Willawaw Journal Winter 2019 Issue 8

The Ice Has Begun to Unclench

The pool froze months ago. Above me,
bits of twigs and leaves suspend in a slab of grey.
My glass ceiling is an infinity mirror—a mise en abyme,
no more than a funhouse trick of misogyny,
cracked but unbroken—a barrier to a darker ceiling
of false sky. Looking up I see how fractals of stars limn
each leaf. I have no more choice than flotsam.
When this ice floe breaks up and melts will it make
any difference to me? Even my body isn’t my own.

I was born with eyes that can never close…

—Joy Harjo Poet Laureate

Well not born exactly.
Can you imagine, me, Barbie, swimming
doing the scissor kick, swan dives,
the breast stroke—more my style—
synchronized into a Busby Berkeley
extravaganza. Get out your kaleidoscope.
I can perform this number all by myself
in stop-motion animation.

Peepers start Evensong in high C major.
I see a pink jet trail—puffy pink clouds.
Let me tell you about water, dark green
and purple underneath. Pink light retreats.
My mind drifts beneath a liquid blanket.
I hear your brother watching TV.
Mother is washing dinner dishes.
You are curled on your bed reading.

If the stars fell into this pool
would they hiss when they hit the water?
Would they sputter out and drown?
I lie here like a stunned mullet—
fishy and diluted—when cicadas
start their racket I might go out
of my mind. I miss sex. Then I imagine
Ken preening in front of his mirror.

My drowned eyes point toward the sky.

Dale Champlin is an Oregon poet with an MFA in fine arts. She is the editor of Verseweavers and director of Conversations With Writers. Dale has published in VoiceCatcher, North Coast Squid, Willawaw Journal, Mojave River Press, The Opiate, and other publications. In November she published her first collection, The Barbie Diaries, with Just a Lark Books.

freedom 18

That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.—Death, in The Appointment in Samarra

my therapist says i look very tense, i say have you seen the clowns i work with⁠, three stooges⁠, and a GOAT, transcendental oriental. i give up the confederacy for some bubble tea, my comfort, my carnage. verse daily does not mean what i thought it meant, germs of desire, show me the goods, mucinex monster, stop putting boys on pedestals, boys are shit, we’ve heard enough from them, dirty grunts and quick tempers, they need to be quiet for millennia. they compliment my almond eyes, do you know how much water it takes to grow an almond, i am chaste and blushing, cute cute cute, kawaii kawaii kawaii, put this on, they zip me up, they say i can be cool & cute, i say you mean like sweet & sour pork. they don’t know how i live, they short-circuit my time machine, they jinx my rabbit’s foot, they pin me to the wall, they break my skin with their incisors, their vestigial wings twitching, their legs thrashing, they kiss up and kick down, they tinker with my machinery of death, they siphon my humanity like enron, their concern only a hoax, angels dancing on a pin. unmoored from the ground, untethered to reality, they fit in my curved palm, much too young, their seed modest, bitter nectar sloshing in their mouth, they practice their pout, fix their handsome bangs. i turn the tables, for once i ask a whiteboy, can i touch your hair, he leans in and i am in the chapel reciting our vows. orchids remind me of singapore, and sean, he is a financier now, can we pick up where we left off. still, sorry, i wish i could but, these boys build cathedrals, their mouths taste like whiskey and rocky mountain oysters. all is forgiven.

Michael Chang (they/them) hopes to win the New Jersey Blueberry Princess pageant one day. Michael strongly suspects that they were born in the wrong decade. A recovering vegan, their favorite ice cream flavor was almost renamed due to scandal. Their writing has been published or is forthcoming in Q/A Poetry, Yes Poetry, Typo Mag, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Bending Genres, Heavy Feather Review, Cabildo Quarterly, Neon Garden, Yellow Medicine Review, The Conglomerate, Kissing Dynamite, Little Rose, Milk + Beans, and elsewhere.  They are the proud recipient of a Brooklyn Poets fellowship. They poet to feel alive.

“Still Life”–12″x 18″ oil pastels on paper

Artist Statement: With the use of frenzied texture, tonality of color, and awkward positioning, I attempt to offer up a glimpse beyond an unsettled tabletop, where an unnatural arrangement of two pieces of fruit, seemingly hovering, offers a perplexing look into gravity, shadows, and light. I use repetitive and patterned slashes of white tints in depicting a questionable source of light that is both illuminating and off-putting. 

For more information about Lisa Ni Bhraonain, see the Back Page of this issue.

Cornflowers, Iris

Virus

Like the other wounds I carry it transforms my core
carves the flowered seat into its own cottage, where

decomposing stone molders by the roadway
an old bucket tips over by the door

A dank familial smell decorates the air.
Grass rises up through fallen tines—a forest of tools

buried deep in built-up soil
that root-rich matrix unyielding as ignorance.

This morning the heavy trucks have come
and trailers bearing scrapers. Dozers to push away

the last quivers of the old world.
I have become the host

of a landscape drawn and named,
an erasure, uncontained.

Fermenting Again

Through the kitchen window I marvel at the hydrangea,
festooned with red flames, all pointing downward,
its in-your-face response to the coming cold,
while I wash my hands in lukewarm water
and let the radio’s babble, a stream of responses
to the current immigration twitter storm,
rush past me. After all, I am
a legal resident. I focus on a new head,
a firm, green cabbage, glistening on the counter, ready
the mandolin, the salt, and the wooden stomper,
rinse the crock of brown earthenware, a small but sturdy incarnation
of the tall one which once reached up to my 9-year-old waist.
Then, I used to whistle loudly every time I descended into the basement.
At the bottom, out of reach of sparse rays
able to fall through the door (always left open),
I turned to the right. In almost complete darkness
I entered the cellar, which harbored
jars of jam, canned cherries, and green beans,
barely visible in the gray light, thick dust
obscuring the small window, high up below the ceiling
as if in a prisoner’s cell. The dark shape
of the crock loomed before me, its open mouth
plugged with a rock, below it an oaken board,
the two of them holding down the fermented cabbage.
I placed the two gate-keepers on a nearby table, rolled up a linen cloth,
the last barrier between the kraut and open air,
pushed the top layer of scum to the sides,
scooped enough of the good stuff from the center
into my dish, then, in reverse order,
re-covered everything as fast as possible, to finally,
prize in hand, run up the stairs, as if I had to escape
from—I don’t know what exactly I feared
down there, where I had nothing to fear—
but now, as I start to ferment again,
this fear resurfaces, feeds on itself, grows
into a full-blown panic attack at the mere thought
of being sent back to my home country,
a safe and civil place—but not my home,
not my home anymore,
not for a long, long time.

Brigitte Goetze lives in Western Oregon. A retired biologist and goat farmer, she now divides her time between writing and fiber work. She finds inspiration for both endeavors in nature as well as in stories and patterns handed down from generation to generation. Yet, she always spins her own yarns. Links to her most recent publications can be found at: brigittegoetzewriter.com.