NORTHWEST

POETIC Y + NORTHWESTVOLUME FIFTEEN NUMBER FOUR

WINTER 1974-75

EDITOR

David Wagoner

EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS

Nelson Bentley, William H. Matchett

COVER DESIGN

Anita McMullen

BOARD OF ADVISERS

Leonie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman,Stanley Kunitz,Jackson Mathews, Arnold Stein

Coverfrom a mask of the many-headed demon-god Ravana from India.

POETRY NORTHWEST W I NTER 1974-75 VOLUME XV, NUMBER 4

Published quarterly by the University of Washington. Subscriptions and manu­scripts should be sent to Poetry Northwest, Parrington Hall, University «Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195. Not responsible for unsolicited manu­scripts; all submissions must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressedenvelope. Subscription rate, $4.50 per year; single copies, $1.25.

©1975 by the University of Washington

ROBERT HERSHON

BARBARA L. GREENBERG

Because of the Associations

PAUL ZIMMERThree Poems..

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SONIA GERNEST wo Poems. . . . . . .

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JAMES CLARKEThree Poems

STEPHEN DUNNThree Poems

DIANA 0 HEHIRThree Poems. . . . .

JAMES COLEMiniature Golf. . . . .

CARL DENNISTwo Poems.. . . .

WARD STILESAt 3:00 A.M. in the Kitchen Peace Passes Understanding.

The Fattest Man. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

FRANCES McCONNELThe Poets Cry Out Against Schoolchildren

The Centerpiece ..KATHLEENE WEST

For Cleopatra, Whose Name Should not Be in a Poem

JOHN VERNONHands

CAROLYN STOLOFFThe Innermost Room

DAVID WEISS MANNPretensions

DICK CASETwo Poems

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28Distributed by B. DeBoer, 188 High Street, Nutley, N.J. 07110; »d in theWest by L-S Distributors, 1161 Post Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94109.

NAOMI CLARKFound Poem: First Letter fiom Aunt Cat .

HERBERT SCOTTTwo Poems

DAVID ST, JOHNThis

JOHN SKOYLESI n Memory of My Voice. . . . . . . . . .

JAMES McKEANThe Gift

TESS GALLAGHERTwo Poems. . . . . . . . , . . . . , . . .

RICH IVESHeron. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CHRISTINE ZAWADIWSKYTwo Poems. . . . .

GWEN HEADTwo Poems. . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . .

DUANE NIATUMSongs from the Maker of Totems .

JOEFFREY BARTMAN

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44T wo Poems.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .WESLEY McNAIR

Going Back to Fifth Grade. . . . . . . . .MICHAEL MAGEE

Three Poems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .BRENDAN GALVIN

Two Poems.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .KENNETH 0, HANSON

Four Poems.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Paul Zsmnses'

ZIMMER THE DRUGSTORE COWBOY

At least I know my peculiar emptiness,My vague reality, as though I'd beenStunned by a concrete tit at birth,Dull as a penny bouncing off a cinder block;My white socks down over high tops,The big lugs heavy with gravel and mud.

I always get up in the early morning,Sit on the drugstore bench in the mist,Drink Dr. Pepper's for breakfast untilThe boys at the Shell station startRevving their motors like a pride of lions.I wait all day for things to cool down,Watch the bread trucks and the big rigsDeliver and depart, pass out of my sight

P OE T R Y N O R T H W E S T

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Down the Interstate.

Shattered safety glass in the streets,The stupid heat lightning swelling out of trees,Groove, gash, dent, dog, mosquito, Hy;Once in a while something just froths me,My anger bursting through my skin and slappingSurface like the side of a bluegill,My cold bony mouth snapping and suckingAt the hot air, my eyeballs pivotingUntil I can settle down again.

At night I walk the town, look upThrough the tiny squares of window screens,

Notify us promptly when you change your mailing address.Send both the old address and the new — and the ZIP code numbers.

Change of Address

I get mad about things:

Three Poems

W I N T E R 1 9 7 4 - 7 5

Allow us at least six weeks for processing the change.

POETRY NORTHWEST

Inside the squares of pictures and doorframes,Inside the glowing squares of television,Inside the squares of the windows.Everything is plumb and solid in the night,The corners of lamplight fastening things down.

Because I have become my own shadow.The crickets tinker with the silence.I walk in the dark alleys, see starsWell out of the roofs of buildings.They swarm and multiply l ike a massOf shiny gnats in my gaze. I wonderHow many I could see if I watched foreverPStar growing into star, year after year,The new revelations spreading out beyond my sightUntil they would all grow together,Swelling like heat lightning out of trees.Then maybe I could live like a bluegillAll of the time, full of hunger and purpose,Cool, trim, quick in the water,One little muscle waiting to strike.

Wherever I move the darkness moves

Of a landslide.

I feel his blows, then painFlies to my surfaces as thoughIt has always been there waitingFor Barney to challenge it out.My skin folds back in slots and tabsAnd the sweet night bleeds from my face.

Barney catches me in a dark place,His jaws and pincers grinding.

I fall before

THE SWEET NIGHT BLEEDS FROM ZIMMER

Barney catches me in a dark placeWith no sunlight I can squirm through.His body uncoils its frustrationsAnd fists plunge like the last stones

I feel my brains sucked out of my head,My heart clutched in his claws,Remembering and still trying to beat.I am ground up and spat into the weeds,The sweet night bleeds from my skull.

Barney catches me in a dark placeAnd stars descend to coil about my head,Buzzing about my gravity, sinkingTheir stingers in my lips and eyelids.In the trees each twig and suckerIs pointing at a separate fire.How could I have forgotten all these starsP

Stars in the desert faded at dawn;Then the flash and shock waveRammed sand in my face, uprooting cactus,Blasted the animals, birds from the sky.Afterwards, under the fireballAnd faint stars, we wanted to kickDead rabbits, throw stones at each other,Call each other sons-of-bitches.

Once on the dark still lake I droppedMy line between the stars and prayedFor fish in the midst of night.The small pickerel swallowed my hookAnd when I ripped it out the fishScreamed like a wounded rabbit.I rowed my boat in out of the dark,Churning the galaxies and nebulae,Spoiling the perfect night.

Barney caught me in a dark placeHe won't back off and let me be.I look for a place to hide underMother's navel, behind father's penis.

Someone wounded and breathing hard,Trying to become the earth; sorry man

But I can't remember who I am.

POETRY NORTHWEST

Remembering each cruelty under the stars;Someone wagging submission forever.

In my great warmth and confusionI put them into my mouth and chew them,Let my teeth commit their quick atrocities.Then in highest hopes I swallow them,Feel their pulp and grit slide delicatelyDown my throat into the dark acids.

I return to the shade of the site,Small beauty pumping out to the edgesOf my body, infusing into my parts.Amidst the ring of tremendous stonesI feel my cells divide in fragile ecstasy.

ZIMMER AT THE DIGGINGS

It is best to begin in the morning withThe low sun slanting over the cool site.I brush the dust from the groovesOf ancient trash, strip down the layers,Sift, count, dig, date the axeheads.

These are my findings:Surface — Bones of wild dogs,Some elm stumps smelling of urine.Second level — Residue of hemp,Circular mounds of earth, post holesTesting of urine, scattered bones ofChildren, birds, woodchucks, snakes,The femur of a stupendous cave bear.Third level — Reasons for the circles,A ring of large sandstone tablets sunk intoMounds of cranial fragments, eye teeth,Delicate shard and fingerbones.

I sweat. By midafternoon with the sun highAnd sky pressing down upon my head,I start to imagine I can join it all.The axeheads strain like wings.I begin to glue the shard together,Rack the teeth, stack the bonesAnd string them with muscle and sinew.

Soeia Gerees Two Poems

ROPE ENOUGH

the hay:We were the penitentiary's best customerthat year my brothers made the rope machine,buying bales of its hard-labor twineto string the sweet loom of our alfalfa field.

A boy at each end, I was the bright bobbinthat coursed between the twisting strands,blonde hair floating out and out with the running twine,

Weaving rope strong enough to rip the fleshfrom our father's hand that summer in the mow.They grafted him in a body cast — a round white cup,his elbow plastered for the handle's crook.

Looking back, I want to tip him,pour out the pain that floated to his eyes,let love be the pulley where he hitched that rope

to rafters in the shed, his own therapy,pulled and pulled that handle of an arm

I breathe on them and listen for voices.

At last, in heat, I wander into the countryside,Gather the small, exquisite things I love:Maple seeds, phlox petals, flakes of birch bark,Gypsum pebbles, baby mice, all minute jewels.

NORTHWESTPOETRY

the belt:

I learn a sailor's art; tie downone by one those strands that slipand make my counting wrong.

I number back to strokes I' ve brushedin my mother's hair — white threadsthat multiply, snap like wormsas each part grows. She has seen hourswriggle in the hand, dissolve into partsbefore they die.

I pull this partial belt in line,leave out the beads my friends advise(I don't want what turns). Where string ripplesI pattern knot after knot, designmy defense. What I tiestays.

the hanging:Carol swallowed Mayo Clinic threadthe weeks her esophagus closed. Handover hand, like fishline, reeling inand out again, it was all she hadagainst that sealing off.

Nights I wake to feel a closing,a stricture in whatever goes within,I hunt for pencils in the dark,string out words across a page,filament by filament, testinguntil they' re strong.

I know the old saying: men given rope ..I'm careful enough. I' ve seen friendstangle in their words, dangle

back to length and use, Three fates in that field,we had measured out his pain, his health.

This birthday,

that awful O.E.D."

We nod, know how it is,mutter so she cannot hear:That's what it gets you, all thatdark research. Surely there's a lesson here.

We fumble in our bags, draw out

TERMINAL PAPER

The professor has died in my dream.We huddle, forms without content,in the room that was his class,speak softly, wonder what it was­enjambment of the breath,a dissociation of the spirit and the sense ..We say nothing correlates.

The wife comes. A net of weepmgcurbs her rhythmic stride. She says,"It came so suddenly. He's dead, you know,from an infection he picked upusing the Oxford English Dictionary­

where some capricious musehoists dreams on attic rafters, smashesother loves, breathes the peace of oven doorsthat open only once.

Wherever there's rope, there is danger;I keep mine to the size of twine,know that alone it won't hold me,but it's there, tangled and dark by the bedsidenights I wake and swallow, swallow, hopingit is enough.

clean white cards. We make a noteof that.

NORTHWESTPOETRY

Three PoemsJames Clarke a yawn that promises to lastforever, scratch my head,or crude as a lumberjackwaking up slow and coldat dawn, I pound my chestuntil your eyes avoid mineand your chin begins to tremble,until I am able to say it,say I love you and knowthese words come straight, clearfrom the bottom of my lungs.

HER LIES

I dreamed I saw myself;an old man beating a stickon a stone. I said, "Old manwho did you love, anyoneP"he said, "Son, it was wellbefore they cut down treeswith chains, before the delugeof cats, and her eyes wereblue, light blue, tworobin's eggs that hatched,two yellow hummingbirdsthat flew, and it was therein that place that I lovedeven her lies, the small onesthat grew, those I caughtright away but listened to,and the larger they got,the more I loved her;and when I'd pound my fiston the table bellowingStop, she'd fly half-wayto the ceiling and returnembarrassed at being caught;

the harder it was to stopthese lungs from bursting,bursting out in laughter."

but the louder I bellowed

APOLOGY

Whatever it is that formsthat frown, that blue veilcovering your face, its edgelike a scar my dreams etchin a plate of purple glass;whatever it is, I thinkin my own way I understandand I have felt it also;the conclusion I forced,the long silences, the lies,

the trails I left scattered

across the country-side,the small circles of stonescovered with warm ashes,each larger than the last;in the morning the lonelinessof breaking camp, at nightthe feelings a small streammust have entering a lakesuddenly. These I feel

and though it seems to makeno difference if I like itor not, there are times

HER SADNESS

.. . and being a little sadyou speak of the days when...how once a poet lovedin a less modern, more delicateway, as I begin to yawn

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StephenDunn Three Poems

a candle lit in a cellar

which is not an excuse

will rise from its exhaustion

I believe it must be allowed

I pull a stone from the fire,hold it up in my bare hands,offering it all for its end,an end doused in a poolof calm water; a stone restingat its bottom, and a mistrising to cover it over.

Yet, having felt what it is

to continue its long walkwinding toward exhaustion,

but rather the hope thathaving walked through itmy way, all wil l come outin the end, seen to be balancedand justified by you; my hope

based on the certaintythat something inside you

to meet me; something like

smelling of earth and roots;like the petals of a roseburning down its stem, untillike an empty glass its flametouches and warms you

with ambitions for morning;something kindled deep insidethe almost imaginary bonesin your face, making your face

glow faintly; something like

lifting a face, long buriedin the blue veil of cold hands,from the hands, a smilethat is yours and mine.

search for what I feel.

he' ll hand us a note marked

a white ball into the forbidden

DEATHS

The first time the news comes, I'm twelve,I stop as they do in movies,

And though I hardly careeverything inside me moves.People can disappear.

Uncle Frank, dead for no good reason.The neighbor's dog at least was chasing

territory of the street.Just a bad cold that got worse. Poof.And suddenly my parents, in perfect health,move on to my critical list.

And years later they die of nothingI could have predicted.And for my father I sit on a tile flooruntil it hurts, and after it hurts.

PROPHECY FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS

He is somewhere in our future,the beggar who gives change.He will be waiting for us perhapsoutside a department store, his pocketsbulging like the stomachsof starved children: all hope and air.When we give him a quarter

"This is only the beginning, friends."And we, who have never completeda single gesture,will carry that notefor the rest of our lives.

the smile one comes to

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THE VISITANT

a stillness when the news comes.

And for my mother I play hostat the wake and keep the face

everybody wants.Then some friends die in an accident,and a girl I slept with once is foundin a lake.

And always the stillness that is not

The dance in place, the oldfunereal rag.And the rhythms after a whileare breathless, and beat my name.A walk down a street, a night in bed,become the same as a trip in a jet:I can see my body — ashes.They will learn my namefrom my dental records.

And my children, whom I cannot teachthese lessons, think my lap a resting placeand come there when they' re tired.When I stand up, all they knowis that it's gone, and will reappear.But I, I'm happy these dayssimply to be there when I rise.

Maybe Wolfe's title should have read"You have to go home again, even thoughyou can' t." — From a conversation

it curls a finger and beckons youback into the half light,and soon you' re at an airport,surprised, heading home.

The old house is empty when you arrive,your parents gone.It's the attic you go to; ratherwhere you find yourself going.There are locks strewn on the floor,keys still in them like menwho've had heart attacks in women.And empty trunks sit like sarcophaginear the junk boxes, and you tryto remember what belongs in them.Soon you notice the small boyis extending his hand, asking you to grasp it.But there's a finger missingand another gnarled and broken;you grasp what you can.

And the small boy wishes to stay,says he must gather the scattered flesh,all his own broken promises.And though you tell himabout your wife and kids, the businessthat is waiting for you,he doesn't listen, sits down,throws a tantrum,says you and he are finished.

How seriously should you takethe mind of a childP You leave,choosing not to wait for your parentswho are gone,and head back to the homeyou' ve made for yourself out of loveand forgetfulness.You are pleased the small boychanged his mind, suddenly stopped crying,

You try to shake the hand of the small boywho lives within you,but it's buried in the deepdebris of adulthoodand the hand is too shy, doesn't know you,recedes into the safety of its dark.One day when you reach for it, though,

POETRY NORTHWEST14

came with you. But you know this isn' tthe end of it.He has slipped back into you like a childinto quicksand, a black child nowrising all the way down,fist over his head,uninviting, meant for you.

Diaers 0 Heber Three Poems

A PLAN TO LIVE MY LIFE AGAIN

I would adore doing it over.

I wouldn't marry the prince and live in his Mediterranean palaceNo marble vistas of stairs, noPeacocks' tails unfurled; clematis falling from porticos;The electric sea silent for some other feet; the lover,Curls brushed, teeth flashing like road signs,Holds out his arm for another fainting mate.That glass slipper cramps,A slipper of notions; a little cold vise.

My other country has white roads and static skies.Once, flashing a car across Utah, I sawA crown of mountains upside down in the vague air;Peaks, echoes scraping the earth,But only in the mind's camera,A machine as ominous

toes.

FORGETTING THE PAST

(Written after a visit "home" )

The clock over the mountain strikes twelve and a half,The hour at which all of the ladies grow up.I am not going to worry it any more:No more sullen sulks, no cakes untasted.I' ll forgive everything.

Behind me slovens that dark stretch of prairie,Gritty, a road into exile, back over boredom.It flails out under the blank sky like a cloak,A terrible country of leisure with the sound turned off,Under a dome where the sun sags like an egg plant,Where the rock crashes in scalding silent dust,Where a finger's crook takes a year, crying takes three,And feet are invisible. I walked that road searching pain with my

And up here the mountain is bare. Its clock has stopped striking.I hold in my hand the egg of the morning.There is blue air over rocks with angled corners,Spiked like human questions.The mountain reflects brightness,And my children have packed me a lunch: six cookies,A geranium for my hair. I tell the summit: I'm coming!On the other side will be rocks of a different color.

As dynamo, creasing water into electric light.

There can be no prince in such finality.He'd blow away like a cry across white sandEnd over end, his little arms flailing,A puff in the uncanny air. Those mountains crushUpside down, founder to all logic,A terrible problem,

Particles scraping against an interior lining.

IMMANENT EARTH QUAKE

The sky is as dry as baking powder.A scuffed shoe may send the whole thing up.

Houses, sidewalks, stucco railings string out in a sound-line,A breakable presence, garage-door magic beam.It waits for its flag,And the rumbling mess, gawky-fingered, shoves home.

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Curl Dersssis Two PoemsLike everything you wait for.It sits behind you holding its breath in static.It moves in the circle of your mother's death.

Last year's earthquake, we were at the opera.We flattened ourselves into our velvet chairs,Clutching the arms, weighed down by that pushing apron;A conveyor-belt roar lurched off next to my ear.It spoke in metal of a metal world, metal people and flowersClashing themselves to a brassy finish,And death as the voice of an open gong.

Down in the works of the opera house,Shifting weights shoved each other like cousins,A raucous playground scraped by noise.

Afterward, the air wasn't dry. We laughed, a captive people,We laughed as if the sea had split for us.

James Cole

HARDWARE

In line at the hardware storeI lose my manners,Pushing to the front past an old manWith varnish-black fingers,Slamming down the cash of a weekend carpenter.I' ve wasted my Saturday on a tableWhen back at my room I could build a townIn a day at my writing desk,And take it down for corrections,And build it again.

The old man behind me,Waiting in peace for his turn,Is content to spend a day sanding one board.He lives in the faith that his eyes and handsShow him the bottom warp of the world,The basement floor of the houseWhere he finds his work.They are on his side he's certain;They have never deceived him;They hold nothing back.

MINIATURE GOLF

We cross a footbridge to the garden,Rest on a stone bench, record the score.A canal cools. The air's light.We aim for the dragon's mouthOpening slowly and dropping shut­The eyes burn like taillights,The ball plops into the water hole.Mozart comes over the loudspeaker.Over the covered bridge the ball rumbles,Over the drawbridge being raised, rollsBetween the great blades of the mill wheel,The open doors of the windmill.Mozart, a birdie, a thoughtBy the wishing well. Par for the course.

NATIVE SON

You try to imagine highways to all menBut your heart has always loved boundaries,The heavy fields in back of your house,The visible streets of America.

Now when a plane crashed in ParisYou scan the death list for American names,And only when American gunners fly outDo you board the plane in your dreamAnd jostle the pilots, and grab the controls.

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America is your friend at a loud party.Her jokes are no worse than the othersBut they sadden you most.You want to take her home before it's too late.

It's hard to write letters in your attic studyWhen you hear your father downstairsSmashing the furniture on his path to a glass.He was a wino before you were born.You are not to blameYou say to yourself as you go down

Barbara L. Greersberg

Ward Stiles

To look at the mess.

will wake me in the darkP

AT 3:00 A.M. IN THE KITCHENPEACE PASSES UNDERSTANDING

Shaking with coffee and tomorrow'scold dice, I stare at the kitchen windowwhere the dark and the glass touchmy face with two fingers of the same hand.

These are the questions that boiland finally sing in their madness: What flashlight

Will a breath lift the stones behind itPWill anything be saidP

THE FATTEST MAN

There is always a Fattest Man among usand he is always riding in a circus bus

or riding always in a wooden horse,an ark, a chariot, an altered hearse

where eight nine ten eleven hundredpounds of him are locked, impounded

by the Fact Collector, the official weigherwho keeps the golden ledger. There,

only there, is the Fattest celebrated.He is not sought after. He is not invited

to the singalong, not summonedto the father's deathbed. Care, the common

salt of life, is not his portionnor any taste of tears. Old emotions

sit in his gut like time rings in a treeawaiting better times. Then history

will claim him, earth will make roomfor him, he will be the bridegroom

wearing gabardine, he will be immense,imperial inside a black piano case

which now he eats to fill. He will die youngerthan other kinds of men. He will last longer.

Outside the dream of owlbegins to burn in the tree.Flesh soars in orange smoke.Small bones warp and scatter sparks.The membrane of anger curls up and flies from the heart.

The eyes, not the heart, turn to stone.The beak is buried in the heart.

The membrane of fear softens to ash.

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Frunces McConnel Now that we go back to the obscure clutterof ourselves, that single lonelinessPHow many centuries it tookto rise from the whim of your sullenmasses, and yet in a termwe trade all to tosswords together and scramble to be the chosen.

where we bend to the warm water

THE POETS CRY OUT AGAINST SCHOOLCHILDREN

For Bill Ransom, Poet-in-the-Schools, Port Townsend

How you adore us! our hair is more beautifulthan the immortal wind, our hands flirt with swallows,and our words, how our words triumphhumming in and out of your consciousnesslike the beat of the girl's radio at the end of the row.

You do not yet ask us to drinkand be drunken, oracular, subject to fitsof creation; except from the common concrete fountain

until we are near bowing, our nosesstung with the slight prick of the splatter.

Faltering behind at recess, how we are puzzledat this abandonment, that already you have forgottenthe joyful flutter at our arrival during mathand the words that so stubbed you this morning,so fresh when you whispered them overin our bent ear, your breathunwashed and teeming as a dark jungle floor.

You teach us to be worshipped or, as often, mocked.You teach us to wear our hair long,our hands raving, to praisemore freely than a bubbling baby,to be happy when no one notices the bell.What nonsense you teach us, what vanity: to make gesturesout of our small honesty, to make senseout of our grand gestures.

Yet how you send us careening, sucked frailas a robin's egg, our moodsas ephemeral as your triumphs.Will we ever recover from your audienceP

Robert Hershon

of the beak

By freezingan entire banquet hall

THE CENTERPIECE

Ah yesthe swan carved from iceThe techniques introducedhere at the schoolhave furthered the artconsiderably

Carving from the inside outfor examplethe exaggeration ofthe exposed neckand the increased sharpness

we can now make our swanslast for months on endThis enables the brideand groomto retain the first thril lof coolnessalmost indefinitely

POETRY NORTHWEST 23

Kathleerse West Tonight, after reading this, stand alone in your houseand recall those steps. I will stand by you,my hand on your shoulder, and we will dance.FOR CLEOPATRA, WHOSE NAME SHOULD NOT BE

IN A POEM BECAUSE OF THE ASSOCIATIONS

But it's not your fault Mother ran off with the American,and what had you to do with being the first bornPAn old method: name the baby for the disowning grandmotherand she' ll forgive. With her Greek legacy and a Southern accent,you practice forgiving alone.

How many times have you listened to: "It's not really your name!"or explained, No, it's not Cleo.Taking and discarding names from father, stepfather,and two husbands, you still haven't found a surnameto match. Grandmother knew. Arranging love for you,she beckoned the young man from Athens. Promising dark eyesin great-grandsons, he came. Was it your American halfrebelling, affirming the freedom of your winter skin!Or the fear of becoming Greek too soonP

In Montana, I dedicated a poem to you,and ten poets sitting around a table shook their heads, No!The name suggests too much.Consider Shaw, Shakespeare, the legends, Britannica.If you must dedicate, use the initial,or omit the name completely.

My dear "C," my sister,I strike surnames and each month send a letter east to Cleopatra.With violet ink on yellow paper, you transcribeLouisiana syllables. The mirrors need cleaning, you write.Your hands fly like frightened chickens, scratchingat your hair, to mask your face.

Remember the night you woke, hearing Greek musicand crept downstairs to watch Grandfatherpacing folk dances on the rug. Seeing you peering from the shadows,he motioned you closer and guided you in his steps.

Johrs Vernors

HANDS

I want more from my hands — not what they takebut what they can't take, the fragilethings that break to be touched­I want my hands to be too big, to scatterrather than organize things, to smash them to bitsinstead of fluttering over their surfaces­my clumsy hands, my half completedtwin faces, trying to rob the world­for too long they' ve been dwarfswho shrink just to touch something­

by throwing themselves against the walls­they smell too much of the dictionary,I want them to be thirsty ford isorder, and to shake a lot. . . .The next time a hand reaches outto touch mine, I want to saygive me that, it's renteven though it's yours,all I did was nothinga nd my hands are empty to prove it. . . .My hands used to pray too much,they should get caught in a doorbecause they' ll learn they can't give awaythe distance between them and things­that's why they desire so muchand waken even before the bodylike birds opening their wings­perched on the ends of the arms,t railing the arms behind them.. . .

I want them to live

24 POETRY NORTHWEST 25

Kathleerse West Tonight, after reading this, stand alone in your houseand recall those steps. I will stand by you,my hand on your shoulder, and we will dance.FOR CLEOPATRA, WHOSE NAME SHOULD NOT BE

IN A POEM BECAUSE OF THE ASSOCIATIONS

But it's not your fault Mother ran off with the American,and what had you to do with being the first born?An old method: name the baby for the disowning grandmotherand she' ll forgive. With her Greek legacy and a Southern accent,you practice forgiving alone.

How many times have you listened to: "It's not really your name!"or explained, No, it's not Cleo.Taking and discarding names from father, stepfather,and two husbands, you still haven't found a surnameto match. Grandmother knew. Arranging love for you,she beckoned the young man from Athens. Promising dark eyesin great-grandsons, he came. Was it your American halfrebelling, affirming the freedom of your winter skin!Or the fear of becoming Greek too soon?

In Montana, I dedicated a poem to you,and ten poets sitting around a table shook their heads, No!The name suggests too much.Consider Shaw, Shakespeare, the legends, Britannica.If you must dedicate, use the initial,or omit the name completely.

My dear "C," my sister,I strike surnames and each month send a letter east to Cleopatra.With violet ink on yellow paper, you transcribeLouisiana syllables. The mirrors need cleaning, you write.Your hands fly like frightened chickens, scratchingat your hair, to mask your face.

Remember the night you woke, hearing Greek musicand crept downstairs to watch Grandfatherpacing folk dances on the rug. Seeing you peering from the shadows,he motioned you closer and guided you in his steps.

HANDS

Johrt Vernors

I want more from my hands — not what they takebut what they can't take, the fragilethings that break to be touched­I want my hands to be too big, to scatterrather than organize things, to smash them to bitsinstead of fluttering over their surfaces­my clumsy hands, my half completedtwin faces, trying to rob the world­for too long they' ve been dwarfswho shrink just to touch something­

by throwing themselves against the walls­they smell too much of the dictionary,I want them to be thirsty ford isorder, and to shake a lot. . . .The next time a hand reaches outto touch mine, I want to saygive me that, it's renteven though it's yours,all I did was nothinga nd my hands are empty to prove it. . . .My hands used to pray too much,they should get caught in a doorbecause they' ll learn they can't give awaythe distance between them and things­that's why they desire so muchand waken even before the bodylike birds opening their wings­perched on the ends of the arms,t railing the arms behind them.. . .

I want them to live

24 POETRY NORTHWEST 25

Carolyn Stoloff for the wind's homeits ruby chalice

returned to my table, I'd dwellon a level with no supportinventing exploits against nightwith one black wing

THE INNERMOST ROOM

"I have often thought that the best mode of lifefor me would be to sit in the innermost room of aspacious locked cellar with my writing thingsand a lamp." — Franz Kafka, "Letters to Felice"

deep in the mill where the wheels grindawash in time I cou l d penetratethe faraway the l as t cabinon the road back retur n i ng

with smoke down the chimneyto three little pigs in sailor suitsking of the golden riveralso the fisherman and the mermaid

to watch water pour off centerdragged up in knotted strings

but returning after all

again I would presstoward the desert's last teethmere stumps of mesas old buttesswathed in spacious light

or exam i n ing the diurnal azuremy skylight's page I 'd fo l lowin Persian letters a lon g ta leabout the lizard's love

how he grew wings with deliberationfumbling toward flighthow the ambivalent windhumiliated the strange scaled thing

but at last gave into the quest without end

David Weissnsann

PRETENSIONS

When the wind comes, explain how treeslive on air, dirt and water, how camelssurvive on sand, workers on grease.You' re no saint though you love virtue,

and your hard flesh faces the windas green-bottled wine waits for drinkers,disdaining sunlight as mere history.

The sun has no further names, no escapes.It's borne as housecats endure quiet,sleepers their dreams. If you revealsome hideous secret, it will make friends.

But you relish the deep hours of boredom,small skulls stuck in the mind's craw.You stand among turbulent, empty days,knowing your wife for the storm's eye: moreor less damaging but not that serious,unless some rank July they walk offand leave you the noise of your own sweat.

Save the long weather of burial for last.Imagine the plain food you wouldn't mindeating always. If no hunger finds you,what life is better than this, to lie backwatching the seeds flower, the seasons pass.

so much fearl scales tears also

26 POETRY NORTHWEST

Dick Cuse Two Poems

NOSTALGIA

One cold autumn day Tommy BraidsDrank cheap port with old men,Tommy Braids the Indian, missing many teeth,Nose bent at knife scar, drank cheap portIn a run-down tavern, saying Grandfather,Grandfather Bright Rock in a Pool;But the old men didn't listenAnd everybody laughed; all prospectorsHad gone broke years ago.

But Tommy Braids the young buckHad heard Grandfather Bright Rock in a Pool;He clutched his wine bottle, his scarred mouthWailed at coyote, ice off the swampCatches a bullfrog, but the whites didn't listenAnd the old men laughed. Tommy was brokeTrading tales for wine, but wine slurred his taleUntil he slept, climbing a rock slide;His sleep screaming through a bent nose.

One cold April day Tommy BraidsRose from the corner and drew a mapOn a napkin with wine-blistered hand;Tommy Braids the Indian missing many teeth:Below the rock slide, a black boulder stopped the creekAnd the pool hid his crazy grandfather,Grandfather Bright Rock and everybody laughed;Even Tommy laughed and the old men bought portFor Tommy Braids the scarred-mouth Indian.

Then wailing at coyote, he dancedSaying, as the snow went, he'd climb the rock slide,And hunt the boulder damming the creek;And he danced and everybody clappedAs Tommy Braids fell into a spit pool.But he rose again to dance and as they clapped,

'R

IMMIGRANT TO CANKOR CANYON

As a rabbit turns to duck beneath brush,He walked into Cankor Canyon with a fistFull of secondhand handouts, a bag of beansA slab of moldy bacon, an old coat,An ax and shovel picked from junk;And in Cankor Canyon, a bottom full of swamp,He discovered his beans would sprout in dirt ,The rock built a wall that held heat,And tin enough for a roof the wind rattled.

And the wind always blew from a shadow,From the west cliff hidi n the August sun;He said the wind was right, Cankor Canyon wasn't home,Too many rabbits and no horizon,No two story white house tall in a wheat field;But that was Dakota, the Dakota full of dustThat choked him, that slapped him with hunger:In Cankor Canyon, he could kill enough rabbits

He bummed money with wine-blister hand,Bummed enough for a gallon of portAnd with a gallon of port he walked out.

The next cold autumn day hunters were toldTo poke the fallen leaves. They thought of using dogs,But nobody had kept anything of Tom's that gave a scent:He wore every day the only clothes he owned.Grandfather Bright Rock the drunk Indian was forgotten untilThat next warm April day, two hookie boys after bullheadsFound Tommy Braids five miles from town,His exploded hands drawing fliesAnd clutching nuggets.

To eat meat, to cover stones with fur.

And he didn't open his fist, the meadowToo green, too many beans hanging from poles,And after the Japs flew half the ocean,

28 POETRY NORTHWEST 29

Coming toward his west cliff, to bomb Pearl Harbor,He went after Japs; always up at dawnAnd able to fire from squat. It wasn't bad,Except for cleaning boots, he'd come back saying,He'd been to Guam, Guadalcanal, to Okinawa,He'd been there, fought yellow and almost died.

Certain the only bad that could happen in Cankor CanyonWould be the winter wind snaking away his roof;And the wind wasn't bad when he ate rations in mud.When he slept in rain under a helmet,He'd remember drops on tin and a dry bed.The swamp would never be dust, the rabbitsWould never quit, and maybe the beans would go wild:Hadn't Cankor Canyon, the wind from a shadow,Stopped the hunger that almost knocked him deadP

But the trail back was road; he'd whipped the JapsAnd bulldozer had whipped his stone wall,The west cliff dropped by dynamite,Boulders broken on rabbits' runs,And he turned an old man, a fistClosed on a wine jug, belching dead rabbitAt heels that crossed Cankor Canyon,Crossed and left asphalt that couldn't grow a bean:Behind the west cliff there is only blood.

Hi

Neon' Clark

FOUND POEM: FIRST LETTER FROM AUNT CAT

blossoms

colors you never saw

bluegill's fin

swim round through in

But to get to that — is this something

have started loosing 10 lbs a week

for no rime or reason

I have some kind of spell

I just leave this world

come to in hospitle

Been having one a month

Dr says they got stop or

I' ll be a vegetable for as long as I live

so pray for me that they find out what

it is brok e left arm Hon once

heart back last time

can't be by self or do nothen

take medcine that makes me drunk

but Dr say its bettern being outcloud wind pool moon

fiy up

I'm the skySo pray for us

biggerI love you

and the water

whirlpool sti l l mirrer

scoop a drink

moon in my hands

drink moon

swim in the moon

Grady is on way to Big Spring Hospitle to see

if he can get something don too for him

sandstorms ever day but there — plum petals

wind's all plum petals snow

feedsack dress all turned to plum blooms

breath all plum bloom smell

I gess you'r surprise to get this letter.Think of you often where is your mamayou would not know me I way 137

yes this is your big fat Ant Cat. than bigAnt Catif I could tell you

30 POETRY NORTHWEST

Herbert Scott Two Poems We are artists.The flesh glowshealth for another day

THE HOMEMAKER

She is climbing into the refrigerator,putting her fingerprints into the butter,tasting old onions, sleeping with the leftovers.She is helping herself, finding the right shelf.She is firming up like jello, slowingdown, keeping cool, her skin thinninginto pliofilm, her flesh stiffening into steaks.She is becoming a meal, ready to be eaten.

haloedby a wreathof fresh greens.

David St. John

MEAT

"The counter life of fresh meat is three days."

Two days underfluorescent lightsmeat turns greyas the skin of rats

slate colored steakslaid out for viewing

THIS

after Tadeuss Rozea>tcr,

This is the light, I said.This is the light, and the day.

The boy looked at me, his facethe color of dust. It's not enough,he said. You' re lying. There's more.

This is the street, I said.This is the street where people walk,the street they see from their windows.like dead fathers

mourners passingshaking heads, lamentingthe high cost of survival.

The third daywe turn the other cheek,expose a new side

you only imaginedexisted. "They lookso natural," you say.

It is this one.

He saw a waitresswetting her lips with her tongue.Yes, he said. Go on.

This is a house. Someone's home.There is a fire going, dinner on the table.There are children waiting: for a father,

in the keening. For the beds to warmthemselves, in winter.

Never, he said. I don't believe you.

a brother back from the war. For a silence

32 POETRY NORTHWEST 33

Here; I pointed. A newsmanwhose tongue is a rancid almond. A machinistwhose ears drone like sirens. Your own twin,looking for a street sign. A girl, slippingher hands under your shirt.

No, he said. Go on.

These are my hands,that drag a knife through meat,that stack crates in warehouses, in trucks,that whisper like thieves in dark offices,that twist an icepick into your temple,

ringing like the cries of some lost minerI choke myself to smother:his questions, that endless tone.Still, it riseswith an anger worse than muscle.

So I handle this voice like a bird,a razor, or a tiny man,something to notice in an empty room.It seems useless, the struggle to connectwith sound in another way than pain.

The voice, fixed in its long drone,waits to slip out of the bodyas a confused ghost, wonderingwhich was better, the caves, or all this air.And the mind misses the voice and its tricks,slowly releases the faceto an expression of great composure,the mouth left open like a favorite wound.

that hold a woman's face.

Yes. What else.

Nothing else. Or this:that some days, the letter you wait for comes;that the light is blowing into the hallway­as you open the door, and step out.

You' re lying, he said. Go on.

Jurrses MeKeae

Jobe Skoyles

and the scars white as erasures.

IN MEMORY OF MY VOICE

From this house of drains, no exit.I kiss the broken mirror, my own bad luck,

Finally I' ve got myself by the throat,but the voice slipping between my fingers

That voice rising sleek and purecosts breath, that voice scorns flesh,

1898 edition of

THE GIFT

Beneath an incomplete setof World Book EncycLopediasand two movie magazinesin the corner of Gracie's Junk Store,Dillon, Montana,I foundMrs. Ruth S. Julian's

A Selectionfrom theDiscourses of Epictetusin which she had pressedone hundred and twenty-seven

rehearses its chorus of threats.

four leaf clovers.

34 POETRY NORTHWEST 35

Tess Gallagher

BEGIN

All the winds that knew youturn away. The hill looks upfrom your shadow, looks up from the owllodged in the hemlock. Hill,that is a marching under you, hillthat refuses you nothing,to which you have agreed, to whichyour heart thickens

Two Poems reason to slay the cyclops. Nowill not save it. And the cricket, "Yes, yes."

Fresh bait, fresh bait. The searchfor the right hesitationincludes finallyunobstructed waters. Goodbye,old happy-go-anyhow, old shoefor any weather. Whosecandelabra are you? Whose soft-guy, nevermind,nothing-to-lose anthill?

"And," the despised connective, is really an engineuntil it is yes all day, until a light is thrownagainst a wall with some result. Andthere is less doubt, yes or no,for whatever you have been compelled to say

like a root.

There is a memory of snowwhere you were but an absencedeeper than memory. Yet the groundstays with us a whilein your honor. Do not blame usfor speaking, as though this were usual,as though you were not an openingin the silence we already begin.

more than once.

15ch lees

BEGINNING TO SAY NO

is not to offer so muchas a fist, is to walk away firmlyas though you had settled something foolish,is to wear a tarantula in your buttonholeyet smile invitingly, unmindfulhow your own blood grows toward the irreversiblebite. No, I wil l not

go with you. No that is notall right. No I am not your mother, no, nor your sister,your lover, your sweet dish, your home cooking, goodlooking daf­

HERON

The neck is a questionof swallowing whole lives.Stay calmin this sliver of slow flight.

Sing like stiff reeds.

Eat what the water hides.Stand quiet like seed.

When you eat fish you become an ocean.

The moon swallows your breathing.

Breathe like tide.

fodil. Yes is no

POETRY NORTHWEST 3736

Christirse Zau adiu sky Two Po ems "You do not understand," I say.(At night we make up storiesabout fried men who come out of the heaterlike Santa Claus, and four-acre beds.Chimney soot, and the moon.) "My handhas no house. Only fingerprints. Invisible,indelible. Of course I can't cook."(And your eyes shoot like Geritol, likemercury. The squeak of your jaw. Your headone small sparrow.)

A Christmas Eve memoryof broken jokers, and bravery.(" Tomorrow, we' ll at once go outand bring in all the bloody sheep again.")You do not understand. You think, you gasp,while your headless hand squeezesthe life from my thighs.

THE HEADLESS HAND

Still there are times I feel cheated!Is it a clean and fair exchangePFingerprints. White nails. Jerusalem.The breasts of a joker, although you won't say it.Will I wake up some morning with bloodin my thighsP ("I want to coverthe whole side of your face with my handand feel the softness.") Deliberate kissesstained with aged ink. Season's greetings.Rechargeable laughter. ("Who cares about infinitywhen she was so softP") Through an inferno pressed overyour eyes. ("And she was all red, down below, down there.")The concentration camps around your face,eyes like drunken scarecrowsout of season in the snow. Quick penitentsof wrinkled dough. Tracing, under your eyelids,two dry, defunct oceans. Crucified, a haughty word.In the pale desert, under a tide of saliva.

"Atlantis!" I cry. (Never "Leprosy!" )"On top of your forehead people will standand admire your harbors! From the bulk of your eyebrows!"

"I don't know," you say, flexing a nobleTeddy Roosevelt hand. Red rubber ball.(You do not understand.) "I don't mind younot knowing how to cook or to sew, but I don't understandwhy you hide in the closet." (Three gunshots of kissexplode in my ear.) "Why you cut yourself afterour argument. Why you came out and said thatyou'd seen a white deer chasing your skin away fromthe light." (The crescent moon on your fingernailslices my tongue. A rich harvest of angryfruit for the poor.)

IN THE NORTH TEMPERATE ZONE

Consider the summer of 1816, when it snowed and sleetedthrough July and August. On Bear Mountain the sky rained grassand even though it wasn't summer, I froze. We made love

in front of an open refrigerator. You raised your headand your eyes were filled with snow, your arms forkedbranches, your bones a haiku, a l andscape of o ld-fashioned

Milk bottles glinted on the shelf. Somewhere on Everest a freezingcrow cawed. My mouth was a mirror, my limbs were icicles.The burning bush, the fig tree, a handful of snowballs — but flowers

are food for dying people, and that was the summer we ateroses. They were well preserved in the early morning frostand reminded me of candied yarns,the blotched petals a mixture

snowmen.

38 POETRY NORTHWEST

of blood and snow. Consider the lawnmower, lazy, abandoned,its spokes twanging through a junkyard of human flesh. Thatwas the summer the grass was blue. That was the summer

that we wore red mittens and tried to sue God formalpractice. Our stomachs were screaming refrigerators,our tongues burned wildly in our heads. Someone to argue

with, someone to blame things on, someone to use in one wayor another, that was enough to ask of each other, but as we turnedinto Eskimos our complexions darkened and we wore teeth and fursand never pulled free of the sun's enduring gravity, its winterlove. Dreaming of the Sahara and endless rivers, we skated on our

imaginary blisters, projected sunburns, unearthed the sidewalkand the sea and shoveled the cold back into our mouths, ate pale

that avoided the sun. Consider your hands upon my breasts,

our total inability to melt into each other, our skins like vanillaice-cream cones, like dead children fossilized with our love.The metal on the k i tchen counter (assorted grinders, knives and

forks)

will feed us intravenously, bleach us, paralyze us withan exotic variety of leprosy, silence. Like an untouched sheetof unlined paper or a newly fashioned mannequin, if you try to cut

my dark skin (sweet as chocolate, thick as papaya) you will findnothing

but more snow. Seriously consider the rest of the year: a blizzardof unreality, sledding on our bones above the barren land,communicating under an avalanche. Skinning our knees was neverthis good. Indians are lurking in the woods. Consider Africa,

Greenland,our new abode: consider us eating each other, unloading the last

its rim marked

roots

On its curved obsidian

Gseee Heud

RECENT ACQUISITIONS

Item: one tea bowl, Japanese oribeof a frozen porridge color

by three vertical linesterminating in circular scrawls.These may be read

as spidersamulets, arrestedraindropsplummeting

into a deep green glaze whose color suggestsif organic, dragonfliesif chemical, arsenic.

open

Item: canusauli cue, reticulatedblack and white shell of the Philippine tide line.

sides, a perspectiveof large and small white coneserupts, an infant mountain range extrudedfrom the obscure sea floor.

Item: on the leatherymoss and cream-colored foliageof paphiopedilum concolora similar patternrecurs, a softened and flutelikecanon at the octave;but its bloom, while of an appealinglavender-speckled yellowis sparse, infrequent, and for an orchid, totallyinsignificant.

Finally on a still-crypticcurl of ghostly gelatin

Two Poems

load.

40 POETRY NORTHWEST

in a metal can, this snapshot:framed

by yellowing Royal palms

green-shingled ColonialADAMS FUNERAL HOME

low-lying, white, s-curved, voluptuous"A Morris Lapidus Associates Renovation,

left

center

in my mind, as in an etching of Piranesia baroque monument called Patience.

I carried you, I learned one lesson well:first be a good animal.

Those long months

Duane Niaturn

foregroundHEAVEN

the choppy brown canalone heedless pleasure boata third sign:

SONGS FROM THE MAKER OF TOTEMS

For Abner Johnson

I.WATCH YOUR WAKE.

For Lee

SURE THING

Your father picked a filly from the paddock;silver, insolent, an early fernrearing above drab leaves; pliant as grass,fickle as water, dappled like a stream bed.Mounted, she was a lethal blue machine.Sure thing, he said.

the dirty wave sucked her under, head over heelsand held her, mauled her, teased her. When she surfacedriderless, on three legs, the fourth hoof dangledon its chains of tendon, scattering blood like a censer.Two men at her bridle, two at her stirrups, she would nothave done with running, but, bearing them all, waltzedfor home until the master rapped three times for silence.

Hers was a short dash and a quick ending.I can no longer die young; the deepening linesin my face, my palms, converge in perspective, forming

Driving through mud at the rail

I offer you the chance to forgive your woundsThat often burned down the longhouse.And you must never blame the village shaker;I comfort you because of his dreaming.

See owl settling in the four directions, roostingIn the salmon ceremony of your tribal fires­Flying back to First People hidden in your feelings,Easing the weight of morning on your eyelids.

They leave your pride in confusion's cave,Light your burden with another storm.

2.Thunderbird because he's buried under bones,Teeth, and shell; Raven because he can' tSee sun reach the crocus beneath the ferns;Bluejay because so few hear the humor in his laugh,

His praise to the women swimming in the river;Whale because he's more hunted than haunted,Seaweed because it is now no more than desert dust.Beaver because his last dam was a collapsing

POETRY NORTHWEST 43

Rainbow that sent him off to the stars withoutA cedar chip to begin where the water song failed

3.

To hold the second circle in the second shadow.

The trees in the yard, the trees on the corner.Peaches on a tree, blurredin the rain, through a window.The oldest tree in town and the treein the park tattooed by lovers. The treesjust planted. The trees on the orphanage lawn.Wolf is roaming through the forest of your terror;

He can't move until you stop running behind the dead,The drummers behind the moon. At dawn, he must beGiven the rattle to shake you back to shore.

As it was your ignorance that started this tremor,Feeding the sharks the procession of hearts,The stream of suicides diving into white breakers.

The trees in the woods. The one treewe don't know about. The tree that doesor doesn't fall. The branches tangled inthe telephone wires that parallel the highway.

Joeffrey Bartrnan

THE TREES DO THIS AND THAT

The trees do this and thatin the wind, in the white and yellow sun.They taunt their shadows and go berserkas sunset unbuckles their spines. They seemabout to strangle in the orange-lit evening.Undressing in the fog or waiting to beundressed by the smoke from a campfire,they try to burst the shotglass burieddeep into their centers.Meandering snows jockey between their limbs.The trees have worn people to hangings,ribbons to fairs. Two bluejays don't collide.

The moon blinks, the trees woo,the flickering stars are ignored, the syrupyrain occasionally travels over the bark.The trees have spent lifetimes determiningsummer for winter, spring for falland barricading night for day.

Two Poems

FROM THE LIPSTICK FACTORY

In the door and taken for the shiftgetting off. Well okay and we slapa fog of dust from our corduroys,

wipe our hands in our hair.Another set of eyes trades a photowith another set of eyes. An overwide

mouth howls when it wins at bingo.A few puckering others kiss sloppily, The girlis in love with the guy. The girl

is not in love with the guy. Two guysare in love with the same girl. Another girlloves somebody else or at least says she does.

A guy loses. A girl wins. Vice versa.

Two girls bicker over the daredevil who said hello.

A girl and a guy whisper that the money' sgot to go for snowtires. One waitress in two uniformstakes up three seats. Three.. . H a loes

of our pink dust dream on the ceiling.Eyelids and underneath puffed up

All combinations of the above.

44

like a blouse full of wind. I breathe

NORTHWESTPOETRY

long and short in emergency red. Blow-outs,air guns and wristwatch alarms.The jukebox, it revs. Eggs

fry and squeal and hams broil and cry.A rack of saucepans falls on the griddleand clangs slowly like a trainwreck telling itself

to a town via snow. Cuddling in housesembracing mountains, the sleepersthey almost hear.

You are the Person

who travels all over the state

The whole class applauds.Up front, meanwhile, the Penmanship Man

writing beautifullyis putting on his coat,and the teacher is at the blackboarddotting the i in your nameso hard her flesh jolts.

Who Always Spoils ItFor Everyone Else. If you could makeone half-inch margin, you cry, just onebeautiful pink mapof Asia. Outside it is beginningto rain. When you stay after schoolnobody is there.

Wesley McNair

with breasts and the bald one

turns to smile. You become aware

GOING BACK TO FIFTH GRADE

You sit downclose to the floorlosing your height forever.All along they have beenexpecting you. Across the aisle a boywith thick glasses andwide underwater eyes

that he is not happy,that none of them are happy.The baby-faced girl

off b the windows who had ringwormare blaming youwith words you can't quitecatch. Surely they recall your paintingof the tropical birdyou ask, speaking their nameswhich you have never forgot.But things get worse: Someone is questioningyour decision to grow upin the first place, leaving them here.

Michael Magee

THE CIRCUS

After we have slapped our thighsonce more, and we laugh quietlydown in the pit of our belliesthere will be tougher acts to follow:clown-face, white-face, lovers.We could walk on our hands,see the big-top go spinningor rolling over, play deadfor a minute like lions,lying on our backs, yawning.

With love as our ringmasterand three rings going at once

our extraordinary juggling actwhere I suspend you breathless,cupped in the palms of my hands,

Three Poems

who would know what to watch:

46 POETRY NORTHWEST 47

POEM FOR THE POET STARVING TO DEATHON HIS OWN VOCABULARY

I have bitten off the words,left them cold on my tongue,without sense or taste,not even a pinch of salt.

I kept only my bad breath,starving on this silence,gnawing the same old bones,settling for grubs and roots.

But I crave darker meat,anything I can chew on,fat, even gristle, the scraps

or the thrills of the high-wireas we touch briefly, passing again,tempting luck and death,losing our balance only for funbefore we come down to earth.

Or me on the burning trapeze,you my star-spangled accomplice,dressed only in a handkerchiefas we perform our triple somersault.And finally our sweeping bows,followed of course by applause,the cotton candy and hoopla,the horns and glittering girls,spotlights swinging above our headsas we exit through the roof.

from someone else's table.

that when the darkness cracks

THE LIE

You have told me this truth:that when we lie asleepI wake to your cold dreaming,

even this bed will not hold us,that we shoulder the nightbetween our two backs,and pressed between our palms

Brendan Gakiss

DIAGNOSIS

Between flesh and the spirit,

Two Poems

who's not tornPA hairless curatetrails around in meon rubber soles:his homilies are fluentas birch rods.He trims my wicks.A notebook in his skirtslists my offensesby the ounce.He calls the shotsall right (let's call himA).

is the blood of our children.

That what we love, we fear:this pulse driving us onbreaching our valley of bones,the many shapes we becomelike shadows tom from evening,this nest of tangled hair,the clay of our bodieswrested from its labor.I tell you to your teeth,it is a lie I like hearing.

48 POETRY NORTHWEST 49

Though there's B, too,who wants and will not quit.He's the unstrung Harp

pratfalls. Just hear him,day and night:Kick out the skidsl,ditched on his backin weeds beside the road.Oh, he's the nightsweat'sfather, I know that,Will-o'-the-Wispdry in the throat,who nails his warningflare to my big toe.

who framed me for

Then when his deathbedpillow's plumped, he's randy

But A produces chalk,and, on the clearingblackboard of B's skull,describes delicious tits.

B knocks the blocks out then,goes with his goadand dams the tilted bucket.Think of the chickenand the egg, orpartners in a dancehallmarathon, marrying

through the night.

and systole,

beating good times out.

each other

for the candles and the oil.

IN ENVY OF INSTINCT

Earth, air, or water,which are we natural toPRunning the countrythe only way I know how,I put one footbefore another, whereearlier a deer clicked offthe distance like a caliper.

My heart beats redas the pouchof a horny frigatebird.My lungs are spongesworking for more air.When I stop,a metaphor for nonchalancecomes paddling up the creek.

Is it speech and its procrastinationsthat separate usfrom these lower ordersPOr that backlash of knotsand loops, the ultimatenervous systemP Any wave skimmerbelting along the coastcould go without reasonto Venezuela tomorrow.

Off Jeremy Point the bluefishhang straight out in midair;seeing them flexedover fleeing bait,my heart stands upand walks into my throat.

Surely this body's more than justsupport for a tangle of untied punchlines,out-takes from The Impossible,

Think of diastole

stick in a barrel

50 POETRY NORTHWEST

she says over and over­a stomach that soundslike an old machine­your life

and mash notes from the dead?Why can't I have a womanwith breasts like the mourning doves'?

And goddam it I'd likethe energy ants save the world with.To store it drib by drab in underminesand riddles of wood, no jot too smallfrom smears and flakes,from lips of children asleep,A decimal at a time, to carry offwhole silos, nudging the originof species my way.

as if for the first time

Keeeetb 0. Hanson

GOING TO SLEEP AS THE DOGS ARE BARKING

On that day when you wake up

and find that the woman beside youis not beautiful, a whore­your life

the muscles that holdyour eyeballs in placestretch tight as rubber bandsyou keep trying to blink, the skintouches your cheekbones­nothing has been overlookedit is that kind of day

Four Poemsdirect

be so amazed

is like metal

I feel likethe ocean floorprofoundI'm patient as a stoneI know my place

SAYING YES, SAYING NO

What amazement it isto be livingonly someonefrom a village could

I gazeat the blue skythinking of veritieswhat brain power

sunlightalwaysdoes this to meI blink like a starstruck moleI breakinto song 0 sweetGreek morning my voice

like crystal like glass

the vision is dazzlingtears start

he loves mevery much he loves mevery much

let the restthink cleverspellbound

Nightsin the Gardens of Spain I sayhello to the world with my eyes

numb

NORTHWESTPOETRY

air between

ALCYONE

Sitting in the sun by the blasted treeI say yes to begin withlike old times.

The leaves hang downhang down from branches

like the delicate bones of fish.

Across the squarefrom levels of a balconylast night's warm sheetsare cooling in the breeze.

The woman yawnsand stretches, leaning on the railinglooking rich.

tomorrow the second

into weeks, if you askat the very beginninghow, you will missthe beginningI love you

Suddenly, allthe workers in buildingshave dreams in the sunlighttodaythey are dreaming the First part

I love you

It is too late nowto go back and be strangersall the corpuscles joinlike a true majoritysingingYes sir she's my babythe real thing

like the tree.

So much to seeso much to find

no need to hurry.

She is open to suggestion

Nobody makes the first move.

Too late to rememberthe way it wasfrom the very beginning

on your head like a hatin August, sunon your back like a hand

sun

"SUDDENLY, ALL" SONG

Because it is springshe is washing the windowlike rain, washing

eucalyptusI love you

The daysare all turning themselves

the leaves of the tall

NORTHWESTPOETRY

past seven years.

Brazillier in 1974.

About Our Contr ibu tors

PAUL ZIMMKR has edited the Univ. of Pit tsburgh Press Poetry Series for the

SONIC GRRNzs is a graduate student at the Univ. of Washington.

JAMEs cLARKE teaches tennis in Ann Arbor, Mich.STKFHKN DUNN's book Looking for Holes in the Ceiling was published by theUniv. of Massachusetts Press in 1974.DIANA 0 HKHIR teaches at Mills College and is working on a novel.JAMEs CoLE teaches English at the Univ. of Wyoming.CARL DENNIs s first book A H o u se of Mix Own was published by George

WARD STILzs lives in Suffolk County, England.BAHBARA L. GRzzwszRG's first book The Spoils of August was published byWesleyan Univ. Press in 1974.FRANczs MCCoNNKL teaches at Claremont College.RORKRT HznsnoN l ives in B r o oklyn and has appeared in numerous l i t t lemagazines.KaTHLzzNz Wzsr is in the Graduate Writ ing Program at the Univ. of Wash­ington.

JOIIN VRRNON teaches at the State Univ. of New York at Binghamton.CARoLYN STDLQFF s second book Dying to Survive was published in 1973 byDoubleday.Davm WzxssMaNN is a graduate student at the Univ. of Cincinnati.DIGK CAsK lives in Spokane.NAoMI CLARK teaches at San Jose State Univ.HKRRKRT ScoTT works for the Michigan Creative Writing Project sponsored bythe Michigan Council for the Arts.DAvm ST. JDHN is a teaching — writing fellow at the Univ. of Iowa.

JOHN SzoYx.zs is a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown.

JAMzs MGKzAN teaches at Columbia Basin College, Pasco, Wash.Tzss GALLAGHKR is teaching at St. Lawrence Univ. in Canton, N.Y.RIGH Ivzs is a graduate student in the Univ. of Montana Writing Program.CIIRISTINz ZwwADxwsKY was born in the Ukraine and lives in Milwaukee.GwzN HKAD's first book of poems Special Effects will be published by the Univ.of Pittsburgh Press this spring.DUANz NIATUM's second book Ascending Red Cedar Moon will be publishedshortly. He is a member of the Clallam Tribe.JozFFRKY BARTMAN teaches at the Univ. of Massachusetts.

Wzsx.zv MGNAIR teaches at Colby College — New Hampshire.MIGHAEL MAGEE is working in the Poets-in-the-Schools Program in WesternWashington.BRENDAN GALVIN s latest book is N o T im e for Good Reasons (Univ. of Pitts­burgh Press, 1974) and received a National Endowment for the Arts Awardfor 1975.KENNETH O. HANsoN recently returned from Greece where he spent a year onan Amy Lowell Fellowship.

to Poetry Norfhwesf's Donors' FundNews for Contributors

PoETRY NoRTHwEsT reminds its readers that it is the recipient of a $1830grant from the federally sponsored Coordinating Council of L i teraryMagazines. Since that amount has been given to us in the form of match­ing funds, every tax deductible contribution in support of Poetry North­west from you, our readers, will be doubled until we reach that figure.The CCLM rules stipulate that you should say you intend your gift toapply to the matching-funds grant. We hope for your help.

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