C ~ C. P POET RY + NORTHWEST VOLUME EIGHTEEN NUMBER ONE EDITOR SPRING 1977 David Wagoner 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. GARY SOTO T he Leaves. 24 BOARD OF ADVISERS ROSS TALARICO Leonie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman, T wo Poems. Stanley Kunitz,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 University of Washington. Subscriptions md manu­ Two Poems.. .. .. ... .. .. 30 scripts shonld be sent to Poetry Northwest, 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, REG SANER 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.