Winter 1982-83

POETRY gJ NORTHWEST EDITOR David Wagoner VOLUSIE TsVENTY-THREE NUXIBEII FOL(R WINTER 1982883 EDITORIAL CONS ULTAXTs Nelson Bentley, TVIIBam H. Nlutchett, William hlattbews RODNEYJONES Four Poems . EDrronlst. AssoctATEs VVILLIASI STAFFoRD Joan Manzer, Robin Scyfried Two Poems CAROLYN REYN(ILDS MILLER Four Po(ms . 10 Jt! LIA MISHEIN COVER DEsiCN Two Poems Allen Auvil BRIAN SsvANN Su Shc Can See 16 PHILIP RAISON Coperfrnm 0 Fhnto nf Iree-(Ja(entraf/ic Tsvo Poems . 17 nn lnterstale.5. Seattle. SUSAN STE'(VART Three Poems JoYCE QUICK BOARD OF ADVISERS Poet's Holdup Lt(onie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman, WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN Stanley Kunitz, Arnold Stein The IVife LANCE LEE What She Takes from Me POETRY NORTHWEST W INTER 1962-63 VOLUME XXIII, NUMBER 4 ALEX STEVENS Two Poems . 26 Published quarterly by the University uf AVushingtun. Subscriptiuus aud manas«ries should Ir«s«ut tu Poetry Blur(la«est. 404$ Bruukbn Av«(ui«NF., University uf SVssbing ROBERT FAR)(SWORTH tun,!iesttle, Washing(un 98105. Nut r«spuusibl« fur uasuli«it«d usunu«r(pts; sB submis Seven Stanzasin Praise of Patience sions umst he a(sun(psnicd lry s stamped sc If-addressed envelup«. Subscription rst«u EDWARD KLEINSCH>(IDT U. S.. $8.00 per year, sing)» ((spies $2.(g); Foreign»nd Canadian. $(BOO(U.S.) p«r yer(r, . 30 sing)««epics $2. 25 (U. S.). Fonr Poems . DANIEL HOFFMAN Twu Poems 33 Second class pustagc psirl at S«attic VVsshiagton Pos'rsmwmu Send sddrrss ci(sages to Pu«tr) Northwest, St!SAN DONNELLY 4048 Br««lian Asssue NF., Uui«crs i(y uf IVsd(iug(un,!i cur( i«, ')VA98105. ln Hcr Dream @ )983 by the University uf IVmtnugton biS N: (XS32-211:I BOB Sht(TH Primer . 38 Distrilmted by B. DeBuer. Ils E. C«utre S(rect, Nutl«y, N.l. 07 Il o. StizANNE h'IATsoN P O E T R Y N O R T H W E S T Two Poems WINTER 1 982-83 AIDHARD BDNAN Pine/Eucalyptus/Fennel . AN ITA EN DREEEE-DAN IELSDN Two Poems CHRISTINE GFBHARD Three Poems Rod?sayJorses Four Poems KATHERINE SDNIAT Just to Be Seen Is Enough EI AtNE Goyr>AEB REME M B ERING FIRE Elegy Ahnost as though the eggs run and leap back into their shells Anti the shells seal behind them, and the willows call back their driftwood And the oceans move predictably into deltas, into the hidden ouhliettes in the sides of mountains And all the emptied bottles arc filled, and, flake by flak«, th«snow rises out of the coal piles And the mothers cry out terribly as the children enter their bodies And the freeway to Birmingham is pulled from the scar-tissue of ficlds The way it occurs to me, the last thing first, never as in life The unexpected rush, but deliberately, I stand on the tx>ld hill and watch w.'. ' Siir Fire up from the seedbed of ashes, from the maze of tortured glass JH,"6r<' Molten nails and hinges, the flames lift each plank into place And the walls resume their high standing, the many walls, and the rafters Float upward, the ceiling and roof, smoke ribbons into the wet cushions And my father hurries l>ack through the front door with the box Of important papers, carrying as much as he can save All of his deeds and policies, the clock, the few pieces of silver Are You Moving? He places me in the shape of my own l>ody in the feather mattress If >xiu wish to iont inue receiving your subscription copiei of POETRT NORTHVI'EST. he sure to notify this o/Ece in sdian«e And I go down into the soft wings, the mute and impalpable country Send both yonr old addressaad new — and the ZIP code numbers. Of sleep, holding all of this back, drifiing toward the unborn. I' A HILL O F C HESTNUTS that sticky wing beating at my ankle. v Go back down," All over the woods seedlings still sprout I came up quick. from the useless crotches of chestnuts my father said, and I went softly shoot green and straight, toss tapping at the door of the earth. and are blighted, and die into stiflness: Over my head he found the simple stone dead wood all over, blackening, here coiled in privet, the name and date. I chucked out clods, ancient and there, a beech blasted by lightning, the ache one feels like music scraps of gingham, colfin-screws, half a century, what's left of an infant. where fire scored the trunk, but not tragic like the extinct chestnut, The next day we laid the father the worm-mitered and cottony fallen. in the ruin of his son. I went home And it is not like the shaky marriage and began to keep this to myself„ ofmemory and hope, which we see the fear, and the names of the living, and do not see, in the root-fist which were the names of the dead. Sometimes I' ll feel a hand gripping the boulder, where the oak, come upthrough the pavement. that overcomer, rises improbably Then doom recedes from mc, like a hairline, from the mineral absurdity of stone but when I see chestnuts going and the heart is astonished, the air down into their hills forever, singed by so many green torches. Finally, to burn like that! Once some standing fierce as missiles, all I had left to love was color: holding a pitiful green out from the rot„ I relished poverty like a mouth, cheap I want to walk out into the streets salads in the kitchen of a friend with all the foolish self-righteous who every evening got less friendly. carrying the signs of redemption, One time — I was a kid — a poor man, maybe not to shout, only to move a friend of my father' s, had died. cautiously, as though in silence We dug the grave. I was down there which guards terrible secrets. in the hole, beating at the clay And I think of pie-safes and cupboards, with a pick, laughing when the bottom the yellow and black-grained ivood of chestnuts. gave — and what I sank through feathery manacles that felt like chestnut humus, hands of the dead, all POETRY NO R T H YS EST LOVE SONGS A HISTORY OF SPEECH It is the way the evening approaches That night my sophomore date wanted kisses my house, drifts in unannounced I talked instead of the tom ligaments and places its hand under my shirt. in myankle, crutches and Ace Bandages, Most of them come too easy parading like any arthritic to be sung by children between the bells the exotic paraphernalia of my sufiering: that slice all school days and, that failing, went farther„bobbing into seven neat portions of boredom. in the thesaurus of pain: the iron lung, That heart is academic, the burn, torture with water and bamboo. travels in lunch satchels. broken, She twisted a frosted curl around one finge. until time reassembles it, locates It was then she touched the skin along my neck it precisely in its rightful It was then I noticed for the first time pain. Most grandmothers here the strange wing beating in my mouth are listening to gospel and ldssed her in a kind of flight from Big Stone Gap, and instrumentals that plummeted and clutched for branches. go out to salesmen who know all words are cheap. Oh but Tahiti of a thousand Tahitis! The housewife fears she has been Among the suckling cars of the drive-in, tuning in the wrong station trays of pomegranates, lingerie of surf. for months, the one where poultry Days I hurled papers onto the porches of invalids. is down in early trading. June nights I only had to open my mouth, As I drive home, I, too, am twisting out came a Hock of multi-colored birds, my dial toward some lost birds of all denominations and nationalities, romance of truckstops. The best birds of nostalgia, the golden birds of Yeats, songs are for the ugly birds trained in the reconnaissance of exclusive buttons, who have been betrayed by the beautiful; Before I knew it, I was twcnty-two. it is the intricate nomenclature I was whispering into the ear of Mary, of distrust we follow always the mother of Jesus. I was dreaming to heartbreak or gunplay. My dial in two languages I did not understand. tears the had ones apart I was sitting in the bar of the Cotton Lounge like paper to find these few. Eventually I know all the ones I love railing against George Wallace when the fist will have gone oif the air rang in my stomach, and I looked up and I' ll just be riding along alone to a truckdriver shouting down at me toward some job I' ve held for years, "Talk too much!" Talk too much into greasy singing for no one. footprint, linoleum stinking ofhcer, the thigh of that woman rising to leave, Talk too much and understand I'm not to blame for this insignificance, this infiation P 0 E T tl Y NORTHWEST in the currency of language. Listen: Or — listen — in the cardboard house Whenever I hurt, the words turned their heads. we built by the kitchen wall, a doorknob Whenever I loved too much, they croaked and hopped away. drawn with crayon, Kit's little window peeking At my luckiest, I'm only saying the grace out by the table — is it a message from thcreg the hungry endure because they' re polite.

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