Willawaw Journal Fall 2019 Issue 7

Disintegrate

 I step off onto the tarmac
And my identity evaporates into the rush of wind
The cogs and bolts that define me
Suddenly irrelevant in this place
My lungs are filled with my stories
Words this country doesn’t care to swallow
So I dream
I pretend that there are butterflies around me
They know what was left behind
A slab of concrete becomes the law
The uniform that approaches me is what I fear
From spending Christmas with my family
Watching willows weep into the wild rivers
Mountain winds whispering secrets into soil
To a city that never sleeps
I came here for a better life
than my minority blood
would have allowed back home
There is a cancer with my name on it
Violence and hatred call out to my kin
In me you see a refugee, an inconvenience
the stranger who disrupts your economy
And all I have are my memories
Losing myself completely along this journey
So I can smell flowers without blood
And walk in a park without the looming chants of war

Johann Van der Walt, a South African born citizen, has published poetry in journals locally and internationally. He is also the winner of the L’Art Poetique: Ingrid Jonker 2019 Poetry competition and has written two children’s books – Bhubesi & Frankie Learns To Fly. Van der Walt will make his American debut with a new chapbook, This Road Doesn’t Lead Home, forthcoming in 2020.

Coffee Break

Her paleo grimace and a mummy’s differ
in degree, not kind.
Toothless for decades, but still not grizzled.
Her coarse hair’s dense as Tule mats,
and her frock must’ve been washed out
when she got it—cast off
polka dots that mean nothing to the blind.

Now a bewildered child guides her
to a farmhouse stoop
where she barters bay leaves
for coffee—not black,
but half sugar and thickened
with an embalmer’s dollop of cream.

Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. Recently he has been concentrating on the Yokuts, the indigenous people of the region. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website. 

Somewhere Near Odessa, 1900

In the low light by the river
my grandparents, so young,
stand in shabby coats and worn shoes.
The bridge casts violet shadows on their fear,
on the pine trees and frigid cold,
the black rage of Russia
an underlying hiss.
He knows he will leave,
the spoken goodbyes harder than hunger,
the thirst deep in him.
He will work and save,
send for her and the children.
He sees her tears and turns away,
his restless mind already in flight,
his feet tapping, tracks
that will fade to memory.

On the way to America,
those cold damp nights on the Rotterdam,
he hears the fading colors of their voices,
diminishing wave lengths, the tossing ship
and the shock of the lonely dark.

Go to the Poet Laureate Prompts for a short bio. of Joanne Townsend.

The Reach

Lament of the Leper King

–Now no clock exists that might want to give me time
to run away from death.–Rafael Alberti 

They came from the west without provocation,
tore the sun from the sky and buried it under
our numberless dead.  Then they said to me:
“Take your bell and rotting flesh and tell all
who grieve we have anointed you king of this land.
Tell them this land is diseased and your bell
will toll until we have cleansed its soul.
Only then will the sun shine without shame.”

Now I wander through my kingdom of grief
looking for that place where they buried the sun,
my only companion the black whisper of death.
Listen to those dogs, starved mad and howling,
racing across those once great estates,
their eyes flashing like the sun’s last moments,
their nostrils flared with the fresh scent of death
that twists their empty guts with hunger and rage.

Do you see that weary old Jew sitting among
the smoldering ruins of his village?
See his ashen face harden to stone, his red beard
quivering like flames, as he hears the whisper
yet again: “Go you, out of the land and out
of your homeland and out of your father’s house.”
See him rise from the ruins around him,
look to the west, to the east, to the sky and shrug.

Do you remember those first days of spring
when the last snow wept in the shadows and wisps
of frost rose like ghosts under the blossoming trees?
Your voice was new again and you talked of the future
as if you would live long into the gift of years
and die old and satisfied in your sleep. Now
my bell tolls through this sunless season of grief.
The future whispers in a swirl of dead leaves.

This poem is a response to the series of etchings “Misery and War”, particularly “Winter, Leper of the Earth”, by George Rouault and the painting “The Red Jew” by Marc Chagall.     

Doug Stone lives in Albany, Oregon. He has written two poetry collections, The Season of Distress and Clarity and The Moon’s Soul Shimmering on the Water.

Evening in July

For an instant the crescent moon lies
cradled in branches, then tumbles
behind the elms, even now
the day’s length diminishing.
Across the street, beyond mountains, into
unseen ocean, the sun descends
without fanfare. The Amtrak,
seldom on schedule, proclaims itself
down by the river. A motorcycle
passes, a man walks a dog. The sky
streaks with silver-pink. Briefly
the wind swells, bamboo
chimes clack wildly. The train
announces its departure–so soon.

Linda Seymour, born in Chicago, has lived in Eugene, Oregon for nearly five decades.  Geography is destiny.  She has been writing poetry for three years, cajoled and encouraged by Indigo, her writing posse, and Barbara Hazard (1931-2019,) who advised flexibility.  This is her first submission.