Journal

Bridge over 15 Mile Creek

–Dufur, Oregon

The night’s velvet hands guide us
under a moon not quite full but full enough
as we hug the gravel verge against
the occasional oncoming semi.
Finches and doves quiet now,
only our voices whisper to each other
and, beyond the school yard,
a dog interested in our passing.
It’s the first of June, warm enough
to walk without a jacket. As we pass
the ancient tractors, their rusty sighs
speak of forgotten furrows, mulch
and earthworms. Amber wheat fields
succulent and wavering. To the west,
the snow-covered mountain governs
all that can be seen from its craggy peak.

Suzy Harris lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Calyx, Clackamas
Literary Review, and Switchgrass Review, among other journals and anthologies. Her
chapbook Listening in the Dark, about hearing loss and learning to hear again with
cochlear implants, was published by The Poetry Box in February 2023.

France, 1990

The pan-fried, half-moon,
butter-browned omelet was richer
than Versailles’ cold mirrors, stark
shrubs, boudoir cherubs, pebbled-
walks, or cardinals in a line.
It was better than the mechanical bird
the African sold me outside the bus
that flew in circles without a string.

It was before and after the time of Marie
Antoinette. It was the hole the angel
burned into the bishop’s skull
for Mont St. Michel on a gray
day—mudflats below the crag
like a wet towel on the deck. It was
Therese’s tattered arm on the altar,
in crystal, and the billboard nude
in Paris. Sister said, “Don’t look.”

Roadside America

She drove halfway home. The first
rest stop was crowded. The Starbucks
line was too long, so I got
gas station coffee.

‌                                    One cashier
worked the line while two other
gray-shirted workers talked near
stacked cartons. A man, wearing overalls,
in front of me said, “The next government
to get overthrown will be this one.
Nobody wants to work.” I tell him
my grandfather was a black-topper.

‌                                                           It’s good
he died before all this. He might
have shot someone. Or worse, given
up. Let the Miller Genuine Draft
get warm, the dogs starve, the ducks
go wild, the wood stove rust,
the striped turtle slip out, the horse’s
hair tangle, the garden remain mud.

Dropcloth

Mr. Lawrence brought back my ladder,
drop cloth, step ladder, a new
roller, a tray, and pads, for the brush I didn’t
care about. My roller from fifteen years
ago works better than the new ones.
The arm, from handle to pad, is angled, not
straight back. No matter how thick
the steel is, the forty-five-degree-angled
arm outperforms the ninety-degree-
angle-arm. It’s not thickness, it’s
physics.

‌                     He said he wasn’t sure if all
the dropcloths were mine. I recognized splatters
from old jobs: stairs, ramps, doors,
windows, walls. One used to be Sheehan’s,
but I claimed it for the hand-sander they kept.
There’s a fluidity on worksites. That’s why
I wrote my name on the step ladder.

I spread out the big drop cloth—
three-paneled splash art—and set
the aluminum garden trellises on it
to spray. The negative, like an x-ray,
or Jesus’ face on the Turin shroud, remained.
The triptych had outlived marriages.
It had dashes and dots from Joey and Brooke’s shutters.
They liked Neil Diamond. He thought of joining
the Masons for business. She met a boy in a hotel.

Their maroon shutters had clouded. “Paint them black,”
like the Rolling Stones. The sun baked them dry
on the lawn and a skunk wobbled into the street–
blind and spitting like a drunk. We threw rocks.
It climbed into the sewer.

‌                                               Old tools
remember money made in the sun—threadbare
jeans sealed by paint. The way the skin
oil consumes the bronze nose of the boar.

Matthew Hummer is a writer and teacher in PA. He has published poems and prose in various journals, including Cosmic Daffodil and Novus Literary and Arts Journal.

Hunnered

In Shetland, that’s the word
for weary, exhausted, bone tired, as we say
here in Oregon, about to fold. We’ve all been there—
out on our feet, unsteady, reeling, feeling
pulled through a knothole backward, wishing
we could dig a hole and pull the hole in after us.

And then here comes morning and the birds.
Today, as if they’ve heard us flip the calendar
to February, they arrive, a host of wings,
small hearts jubilant with faint rumors of spring.
A dozen sparrows squabble over birdhouses still
filled with last year’s nests and on the maple branch
a pair of collared doves caress each other’s necks.
Juncos, house finches, three flickers wearing bibs,
a black-capped chickadee, the downy woodpecker—
and look! two white-splashed quiverings of orange
and black and bright. The spotted towee’s
brought his cousin. A goldfinch finds the thistle seed
and leaps off into air to spread the word. Now
a mob of robins appears out of nowhere, feathers
in soft focus, murmuring in Robin to each other,
heads cocked our way as if they know
how much we count on their return, especially
when we’re hunnered.

Bette Lynch Husted sees the Columbia River Gorge in all seasons in her monthly commute from Eastern Oregon to her Portland-area “Side Porch Poets” writing group. In Pendleton, she helps coordinate the First Draft Writers’ Series, watches birds, and practices Tai Chi. Her books include the novel All Coyote’s Children (OSU Press), two collections of memoir essays, Above the Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land (OSU Press) and Lessons from the Borderlands (Plain View Press), and the poetry collection At This Distance (Wordcraft of Oregon).

Link

—after Carel Fabritius’ The Goldfinch

My mother looks out the patio doors,
Her tears a torrent, enough to overflow riverbanks.
Dark green water, mingling with the scent of
White Linen perfume, flooding fields of
strawberries, sweet peas, melons, and sunflowers.
Creeping across railroad tracks, swallowing dirt roads.

Her cheeks flush with red as she drinks her morning tea.
Black eyes flit, reflecting blue firmament.
Flashes of golden sunlight shimmer across the sides of her
billowing white nightgown, bolts of iridescent yellow
painting the ends of her wings.

I think of all the things that might keep her here with me–
the promise of dazzling red canna lilies blooming,
turreted by great aubergine leaves, crinkly pink
crepe myrtle flowers blowing across freshly cut grass,
bluebirds building nests with chestnut colored horsehair
and bits of cerulean colored yarn.

I wade the cascade of her tears wearing tiny pink rubber boots.
I’m eight, and I know why she cries–I’m the little chain
attached to her well-turned ankle. If not for me, she could
fly away across the expanse of rising river water to
make her home somewhere brighter.

FD Jackson lives in the southeastern U.S., along with her husband and sundry furry family members. She writes about loss/grief and the transformative power of nature. When she is not writing or reading, she can be found wandering the Gulf Coast with a cold drink in her hand. FD’s works have appeared or are forthcoming in Rat’s Ass Review, FERAL, Wild Roof Journal, and Amethyst Review.

Where the Train Meets the Sun

It’s six thirty at
Sacramento Station, ghost
Misty rice fields sleep.

I touch your tired eyes across the gently rumpled sheets of the delta, the horizon and
coast shrouded in a negligee of morning fog with ranks of slumbering breasts between us.

Morning pauses, we
Clatter across, cocooned,
Breakfasts warm and quick.

I brush your unshaven cheek as you jostle beyond Vacaville and toward Martinez.
Sitting still through still hushed conversations and sleepily matted hair.

The Pacific is
Sky dynamic, green,
Blue, white, gossamer.

I stroke your hair as you unsteadily make your way down the haltingly pulsating aisle.
To the right, the mirror ocean reflects me to China, while for you the soft hills are a
memory, the warm Sacramento Valley left you drained, but even now Salinas and
San Luis Obispo are a dream of desire to be wakened.

Marc Janssen has been writing poems since around 1980. Some people would say that was a long time but not a dinosaur. Early decrepitude has not slowed him down much; his verse can be found scattered around the world in places like Pinyon, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg also in his book November Reconsidered. Janssen coordinates the Salem Poetry Project- a weekly reading, the occasionally occurring Salem Poetry Festival, and was a nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate. For more information visit, marcjanssenpoet.com.