Willawaw Journal

Online Poetry & Art

Willawaw Journal Winter 2018 Issue 5

Cover Art:  "Power Within" 12"x 12" collage by Yeva Chisholm
Editor's Notes
Page 1:  Carolyn Adams   Matthew D. Allen   Tiel Aisha Ansari   Delores Pollard    Page 2:  Linda Knowlton Appel   Frank Babcock   Amy Baskin   Dale Champlin   Yeva Chisholm   .chisaraokwu.   Page 3:  Margaret Chula   Holly Day   Salvatore Difalco   Gyl Gita Elliott   Erric Emerson   Delores Pollard   Page 4:  Amelia Diaz Ettinger   Abigail George   Brigitte Goetze  Benjamin Gorman   Isa Jennings   Linda Wimberly  Page 5:  Karen Jones   SR Jones   Nancy Knowles   Gary Lark   Delores Pollard   Laura LeHew   Page 6:  Joy McDowell   Catherine McGuire   Susan Morse   Yeva Chisholm   Marjorie Power   (Khalisa Rae removed)
Page 7:  Annie Stenzel   Pepper Trail   John Van Dreal   Feral Wilcox   Lalia Wilson   Vincent Wixon   Page 8: Elizabeth Woody   Back Page with Delores Pollard

Joy McDowell

The North Sea

Once, in Belfast, I found an ancestor
living alone in a blue-shuttered house.
I fed the old man tales of my father
while downing ale and spitting fish bones in a pub.
Through a wee window I spied two spruce boys
riding a mammoth hog on cobblestones.
The pure Irishman said he saw nothing.
Those sassy boys were laughing up a roar.
Being played by my sunset great uncle
was okay by me. Three Guinness rounds gone,
with Black Mountain rising against our backs.
Then Uncle shared terrible truth. Scotland.
He was true born in the shrieking highlands.

Lies, murder, your clan blood rises from a plaid fire.

 

Joy McDowell is a native Oregonian living on a mountain overlooking three valleys. Her poem “The Rest I Imagine” won an editor’s choice in the anthology New Poets of the American West.

Catherine McGuire

Response

“Perhaps these thoughts of ours will never find an audience… Perhaps when all the tears have been shed, the earth will be more fertile.” Perhaps–Shu Ting, translated by Carolyn Kizer

Now that cold has returned, the earth remembers
how to freeze, the flock needs more corn,
the wood stove gobbles the sacrificed trees.

Now that joints are seized with throbbing pain
and stiffness makes me wooden, even writing
requires an inner fire not needed
on soft summer days.

Ignore the warm bed,
put down the coffee, take up the pen–
perhaps these words will go nowhere
but Shu knew we have no choice.

Grief is in the ink, the paper blanches
at today’s atrocities, the modem chokes
and won’t deliver news. Too much!

And what can a poem do?

But these cold, wrinkled hands,
too far from the woodstove, crabbing the letters
into cryptic lines – these hands refuse to stop,
to give up the pen, to curl up. Let others hibernate!

Perhaps this draft hastens the paper’s compost,
but I glow inside from Elliott, Rich, Kizer–those
who kept writing amid the turmoil and sorrow.
I can do no less.

 

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep concern for our planet’s future. She has four decades of published poetry, four poetry chapbooks, a full-length poetry book, Elegy for the 21st Century (FutureCycle Press) and a de-industrial science fiction novel, Lifeline (Founders House Publishing). Find her at cathymcguire.com

Susan Morse

Old Gus Remembers

Once in Lee Vining in the high Sierras
I dreamed like Frida Kahlo.
My sons Augie and Stan were riding the pet deer,
their horns dancing, black eyes laughing up
at the wheel of purple sky

I, the father, dreamt of all the other elders,
buried in Mono along with the fish bones
and pupae drying in piles,
in their spheres of dirt and salt,
the blue waters of Mono.

Now I only remember in rings,
rings escaping outward
across the backs of hands,
so many blue bruises
if you read tree signs
you might know how old I am.

In the sunset, everything is gone–
my grandson Jimmy in ’67
(ice on the mountain);
the three Bandero boys, too,
one after another, smiling,

their final grins reflecting off the sheen of whisky,
vanished so long ago beneath desert scrub,
they are smoked ash scattered amongst the craters.
All my brothers and sons marching away,
ghost-gliding through tufa and sage.

I caress the backs of my bloodied hands,
veins coiled like rattlers,
my tongue back tied,
cinders rising,
clacking the mourning song,
mad fire.

Susan Morse lives in Salem, OR.  Her first chapbook, In the Hush, (Finishing Line Press) will appear in Spring 2019.  The Winter Prompt sparked this poem because her aunt was married to a chief of the Paiute tribe near Mono Lake, and she loves the high Sierra desert country.  You may contact Susan here:  swmorse18@gmail.com.

Yeva Chisholm

Find Me in Your Fire–Collage, 10″ x 16″

Yeva Chisholm is a collage artist and poet from the Willamette Valley, recently relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she is devoting her time to learning the art of belly dance, expressing herself on a visceral, body level. In her collage and poetry, she is constantly inspired by nature and human interaction. Collage, in particular, leads her to an expression of passion and to the exploration of the interconnectedness in all things. In her collages, she uses recycled magazines, tissue paper, cardboard, canvas, and Mod Podge. See more at her Etsy shop, Fierce Rising. 

Marjorie Power

To Larry

we two
wander, white-haired,
a heartbeat between us,
its pulsing silence our teenaged
brother

Marjorie Power‘s newest collection is ONCOMING HALOS, published by Kelsay Books. Other recent poems will soon appear in MUDFISH, TRAJECTORY, and THE NORTH DAKOTA QUARTERLY. Power lives in Denver, Colorado after residing many years in the Northwest. Find more information at MarjoriePowerPoet.com. 

Khalisa Rae

Ghosts in a Black Girl Throat has been removed at the request of the author.