Willawaw Journal

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Willawaw Journal

Willawaw Journal is an online magazine for poetry and art, published three times a year–Spring, Fall, and Winter. Each issue features the poem prompt of a northwest poet laureate with a model response from the editor, and may also promote a theme. Submissions are open year-round. Our mission is to encourage writers and artists to create, and to generate a community where a diversity of voices is welcome.

Welcome

Submissions for Winter 2018 are closed

Willawaw Journal, for Winter 2018, features the poem prompt, My Brother, by Elizabeth Woody, former Oregon Poet Laureate. This issue also invites poets and artists to respond to the form of a Cebu, detailed on the submission page. As always, the journal is open to submissions from  everyone, year round. The deadline for the next issue is December 1, 2018. 

Read the Guidelines & Submit Your Work

Poet Laureate Poem Prompt—Winter 2018: Elizabeth Woody

We hope ‘s Elizabeth Woody’s poem will inspire you, as a reader, to discover a feeling you hadn’t named before or a resonance you hadn’t expected. For the writer/artist, let the poem as prompt carry you to some place new in your work. Photo Credit: Amy Castano

My Brother–Elizabeth Woody

It was bruise marks of hands that alluded to tracks of murder.
Her neck was twisted too many times in short rope,
and the tree too high for a small woman.

“He was here.” He says,
“He came to her new Man,
too, and said that he was coming for him next.”

The nightmare is black tongue.
No footprints.
The form in the room
laughs, “Ha Ha, Goody!”
He sees that it is vapor.

Later, when he cuts her down,
he knows that she came to him,
to him, she laughed.
The night will not make her unhappy.

He had no time to hunt,
since he had to bury
three more brothers the next day.
Car wreck on ice.

The insidious soul danced across the river
to entice other women to death.

If he is man,
he is subject to will.
If one prefers Archangels,
he can be cast into oblivion.

That does not comfort the people
and we must battle
with Bell and Prayer, for the brother.
This will take up the nights
and the rest of our thoughts.
The brother has seen the foreshadowing of events.
He will bring the damned down in his fisherman’s grip
into the mad boil of the river’s strength.

 

From Luminaries of the Humble by Elizabeth Woody.  © 1994 The Arizona Board of Regents.  Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press.

More About the Poet Laureate Poem Prompt

The Editor

Rachel Barton is a poet, teacher, writing coach, and editor. She earned a B.A. in English from West Virginia University where she also pursued graduate studies in the art of printmaking. Drawn to Alaska by an older sister, she continued to pull lithographs at the Visual Arts Center until her new family began to manifest. From there, she dove into clay and watercolor. Upon her arrival in the Northwest 25 years later, she earned a Masters in Teaching from Western Oregon University. It was while teaching that she became acquainted with the Oregon Writing Project. And the rest is history...
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More About the Editor