Willawaw Journal

Online Poetry & Art

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Willawaw Journal

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

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Submissions open November 1–November 30

Willawaw Journal, Winter 2019, will feature the poem prompt, “In Sommerlicht Schwebend” by Claudia Castro Luna, Washington Poet Laureate. The editor invites artists and poets to respond with their own take on mental illness. General submissions are also welcome.

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Poet Laureate Poem Prompt—Winter 2019 Claudia Castro Luna

We hope ‘s Claudia Castro Luna’s poem, “In Sommerlicht Schwebend,” 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.

In Sommerlicht Schwebend

Our marriage began
the two of us on a carousel
young and lost and spinning
to the pretty music, sitting on griffins and dragons
with wooden wings and static claws

Once he introduced me to an older colleague
“Meine Verlobte,” he said
the old man took my hand with reverence to his lips
and my husband smiled in that way of his —
back and forth between us, love,
a champagne fueled badminton birdie
flying higher and higher on late summer nights

the faster the merry-go-round
the more he liked to stay on it
the same piped in music
screaming inside his head
melancholy and melody wrung out of it
like water from a dirty mop

the day the carousel spun too fast for me
he was busy spinning inane tales of power
stories of winning after losing
jobs and so many other things
I let go of the drop rod, hurdled across the Atlantic
orbitless, like a comet without a tail

He spun on, bottle after bottle
drag after drag, year after year
chiming beer under the canopy’s striped firmament
he stayed alone with his addiction
with only the chipped menagerie to lean on

I hope his last ride was superlative and fast
a deep maze of flamboyant fantasies
wind flapping shirt and pant leg
“Look how my slip on shoes don’t fall!”
he would have shouted at my ghost twirling next to him
and breaking into his toothy smile, the gap in the middle
a channel for the dove inside him to fly through

This poem was previously published in Psychological Perspectives.

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 where she resumed her writing life.
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