I got things right, they said I'd retired. the last woman waits, salt-white, wavering, But I went where the work was. a fountain of tears grown old beyond all fiction. The modern world offers too many theatres. And now the clever hasps of her heart spring open. The price of art is anonymity. My lord, you are enthroned there, tiny, gorgeous, Nobody recognizes the aberrant blip on the oscilloscope, expectant. the unexplained ghost on the late show, But I have lost all my voices the alarm in the peaceful house. however many clog-eared nights remain. The times are against me: c o nsider Prince, it has always been the same story those cereals more permanent than marble. and always it ends in death. The work now is sterile, all bit parts and banality, those hideous lives of agar and centrifuge, PROTEUS as if simple replication were ever enough! Greek Mythology. A prophetic sea-god in the service of Poseidon (Neptune). I'm a classicist. I liked When seized, he would assume different shapes, so trying to escape proph­ roles I could sink my teeth into. esying. Hence, one who easily changes his appearance or principles. — Webster's Neto International Dictionary, Second Edition And only my vacations, being sunlight on a Dutch wall, or a hatch of Monarch butterflies by an abandoned railhead,have kept me My master liked to play tricks. He'd toss — I can't say whole — but going. a shaggy blue paw at the shore and when he jerked it back like a clumsy conjurer I'm at the top, now, of my forms there'd be mullet jumping, or a ransom and I'm staying put. of unspent agates, gone with the next wave. I am anything I choose Little things. though you' re too slow to follow No matter how hard he tried while I run through all my frequencies, visible, invisible, his heart was too vast, liquid and cold with the rippling grace of a dancer at the barre. to cram into one body. I'm more volatile. I think now he told me Virtuosity has its hazards. Faster! Faster! My sine waves snap and hum like rubber bands. what to do out of jealousy. My peacocks and my coelacanths melt together into that gray, bureaucratic blur your dull eyes, Like any craft, it was hurtful and crude at first. beating twelve plodding times per minute, How I struggled to throw the combers on, a pelt mistake for normal that seldom fit. mistake for yourself. I blush to recall my juvenilia: the three-legged bears, the tailless crocodiles. My audience didn't notice. But I know, I warn you, where I am going Even then they complained I didn't communicate and my great speed steadies me.

POETRY NORTHWEST A MUSICAL OFFERING two brass urns in leaded window niches through which the blue day shines for Marvin MeGee and a grand piano. I A girl raises the lid At Christmas, your telegram: sits down and plays I love you. I' ve lost a Bach partita. There is pure, airborne order. your telephone number. No one The room lights up with blue butterflies. else gives me such presents, although I can't remember now A moment only. Her fingers stammer and stop. what, when I called you, we said. The wings clap shut. The thread of music snaps. Patiently she goes back, repeats, pieces together II the broken ends. There is a way out The nearer I came to my native city, the more frequent of the dark house. She must have the wit to play it, were the lettersfrom my father. I therefore hurriedforward as fast as I could, although myself far from u ell. IV My mother's disease was consumption. Seven weeks ago she died. Last year I sent my piano, Ah, who was happier than I when I could still older than I, younger utter the sweet name, mother, and it was heard? by far than you, away to be rebuilt. And to whom can I say it now? Where it stood, the percussion marks I have passed of my pedal heel overlapped very few pleasant hourssince my arrival here. like ragged valves, at the top To the asthma which Ifear may develop of a lopsided heart outlined in yellow varnish. into consumption is added melancholy as great an evil as my malady itself. Pianos age as we do. In Augsburg you lent me three carolins, but I The soundboard, that heartwood must entreat for a time your indulgence. dries with time into its glory. Myjourney cost me a great deaI, and I have not Cellulose, lignin, its ranks the smallest hopes of earning anything here. of vegetable pipes hum at the least touch. Fate is not propitious to me here in Bonn. Pardon my chatter;it was necessary But the metal plate, under tons for myjustification. of deep-sea pressure, buckles I am, with the greatest respect, and sags like a sunk galleon. Your most obedient servant and friend­ The rigged strings go slack. Here, Bits of wire and felt on page eighty-nine, sunk in my own life, sprout like hair in odd places. I abandoned Beethoven, and since have read no further, The machine, in short, decays. The singing voice nor played his music, nor written to you. falters, damped by excessive tolerances. III In the dark house all that remains Now what a comeback! Copper strings like store teeth, is a gas log on the stone hearth a giant clipspring bolted into the belly

POETRY NORTHWEST (that curve more tender than any living flank ), THE FACTS OF LIFE and the huge shifty voice of a ventriloquist. for Lee

My cyborg,my pony, I don'tknow you, The body i~ not on youi side with your face-lift and your megaphone, mysterious While you are trying to sleep, or writing a poem like all my old friends. in your head, it shelters the shadiest activities. In the attic V they show blue movies Heartbroken when the Great War began and on the ground floor old La Perouse stopped eating. G i d e found his piano teacher is an establishment whose interior in a threadbare velvet armchair, not wanting to die is red, dim, plush. in the bed he shared with his termagant wife. The shutters were almost closed. Imagine that dark room Commotion in the bordello~ with its senile clutter: a pile of hatboxes; The doors swing wide, the walls of the place are shaking. a bureau covered with uncut books; a garbage can A mob of customers barges in. full of worn-out shoes; a dozen spirit lamps, It is clear they are all villains, lit and unlit, like random votive lights; so many abstract twitching moustaches, untouched glasses of cider, and flies circling so many leering eyebrows. loud in the August heat. The old man's face They riot, yet all goes swimmingly. was parchment white, spattered with the confetti But one skulks behind the portieres. of age, fever, chagrin. Picture his mouth, He looks for a hidden door. flabby and toothless, working its cud of grief. Gide slipped him swallows of cider and sips of broth You would not like the madam. each time he paused between injuries. Then he eased him She is fat. She lolls in an antechamber. to his feet, found his hat, and helped him downstairs. She doesn't come out for the party. She pouts. The truth is she never So the man who had written The Immoralist wanted to leave her sisters. and the old musician went their ways, La Perouse But he finds her magnetic. to his cafe, while Gide, unable to write, He's a plunger. He loses his head. played Bach all day, "preferring," he noted later, Spiderlike, she swallows him. "the fugues with a joyful rhythm" though the war went on. But he doesn't die. They are beside themselves repeatedly, Retelling this fable, I think of you and am comforted. chromosomes clinging and cleaving, genes kissing their doubles. VI This goes on for months. Old man, Ibeg you, do not The bordello becomes a machine shop. die yet.Teach me again It is a growth industry. the art of things done badly Overcrowding ensues. for love. In another scenario the floozie sulks alone.

POETRY NORTHWEST It's an off night. The customers their sad lives, find the atmosphere poisonous. One or two take a look around which if combined might be adequate to a palace, But she isn't there, or she's wearing her hair in curlers. might even resemble one life. The place isn't what it used to be. So afteran emince of beef bourgeois Trash it! Tear down the curtains, to which the peasants are invited, rip the red paper to shreds, it being their house, yank the stuffing out of the pillows. It all goes out with the garbage. the czarevna sits at their drawing room spinet and waits for the prelude to begin. Each time, you are the informer, Her great-aunt is coughing, the outraged moralist, the vice squad. and acros's the road there are branches down, The body'? It only wants to make you happy. French chandeliers in the workers' orchards.

Then, in such a time of miracles and feasts, Jay Meek Two Poems would it be provident to leave, and to what could one ever hope to return s PRELUDE TO RIMSKY-KORSAKOV 3. Sometimes it seems the grocer's striped awning 1. is a keyboard on which sunlight plays, The houses along the Moskva are like houses in coloring books, even the gardens, but silently, as if his shop were a museum, which seem to be made of something like snow, but it's altogether ramshackle, and under it are oranges covered with snow which he erases in his sleep how the roofs slant down to the white grass. until they become more than simply oranges, And this is only the beginning, more succulent than before. as the white gladioli bloom under the eaves, as a gateway stands, or almost stands. It is as though a czarevna had begun screaming / at the overthrow and death of her father, 2. but in a silent movie, The houses along the Moskva are like houses everywhere, in need of more and one in watching felt intimidated than maintenance alone: by the threat here the butcher lives, and here the grocer. of incompletion, the dark intervals of fields

It is the time of miracles. with the half-moon rising over a pale orchard And the czar's daughter has desires for them, like a dagger, it is like that, desires their ramshackle cottages,

10 POETRY NORTHWEST Say in her hand is a copy of Villon's Testament, the scream one somehow feels obliged to make almost inaudibly for no reason at all. gold-leafed, but untouched in its Provencal.

4 And suppose her dressing room is papered in flock, In such a prelude, the air is clear as gin, but peeling, and that outside the theatre but dry, so dry and colorless her lovers are near to clamoring, one cannot say that he is drunk at midnight, were it not for the hopelessness of the evening. or that the bottle was ever full. Now place with the roses two tablets of aspirin. But when morning comes to the Moskva 0, the roses! over the ice a vapor rises, Her broken arms, and bruises about the body! and the butcher's children in coloring books 2. follow their lines, going in circles But, as it happens, hanging on a wall over the diva around the czarevna or the gables or a gate, in her ravished beauty going like smoke, like the spirits of Cossacks there's a likeness of a diva reclining on her sofa. waiting in corners behind brooms Her eyes are still as roses, or at the bottom of a churn. Nicolai Andreyevich, the banquet is finished, beyond translation; her neck, white as two aspirin. Villon is not in the painting, someone has eaten the beef and the oranges, and it is time to begin. nor the black coachman outside the theatre in rain, nothing that's in transit, For today begins the prelude, and that is all; the great stockyards fill with snow; not the boy who has slipped from an iron railing, the shops are open, as before. nor the woman taking pills with a lamp on.

STILL LIFE WITH ASPIRIN The painting is as it is: only, after such clamor, the dressing room tilts (The title to an unwritten poem by Stevens)

1. and her lovers must be angular as mimes to speak Assume that one evening a diva of the touring opera the difficult words of their adoration. is lying on a medallion sofa with the back of her hand on her forehead 3. Language in its sheer being is a form of notation as if her arm were broken. open to transcription, so what was scored And place beside her a vase of three-day roses for organ now takes brass, whose petals have fallen like pennies on a sleeping crocodile. and what was once a concerto for diva and bassoon

POETRY NORTHWEST becomes a serial innuendo for roses, that somewhere a bridge was out or for snow when it is blown with roses outside the theatre; or not yet built, and say her lovers hadn't come and perhaps had never lived, so the translated poem reshapes itself to the time it is newly a part of, that the theatre was simply a pharmacy which sold over-the-counter remedies and what was once anact of voice becomes an act of mind, not wholly divorced and when we said aspirin we meant the local name from the voice, but like the gestures of mimes, for something that did not exist,

it enacts from a dark hall, on a hopeless evening, then wouldn't we have been right in what we said, words that make sense of the visible, in whatever'language we said it, while its origin in the proto-poem goes on, absolute in its one time wouldn'tthat have been enough, and of some value, if we had, in fact, spoken. and idiom, like a still life of pheasants, or a museum piece from which eloquent approximations are made, and in their being made Rob Suigart the act of speech discovers its first circumstance, its ravishment and blood and roses BONE POEM whose petals arrange themselves in possible ways.

4. The poems grow and fill with bones; But what if one found a body lying in a grave the bones articulate, lashed together with its neck in a rope by ligament and tendon. They begin to speak: I am the bone, bone. The poem, that suddenly jerked until it pulled up 'a man once a bag of words, stiffens who stood on a scaffold, into a face sliding easily over the smooth fine grain of bone. and in that man was a child wanting to be born It's all silly, of course, the bones who at his birth became don't really talk. But the full lips of the poem grow taut, and grin, for his parents the apprehension of his birth, showing white teeth. The arms bend at the elbow larceny, parricide, departure, and rise up. The fingers hook into the sides of the mouth, and the poem, an undoing-of-things they gave the name Villon. now filled with hundreds of bones, and what if the diva very solemnly and foolishly, wags its long red tongue on the air. with her entourage did not arrive opening night,

14 POETRY NORTHWEST Joan Suift Douglas Crase Three Poems

PLANKTON REPLEVIN

Sometimes, at night, each one If the beginning of love has a lightning bug in it. Is loss, possessing it That's how you see them, In places where you know invisible It can be seen, then under and around the boat. The reason for love is I drop a pail over the side, Retrieval, arranging it To fit the space where think how for herring It always might have been. they are three meals, If the manner of love phosphorescence Is displaying it, faithful in the flesh of bass As if belonging were, and the deep blueness of whales. Then the assumption of love Is correcting it, rightful They live their lives unseen, Proportions rightfully not just gray mobs without faces To restore. If the effect but like calm steady workers Of love is regaining it, in some underground plot In greetings as over to keep the world alive. Distances overcome, Then the source of love I stare into the pail Is renlembel lug lt, the where thousands drift. Illusion of love is When the sky is dark enough Reshaping it, and the life I' ll row the dinghy out and lift Of love is embracing oarsful of their dripping light. Its perpetual I won't miss the sun on the other side Unattainable selves. because it is here, brushed angel wings COVENANT when I dive and float flapping my arms. To live with me and be My love, proposing it Later, I' ll towel them from my skin, As if all the pleasures taste salmon, Came to the same test, oysters, Invites the love from living some of the little light. In for life, deposing it With an innocent lively

16 POETRY NORTHWEST Tension of intent. And Habit can ever come, To live with me or be Then the turn of love My love, selecting it Is resembling it, the As if without the other' s Trial of love is Commerce the one could live, Revealing it and the fate Secures the life from loving Of love is in facing In live death, protecting it Its eventual With a deadly living Duplicate done. Waste of discontent. But To love with me and live My love, engaging it John Holbrook One from the other neither Leaving off, is to love In the life of division STARTING WITH WHAT I HAVE AT HOME And live in loving it, Where if loving only lives I love the trust, the open intimacy It dies my son finds so easily with things­ But if living only will love last month the Maytag washer, Then loving will live. broken down, the motor frozen, dismantled on the lawn in half a week. He loves his tools — when he can TROVER make himself do or undo what for him is near enough and therefore real. If the leaning of love A favorite is the wrench, his specialty Is to learn, investing it the hammer. P l i ers, of course, In acts that you intend for the long unraveling For their effect, then of electric copper wire. Best, though, The effort of love is is the magnet deep inside the core Example, addressing it that somehow makes the whole thing tick. In practices In the first grade now words are hard Exact to each respect. for him, not quite the "things" If the method of love to tinker with on paper yet. Is rehearsing it, faithful In our bathroom over the sink As if a performance were, in red ink above the faucets Then the tension of love the words "Hot" and "Cold" are taped, Is attending it, skillful over the soap dish, "Soap." Ambitions skillfully They' re real. I know he knows Played for more. If the motive these words and more but I listened Of love's reproducing it to his teacher and in every room In habit come close as helped where I could and wrote and wrote. And I am writing and failing utterly

18 POETRY NORTHWEST to speak this moment not for him If she wants to bait you or play-fight, but myself of what is near, intimate, make sure it comes out a draw. and horribly, real. One star I wanted, If her skin crawls, knead it slowly; tonight, its trust to fill the total volume if she falls asleep too early, hold on. of this room — that I might do, perhaps Say nothing about your children. like my son, or undo telling myself gently with these lesser tools I love Night will end or begin in her hands. something more than compassionate­ If as it does, you see Medusa kind of the girl, who, having failed once standing in the curtain behind her, a week ago at jumping off the bridge do not let your blood run cold. because two frightened men could not let her slip, Close your eyes before she does. slipped again, last night, in soft chiffon into her green garage, four doors down and with her father's band saw HER DEPARTURE cut away for good her arms, sure this final grip would leave no one, She's done with training for her departure: ever, with anything left to let her down. the cabin boys she let in through her window are pirates now, her parents bashed-in dinghies, the dainty incisions in her wrists a joke. 3lfark McCloskey Two Poems It's her she's off to — that exclusive island schoolrooms and drive-ins drag out maps to HOW TO KEEP YOUR LOVER without saying the buried goods are footlockers with nothing in them but sailor suits. If you hear her step, empty the ashtrays; stay some distance from the front door, I' ve tried to warn her. "Fog," I' ve said, so when she knocks, it won't seem as though that were the worst of it; you' ve been waiting there like a nightclub. "Sandbars in the estuaries." Do not fumble with the latch. Hurricanes are too big to talk about. Hug her as though good luck So it fills her body like a sail has been with you all day. to nudge the deep-six... and though it leaves me If she has on a light scent, seasick a little to go the night with her, tell her how much you like it; I crave the taste of salt on her tongue, if a heavy one, say nothing.

and pray that she' ll come back light-headed As much sofa as she's in the mood for let her have. Let her do all the talking, upon the bony arm oflove, and I — grizzly mope with a towel under his chin­ or gossip with her like a backyard: feel it out. Don't ask leading questions. will want her to tell me she' ll stay now. Give her the run of the pantry.

20 POETRY NORTHWEST Diana 6 Hehir Four Poems The questions that she knows all the answers to: How longP Nights as dark as the bottom of a sack. RETURNED, IN A DREAM How much did it hurtP Forever.

You follow me She needs a bath; all that she's good for is talking: Out of your safe blue place, I always knew they would leave you, she says. Your hand is raised half-way; The color on your cheek is night-burn; I stare at my clean white hands. There's no place under them for this Your eyes are gray marble; Morsel, snag-toothed urchin. This remnant of me. You tell me that I never meant it; The child has a difficult accent. I hate the scars on her ankle. Death wasn't for me, you say; It's too new; it's the weak place in the enemy's line, Outside of the window is a long blue plain, a sea as vast as the The chance for victory. Sea of Azov, Only fifteen feet deep at its deepest part. There is a crowd with you, they watch accusingly; What mistake will I make nowP They' ve gone away in a boat, the child says, Across the room they follow me, counting I always knew they would. Forgettings,

While your breath makes trees of ice; you listen BESIEGED To the words behind your forehead, You push me away from you; there are no minutes left, you The bed was a bright green raft tell me. That turned in a tide that neither of us could measure. You' re turning your life in; Dangers paced us from the shore. You need only yourself now, Help me, I said, and you couldn't hear because The pictures on the shore were caverns to suck us under, Turn me around, I ask you, take me Oily swirls without bottom, Home where all hurts stop, send me Diseases sent across on the fog in a conical Down into your dark blue ground, Dispersion. I c an't hear you; your words make A clatter against my life. Into your spiky treasure house, your Underground room. The walls of the room bleached pale; the bed Swirled up to the waterfall. The noise, I cried. I put my head under the pillow IN THE BASEMENT OF MY FIRST HOUSE And felt you floating away from me, far on a tide

The child at the end of that passageway Like an awkward movement of the planet, like the slow toppling Is a little monster waiting for of a cliff. My flashlight beam, my hand to untie her, my voice to ask And there was no motion in your arm.

22 POETRY NORTHWEST 23 VICTIM Inside a cloud, For the sparrow Don't offer us grocery lists of reasons, don' t That raises the sun. Appeal to us, ask us to fight each other. Drifting, they What we want from you is simple: a splash of blood on the altar; Rubbed the soft belly We' ll mourn afterwards like bereft Arab women, Of earth, loosening Toss ourselves onto the stone; Its hold on rock. But don't be real. Y our blood is not supposed to be sticky. Blown into fences, They scattered Because, if you say things like, wait for me, look at me, Like ants You awaken the listener in us, And followed Who has to remember you' re human, What the ants followed. That your hand shakes because the base of the temple is crumbling, Through streets, That the flick in your eyes is terror, old friend, old lover, In small herds, That the reflecting surfaces around you Where no one pointed Give back in sequence Or stroked his beard, They crossed Your face, our faces, Orchards, a stand Our fears, Of trees Like an advertising sign, like the machine they write heartbeats on They never saw, And scratched The one that measures A strange alphabet How to hold on. In the damp ground. Climbing the foothills Under a rumor Gary Solo Of rain, The leaves left Their fathers THE LEAVES Sycamore and Oak For a new wind When the wind lifted, That would fall The raked leaves shuflled off Through them like light Like shoes And the grey And left the street, They would see The old one Was their own Leaning on his broom, As they moved south A cat yawning Toward the jeweled fire of snow. At the tree. The leaves went looking For the dry place

24 POETRY NORTHWEST 25 Ross Talarico Two Poems PRAYER FOR MYSELF

Under my breath ROMANCE A voice flutters like a flag Hung over the broken porch He kept a bullet from the gun Of a shack. . . Of his lover's husband On the desk where he wrote his poems. The poor have faith Late at night In a country, He found words for its hardness, There's no denying that; For its simple function, But it's hard to understand why. For the certainty of its direction, Dust on a mirror And most of all, for its disuse. Is the holy cloth a man wears In the ceremony of recognition. When he agonized Over his inability to enter himself, I put a quarter into a hand Touching the smooth flesh As easily as I slip And feeling the perfect cycle of blood, A ring around a finger. He knew that his suffering I bless the swollen stomach Was contained by his health. As if hunger and pregnancy The risks he took Were mere conditions of survival, Were merely the stirrings of a larger appetite. I'm shameless, knowledgeable, poetic. In the empty chamber of a gun The breath of his name Time circles my wrist like a razor. Held still like a note becoming My sense of place T he air it pierces. . . Is the grave upon which I am The living stone. And he knew one night I confess, He'd be found, hunched over woman But, always, joy is my penance, Or poem, the last word Oh Lord, walk out of me, Lodged in his throat, the red blossoms T his pity is absurd. . . On sheet and page as symmetrical As the twin faces of his nature, On a campus, True lover, sneak, As fice and directionless as my intellect, For now he would go to her I stroll across the grass, And allow her to search for the wound . Guard patroling the empty grounds. A book falls. As one would attend to a stranger A tree trembles into frantic blossom. Who could not speak of pain. I , I , I . . .

26 POETRY NORTHWEST 27 William Meissrser T. R. Jahrss

DEATH OF THE TRACK STAR THE GIFT

It all happens in a moment, telephone-still. A hand. Yo u offer it He leans backward across 30 years in his padded as something I can use. swivel chair, back toward his high school track. I judge it of handsome shape, unmarked, ordinary as the glove it squirms out of. A magnet pulls at him again It lacks perfume, tastes a bit salty, from the finish line, the metal won't hold enough zircons for a dowry. of his legs is bending, churning. Lines in the palm speak empty promises. He feels the choirs of wheezing, a chestful of cinders. No, I won't use it to cook my meals, This is real running, he thinks, his heart hang clothes on the line, write notes to myself. beating hard in his heels. I won't cover my face, because it's not a mask or a fan. No one can touch him, yet he touches Blinds I can still see light through; everyone: the crowd arches the game of scissors, paper and rock. as he breaks string after string My lips on it would mean nothing. with his toughened throat and Does it singP A talent must recommend it. For an instant he almost believes I' ll carry the hand in my pocket for a week, he has lived the best possible life­ if you insist. I t m oves! success pours across the desk in front of him, visible Who trained itP All right, I admit as spilled coffee. I t is the stain there's something miraculous about it. of winning. I only ask that you tell it He feels a broken glass trophy putting itself never to crawl into bed and grab back together again inside his body. And applause, for my throat, my genitals, my own sleeping hand like a luminous balloon of light, treacherous from solitude. surrounds each muscle. It seems tame enough when I hold it. This tired fish, so warm. Now his legs can soften into two blue silk ribbons But let it take no liberties rippling in the breeze. for I have two of my own, plenty for my needs, and they learned what yours must: he smiles and suddenly inhales all the breaths never to touch, pray or reach out he has ever exhaled in his life. like a blind limb groping toward heat.

28 POETRY NORTHWEST 29 Two Poems Debora Greger but where I am I hear nothmg, The plain lies still, soaked with blue. THINKING OF FAILURE Gone is the huddle of houses, the sun with its cutting edge. Thinking of failure as my oldest friend, I feel the house collapse around me, There is the shrunken horizon, comforting, a blanket of nails the frozen pool of night, holding my clouded body to the ground. the salt-white handkerchiefs of snow This is the dream you shake me from, blowing against me. the long corridor of loss, as dark outside the body as within, Even pain turns away. But you are here. Lirtda Allardt Two Poems What can I tell youP A n other dream, where I was followed by a large white dog and when I lay down, it lay down beside me. TOUCHING THE MATTER OF SEED I confused its warmth with yours. It was so close I couldn't breathe, A puffball, all moist meat in fog as white as a day last winter. falls to dust in sun, dust of spores You sat in the pale afternoon, that swell to full again in one warm night in the red chair, there, against the window, wherever apples have rotted under the trees. dust motes falling onto your shoulders. It takes the touch of frost to open milkweed You were suddenly so close and send its silk spilling to the soil. Time's fumbling will scatter cattail cotton I had to look away, as if from the distant burning of the sun. You refused to fill a vacation classroom. Hair-trigger pods to let me change the subject of jewel weed explode at a finger touch, like this. W i l l you now'? seed of a spread of poison-healing leaf. How will you come apart if I touch you wrong or right? T WO ROOM S

Here is your sandwich. OPENING DAY, EASTER WEEK Here is the milk you asked for. See how the glass holds the liquid up The stream is stocked a quarter mile upcreek by pressing against it. in Powder Mill Park, where it's shoulder to shoulder with meat hunters along the fiood-cut banks. Here is my hand lifting by itself Here in the wild seclusion by the landfill, from the glass, unbroken. the brotherhood will take them, play them, Here is silence guarding itself against spilling. and throw them back, no matter how badly hooked, You open your mouth to eat or speak no longer trusting the water.

30 POETRY NORTHWEST Joseph Di Priseo on a path brilhant with white parasols the bicycles disappear ga t h er THE RESTAURANT inside the reaches Already it's 11:49 "We have, if we turn to Proust, more emotion in a scene which is not supposed to be Everyone says 11: 4 9 already remarkable, like that in the restaurant in In the restaurant in the fog the fog." — Virginia Woolf I wait on the empty tables distribute menus collect them There in the restaurant in the fog tell the party of 97 from the time is 11:49 forever Finland that we have nothing on the faces of a thousand they want t ell t h e party of 42 from

In the restaurant in the fog We notice that we are driving by my parents justify the menu the restaurant in the fog to my dead brother assu r e him Chez Madeleine a sparagus is out of season ass u r e They rush out to greet us him they are out of grouse and pate Reservation for two at 11:49 Here the y tell hi m T ake t h is bread

Someone plays on the piano someone hits the same note Robert Hershon over and over the same t h e same the same note over and over ever since 11:49 he has hit the same WE NEVER ASK THEM QUESTIONS

A gentleman with a handlebar 1 moustache elegantly dressed Nelson Rockefeller sends in iridescent blue sit ti n g with electric shocks through her body a lady in heavy rouge under and puts roaches in her Coca Cola a feather duster ever y one smiling He has taken her children to Canada at exactly 11:49 Kirk Douglas has made her live in 60 hotels he withdraws the revolver and fires His friends find her with their filthy phone calls seven times at She is a Christian and once worked for an insurance company The restaurant in the fog Why do they want to destroy herP the dwarfs wipe their hands on their shirts after suckling pig aft e r a day on 2 the flying trapeze shot f rom the cannons He has a neat moustache I n the Garden Room t he f a m i ly and an expensive trenchcoat strolls in the park between the trees and he marches up and down FifthAvenue faster than lunch hours

POETRY NORTHWEST 33 Persistent as suitors Attached to a small backpack is a photograph professionally framed Using a dead language. of himself with both eyes blackened I' ve changed names his face cut his shirt bloody But I'm not going back Underneath it says Look What My Family Did To Me To the maiden one And no one's been grafted 3 To a family tree. The old man explains to the su/way floor: I chose this name All the time something's happening here With my oldest friend, there's something happening there I'm marrying me. Who the hell could have known thatP What the hell's going on over thereP All the time I'm over here putting on my pants they' re over there putting on their hats JosePh Bruchac

CLEAR CUT Kita Shantiris

1. MONOMY Broken clouds drift across rain water pools I whisper my name rainbowed with diesel oil The way newlyweds Practice their husbands'. tread marks, the fog I model it and one raven For strangers headmg out to sea Like a wedding dress. a shrike tugs My signature is clumsy. at the dry skin I could be writing with knives of a crushed rabbit From a new silver pattern. I changed check styles 11. When the bank added a name straws from the broom On my account. which swept clean death across the ridges Friends divide Into a bride's side the seedling trees And a groom's side. wash down slope Some introduce me wrong with the wind

POETRY NORTHWEST ~ Dick Hamby Two Poems The Dream Man told me to enter her And I would live forever Where it is too deep DREAM MAN To be water. for Thomas Brush "I am the one who splits the night, And the time doctors bent over me like mummies, I am as happy as the hero of a novel." Probing, muttering: "No hope." —Nausea They wheeled in the Dream Man disguised as a dying patient. Juggling scalpels, grinning and winking, he sang: I first met the Dream Man at the beach on Maury Island. " Burn B u r n He told me to start singing and not stop. He said: "It's gritty in this gristle Burrow down a hole! Soft Soft in these old roots Something's pinching here! We' ll twist the whiskers of a mole!" Such sucking wind He kept everyone in stitches until I escaped Scent of the sea! With the map to the Last Dream. Woo't eat a crocodile? Ride this tide to fritters'? I found it shining, softly luminescent Follow me!" In the eye of an owl on a cold night. And off he sped, careening around corners It is the broken moon floating on a lake, In an old car with rattles The sun stinging my face like snow, In the back seat. A landscape burning at noon Exiting on the wind. Since then, I have seen the Dream Man Mother, Father, Lover, I am home. Wearing out his boots on the stenciled pavement, A wild man with mad eyes and his teeth out, Pointing his finger at old bearded men THE POND FLOYD MADE In doorways of condemned hotels, IN A RAKU KILN Saying, "Yes, Yes." He is a broad-shouldered man I have seen him by his fire With a bushy red beard. He paints with fire. Gentle turning all his secrets in his hands, He gives the earth back to itself, thistle The silence of the room Back to the field and the eye. He spins out Lying at his feet like an old dog, an old dream Dreams rooted in stone. He is the maker of moons, Stitched in a knee of his bluejeans, unraveling. Cold and burning in the hand, mountain ridges Rising above the sea, landscapes soft as moss. A child can take a dream from his hands, His seeds are as big as Easter, opening to the air Kiss the small moons of his fingers With the memory of warmth and rain. And never be alone. One winter night, I huddled like a child Once, I had slept so long beside a woman Beside his kiln, watching him work. I had stopped singing; she had turned to stone. The glow from hot brick

POETRY NORTHWEST 37 Glazed our faces. our own faces blobbing out of control on the jars' We talked in low voices glass curves, refusing to hold the domestic About the sky and the trees to keep them close. steady. You looked and the look was amoeba splitting. The shiver of leaves and rotting fences That, and my sweetie, whose face I'd just known Came back in our words in the Tunnel of Love by lip-touch alone, the As they turned to steam in the night air. girl Pa said would make a good match and she ran out to where they were lighting the midnight When breath and bone divide, what breaks is perfect. bonfire and became the glow on all the men's faces in town In the bright garden of the kiln I moved closer to stone, to pond, that night, having so long been stored in a corner. To the hiss and crackle of coming finally from fire, To float in shades of green and bronze Among pink flowers and tall grasses In a blue mist where it is deep and cold Stuurt Friebert And I am not Lost. YOUR MOTHER, THE ALCOHOLIC

She sets the cards down and raises her hands Albert Goldbarth and with her hands grips her forehead, earth has only one heart. Shut up, for God's sake! WHAT THEY DON'T SAY IN THE your father begs. He told her about the woman HIGH SCHOOL TEXT ON SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION in Berlin, what was she supposed to do, forgive himP All she could say was, Did you like her dress'? The ferris wheel — we were, all, its All he said was, What in hell's that got to do with itP gerbils. At the Picture Booth booming popcornballs of light set our squinty faces You' re very happy, she tells you she' ll be glad to speak on cardboard gorilla bodies. The County German with you just for practice. You handle yourself better Fair: transformations — music flushing when you do German or even algebra, she still knows some answers. the timid gazelle out from the shaded places in The side of her face makes a shadow on the window, your father' s Aunt Emma's body, corn mash distilling hand flicks out at her cheek, blood comes in a slow whorl. You pure swine fiom Uncle Dibs. What hand her a kleenex with the idea she' ll find the spot. Back two or three specks, mom. Excuse me, she says, I'd better have a look. didn't frighten in "Doctor Methuselah's Museum of PREEEserved Oddities!" were the jars' formaldehyde The door slams and when you go after her in the dead of night, contents: lizard-things like warty pickles, this she's in a famous bar. You have to drink something too, there' s bird-thing with broke-umbrella wings, a cow fetus a loud noise from the organ, waiters smile. Then girls, and more crumpled like old shoe, some something — a girls. Your father gets to her first but she brushes him away. tongue so sick brie furred it: all of those stages When you climb up next to her she smiles boyishly: Want some we knew in the thicket of motherblood, the peanuts or pretzels, sonnyP And always she's gone before you nod. pre-us, the plasms. But what scared was

38 POETRY NORTHWEST 39 John Deluney He is franker than a banker, and at every civic function TYPOGRAPHICAL SIGNS he wields the knife to slice the pie. (variations on a theme by ) Hands in business and politics, he has secured his syndicate: Quotation Marks no one dares return his vacuous stare. Worry wears its wrinkles like this. The sheriff who is worrying fingers One would gamble on the hunch his hip-strung six-shooters like this. that a good punch to his face When he calls that time's up, could be the break he needs wanted words that come out to have that slanted nose of his fixed and surrender to the law so he could join the human race. are clamped in these handcuffs. Deputies round up iv. P arentheses the vigilantes. ( ) Glass that cups a candle's flame saves it from the weaseling wind. n. The Dollar Sign $ A winding road and railroad tracks. Two ears turned in toward each other: The dilemma of light they hear the tree of the mind fall. split between wave and particle. Inside the kept secret sputters. How fast must the car go Outdoors, gossip flutters and storms. to keep pace with the trainP And where do they race toP Arms of parents cradle and rock; sleep fears no knock on the door. Earth only offers earthly speed. Its vehicles compete for the choice of destinations. Glenn Arthur Hughes But sight, that lives above the earth and ranges at the speed of light, ADVICE TO AN AMERICAN verges everywhere on vision. There seem to be too many kinds of light. Cars crossed by trains only form wrecks. Even a kind to eat and a kind to complain to. So much light that tar tastes like honey, nl. The Percentage Sign grief like self-pity. To get out of Mr. Ogle Eyes, the skeptic, the light it seems you must starve, and fight. diets on statistics. A la carte is the way to his heart. (Remember they have all the magic. They move

40 POETRY NORTHWEST beautifully with razor blades in their shoes. Will Wells Two Poems The fists keep smiling, they always do, just as the men dialing them in small rooms never do. Remember they are utterly loyal. THE LONG SHIFT Never forget those seconds in the mirror: the trucker making love to a rotting angel, Each day we go further in, the drunk staggering for his bus that pulls away. ) listening hard for our graves.

And in the dark nothing has been prepared, The coal rubs off on us, nothing made for you, to dignify your need. so we wear it home like a suit Take your knife, which is always a weapon, we' ve taken out on credit. and carve your own rude cry out of rock, and curse it for being crude. Be proud of the dark. In bed we close our eyes so tight the walls come crushing clown: we hear the miners trapped Jack Butler in our minds, our blood pounding its long shift in the dark. BEEFEATERS MAKE BETTER LOVERS OF GOD, or SEE! SEE WHERE CHRIST'S BLOOD STREAMS IN THE CHEESEBURGER! TWENTY-SIX DEAD IN SCOTIA NUMBER ONE

Somewhere not far from Springdale, I saw a stupendous steer, Every night, a steer of fiberglass, and blazoned on it clear, shifting in our sleep, two slogans,one a menu; two double cheese andfries, we feel muscles polishing our bones 1.69, it read, and mentioned other good buys. to a brilliant whiteness. And being it was Sunday we drove upon our way, the other side of the thing, also, had something to say. Our fingerprints are gone into agates .

Oh Christ, sweet Christ, my meat and milk these many days, Our eyes dull into opals. . . as often as we do this, we do it with mayonnaise: hang now on neutered bull,who once hung on a tree. We scrabble messages I'd slay them for it, but would have need of one to slay me. with the chalk of our fiesh on a blackboard of solid rock. Yet with us, and in us, you cross gut-rumble with concinnity. We speak more truly than we mean to, in your vicinity. We wake and there it is: Restaurants utter parables, two-edged beeves complain, coal dust under our fingernails. For me to live is Christ, for me to die is gain.

42 POETRY NORTHWEST 43 Raeburn Miller and filled the tank with stones. It was your hand that forged PARANOIA my diplomas, your feet that almost carried me to war. The wallpaper has turned its back on me. I unplug the phone to stop it from not ringing. No more. Starting tomorrow The memo holders have relaxed op the Frigidaire, I will not listen to your whispers And the compasses have run down like clocks. jingling in the shadows. I will not read your postcards, Someone hiding in the azalea hums steadily, I will pay back every loan. -Hums all night like a machine underground. The wistaria next door inhales to speak, It doesn't matter that But the wind blows in the opposite direction. I' ve said all this before. Tomorrow I retire­ Opposite! The very word is like friendship. right after the parade. I reach my hand and leave a smudge on the air. Look for me in the front row, When I make what I make, I drop into cold water wearing your guns. The boiling syrup, but it never hardens.

I have dreamed so well I know what happens next. They have tampered with my thermostat, but I hide my eyes. Robert Lietz Why must I suffer? What have I done'? I have walked up and down. I confess. Here, take me. FATHER: SECOND THOUGHTS

The skate on the cellar stairs is a poison letter. Mark Vinz Your daughters are with their boys,

RESOLUTION they will miss the clatter, the slip of the bed-slats says they cannot be interrupted. You have trailed me since birth­ shadow man, hawking balloons All of this will happen. at the foot of my crib, Your watch will be broken, grand prix yo-yo champion, the grin on every baseball card. your important bones.

Consider you belong here, It was you who sold me sprawled on concrete, my first convertible bruised, encouraged in all things likely,

44 POETRY NORTHWEST 45 a man who masters stasis 111 while the kids discover role-play, An amorous flute and voices legged like wasps saloon the room. You have the solitude you looked for. I relish the spit of my prattle; Voice like a tug has shored at my house for a year. You paint each five years, I recite the names of the pine cones and shells pay a high price for colors I had poised on your hospital tray. inside and out­ This compline does not still my tongue.

There are sounds like searching, sounds like broom-handles Julie Mishkist banging under heat-pipes FOR ALL WE KNOW the sounds of a creature creating his backwoods dark, For all we know his black room. language is beating a slow retreat. You write me a letter: see how the words slip off the page! Your 0's become rounder, Rachel Nortoe devouring ink. Or we go for a walk. If I stop by a tree, wrap my arms around ECHOGRAM the bark, press my ear to the wood, all I hear is sap, the dazed 1 heart-beat: the branches droop, My muse, O'Halloran, has relented: flaccid as commas. Armistice between my craft and the monosyllable. Hibiscus borealis flocks the heads of my guests. Ask me a question: my words A suspicious Tuscan hums Satie. float away, return at night, Melissa's hennaed hair flips like a fist of centimes. impregnate your sleep. The rings on her fingers raffle across other ambitious palms. You dream of me, standing in a room, opening and closing my mouth. 11 Fish of your dreams! Why do I dream that my father prospers' This martyred silence! Metastasis has pocketed his larynx like coin. All afternoon the pigeons clack at our feet His skin warps over his bones. like needles, knitting a scarf He puzzles out my name just like his mother did; from old conversations. But nanna reared colts near Chehalis at sixteen And never learned how to spell. For all we know Bedded, his arms and legs beg toward his ribs. it's time to swallow our words. The cancer sits like a bowl in his throat. Paper, scissors, stone: I wrap

46 POETRY NORTHWEST 47 whatever you say and hand it back. from an empty mailbox, a hole in the shoe. If we lie here counting the minutes They pay no attention to lines drawn in the dust we grow rings under the eyes. by anything that would have us hungry. Doors give up on us, hollow when we knock. Our palms And the promises are like a ladder of light, grow smooth with the meeting of strarrgers, as tangible as sunflower stalks or my spine. a simple atrophy: I feel them fill the sky, wands that flower into an Andromeda map, signs that scatter for all we know great formations of wild geese home. this is the time we' ve been waiting for. Language fills our pockets like broken glass, a suicide of verbs. Reg Saner

Mekeel MeBride ONE FOR THE DEER

MANGOES AND CLEAN WATER For alphabet they' ve learned brou>se, listen, took. Roaming the mesa's dry swale of weeds for Barbara half ochre, half rust, I come on hollows I was standing just at the line that hunger drew. pressed out of knee-high grass, absences I had no job, no money. My friends still giving off warmth. Because the opposite were in some distant country I left years ago, of deer isfender andfreezer, sending me love in letters, the paper thinner than air. they make sidling off an art of defence. My life was as thin as air in a flute Further into the half-light of evergreen and getting thinner when suddenly I watch their pairs of cloverleaf ears twitch forward it filled out to the size as the heads come up with the creak of my boot. of the buffalo clouds. I don't know why. Saturday nights I' ve happened into the VFW I could feel air in my lungs crowding the Buckhorn Lounge in Momence. Forearms as if I had just escaped drowning. like bowling pins tattooed, and opposable thumbs saying the reverse of toot is beer. Courteously Nothing had changed except the sun seemed closer. the pockets of grass read, "We were here, Nothing had changed except I had stepped over but hearing you come, moved on." the line that hunger had drawn and found myself in a country of mangoes and clean water. Except for Falstrtff and Bud stuttering in neon It was clear, then, that the promises made the loudest end of this bunch is dark as rocks and shouts with torches closing me off, edging me at the beginning are good for a lifetime at least. toward that final club, the cliffs At least they live separately 50-foot drop, As if some longhair

48 POETRY NORTHWEST 49 had once climbed onto the bar to scream early morning; and left suspended in the sky: "The opposite offing is nude!" to be worked under like heat, to be honored for light, and to be escorted Downwind, shadowed by boughs, I stand carefully through the dry tedium of day quite still, letting the depth of their look until, hungry and hesitant at dusk, make me the place I wish we were. Meanwhile, plunging into a wilderness of colors. through irises bluer than gunsights, the sportsmen back at the Buckhorn practice beads drawn on the ideal: for preference, one or two cross-country Jews running on broken legs­ Roger Gilnsun Two Poems but 3 weeks outof each autumn make do on flanks the color of twilight, THE PLAINS AROUND RAINY MOUNTAIN whose antlers say meat, and out of whose eyes a pure, intolerable silence says shoot. Rainy Mountain rises out of the plain to the hardest weather in the world. In the summer it cuts hot winds Edursrd Hirscb like a running horses' head. I n w i nter blizzards beat it like hard hooves. APOLOGIA FOR BUZZARDS The plain pours out around flat and fast as corn mash poured Nobody welcomes me, nobody. And yet from a pot. O n ly brown brittle the sun that beats through the ribs of the sky grass grows from that hard yellow floor; beats with a heavy pulse, like the heart, and grasshoppers only, popping like corn, hollowing out the skull and spoiling the flesh, rise above that grass. I n this lonely land tattooing the ground, flaming with a heat there are no objects to confuse the eye. that turns oceans of blood into quarries But to look at this landscape at morning of bone, and makes even the cactus writhe. makes your mind come to creation. But nobody despises the sun, nobody. (after the Kiowa of S. Momaday)

The sky, too, is a map of quarries and caves, parched like a canvas, and WORDS OF A DYING CHIEF wrinkled from the blear-eyed motion of a sparse wind. A violent muscle is What is Life but a flash pumping blood through a few scattered clouds of a firefly in the night until a strange liquid sizzles in the ground. or a buffalo's breath in the winter snowP I, too, have a heart and wings, and I say that a single pulse animates the world. It seems but a small shadow running across the long grass I ask nothing more than the sun: losing itself in the sunset. to be hoisted up like a flag into the (after Crowfoot of the Blackfeet)

50 POETRY NORTHWEST Vere Rutsula Two Poems Woman's got a hell of an arm we say. In town we hear the skillet ring ON A BINGE WITH DAKOTA SLIM and let the first drink slide down slow as summer weather. That's a little better we say, I pick a year, say 1932 just a leetle better now. and travel back by hearsay, Let the goddamn radio back to the old kitchen dim those blades dull again with its glass of spoons we don't care. We' re here in the exact middle and by god we' ll stay of the table. until we drink our paycheck dry. We are there together letting it all get too much for us, letting it all build up, CLUKOV AND RAMBIAN sitting night after night lt is felt that the department is too heavily immersed in English and Amer­ with only two sounds­ ican literature, not doing justice to such rvriters as Camus, Clukov, Dostoev­ her radio, our steady honing. sky, Gogol, Pirandello, and poets such as Mallarme and Rambian. — From a student survey of an English department The snick and whirr, the static straight from Boise Dear Clukov Dear Rambian and every blade already Had we but known keen enough for surgery. Our syllabi How much coffee can you drinks Would have bulged How sharp do knives have to beP With your works It's one of those times But for our sins we dread and long for­ What can we do the cold bedroom, the single bed, We' ll forget English getting up at five And vulgar American to work the pond. Scrub every word (We' re like cats on those logs.) From our tongues But it's all too much for us. We' ll even pull out the syntax How much kindlingcan you chops Like fishbones It's one of those clockwork times­ But is this enough three months gone and time 0 dear Clukov dear Rambian to get the hell out, How could we overlook time to trade that whetstone in The Eleuen Year Old Poet on the rusty edge Or The Shrunken Boat of bootleg booze. To say nothing of Raspberries Think we' ll go into town we say and Ward No. 10 or The Apple Orchard and get out 0 how could we have missed just before the skillet hits the door. A Seagull in Hell

52 POETRY NORTHWEST 53 H arold Wi t t Whistling She stares into the mirror, her lips HOT AIR BALLOON stitched in knots, dumb as a fish, dry bubbles rising from her lungs. It doesn't have to be remembered daffodils­ She wishes harder, a bright red and butter yellow her small breaths hissing like a teapot. vertically striped balloon When one thin whistle finally slithers out, was floating on bluest blue she carries it downstairs carefully, over the spring hills holds it up for us to see. as I ran out Nose-bloioing hearing a whoosh — WHOOSH­ The kleenex covers her face like a large white bird. to see two frantic human figures She tries to brush it away, and an upward rush of flame but it flies back, dry, persistent. in the rope-held basket She knows her father is behind all this, so she starts to cry, her swollen eyes under that round of nylon fluttering around the room. drifting toward catastrophe, There is nowhere else to go. then lifted on the wind­ The white bird's toes crawl up her nose: it doesn't have to be she blows. petals flashing later Shoe-tying images of pleasure The shoelaces hang limp as worms. intense on the inward eye­ When she pokes them with her finger there is a man-made brilliancy they quickly squirm away from her, immediate with danger burrow into her dark shoes. Wordsworth's rivaled by. She digs them out, determined now, her fingers clumsy as hooks. Later, I find her, smiling, Ronald Wallace rowing around the house, her shoes tied to her fists like fish.

TRIUMPHS OF A THREE- YEAR-OLD Tongue-clucking The mysteries of the mouth, Winking that wet place shelled with teeth, Her whole face wrinkles up like an apple doll, the tongue, blind as a yolk, a dishrag, a small clenched fist. sticking its blunt nose out. Her lips thin and twisted until She sucks it in; it begins to cluck. the eyelids of one blue eye kiss. And then We feed it words of encouragement. her face breaks bright as water, It grows. Begins to crow. her new smile smooth as milk.

POETRY NORTHWEST 55 Abolt Our Corttribltors

Gwzw Hzan's Special Effects (University of Pittsburgh Press) was published last year. JAv MEEK's The Week the Dirigible Came (Carnegie-Mellon University Press) has just been published. Poetry Northwest Prize Awards, 1977 Roa SwxG~T's novel Little America (Houghton Mifain) has just appeared. Joaw SWIFT lives in Edmonds, Wash. DOUGLAS CRASE teaches at the University of Rochester. Jonw HQLBaooK teaches at the University of Montana. MAax McCx.osxEv teaches at California State University in Chico. HELEN BULLIS PRIZE: $100 DIANA 6 HEIxxa teaches at Mills College. John Taylor for Three Poems (Autumn 1976) Diana 0 Hehir for Three Poems (Summer 1976) Gaav SoTo's The Elements of San Joaquin has won the 1977 International Poetry Forum Award. Previous Winners: Hayden Carruth, 1962; Ross TALaaxco's latest book is Simple Truths (North Carolina Review Press). John Logan, 1963; Donalcl Finkel, 1964; Mona Van Duyn, 1965; WILLIAM MEIssNER teaches at St. Cloud State University. , 1966; Winfield Townley Scott,uzi Katie T. R. JAwws lives in Tucson. Louchheim, 1967; Sandra McPherson and Gwen Head, Dzaoaa GaFGEa lives in Richland, Wash. 1968; Eugene Ruggles, 1969; Will Stubbs, 1970; Kenneth LINDA ALLARDT teaches at the University of Rochester. O. Hanson and Jack Tootell, 1971; Lewis Turco and Tom JosEPH Dx Paxsco lives in Albany, Calif. Wayman, 1972; Richard Hugo, 1973; Adrien Stoutenburg RoBERT HEasxxoN lives in Brooklyn. and Lisel Mueller, 1974; Dan Masterson and Paul Zimmcr, KITA SRANTIRIS lives and writes in Spain and has a Ph.D. in psychology from 1975; John Allman and Greg Kuzma, 1976 UCLA. JosEPH BRUCE edits The Greenfield Reoiexc. Dxcx HAMRvteaches high school in Kent, Wash. TIIEODORE HOETtu F. PRIZE: %50 ALBERT GoLDBARTII s latest book, Comings Back (Doubleday) appears this Stephen Dunn for Three Poems (Autumn 1976) fall. STUARTFaxzBERT teaches at Oberlin College. Previous Winners: Carol Hall, 1963; Richard Hugo «nd JoxxwDELANEv teaches at Syracuse University. Kenneth O. Hanson,1964; Kenneth O. Hanson, 1965; GLENN ARTHURHvcezs lives in Seattle. , 1966; Carolyn Stoloff, 1967; John Woods, JAGK BUTLERlives in Okolona, Arkansas. 1968; Thomas James, 1969; Philip Booth, 1970, Dave Wx.x. WEx.x.s is a graduate student at Ohio University. Etter, 1971; Albert Goldbarth, 1972; Mark MLCloskey, RAEBURN MILLER teaches at the University of New Orleans. 1973; Greg Kuzma, 1974; Joseph Di Prisco, 1975; Gary MARK Vxwz teaches at Moorehead State University and edits Dacotah Territory. Gxldner, 1976 RoazRT Lxzvz teaches at Syracuse University. RAGHELNoavow lives and works in Seattle. JULIE Mxsxxxxw lives in New York City. YoUNG POET s PRIzE: $25 MEKEEL McBRIDE is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute. Stephen Jaech for "Dying on My Feet" (Winter 1976-77) Rzc S~ER teaches at the University of Colorado. EnwARD HxascH lives in Philadelphia. Previous Winners: Greg Kuzma, 1973; Joseph di Prisco, RoGERGILMAN is poetry editor of The Chicago Reoiem. 1974; Thomas Brush, 1975; Judith Small, 1976 VEaw RUTS>~ teaches at Reed College, HAROLn WITT's Suprised by Others at Fort Cronkhite appeared in 1975. RoNALD WALLAGE teaches at the University of Wisconsin.

56 POETRY F.

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