~©~«E >+~i " ':~UM~'.:4',":--+:@e TBe:,.".tev1-7a C 0 ',.' z>i 4 ' 8k .'"Agf' '" „,) „"p;44M P POET RY g + NORTHWEST VOLUME EIGHTEEN NUMBER FOUR EDITOR WINTER 1977-78 David Wagoner JANIs LUI.I. T hree Poems.. 3 EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS CAROLE OLES Nelson Bentley, William H. Matchett Four Poems CONRAD HILBERBY Script for a Cold Chris tmas. .. JOHN UNTERECKEB COVER DESIGN Two Poems Allen Auvil 10 VICTOR TRELAwNY What the Land Offers . FRED MURATORI Confessional Poem Coverfrom a photograph of an osprey's nest RONALD WALLACE near the Snoqttatmie River in Washington State. Three Poems 13 CAROLYNE W R IGH T 613 15 CABoL McCoBMMAGH Rough Drafts 16 ALVIN GREENBERG BOARD OF ADvISERS poem beginning with 'b eginning' and ending with 'ending' Leonie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman, MARK ABMAN Stanley Kunitz, J Jackson Mathews, Arnold Stein Writing for Nora 18 RON SLATE Pastorale. 19 JOHN C. WITTE POETRY NORTHWEST WI N TER 1977-78 VOL UME XVIII, NUMBER 4 Two Poems 20 Published quarterly by the University of Washington. Subscriptions and manu­ WILL WELLS scripts should be sent to Poetry Northwest, 4045 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Univer­ Two Poems 21 sity of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105. Not responsible for unsolicited MARJORIE HAWKSWORTH manuscripts; all submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed I Never Clean It. envelope. Subscription rates: U.S., $5.00 per year, single copies $1.50; Canada, $6.00 per year, single copies $1.75. VASSAR MILLER Two Poems © 1978 by the University of Washington SANDRA MCPHERSON Two Poems . 24 Distributed by B. DeBoer, 188 High Street, Nutley, N.J. 07110; and in the West RICHARD GROSSMAN by L-S Distributors, 1161 Post Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94109. Torture MILLER WI L LIAMS Husband. , . PAUI.A RANKIN P O E T R Y N O R T H W E S T The Man Who Invented Fireworks 28 JOAN LABOMBARD W I N T E R 1 9 7 7 - 7 8 Marbles LINDA ALLARDT Two Poems . 30 RICHARD FROST Two Poems 31 KATHERINE SONIAT In Another Mold 33 CHRISTOPHER HOWELL Three Poems . 34 JACK CRAWFORD>JR. Jaeis Lull Three Poems Brushing Away Gnats. 36 SUSAN STEWART Two Poems . 37 THERE ARE FIVE GREAT THEMES DICK HAMBY Two Poems . 39 The question is: are they Nurture, HOLLIS SUMMERS Sin, Reconciliation, Desire and Death: Two Poems . 41 Or are they Innocence, Interdependence, Wandering, SHERRY RIND Enlightenment, and the rhythm of heart and breathP Who's Harley-DavidsonP Or Birth, Ingratitude, Renewal, Mutability and Love, ARTHUR MILLER Or none of the aboveP Why the Dead Return . 43 EDWARD HIRSCH A Letter . 45 MARK McCLosKEY TO HERSELF REFLECTED Three Poems . 46 This breath is you if you could face It; the old one-two each time Expresses all, and each time new. Just so you saw yourself escape As vapor on the winter afternoon You turned five. Years later, it was you Returning as rasp and gulp the day They pulled you from the spilled canoe. Your cough Change of Address Kept you alive, and kills you now Notify us promptly when you change your mailing address. You like to say and laugh and smoke Send both the old address and the new — and the ZIP code numbers. One more. This song, this sigh, this arching rate Allow us at least six weeks for processing the change. W on't change;could change, but won' t This breath predicts the next and when Carole Oles Four Poems We take the air we take it as We used to. The one surprise is That there are no surprises; no Cave OLD TEXT Of Self, no secret alveolus where Three things are too wonderful for me; A treasure's locked of air so pure four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, Its whisper would crack glass. The mirror the way of a serpent on a rock, Fogs and clears and keeps still the way of a ship on the high seas, Its fascination. What you will and theway of a man with a maiden. Means nothing in the mirror: what you think or might I' ll tell you. — Proverbs,30:18, 19 Think is never there. Yet this is you The way of a man W hen you canface it;all you do with a maiden That counts here is breathe and shine in the borrowed light. is the way of all three wonders. DREAM MAN He soars and tuinbles drawing loops in the air He only drives night loads which she flies into Skin won't hold scars and he cinches He gets kicks snapping chains, shaving skulls, smashing cars. pulling her down He wears his electrodes to the pfle of sticks Down to his ass on the ledge. Eats naked babies on buttered glass. It begins. He smells of excess thought­ He's all muscle. Ozone or sulphur­ How can she resistP He's got an extra mouth on the top of his head She knows that dance. For sucking the sky. Even the rock squirms under it. He hardly sees her. Don't you know this is a job for MoonwomanP If she doesn't fight back she's female. If he don't get what he needs, He has no shadow You' re gonna see some shreds. until he's erect. Just give me an hour with him Then, even the trees applaud. In the cab of his pickup truck Oh brother, Only those on the shore He' ll be licking me all over call the sea Mother. For the salt. The maiden's the ship made to dip and rise with his moods. He's dark-eyed POETRY NORTHWEST a roaring drunk RESPONSE TO A. J. DALY, a batterer. SPECIALIST IN 'PERMANIZING', Remorseful in the morning. POSTMARKED PROVINCETOWN Rolling the sun off his tongue. Dear Mr. Daly, Thanks for your offer to 'permanize' this clipping about me. THE UNTEACHING But I'm writing to tell you about noon on the beach. A social worker was sent into the 3rd grade class that had witnessed its teacher shot and killed The bodies. From the splayed by her estranged husband. She was sent to assure legs and surrendered feet the class that school is a safe place. — UPI you can tell they' re goners. No blood, but poisonous quiet She talks about the law under the sun's drumming. of averages. How many storms it would take Even the sea's tongue cut out, before lightning struck one of them. no water until the Point, How often they would have to fly. a period on the horizon. As she speaks, they glance at the door he came in by, they trace Over the flats, more bodies. the stain on the hardwood floor. Crabs belly-up, squid with ten useless arms, flies drinking She does not mention the law of opposites, their eyes. And mill-ends: love and hate for example. How they cohabit. the lower jaw of a bluefish Or the law of gravity, demonstrated biting on air, scales dried by the teacher's falling. Or the law of to fingernails, bones too small conservation of matter: that nothing is lost, to extrapolate from. And shells, the teacher lives in another form. whole city blocks of rooms where no one makes love. She talks about sick people, says they need help. Mr. Daly, for a dollar-fifty A girl with braids is yawning­ with your sparkling clear she has slept fitfully — a red-headed boy plastic and special equipment sits rigid, as if he hears her through water. can you protect me forever His study habits will not improve. against moisture, soiling and the wear due to handlingP The children are not stupid. Mr. Daly, at night here As she talks on and on the foghorn persists in its two wornout notes, question they do not relinquish the one priceless and answer. The sea, that reformer, picture of their teacher crumbling before a blackboard spattered with lessons. works its dark industry. Free. POETRY NORTHWEST A MANIFESTO FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED Conrad Hilberry Don't curse your hands, the tangle of lines SCRIPT FOR A COLD CHRISTMAS there. L ook how in the deepening snow These reds and greens, of course, are all wrong­ your feet make blue fish the blazing log, the star like a sunflower no one can catch. almost toppling the tree. All fall, the colors Don't take personally have been diminishing. L o ok: the beech tree breathes twigs of vapor against the grey sky, the defection of leaves. icicles drop their spindly light in a long beard You can't be abandoned by what you never owned. from eaves to bush to ground. My promises Spring will give back more have cracked and dropped away like old bark. green than you can bear. I am a winter stick, a flagpole clanging a hollow note in the wind. There is nothing Don't rest by the hearth dramatic here, neither jubilation when all you' re worth nor despair, but rather a kind of exile tells you Run! as when in a foreign country you shrink If the fires within into yourself, unable to speak. strangle, not even suns will comfort your bones. Our rituals exaggerate. T h e star You' re not so special. was no Catherine Wheel spinning and hissing The jungle's full of animals over the stable. I t was a star, a point of no dimension, one match flaring across whose guts invert a frozen lake. The shepherds, hearing the angels' when a stronger one parts the camouflage, peers through song, thought it the wheeze of a cold sheep as they climb a tree.