Journal

Critical Defense

–after Jane Hirshfield

I shot the Berretta

I loaded frangible round into the Berretta
I shot the Berretta
the way no is pushed when baptized yes

What We Give Up

we begin and end in the woods
old women and the trees

beyond the backyard
edging the cemetery
hide’n seek

girl scouts making camp
stacking stones
finding our paths back

crossing the bitter cold of the river
removing leeches
at the trailhead

leaves of three
leaving them be
silence

girls blazing into bright red
poppies pistil stamen pollen
boys our marlins

we slip into heels
move indoors
form families

asleep in our boat
we acquiesce through time
the forest just out of sight

in the fall
out the front door
wherever we walk

riotous willows, oaks, elms
clone, root, take seed
sprout

pilot us back
to where we began

Laura LeHew always thought she’d be an astronaut.  She has published several books including Beauty (Tiger’s Eye Press), Becoming (Another New Calligraphy), It’s Always Night, It always Rains (chapbook in a collection–Ashes Caught on the Edge of Light:  10 Chapbooks, Winterhawk Press books), and Willingly Would I Burn (MoonPath Press). She edits her small press, Uttered Chaos (utteredchaos.org) in the wilds of Eugene, Oregon. Visit lauralehew.com for more information. 

Mother, Mirror

This hand-me-down
Gothic reflection.

This Holy Mother
Scrolling her entitlements–

Even after death. Her embossments
Perpetually etched in my ebony frame.

For so long,
I have thought us the same.

But, she’s just a dark
Glint for me. A splinter

In the beholden eye. I know
She follows. She breathes

The same air, close by.
I know she’s bothered

I survived.
That I lived

To transcend her
Likeness. Her creeping

Resin. The spotty
Patina mottling

Time. My face
An erasure

Of her face.
Our commiseration

Greets each day:
We grimace

One to the other
Then move away.

Tammy Robacker , a Hedgebrook writer-in-residence, graduated with an MFA in poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University, 2016. She won the Keystone Chapbook Prize for “R” and just launched her second book, Villain Songs through ELJ Editions this year.

Mexico at Twelve

Like a young prince,
I rode high and untethered
Into the desert
My saddle the engine lid
Of our dodge camper van
Higher even than my father,
Driving, on my left
Or my mother,
Worrying, on my right

Across the Rio grande
We drove, through rocks and sun
I said “mesquite”
every chance I got
Tried not to stare
At the ragged kids
In our dust
Kept my eyes open
For the bright birds of Mexico

I saw them
The orioles, the buntings
The boys breaking rocks
At an opal mine
The vultures, the hawks
Together we looked
Through my binoculars
The girls and their babies
Begging at the Temple of the Sun

At the beach
I burned so brown
Ran so wild
A lady thought
I was Mexican but
I had no Spanish
Looked at her
Struck dumb
The egrets, the hummingbirds

We drove home
Mile by mile, more
Green, more cool
Blue jays, vireos
My mother happier
My little brother calmed down
But me, stirred up
From then, and now
Wandering

Pepper Trails’ poems have appeared in Rattle, Cascadia Review, Atlanta Review, Spillway, and other journals. His recent collection, Cascade-Siskiyou:  Poems, was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry. He lives in Ashland, Oregon.