Willawaw Journal

Online Poetry & Art

Journal

Sarah Dickenson Snyder

The Mirror on the Handlebars

A circled image of the passed–
to see what is careening,

about to overtake, thinning
and thrushing the air,

the distance behind
flattened and tunneled

into a one-dimensional
disk that I can cover

with a palm. Ahead–sky-filled
clouds and a sun

above a road
to follow.

 

Sarah Dickenson Snyder has two poetry collections, The Human Contract and Notes from a Nomad. Recent work will appear or has been in The Comstock Review, Damfino Press, The Main Street Rag, Chautauqua Literary Magazine, RHINO, The Sewanee Review, Front Porch, and Whale Road Review. https://sarahdickensonsnyder.com/

 

 

Barbara Spring

Daybreak

Robins with their marmalade voices
Caucuses of crows
And mourning doves loving the morning sun–
Humming birds mighty in spite
of size chirp and hum as they fly.

Warblers warble and catbirds crumble
All the songs they every heard together
Sweet crumbs of song
tumble through rose-colored skies.

Then sleepy at evening a robin sings
Its sweet bedtime song.

But most of all
birds sing at sunrise.

 

Barbara Spring is a lake watcher, has served on many committees for the improvement of the Great Lakes and was a correspondent for the Grand Rapids Press. She taught in public schools and at Grand Valley State University. Spring wrote The Dynamic Great Lakes (available on Kindle) and also wrote three books of poetry. She enjoys painting with watercolors.

Andy Stallings

Paradise

There may not have been
research yet, but there was
the human ability to observe.
Collapsed into a garden. The
family, in retrospect, was not
happy at all, with its frequent
divorces, infrequent reunions,
and simple alcoholism. A
perimeter not erected but
emerged. Her mouth didn’t
open correctly, had what my
uncle called a hinge. He
leaped up then, pointed
across the table, and yelled
“That’s right, Heather, I am a
man, I do have a penis,” then
sat back down. As orange as
orange, at last. But what if
“getting out of your comfort
zone” is within your comfort
zone.

 

Andy Stallings lives in Deerfield, MA, where he teaches English and poetry at Deerfield Academy. He has four young children, and coaches cross country running. This poems is from Paradise, a collection of poems which will be published by Rescue Press in 2018.

R. S. Stewart

How He Took Up Painting

He was out on the avenue
hesitating before scenery, absorbing
its easiest pieces, sidewalk buckles,
gate styles of fences, shy barking dogs
circling him in play instead of pause.
Because the bus he was aiming to board was frequent
he moved toward a meadow in a neighborhood
emptied of traffic. There at its edge
he bent, as if shaping himself
to some seclusion a passerby would misinterpret.
The flowers around him in vigorous bloom,
the wooden fence on his side of the meadow,
a braver dog a block behind him
helped him outline the old obscurity,
assisted his aim at the first plush of color
toward the center of calm.
In a deeper sleep
his arm never rested under a cover.
His fist never punched the pillow
in a knowable nightmare.
By morning his fingers found
what the next day his mind grasped.
The brush is his as it dips and dips
touching on blue tips as it pauses
as he had, bending into intended solace.

 

R. S. Stewart is a native of Oregon where he still lives and writes plays as well as poems. His poetry has been published in many journals, including Canary; 2 Bridges Review; Poetry Salzburg Review; The Journal (UK); PIF Magazine; Serving House Journal; Ink, Sweat, & Tears (UK); Brittle Star (UK); and BlazeVOX.

Doug Stone

At the River’s Edge

Just below Cedar Bridge, I listen to the river’s poetry
sing among the rocks and moss covered logs.
Over my shoulder, the moon stands on the bridge
like my mother looking down on me when I was a child
and she casts my shadow on the swirling current
so I can feel the river’s poetry dance in me.

 

Doug Stone lives in Albany, Oregon. His chapbook, In the Season of Distress and Clarity (Finishing Line Press) came out in 2017. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and in the anthology, A Ritual To Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford.

Patty Wixon

Red Shoes

‌    A little trick we have or have not learned–Jim Harrison

1.
In Anchorage, she put her maroon boots by the bed
in case she needed to run when an earthquake hit.
She woke feeling the bed rocking like a hammock.
Would buildings collapse, roads buckle, or bedroom walls
slide side to side before crashing together?
Five hits then it was over. Turnagain-by-the-Sea was gone
as if a giant mouth bit off then spit out those fancy houses
into the ocean below. A megathrust underwater landslide
came inland, twisted railroad tracks into Copper River
and rolled to a stop at 4th Street.
2.
In Los Alamitos, she put on her red sneakers ready for a field trip
with her fourth graders. They chased each other on the playground
waiting for the start-of-school bell to ring. That’s when she felt it hit,
knew an earthquake was on the move. She instinctively crawled
beneath her teacher-desk, looked out to see the classroom piano lurch
across the room gaining speed with each sharp report of splitting
tectonic plates. Was the earthquake connected to wearing red shoes?
When it stopped, she ran out to join her students who’d corralled themselves
in the field far from anything that could drop.
3.
Her book group was discussing Women of the Silk when windows began
to rattle. She saw she’d worn her cherry-red flats, said, Must be an earthquake.
No one agreed—there weren’t earthquakes in Ashland.
When the next jolt hit, everyone stood and rushed through the door.
A strange silence followed her through town and when she got home
she opened a window to listen. Then it began: first a boom from distant mountains,
then echoes closer as if rock ridges were clapping, sending sound sliding off crests
of hills. Again a boom shouting, This time the earth is changing.

 

Patty Wixon’s most recent book is Dear Spoon. Her previous collections are Side Effects and Airing the Sheets. In 2014, Patty and her husband Vince received the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for contributions to the literary life of Oregon.