Willawaw Journal Summer 2017 Issue 1

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.

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.