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. Teaching speech, Cicero put pebbles in his students' mouths, And from Aunt Helen's room where she sews but my voice is haunted by softer things. all We thought it was a train far off YEAAS AGO, OFF jUNEAU giving its horn, roving its headlight side to side in its tunnel of darkness It looked all right on the map, where the channel jagged and shaking the bridge and our house south, where the captain dropped anchor offshore that night till dishes rattled, and going away. in a freshening gale. It looked all right. That year it failed: in the crazed dawnlight one little vvhimpering puppy We thought it a breath climbing thc well where Kim crawled onto thc rocks and looked back, once, and howled. almost fell in; it was a breath saying his name, and, "Almost got you," but we piled boards It was dark that night. Though they watched from shore and bricks on top and held off that voice. no one could tell how that freak wind took all women, children, pets — on the annual ship Or maybe it was the song in the stove that sailed outside from Dawson, taking summer life home. walnut and elm giving forth stored sunlight through that narrow glass eye on the front For years afier that, when summer life went home, in the black door that held in the fire. an old dog, a Labrador, limped whimpering toward Thc Sound, and one long howl at dawn saluted Or a sigh from under the mound of snow where Bret's those gray, heavy waves where The City of Col POETBY N 0 tl T tt W E S T Carolyn Reynolds lyfiller Fo ur Poems already dead? He won't shed his russet pelt, handsome as foxskins he rips in his private wood. And she has taken to calling him ma Bete. Is it a joke MA BETE to have his face so ugly, to have fur in his n>outh? It must be a spell, so much ugliness And he is weary from balancing two legs against his tail. a castle grew up around it, twenty-foot walls. A curse to rule over: brutes live alone Every night he sleeps in difierent directions with terrible faces, and only fresh young hearts so she, stumbling lonely, will not catch him by surprise. Hc might take her for a snowrabbit and tear her belly. can improve their appearance, Tonight the very r<>om he chooses without reason At first he stood in her doorway only in shadmv, she hides in, weeping. He must stop and listen. or through the garden, let her glimpse his separate path It is like thc moon's rain falling into his heart. until she could look without Ainching. VVhen he takes hokl of the >>Vhy should he care for her puny skin? Hasn't hc given her je>vela and a magic mirror to play in? IIOXIE HEPAIHS Instead she spends her day digging among roots in the garden, a rodent not At to be his food. Settled: how»dde to cut the counter-»'ell, hard ash he' ll usc to mend Every evi ning, thrinigh his roses, shc will not marD him. the gap in l»ick, what day, his price. Everything planned. Vapor from his nostrils envelops her head, Carelessly against the sink he holds his ground, she curves her palm over his gloomy paw and they walk just talking, invoking family, his proud voice prodding along the parapet. Q'hen she leans into his fur, last corn< rs of an empty honse. Isn't this thi al>surd when she looks up with quizzy eyes, he wants to bc human dream they stick us >vith? Ilusbands afraid of be WVhat if she will have him and it isn't true He talks: al>out the spell, what if shc will, and they go on forever his wife back to school, a daughter hc may pcrsuadc waiting for that transformation? (if he has one} to take up strings or slide trombone. flow could hc touch her skin and not <1raw l>lood? liow young he is under his disciplined beard. And what 10 e <> g T Il v N 0 II T H W F. S T only a listening box, an answering service in meadows. I know what people arc taking it dosvn when nobody's home to pretend in meadows. I know the wolf at the door or respond. 5 p.m.: all across town, men lapse won't ahvays go without a friend, into overtime or fraud, because so much is broken, that someone has to haunt the private rooms about to pull loose, or be ignored. of sticks and glass. In a haunting, nothing stays in place. Going home late, they believe Brooms overwhelm the dreamer other men can Bx anything. changing umbrellas. I still think they' re beautiful: AT NIGHT, NEYV SUBURBS, streetlamps rare with pink and yellow gases, THEIR STREETI.AMPS SALTY carnival lights the way you could dream them, soft apricot pulp on every corner, Left behind in glowing sodium vapor ripe rain. an old tree tries to shake off poison apples. Belled cows that coaxed and reassured it SURFACF. TENSION AROUND THE fell one November in a heap of straw, HEART, LIKE HEAVEN and the house, its porch cut loose, was led away in mute distraction Stretched new and thin, young men and wontcn lean and a hail of purple phsms. against the surface. They don't know what's coming: I a break in tension, the long slide to where we are, Now the countryside is overrun with lights. in current going toward the bottom. Silt waits, Trees no wider than a Anger lit white with familiar bones. float in the ground, the garden's slow ball and socket. Thc moon tugs, tVe trembled so hard the cup fell from our hands houses rise like lkiry rings and, swamped in thirst, we dragged each other under. or crocus. On streets named Wildwind Drive Spangled chest and thigh, flashing chamber to chamber, or Saratoga, you want to try out their attics we chose one heart to lie in. for walls that won't huif down, for endless feathers aloft in a ticking. We are in deep, dropping through each other's dark, past sonsething Lots Rt neat as a puzzle that matters enough to save us, our breath under sky washed out with city glare. a shadow of gill slits cast from the womb. Under triple driveways, gophers You pull strong, you let me swim in your anna. keep butting their heads, so each house owns its patch of lame and shadow, If we could get out its cut of feebleminded stars. I'd show you a pattern like moirg silk, beauty that pain bends around a stone, all of us sunk here They tell me somewhere people are alive working the river, broken links in a chain of silver 12 POETRY NORTHWEST and our faces shining because of the strain. the chairs, the balls of dust, how long it takes to tunnel Weapons we take up against the world deep, the melting moth-wings work oneach other. Have we evolved from water only to sink back like red rockP on the glass. There's no shortcut through this story. Over our heads, The more we count, the more we amass. water skippers moor to the surface. Quiet days we watch them walk in their halos, moonscast in sixes, or six-armed constellations our fins want to reach for. SLEEPER ASLEEP Heaven's boatmen. At night, they tap their oars on our heart, try to tell us how it's done. To start down this road again: the narrow line of dirt falling between the rows of trees there are no markers, no boundaries, no signs to the nearest exit. Julia Mishkiu Two Poems Sleeper, this terrain's invisible. The weather, unlike weather, does not SLEEPER AND LUCK fall. It does not precipitate or show itself at all. I'm afraid I might slip ofi'the edge ifl don' t... Instead the blind leaves rage against count to ten twice. Slowly, the trees. Their green fists sound like rain and you are fooled into thinking slowly the charged molecules relax. I'm oif to the side it's fine, this soothing elemental pain, watching the eager ones begin and rise to shut the windows, open the doors, and breathe in their daily exercise, the short song in praise of gravity's the last light of evening. blue hair, clear eyes. What happens It's not light, but the rise and fall of five thousand wings. They rise when this miser diesp What holds down this room at the inn, and fall like your breath: white„ irresistible, and what about the beloved string of unconsciousness unwound over the hard, imperceptible ground... paraphernalia, the pencils, brooms, enamelled pin, orange peel, aspirinfi Count POETRY NORTHWEST water melted, stood, and froze. Up the cleared Brial Ssvarsts narrow path, I hold the Aashlight behind me so she can see. SO SHE CAN SEE Sweeps draped the furniture as if somebody's died; dropped the ball. But weeks later the stove PhiliP Raisor Two Poems backed up again. I dismantled pipes, stripped everything, thrust my arm NEIGHBOBHOOD GOSSIPS along the dark Aue into Past listening the main chimney until, against my hand they chatter at each other solid coke the ball missed. Fingers likeraccoons in fresh garbage. found a hole 6r entered, worked What do they see blind in the dark. It took a chisel to when they swan sealed lcttcrs or x-ray smash the seal — a rush of cold air the bowels of the half-idiot gardener watering lawns? shot up my arm like a needle, Do they see buses colliding head-on? Do they smell burning bodies? numbing my Angers. So now the fire roars like the madness that has already left I have seen them on street corners, a father dead At sister wounded for hours, alert to sirens, deaf to children on-the-wing. Their hands Autter momentously. and this mother padding around the house in short A secret broken open, tasted, tossed Japanese steps, filling in words a moment into the gutter. Whose error or pain after you' ve said them, did they fork down the sewer this time? cooking dishes sweet to sickening, held together I wish they would eat me whole: by memories you' re not sure are hers, my sinusitis, ulcer, jock-itch. or yours. She is ready to go out. My short temper; carccr scars. My wife's deep memory of 6 fatherless hoine. Tugs her corsets over the belly that shaped you, ties Lctthe scavengers gorge on my great-grandfather's herself into a parcel. Pulls the last Aap scalping by Delawares, my uncle's Nazi souvenir shut between hcr legs. with blood on it. Let them taste thc spoiled sauce that Aows through the growth on my father's rib. Light closes in the snow-clogged window. Starlight beset, mother takes my elbow walking If their fat bellies need more, let thmn devour crusted drifts, ruts where N 0 R T tt W E S T 16 POETRY my future. "They will surely fire him 3 if he keeps dressing like that. And his car. Now rumps in mud My heavens! You would think in this neighborhood. I turn back to my plans. in Texas in Sarasota in Muncie, Indiana, She spins on noisier than gnashing teeth. Sr I THE LONCEST DAY OF THE YEAR They start again, the toads, bilious whistle When night comes on the dogs go crazy, worse than cicadas, nighttime screech leaping up and straining against their chains, toneless as faucet water. Turn it off, their eyes sticking ont and a rattle in their throats I mutter, harried from hammering studs all 2 The boys and the old men hang around the taverns, The tadpoles gather the Wagon Wheel,the Bzzu. and thc Sncakin' at th» mouths of' fishes, kiss, Peepin' Lounge. It's the same if you' rc inside or out then scurry toward my bruised thumb. on the street: the cigarettes flicker like the stars The shed is up. hly sweat plunks their water punched in the jukebox; someone puts in a quarter, like oil. I am full of song, backroad ballads someone else rolls his hips. A waitress steps up into Hank Sno P<) ETl Every river ran with its thin blue What I have learned is the darkness brother out from the heart of a country; in the daylight and the furnace of a new there cedars twisted toward the southern sky, the reeds were the pens of an augurer. machine. You cannot imagine how the piston's hoolbeats can pouud through my chest until dawn No dates in the wrinkles of that broad face, no slow grinding of mountains and sand, but or how the oil slicks carry the illusions like a knife crying out on a whetstone, of rainbows. the map of the world spoke in snakes and tongues. You cannot imagine my face. The hard-topped roads of the western suburbs and the far-off light of the capitol As I write the black grease swirls all push away from the yellowed beaches across my palms and I am leaving you and step into the lost sea of daybreak. the fingerprints of someime else's life. The map of the world is a canvas turning The trolleys hover like a hundred away from the painter's ink-stained hands while the pigments cake in their little glass angry bees and are the only animals for miles. jars and the brushes grow stiff with forgetting. Once «t dusk I saw the light fall P 0 E T ll T 20 N 0 B T ll W E S T on the haystacks and the vineyards, JoyceQuick but it was only a flower pot in an ofllcc window; POET'S HOLDUP the mountains in the doorway of thc postcard shop turned into a death mask of Verdi. Stop where you are — I ivant your memory and all its untold wealth, I have been to the cinema several times every last picture you carry; to see the bareback riders of the %Vest, I want your ear, the ruinble of shadow, and a black man from America plays the saxophone the distant music you hear each night on the corner for free or cigarettes. and weave into song. Listen to my heart and make something of it. His songs run through my clothes, heaped Listen to the stubborn on the splintered chair, the way the wind repetition of your name. can ruflle the edges oi' the river. You ask about I want your snakeskin boots kicked ofl' the hours I have to spend to myself and I answer in the caesura, and your watch that tells you nothing so reliably, they are only the pauses of sleep. I open the courier of evening for news. but its world I want your hands held just that way palms up, receptive. is not my world. The little girl who takes it I want your mouth from cafe to cafe does not at all resmnble but postpone the pleasure while I hear your crafty speech our daughter: I' ve seen her cross the streets the cadence of it, like a small black leaf borne up and around the great reluctauce to lie in anv wav but loveliness. by the air. I move your photograph each morning and evening from the wall to my shirt I want your stories, games, and songs so I can recognize yon in the dark and my shirt to the wall, and hope that this letter and your mirror so you' ll have no place to hide, is like money or luck, first in one hand but mostofall I want sriiw I sa Your eves and then in another, until all that remains is a sol't shred of paper stopping me where I stand, catching me hard in the throat, at the bottom of your apron pocket one washday. taking everything I have. POETRY NORTHWEST William Chrsmberki n with hair of seed lings would from a lake! I hear her laugh and see scattered apples upon the planet. THE WIFE I open the door to my lush green wife, and mutelv we matc until the laugh goes out, I say the funniest things are all complete like apples. They make me laugh and the laugh goes out the window into orbit. My wife is the best joke, and if she is here I am lord of rain in a drab town. Lrsnee Lee But if she is gone I am fallen flat and dead wood claps in the apple tree. WHAT SHE TAKES FROM SIE Whatawife!Neverhere when I get home from work somehow We argue in the house like a change of seasons still at work and flaring mad: when Iam Schumann going mad shc says parting a curtain of salmon brush, "Herc's lithium, be composed and silent" stumbling into the clearing or Van Gogh removing my ear of the stall to shower, "Here's white paint and grey dawns" swearing loud in breaking rain, or Duchamp with my chess screaming at blackberry vines "Here's the local bus map and help-wanted ads" in the chainsaw's blue smoke, m y heartangry for loss ofher. so I conse outside in this steady downpour and stake myself in freshly turned earth beside In the thick hours tomatoes and strawberries, after work is suspended I pummeled peas carve pure lines of red cedar: vdld on the black ground with profuse, snap-dragonish nota woman figure but a cage fora ball, blooms. a bos of duties. I go without my dinner! My feet become thick roots, my hands a foliage cradling I pray to be myself before berries, this day goes to bed, or for mornings, my eyes fog like a veil and each green fruit dawning through horizons of dark, bitter huckleberry leaf filled to the brim. loquat leaves. I listen for the lightest step, Soon waswings with ember-tipped wings will forage the footfall of the wife through these, who comes down from orbit children pluck the peas from their pods, to water the wooden man inside. and herself, with a laugh, lift her dress and belly Let fog lift as a wife with ripened fruit. 24 POETRY NORTHWEST Alex Stevesss Two Poems on the scope ofher course. Tunisia, Morocco, St. Helena, Barbados; Babylon, Sumeria, Athens; marl>led Venice and its doge, LUNAR VELOCITIES Ecbatana and the promenade, Is gone undi.r thc waves with its wonderful doors: Much written about the moon deals with a fickle courtesan S each imagined that the moon appeared in a new guise troubled by her profile. She's said to be a great to an old locale. But bees chirring by sweet walls, badgers repeater, to take the path of a younger age cradled in remote dirt, Egyptian house cats lapping milk from ewers and shrink from sight. Those who love her pale trysts knew that that moon there and then, spread like a fan, was all rue that she eagerly meets the beetle-browed stevedore, they'd be allowed. the timid antiquarian. What shifty moods, centerless passion nothing to do but go wait for her in an empty museum For centuries the moon was chaste and continent, or down by the wharf. And now fragments begin to bother attending nocturnal chores. the devotees:the mug temper cracked or Megarian shards Then she fell in love, one of those dark allairs pose too doubtful a jigsaw ever to reconstruct. the Middle Ages spawned. Still fit and young, she took to her bosom an old man. One Prometheus, by accounts Although much has been written about the moon, few grasp that survive: not a few commmitators hint the real one isn't ours. Along a sister orbit we find pure pity bedded him. He'd loll about in musty furs, uncouth a moon undressing for bed, mirror and powder barbarian to the core, though of a mind in an adjoining room. Neatly ordered as her reclining thoughts, so nobly tuned, she acceded to his sturdy lust. Dropping to her divan, the slim surfaces of her toilette glint like the ocean they counted far ofi'city lights, lonely candles, watch fires, far beneath. There one captain, intimately ac 26 POETRY N 0 A T tt YV E S T 27 Robert Farnsu orth and water tempered. Maybe because I'm shy, because the retiring do not hastily take the fruit chance or design olfers, I' ve never reckoned with what I saw. What scattered you, SEVEN STANZAS IN PRAISE OF PATIENCE my shock when we colli N 0 >>T H >v E s T r D E I t> Y Already I am thinking back to the next snow Wiggle the loose tooth squalling up the long black lake Appear in a blue dress to my window. The pail remains undisturbed. Forget the shape of the wine bottle I am making myself a promise. Agree to new measurements Talk to the neighbors about leaves Protest over a length of curbing Decide to forget the 30 POBTBT N 0 B T H vr B S T the Sesh of daifodils in a beaker, the bills of ducks, the receipt Dreamland, all the bottles in the murdered man's watch pockety are happy and cold. Or the last tm>th, the butterHy the cat We draw love notes atc, the diamond held up to the sunlightP to each other at the bar„ write epitaphs on hot slabs, AT DIIEAMLAND IN ALABAMA line up indiscriminately a grand piano of ribs. Forget the crab, the cow, the chicken, but remember the pig. And a small ptnk chtld, silent on a deep bed Forget deep sea, coop, of wonder bread, featherland, and roost. sleeps, unamazed. Forget everything else, and you will remember this pig. We scream Drsniel Heffnsrsn Two Poems like Erst horns in their red hot juice svorld. THE BATI'LE OF HASTINGS In this blackovencd, blackowned barbecue, Schoolboys in blazers infiltrate the aisles we don't see nu Of the British Museum. It's hard to read pigeon bones, no parrot, Maps of the Battle of Hastings no white cockatmz While their master futilely harangues them Over our shoulders About the Battle of Hastings. They are intent the huge his POETRY NORTHWEST Scuflling, and out, save for one laggard, a toddler By what they see beside me, others turn But three feet tall. He can't even see into the cases. With heedless stare and curious intent; I lis head is large, his legs and arms are stubby and bent, He pretends he doesn't notice them. His steps necessarily small. And now two boys Ithankhim. I mustgo. The lines In green, for some reason retrace their steps, Are being drawn. Among the columns SniNing. Down the center aisle, they catch a glimpse He appraises his next defensive position. Of maroon, the enemy color. and rush To opposite sides of the hall. They have him AT FONTAINE-LES-DIJON Cornered — then see he's not a mere babe in Infants, but their age, A midget-sized monster providently provided How could we sleep in that pension At the foot of the hill For their satisfaction. He watches the boy at one end Below the chapel Of the aisle, sees the eyes gleam, the curled lip At Fontaine-les-Dijong Of one waiting for him to come nearer. He turns And at the other end of the aisle, sees There the carillon Shattered the stained The other, lip curled and eyes eager to torment him. Glass silence He suddenly ducks under the cases, bobs up in the next aisle Of our sleep. But they move over an aisle and are ~siting as before. Hc is trapped between them, there is no escaping On this high hill Where St. Bdnigne was born Being born to endure the revenge of unknown adversaries A monk in the Middle Ages still For an olfense of which he must be innocent Clanged a clapper all night long Except for being born. I saw the terror In that boy's face, and the desperate resolve Remembering how his mother When herterm had come To run, or if he couldn' t, then to do Hauled her big belly His poor best for honor's sake To the hill's rocky dome And not go down snivelling beneath thc blows Of the always larger, stronger. This was one So her son could be birthed Nearer heaven, so a church Battle in a series already long that might In his name be erected, Be averted.'Young man.' I said,'I'm lost His Sainthood perfected perjta ps you can sir oto mc the soap out F And so let him lead me to safety — Speared by the Romans And now that this spot Through his enemy, as though there is Is holy, we dare not A way out. In thc entrance hall, surprised Give it over to demons POETRY NORTHWEST Who possess the underworld turns grey, the blue-green eyes rheum And pinch us with their spells with uncertainty. At last, a vein part crimson, Unless driven back under the world By the clang of God's hells part silver unwinds from her. This is thc skein we were not to touch, Which is why, at 4:30 this morning, A monk ina cassock, to mark the look-away skein none of us Each quarter-hour in the dark, dragged from hcr — conc but that howler. Toll» anthems fourteen minutes long And how could a child be forgotten And we arise to meagre rations so long in the last nurseryP Under a holy hill, Irritable as demons Shc walks up the stairs. Below her, Whose sleepless bed is in hell. school chums catch rubber balls to their chests. Their jump-rope confidence falters. "kdary! 54ary!" The steps are so diificult. Sea grass like cats' tongues. SnsssnDonnelly Above, the mew-cry c>rchng. IN IIER DREAM At the top of tbe stairs she pauses. Her father, his lraldness hidden A baby cries in my mother's midnight, cries for food from the lost chamber, by Irish linen, studies cormorants through field glasses. Her brothers pose summons her, a towhead girl, from dreams of her childhood on Laurel Street. Upstairs in a bony pyramid, then capsize on the sand. The beach makes its grand gestures. in the room she has always suspected, the baby wrings itself out with wailing. And thc cunnurg mosqu>to nags into her mind's tunnels, The cry pulls great ribbony swathes from my mother's chest: bunting, hungry for brain. Tbe cry, the cry. She msmes to a door marked "PERhIISSION" grosgrain, pink satin blanket edging, toddler harness strings, birthday ribbon, in curled b!ue letters. The door is a blackened mirror, a silver rot the brittle cinnamon folds of Christmas candy. Slowly her hair of fish scales. mica, kelp and POETRT NORTHWEST smashed baby-pink crabshells. "I'm coming." Ruth feeds sparrows. The crib cave beckons. Veins scrawl The lists get harder. inside the transparent skull. But the baby AVords like derelict, cxilc. holds up two fingers, in a china Christ' s Words it n)ay take pretty blessing. Its smock covers air. lifetimes to learn. Thc cheeks are moon pits of hunger. Lastly, the words My mother becomes a well an old man says in his sleep on long nights the moon may dip into forever, when vdnter thickens always drawing up salt. at his window and there is none to hear. The baby shrinks to a wish-coin in her hand. Boh Srrtith Suzanne ?II atson Two Poems PBISIEB FOSSILS First page almost blank For instance, the way trilobites for the years wol'k an)ulul thclr past: you c)n) t I'colon)bcl'. they fill anti fall in on themseh es, A spot in one corner: vacancies blooming ink, dust, a fiv'? into pcrf< ct extinct lives. Next. names of flowers: The shopgirl hugs her arms and stares out, silver bell the tinted day hardly bclicvablc. trout lily Custon)crs «onle, el)tiers ba«helor's In) tton. of square light. She covers This page is mc;ulou green. th«s)une steps, l>ackward, A l>rcczc lisps your name. forward.Shc might lcav« before the end of this SVomen's names now. tube weath«r, everywhere, and not Au I' <) F. T R T R 0 R T II )V g S T :39 sweeping out the empty spaces Clem. not imagining l>andboxes, dusts the waxed timetables she often'becomes, we would find her and puts the needle back in its groove. curled and listening to time, But the train, slipping from its blocks, must go; keeping all that happened, its hollow eye has been fixed too long south. her getting younger face swollen like a blank new moon. It will fall into the familiar groove of track and the children, their eyes also south as they sit astride, will not be shrugged olf, LEAVING GARIBALDI and no one can look back until Garibaldi is left behind. The train stands ready to leave Garibaldi and the Lumbermen Memorial Park forever. Any moment it will shrng ofi'the children who sit astride the black-baked locomotive Richard Rona n and leave the Lumbermen Memorial Park lbrever. Oh, the town will be surprised at first PINE / EUCALYPTUS / FENNEL three generations blackened their knccs climbing the locomotive and it was Clem McKinley's steady job to play the train sounds. Odors of the pine needle Aoor: the thin, dry smell of the upper pine inch, But the train will go ahead and leave the scent of the deeper plane of acrid mulch the first chance it gets, though it will be missed. — both hung low, mixed„close to the ground It's >vhere Ada Beare sat every afternoon talking to strangers on which we lie, breathing. over the wail of train sou mls, Eucalyptus leaves fallen onto this, pointing out her son's three-bedroom on the hill. leather-like, fat, fragrant, Shc only missed for gout and once gallstoncs the twisted wooden rags ofbark, when she cs>nvalesced in style on the hill, camphored, crossing with spiders' webs and Clem, at the donation box, explaining her absence. through tree shadow. But any moment the train >vill stretch Beyond an herb grove of fennel like a spine after sleep, at the head of the hill, leave Clem and his record to explain the absence, dry in the green heat of this summer light. and lurch hayward, parallel to sea. Sea-moist salt scent, bay water There will be passengers sipping drinks, blowing up the sand-ridge, conductors stepping over hatboxes and travel-dusty trunks, cool tide, lap over lap, and families in white linen, looking to sea. out of rhythm. clean as rain The traiu chafcs on its blocks; soon it will go. on the sweat of our bodies. 40 P 0 E T lt Y > >OATH W E S T Arri ta Essrlrezze- Drsniefsots Tw o Poems it seeks decay on its own level. And, finally, here is a curious fact: although it travels great distances, HELIX ASPERSA over liverwort, slime streams, and stone, it tends to return to its point of origin„ The typical garden snail breathes where it contours its body-foot and excretes through the same orifice, to the fertile soil and observes life reducing the loss revolving around it in concentric seasons of moisture which has sifted through of earthly abandonment the nets of conifer needles, diminished and need. to mist by the time it clings to the green collar of trilliuat leaves. The snail is vdthout false expectations: whatever's left over is life. SANC",f UAIIY I am not dissatisfied with things as they are When I was a little girl I believed but I wonder if it thinks the moon is a spindle-shaped shell, I could move clouds by breathing smearing a glistening trail of stars'? my straw-thin breath upwards, And does it consciously fear thorns, droughts, and whispering "sanctuary." thc windless volcanic ash'? Or does it believe When I was older, I was Given Responsibilities, the whole world is underneath, where the porous air but the sheets would mold in the dryer, forgotten is full of Ruid circles, as the lunch dishes I put in the oven. and weathering is a natural mercy1 Sister gloated: You'd even burn corn Rakes. No, it has no insight; it's as common as clover. Mother complained: you' re always off Observe its two front tentacles in your own little world. which scent leaf-mold and lance leaf. I made my eyes as blank as butter Its two longer tentacles are feeble eyes, while she furiously srxsured the pots. sensing only the light which fogs its lusterless shell, In my world, their voices were distant and the shadows that are boneless and Rourishing, as Saturn's rings. Mistakes were written in sand during a fierce wind. f m not without compassion My world was small as a ship in a bottle, but I can't accept this inability to dream a terrarium Eden, or the Lord's prayer beyond one's self. Yet the snail etched on the inside of a needle's eye. has a special knowledge: My world was as big as the seasound creeping 23 inches an hour in a shell, as the pollen that drifts it shifts its perceptions slowly. across the seas, as the single-cell algae Does it bore even itself? conquering ditches with a phalanx Or is it enough that its evolutionary patience of green shields. This is my secret: has awarded it with practical intelligence: my world regretted nothing, not POETAY NOATHWEST 43 burnt toast (which was Night Squared) when hunger possesses you at the end of the trail. nor the lies of boys with eager hands. Nothing mattered but the mantra I could be one thing as easily as another of a cricket, or the chanting the clock you race against or the grove of the maple's leaves in their high mass. of palms you retire to. I could wear you on my ann or in my hair like a jewel. I need jasmine and cloves. I need courtyards and doorways to walk through. You could address the long unguarded Christine Gehhrsrd Thre e Poems letter I have written and left unsealed at the foot of the stairs. Come now. You need something LAST NICHT to happen. I could read my fortune in the hand you rest so tentatively on the arm of your chair. when the rain justified the steep pitch of the cabin roof, and the wind came in through the long slits between the logs TO MY BEADEB that have pulled away from each other, we quarreled among the network of streaks and the bitterness There is little I can keep from you. Now as always, that permeate a small kitchen in late summer. I am plain as black ink on a white page. The words are twice the size they need to be, And when a vein swelled at your temple like a worm, but that is more the fault of the one whowrote them and you said you had no reason, even to hate, than of one who specified the type. Even backwards, in lead, I reached for the red kettle that waits I could never appear distant from the language or from you. on the cold stove like a symbol for fire bright and round like a mouth or a siren Part of it is nearsightedness: I must rush up or the scream I could not make — grabbed it and hurled it to everything to see what was intended. to the fioor. It was the first red thing I saw. Once I tried standing back, but accustomed to my proximity, the world leaned out to me, And when the kettle crashed at your feet, denting and I feared the slender column of space that remained the linoleum you laid to look like marble, between us might lose its balance and collapse. I savr how it, too, had betrayed me, when it opened and bled only water. Then there is the business of my blood, which runs fast for the narrow roads I travel, and warm for northern latitudes. Once I tried chilling the room where my words TO A SUITABLE STBANCEB draw their first breath by painting the walls an icy blue called acalonclie, but each time I entered, I'm light on my feet, and I need new shoes. the windows fogged and the ink seeped from niy pen. I can glide over tongues of ice and dance down the spines of the stoniest roads. I carry Perhaps I have it inside out again. Perhaps through the cold like the smell of bread baking you have come to relish the hunt as hounds do, P 0 P. T R T NORTHWEST and would prefer I play the fox. But be forewarned: barely make it to the next day. my scent clings to every bent leaf and blade of grass, never growing cold. But solncone is clohlg this, You' ll go to ground pushing forward on the line. something arranges these dead as displays. It's not just for buzzards and simple wash ings out to sea. It's meant to be taken in slowly, enormously, from every imaginablc angle. Katberitte Soniat JUST TO BE SEEN IS ENOUGH Elaine Gottlieb I This is a country no longer needing black dress or white dress. ELPGY The bodies lie sunning, uncounted and unaccounted for. It is a violin playing my mother They don't finch for fiies It is the gut note sweet with suffering or the long lengths of Pacific sun. It is never having Neither do they breathe. It is knowing It is my mother dying in Slay Only the ocean moves in gently the white neck the dark drowning eyes and washes out another body. It is an old room in a new house The one no one knows, with drabbled carpeting I t is tom wallpaper the one no one claims to have ever known. spangled with poppies It is a satin spread It's as if the dead arrived dead, on a bed with plastic springs It is raining down like a plague along the coastline, a china closet with a wracked glass door laid out on the lava field. The waltz whines like an adolescent girl Perhaps just to be seen is enough. in a mature woman dreaming of the One who never came I t is the Messiah II deceitfully absent I t is my mother The city lies in the silence of locked hotels. running at night because she does not know Like a ghost, tom curtains blow whose shadow is on the walk behind her onto verandas ofhihiscus and shattered French doors. It is ripped stockings and the death There are no anthems, of her granddaughter I t is a high feline scream and the dead don't begin to resemble soldiers. out of a violin som ewhere in Vienna This is war at random. As in a dream there's no real reason to choose sides. All the promises, words, POETRY N O R T t t YVES T About Our Contributors Rona uv Joiszs teaches at Virginia lnterniont College. Ilia Srst bookwss 1'lie Story T/wy Told Usof Light (University of Alslrsnia Press, 1989). WILL>hu SThvvoRn s latest book is AGlass Face in the Rais>(Harper tz Row, 1989l. Csaot.vu RzvtsoLos td>LLERteachei high-school mathematics in Saleni, Diego>i. Jl. I Is hiisus>N is a freelance writer living in New York City. BR>ax Swa>m is one of the eilitors of Chehea Rerieu. He teaches at The Cmiper Union. Pnusr l4>sua teaches at Old Dommion University and i» managiag director of Heir Vir ginia Resieic ssg, an annual anthology. Svssu Svaivsnv'syeliou Stars and lce was published in tbe priiu:eton University pre>i Contemporary Poetry Series. She teaches folklori at Temple Universitv. A PLEA FOR HELP Jovcz Qutcx is a freelance writer and editor living io Seattle. WILLls>l Cuss>RERLAIN lives in Astoria, Oregon. Lsucz LRI. lives in Pacific Palisades, California. His plays have been published 1» the Poctrg Xorfbu'evt is in its twenty-third year uf uninterrupted pub University ofhiinnesota and Samuel French. lication. Unlike' a distressingly large number of other Anu. rican literary At.zx Srgizus lives in louisville, Kentucky, snd has appeared in s niunber of maga magazines, it has not disappeared, altered its format, or curtailed its zines. quarterly appearances under thc stress of increased printing costs, 808ERT FslllvsvroRTR I Rrst book, Three or Four Hilt> anil a Clolid, was published by higher pustal rates, and a weakened economy, especially in Washing Wesleyan University Press in 1982. He lives in lthscm New York. ton Stat». It continues to publish the best poetry it can find. The Uni Eoivsno Kt,s:mscuinm teaches at the tiniversity of Santa Clara. versity of Washington is supporting it to the limit of present resources, Dsumi. Hovrusn's latest book isBrotherly Lose, a long poen> published by Vintage in 1981. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. hut in spite of our increased circulation, there rmnains a substantial Susan DouivzLLT lives in Cambridge, hlassachusetts. gap l>etween our income and our expenses. Our reatlers have helped Bos Ssin'n is a teacher in Cluster, New Jersey. generously in the past. Won't you please join thmn by making a contri Sczsu>mMs>sox is a teaching fellow in the University of Washington Tvri ting Program. hutimi in any amount'? Gifts to Poetry Xort J>uust are tax deductible. Ricusau Ro>>su's grst book of poems, A Radiance Like Wind ur >parer, will he pub lished l>y Dragon Gate Press this spring. He lives in San Francisco. For the sake of our bookkeeping, if you arc making a contribution ANITA Enoazzzz.DARIELsou lives in Greenblug; Washington, and has appeared in to the magazine and at thc same time are renewing vour sul>scriptiun, many journals and anthologies. wou kl yuu pleas«make out separate checks yThank >'oil. Cnatsrtsg Gznnsno is a graphic designer and photographer living in >Vcjteste>> hiasiii chusett>. KATRRIIINE Sou>RTlives in htetairie, Louisiana. snd has published in many magazines. David Wagoner Essuvr. Corrozn hss published s novel snd numerous stories and bas co-translated nmchof the work oft. B. Singer. She teaches at indiana University at Soutli Bend. Editor