Journal

Uninvited

Every night, an old woman
crawls into bed with me
though I don’t remember
inviting her.

I deny her resemblance
to someone I used to know.

She wraps ropey arms
around my pillow and
wakes me at midnight
to help her stumble
down the hall to pee.

She prods in provocative ways,
kindles lusty longings
then mocks my fantasy
of liaisons with lovers
from my long ago.

I struggle to shake her grip–
a finger-bending battle
that twists my thumbs
into grotesque shapes.

She presses cross-stitch on my cheek,
weaves silver through my hair,
tucks pads around my waist,
reshapes me as I sleep.

In dim morning light
she inspects her work,
gives me a wink.
I smile…and she’s gone.

Lee Darling is a retired computer programmer. In 2011, she published a novel, Just Out of Reach. She’s a member of the Red Couch Poetry group in Eugene, Oregon. For more information, go to scatteredbumps.blogspot.com.

Distance

—Lake County, Oregon

All day, wind beats the edges of dying lakes,
old shorelines heaped with sage.
Locals tell us these distances go on forever,
an unnamed breadth we’ll wish to cross
when the miles begin their hunger,
calling from barnyards and fields,
arid and atmospheric over the grasses.

Time scours the playas into dry contours
while hunters who tracked camels drift
as phantoms through cattle moving to higher ground.
In caves, their alkali-caked bones molder,
and we decay with them, imagining years of plenty,
while ravens in nests hoard broken eggs,
a warning against any awakening.

Steve Dieffenbacher’s full-length book of poems, The Sky is a Bird of Sorrow (2012), won the ForeWord Reviews 2013 Bronze Award for poetry. He lives in Medford, Oregon.

A Clinic

The man who must discard seven years of records
sits on a stool before the fireplace, poking wells in the burnable hours.
Names fold into themselves, numbers and acronyms
he remembers shaking gently like a snow globe
the fragments dividing like ash–all transfer to smoke and air.
First the papers burn hot, loud and crowded
then blue and thoughtful, a jazz score
then grey, something to stamp and deaden–is it possible to watch
words burn without wanting a philosophy?
As a child he made emptiness bright
at the campfires of his useless family
now he sits, not sentimental but in a celebration for which
there is no card. Seven years burn in seven days.
He made up a system, something about packing the firebox at night
and banking embers against a new day

How to Tell a Dream

Nothing is duller than your dream.
Look at me, I’m yawning like a lion.
whilst you make a terrible hash of telling your dream.
I would do anything to get away.
I would sleep with my ex
to get away from this dream telling.
In fact, now I remember I did dream of sex with my ex.
who kept tucking my arms inside a sleeping bag.
The memory fills me with an airy, dense and familiar shame
like the cannoli I spit out of my mouth yesterday.
In my dreams I walk straight into situations I know will end badly.
Dreams are a play, dreams are Hamlet, the dream after death,
heir to the terror that people will keep telling you their dream.
even after you die.
In the coffin I will be settling into eternity
which I picture as some endless cannoli
and there will be a knock on the wood
Hello?
It is you, again.
Hey, you say, I had the weirdest dream
and you, you were in it. OK, I’ll say, settling in:  what did I do?
Tell me the dream.

The singer says he’s been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king. Substitute queen and you pretty much have Merridawn Duckler’s resume. These days she also teaches, edits, and writes. For more information, go to merridawnduckler.com.

Flute

Across black canyon’s rim
to the edge of echo,
your life’s numen touches
the silver surface
of sound’s creation, warms
hallowed reed,
forms moontones from caves
of time; firelight,
starlight, the moonlit waters
of your soul shimmer
through your open throat, pulsing
with a songbird’s
sweet vibrato down your neck,
spine, down
through your legs and feet
into the boundless
ground of your mother sound.

Karen Jones lives in Corvallis, Oregon. She enjoys observing and experiencing the world more closely through reading and writing poetry.