NORTHWEST POETRY + NORTHWEST VOLUME ELEVEN NUMBER ONE EDITOR David Wagoner SPRING 1970 EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS PAUL ZIMMER Nelson Bentley, William H. Matchett Three Poems STUART FRIEBERT For My Mistress COVER DESIGN CHARLES EDWARD EATON Two Poems Ann Downs THOMAS BRUSH Three Poems GARY STEVEN CORSERI Three Poems ANN DARR Cooer from a painting by Tran McCarty titled "Fugue on a Park Two Poems Bench exhibited in the Neto Arts Council's first shotoing of tcorks JOHN HAAG by inmates and former inmates of the Washington State Peniten­ Three Poems 14 tiary at Walla Walla. DOUGLAS F. STALKER Two Poems 16 KENNETH ARNOLD Ballad 17 ROSS J. TALARICO BOARD OF A DVISERS The Contract 19 Leonie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman, RICHARD DANKLEFF Stanley Kunitz, Jackson Mathews, Arnold Stein Two Poems 20 NANCY PRICE A Do-It-Yourself Poem 21 POETRY NORTHWEST SPRING 1970 VOLUM E XI, NUMBER 1 JOHN BARR Jellyfish GREG KUZMA Published quarterly by the University of Washington. Subscriptions and manu­ The Last Poem Using the Word Nasturtiums scripts should be sent to Poetry Northteest, Parrington Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105. Not responsible for unsolicited manu­ JOANNE WARD scripts; all submissions must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed The Room 24 envelope. Subscription rate, $3.50 per year; single copies, $L00. GARY MIRANDA ©1970 by the University of Washington Two Poems 25 Distributed by B. DeBoer, 188 High Street, Nutley, N. J. 07110; and in the West by L-S Distributors, 552 McAllister Street, San Francisco, Calif 94102. RICHARD W . HILLMAN To the Chance of His Child 26 P O E T R Y N O R T H W E S T RAEBURN MILL ER S PRIN G 1 9 7 0 Two Poems WILLIAM D ORESKI Three Poems 29 JAY WRIGHT Two Poems DANIEL LUSK Paul Zi mouser Three Poems Apocalypse SHIRLEY KAUFMAN THE DAY ZIMMER LOST RELIGION Seeing You in a Dream E DW AR D M O R I N The first Sunday I missed Mass on purpose Seance 36 I waited all day for Christ to climb down BETTY ADCOCK Like a wiry flyweight from the cross and Two Poems 37 Club me on my irreverent teeth, to wade into ALVIN GREENBERG My blasphemous gut and drop me like a Two Poems 38 Red hot thurible, the devil roaring in LINDA ALLARDT Reserved seats until he got the hiccups. Lovesong 40 FRANCIS SULLIVAN It was a long cold way from the old days Advice for Liberal Curatcs 40 When cassocked and surpliced I mumbled Latin STUART SILVERMAN At the old priest and rang his obscure bell. Two Poems 41 A long way from the dirty wind that blew PHYLLIS THOMPSON The soot like venial sins across the school yard My Book Where God reigned as a threatening, STANLEY RADHUBER One-eyed triangle high in the fleecy sky. Two Poems 44 ROBERT HERSHON The first Sunday I missed Mass on purpose Three Poems 45 I waited all day for Christ to climb down Like the playground bully, the cuts and mice Upon hisface agleam, and pound me Till my irreligious tongue hung out. But of course He never came, knowing that I was grown up and ready for Him now. Change of Address Notify us promptly when you change your mailing address. Send both the old address and the new — and the ZIP code numbers. Allow us at least six weeks for processing the change. POETRY NORTHWEST The rights of two-armed people everywhere. ZIMMER AS INCHWORM I aimed my scuffy Buster Brown Right for his gonads and got him square, I am all pathetic rhythm And fuzzy ripple, And then I ran until I dropped. All anterior, then posterior, To this day one-armed people make me sweat. My head empirically placed until I avoid railroad tracks, wringers and bandsaws, The next bit of business is done, All places where I might suddenly be equalized. The next poem or little triumph lived, Then I haul the rest of me in. I circle and circle in trees, Grinding leaves, avoiding sparrows, Stuart Fri chert And hoping always to split and launch. I am the color of what I swallow And I hide in green conceits, FOR MY MISTRESS, ON THE OCCASION Comparing myself to an inchworm. OF BEING UNFAITHFUL TO MY W IFE But what can I doP I am always the night men land on the moon and Teddy drives off the bridge Measuring, measuring. I eat food inadvertently and oh yes Martin's brother dies drowning, given And I am food. If frightened to tragedy; for Delores, Iris, Johanna, Kay, Roxie, Diane and I hang by my mouth on a silver thread in memory of Sandra, who sang the sweetest songs, amen. ... While lidless eyes bear down And great beaks clack about When we are almost out of each other the others are almost in and the announcer calls out to all to snap My tender segments. fingers and pass hands over each other's lips while the moon hears our confession, takes a look at what THE DAY YOUNG ZIMMER FOU GH T FOR HIS LIFE we' ve done — the grave of our first child lies next WITH THE ONE-ARMED STOREKEEPER to the grave of our second, and so on, acknowledged, Always he had seemed bilious, Men on the moon sleep, call to us in dreams as though Somehow capableof mayhem but through the bathroom door, the water in their voices washes I don't know why he started swinging. the blood from our index fingers, Their signals are so Perhaps because I only spent a penny far off, your mouth is so tired, names bad things to eat­ At a time; perhaps because he had liver and sausage and Swiss cheese, your eating life has At last decided to make the world into neither day nor night. I really feel dead and answer A place where one-armed men could Wholly live. At any rate, your question: yes, I have slept away from home too, made He sledged my pimply, crewcut head and war and lost my way, so what are you after, you and your Abruptly knocked me back into confections, terrible, hard menses at the mercy of the moony Come come, He cornered me in boyhood and before tell me all about it, that's it, it's coming out now, draw I could grow pubic hairs it was time nearer the vineyard water, lower the right side of the To defend my tender life and bridge, hide your lights. You think I' ve done something NORTHWEST POETRY I shall never be able to make up for, back away and fling THE WIG yourself around the next Kennedy, now there's one more in trouble! Put the moon back in the water, Love, rise from the car, it' s The short woman wearing the foot-tall wig not for you to die in judgment of me you know. (We can live Who seems to have usurped a yellow hive to see the dawn of the other moon. ) My large right foot presses Suspects this is not quite the head's true home: down gently on the gas pedal, inflates your pelvis just enough. Her eyes will sometimes light with suppressed wings, She fears mauling hands as if they were a bear's­ Only the passion to be someone diA'erent Steadies her, and the knowledge that the brain Charles Edu ard Eators Two Poems May well be incubating under hair. So now her thoughts will have a yellow home; THE WEIGHT LIFTER They can come and go, well-pollinated­ There is synergy among her wishes. Impacted with his own strength, the weight lifter Abhors the notion of weightlessness­ One can almost sense the comb being filled. Anything too light makes his body float: We must stand near her, let the spirit hum, Even pencils should be heavy as crowbars. Never regret the thousand flowers drained: Tell him your mood is low, he will lift it; The dynamo beneath thecotton candy Will him your quick, ethereal brain, Could have a revolution well in hand. And he will bronze it like a baby's shoe. It may be sad at night to see the wig Circumstances conspire to make us what we are. Faceless on its form, no longer alive The weight lifter knelt to the boost as to his fate With transformation, but this is the price And muscles pushed beneath the flesh like bulbs­ We must pay for such a revelation­ This was what it was to have a body The woman asleep looks 'gray, passionless, Packed with the controlled thrust of daffodils. Tubercular with terror — Ecstasy Like the slow, silent lifting of the earth, That set the cowl could not reveal the brain, It begins in his feet, shifts pebbles, then rocks: Lucid, thick with amber, crawling with bees. There's ecstasy in the heavy head of things! Having derailed the caboose, lifted the wheels, Thomas Brush Three Poems He makes his move with mechanic things, Content as a hinge, ceaseless and grotesque. He, alone, remembers when perfection, IN THE DARK Swollen, sacrificed itself to the obscene, Static, inaccessible to women, Move quietly, move slowly, Jaundiced through strength, in a land with no Avoiding shadows, with hands and eyes flatly open myths. As the sweeping dip of oars. That only the night will know where you' re going, POETRY NORTHWEST In trees where birds, waiting for light, make thin sounds THE BURNED GIRL That float with leaves, falling through The thickening air, stopping for nothing.