Willawaw Journal Spring 2019 Issue 6

you said you dreamed you had a sister

—how did you know

it was a long time ago
before I dreamed you 

like an echo in the cells
dim gills nub-fingers

the way the dolphin locates krill
the she cells shed
in amniotic spill

a reflection—nerve, bone, clenched
cartilage scooting backward
dragged into the basin like a cradle
sometimes the basin’s a cradle

—how did you guess
a tiny fist
raw-red
in the trauma of
the jelly/in the tempest of
the stem/in the sinew of
the grey umbilical 

a memory
in saline’s solution

a long time ago
when the body’s not your own 

the drug they gave me to forget 

Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Only Country was the Color of My Skin (2018), the award-winning collection Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra, and Pentimento.

Omission

Their clothes – still packed in drawers:
primrose on damson, lavender on peach,
‌           and the tiny box
‌                  for the loss of milk teeth.

Their stories – incomplete,
leaving empty pages in albums
           arranged in tiers on bookshelf
                    on silent afternoons.

Their games and toys – all stored away.
Just one coat on a hook in the hall,
‌          carpet missing the mud and muddle
‌                   of after-school debris.

Mid-morning simply brings
plain cornflakes and toast,
‌         black coffee and pills,
‌                    and no need to hurry.

Janina Aza Karpinska, Artist-Poet, earned an M.A. in Creative Writing & Personal Development, Sussex University, England, soon after which she won 1^st Prize in The Cannon Poets Competition. With work in several anthologies and magazines, she is particularly pleased to be included in the ‘Poems in the Waiting Room’ project. She has run writing workshops at the tax office; in launderettes; pet stores; tattoo parlours and an ‘adult boutique’. Karpinska lives on the coast in Hove, south of England.

in the pre-Raphaelite days,

they ground up Egyptian mummies and made them into paint
a deep burnt umber from white pitch, myrrh, a little pharaoh,
all the browns you could create, for lumber, or sparrows, or wheelbarrows,
touched with the marrow of decay.
in the Edwardian days, the practice was delayed
no more mummy browns, no more mummies could be found
but every museum has a wing where dead kings hang by a string,
mixed into the colors of saints and sinners and lovers,
waters deep, fires blazing, with dust there was no use in wasting
and who could hate a hand that looked at a person and saw a painting.

Moth Snowstorms

Uncle Gordon and Aunt Mary waving
in our rearview mirror. Dad now hours
behind the wheel. Mom up front

while my brother and I share leg space
in the back. We shut our books, surrender
to the twilight-magnified sky, the muggy summer air.

When the curve of earth vanishes
and the nightfall ceilings us, predictably
they arrive—the scale-winged insects

drawn to light like humans to love.
A bump, bump against the beam
of headlights. Then splat, splat

against the barrier of windshield,
and as if a sudden storm,
the moths are like snowflakes in a blizzard.

White and gray gauzy wings spiral
from their thumb-sized bodies.
They churn in the air as our speeding car

splices the darkness with a harsh
wash of manmade light. An unforgiving hurling.
An assault.

What is now a mural of moths,
likely thousands, like protons,
lurch and throttle until a mash

shuts out the light.
My father slows to the side of the road.
A rag ready under the seat, he steps out

to clean glass surfaces, crusted
with broken limbs, mouthparts, and underwings.
With each forceful swipe, the lights

break brighter, shining in the moth-cluttered
distance behind him, haunting the night.
They’re wretches akin to rust, my mother says.

They’ll eat your clothes, even your books.
And, all at once, I am startled by my sadness,
at their price of existence,

drawn to what extinguishes them.
Now, after just two generations,
moth snowstorms are gone.

Yvonne Higgins Leach is the author of Another Autumn (WordTech Editions, 2014).  After earning a Master of Fine Arts from Eastern Washington University, she spent decades balancing a career in communications and public relations, raising a family, and pursuing her love of writing poetry. She is now a full-time poet splitting her time between Spokane and Vashon Island, Washington. For more information, visit yvonnehigginsleach.com

Dirty Linen