Willawaw Journal Fall 2019 Issue 7

Recipe for Petite Macaroons

morning

fitful sleep     and the echo
‌     of footfall     down the hall

the scarf of a dream     lingers‌
‌     in the room     wafts off
as the eyes open     to see

what happened behind closed
‌     eyelids     whose hands
was i cupping     in mine

someone slammed a door     someone
‌     leaped through     an open
‌            window

the skeleton of the night
‌     washes its bones
‌                                    in the rain
‌   water
untouched yet by flesh     except
‌     that     of a dream

i wash my face in its bones

my face   its bones   the light
‌     coming off    the sheets of rain

the cupping of hands     the lips
‌     closing      over the rim
of vowels
‌          like a prayer

Night Stillness

Bangkok, Rainy Season

Silence in its silver light pours across my garden wall
through this monsoon break—a cloud-feathered frame
of moonlight tipping jasmine and hibiscus, airy sprays of orchids

spilling flower to flower into shadowpool.
Moon-filled potholes path the street with footlights
drawing me into the lane I came to live in hot season.

Stillness drying on the pavement loosens sounds I’ve never seen.
Behind a slatted wooden fence, small frogs chirp a lily pond,
and as I pass it, a khamoi bird cries its warning in two voices.

John Hicks has been published or accepted for publication by:  Valparaiso Poetry Review, I-70 Review, First Literary Review – East, Panorama, San Pedro River Review, Mohave River Review, Cold Creek Review, Glint, and others.  He completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska – Omaha in 2016.  He writes in the thin air of northern New Mexico.

You Find Yourself in Kansas City

among house-proud women
and men who are mean with money

to rent an apartment, the first
900 sq. ft. you’ve ever had all to yourself.

You don’t mind that it is across from your mother’s
where she can keep you close

and at arm’s length all at once because
the space is cute – because there is a porch

for your plants – and then you find
the HVAC for #8 is unpredictable,

or rather just doesn’t work even after the maintenance
man bangs on it with the kind of wrench plumbers use

in a show to convince you he’s making repairs
so that all three rooms stretching from west to east

and the tiny bathroom, too, remain forever
inclement. Below, a neighbor whose dog

barks, whose stereo blares, who is surly. Soon
you will discover the mice and will buy

crappy wood and wire traps at the hardware store
which you will toss away along with the pinched bodies

of bulging-eyed rodents into the trash receptacle
nearly every day despite the fact that the cat

in #10 visits frequently to hunt, brings you mice before there is sun
to play with atop the covers, a strange kind of breakfast in bed.

Lisa M. Hase-Jackson’s debut collection of poetry, Flint and Fire, was selected by Jericho Brown for the 2019 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Series, an imprint of The Word Works in Washington DC. She holds an MFA in poetry from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and a MA in English from Kansas State University in Manhattan Kansas. A full-time writer and adjunct instructor at the College of Charleston, Lisa is Editor-in-Chief of South 85 Journal and founding editor of Zingara Poetry Review.

To My Great-Grandmother

Hattie Burton Harris (1865-1922)

You, whose first words are Yiddish,
who travels as a toddler from the Pale
across the ocean, grasping the fabric
of your mother’s skirt
as the swells make you both sick
for six long weeks that seem forever.

You, at 19, in the front parlor
of your parents’ house on Lafayette Street
surrounded by fluff and feathers
on the hats you and your sisters make
for the fancy women who seek your art.

You, in a long dress, dark hair a crown,
ushering the ladies in
and back out to waiting carriages,
discreetly taking their money
as long shadows make their way
across the overstuffed chairs
and antimassacars.

You, widowed for many years,
your grandson (my father) just five,
tell me–what rage causes you to
pick up the match,
rasp its sulfur head to flame,
set it against the hem of your dress?
What rage
or what terrible sorrow?

October in Hood River

Wooden bins filled with apples,
crimson pears,
so many types of jam from the berry harvest–
we walk among the baskets of pumpkins,
shelves of honey, my sister and I,
awash in all this sweet sticky life,
captured in a photo that we will look at later,
noticing the squint in our eyes,
our hands around each other’s waist.

In the car, conversation
turns to our shared bits of genetic memory
hiding deep within flesh and blood.
For a moment, our mother and grandmother
sit with us, bones lighter than air
–we hold their papery hands,
feel the gentle press of their shoulders against ours.

Who are these People?

There’s no bringing these
great grandparents back,
not Neil, not Margaret,
immigrants from Scotland,
married at the turn of the 20^th century,
dead before my parents ever met.

Their existence is the sole responsibility
of this wedding photo,
buried among obscure aunts and uncles,
second cousins and primary school class photos.
Their features are barely clear enough to be human.
But his height is there
and a little of his hard muscle.
Likewise, her steadfastness,
or maybe that’s just something I invest in her,
as if she’s strong-willed enough
to be still posing for the camera,
without a twitch, a blink, even into my time.

I’m old enough
that my curiosity has finally abandoned
all that I can see and touch.
Now it’s transfixed by what it can never know,
I can only imagine how hard this man worked,
how stoically she kept the tiny house,
how unfailingly she wore white gloves to church on Sunday.
I envisage good years on the land and bad,
many children, some who lived long lives,
others who died young.

Try as it might, my mind can’t recreate real passion.
Because this is family.
But, I’m sure, a hand wrapped around a waist from time to time
or a sun-hardened face pressed itself to cheeks of tarnished leather
and whispered, “Don’t let anyone tell you
these haven’t been good years.”

I have little in common with these people.
I’ve no idea what it’s like to live off the land.
The wheat, the flies, the flatness,
the deathless watch kept on a solitary cloud–
nothing to do with my suburbs.
And sure, I’ve known heartache
but it was never once the weather’s doing.

But these are immigrant lives,
great-grandparent lives,
the deep that murmurs in my shallows,
that waters me, which I draw upon night and day,
So congratulations on your wedding, Neil and Margaret.
May you enjoy many years of bliss.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.