Willawaw Journal Spring 2022 Issue 14

My Love for You Flows Like the Wild
Waters Of Ghost Creek Before it Dives
Below the Neighbors’ Plum Tree

––for Anita Maria

This piece of Ghost Creek, this run,
was once ancient cobbles scattered
thirty feet below grass fields,
where Old Willy as a youngster romped
NORTH, flowing like so few rivers
here in the northern hemisphere.
Now this short run of Ghost Creek reminds us
how cobbles wear a long spell
before becoming sand dunes.

Stephen Jones has published regionally in Verse Weavers, Fireweed, Calapooya Collage,
Oregonian, Prism, Willawaw, and Cloudbank, among others. He recently moved from a 25
acre tree farm to the literary district in SE Corvallis. He meets weekly with two poetry reading
and writing circles and studies with Contemplative Studies in the OSU Psych Department.

Overload

Bluetooth lights up the console—
a child is missing.

I scan the car in front of me
and the ones coming toward me.
No matches, but my mind
snags on the trauma of that
kidnapped child.

The radio voice returns with
an update on Covid cases,
the plight of flooding victims in the
South and burned-out residents
in California.

I know so much more
than my grandfather did,
with his daily hometown newspaper.
I can’t do much more—
I just know more.

That’s a good thing, I suppose,
but my palms stick to the steering wheel.
What did my therapist say about
breathing when I’m anxious?

I don’t see the greening fields or
grazing cattle, don’t hear
the soothing hum of the motor.

I’m dealing with
the tornado in Oklahoma,
the coup in Haiti, the active
shooter in Colorado.

Lorraine Jeffery delights in her closeup view of the Utah mountains after spending years managing public libraries. She has won poetry prizes in state and national contests and published over one hundred poems in various journals and anthologies, including Clockhouse, Kindred, Calliope, Canary, and Ibbetson Street.

Taking Inventory

January, it had to be, after the Christmas
shopping madness, when every garment
must be counted—round racks and straight,
flimsy plastic hangers fingered and moved down
the metal rods. Me, the boss’s daughter, green,
but one more body to help. The boss, too, counts
with everyone else, all hands on deck, his rank
aftershave mixing with the sales clerks’ perfume
in that twilight limbo where we turn,
a carousel set to Muzak—can’t take my eyes
off of you. Doughnuts and cold pizza
in the break room where no one speaks to me.
Slips of paper ticked with grease pencil marks
pile up in a box by the cash register. I’m already
thinking of the silent ride home, algebra homework
waiting for me there, the missing part
of the equation not to be found
anywhere near that midwestern town.

Suzy Harris lives in Portland, OR. Her work has been published in Calyx, Clackamas Literary Review, Timberline Review, Switchgrass Review and several anthologies.

Some things you just know—like how to train a lion

The best way to train a lion is to look
At his face and then close your eyes
And then smile.

This helps the lion know you do not
Fear him and you do not want to hurt him.
It should be a ritual for dating.

The lion knows you are kind
If you are, and you should be kind
At all times.

If you slip and are
Mean even once, you should
Never put your head in his mouth.

Besides being kind, you should
Always wear the same outfit.
It should have the color blue.

Lions like blue and it reminds
Them of how much they like
The ocean.

Always reach out and touch his ear.
The left ear is best, and run
Your finger along the edge.

He’ll look at you but don’t
Look back. Pretend you don’t
See his glance.

It is best to wear boots with heels.
Lions are quite large and
you should be as big as you can be.

The most important thing is to love.
Your love lays down a path before
You even enter the ring.

Lions can pick up on that
As if it’s radio waves or
Something in the air.

C. Desirée Finley (Fin) is a fiction writer, poet and artist now living in western Mass. Her writing is featured in Straw Dog Writers Guild’s Pandemic Poetry, the Center for New Americans’ 2020 – 21 anthology and in Silkworm 14. In 2020 she was awarded 2nd place in Franklin County’s Poet’s Seat poetry contest. Fin was accepted into Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2018 for fiction. Her education, which began in art school, includes U Mass, Simmons Graduate School of Management (non-traditional student) and later at LaSalle University as an English major and writing fellow.

Homestead

On the porch of my grandfather’s home,
the one built by his grandparents, a breeze
ruffles my hair, soars to deep-breathing trees and

undulates fields of cow-corn. Silver Queen,
planted for our use, beckons and soon
a cousin will plan a weekend of shucking and

cooking dozens of ears of corn, dozens and
dozens, and we will harvest the sweet, juicy
inner kernel, to freeze for a winter’s

feast. Tall, tall pines nod their heads
like a convocation of magicians, and we
may have to harvest those magnificent pines

to pay taxes, but for now we plunder deep,
rolling woods. A white birch, the last remnant
of Grandma-Old’s Wild Garden, tosses limbs

like a pouting ingénue and coyote give voice
from those deep woods we plunder while
ancient oak tremble as they take up the query,

—how long will we be on this land—

on dirt roads where great grandfather taught
mother to drive, taught her to shift, taught her
to stay in the middle of the road by aligning

hood ornament with the outer edge
of the road. And once she’d mastered all
that, drive all the roads again, in reverse.

Reverse along the ravine, reverse between
gate posts, in reverse ‘round the teardrop
where a dying Linden tree, planted by

Gran and delicate-tough as her, makes
me wonder about the future, about
replacement, renewal or a clean slate, and

I wonder, will our children, all working
in cities and towns, will one of them,
will some of them find another way to pay

those taxes and, in their old age, sit here,
on their ancestor’s porch, as they bear witness
to the fruits of bygone days, lives long past.

Sarah Ferris is published in RATTLE, Gyroscope Review, Better Than Starbucks, Autumn House Review, Dodging the Rain, Remington Review etc. Her chapbook, Snakes That Dance Like Daffodils, was published, April, 2019. Sarah has an MA in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica, and a BA in Cinema Studies from NYU. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

REMINGTON REVIEW, summer 2021, page 7, Birdcage:
https://www.flipsnack.com/remingtonreview/remington-review-summer-2021.html