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Willawaw Journal Winter 2019 Issue 8

Notes from the Editor
COVER ART: "Grow" 4" x 6" collage by Carolyn Adams
Table of Contents:
Page One: Carolyn Adams   Frank Babcock   Louise Cary Barden   paul A. Bluestein
Page Two: Jeff Burt   Lorraine Carey   Gail Braune Comorat   David Felix   R.T. Castleberry   Claudia Castro Luna
Page Three: Dale Champlin   Michael Chang   Lisa Ni Bhraonain   Nancy Christopherson      Delia Garigan   Brigitte Goetze
Page Four: Lori Chortkoff Hops   Tricia Knoll   Kristin LaFollette   Susan Landgraf   Gary Lark   Edward Lee
Page Five: Sherri Levine   Aurora Lewis   A. Martine   Joy L. McDowell   Lisa Ni Bhraonain    Lisa Ni Bhraonain
Page Six: Aimee Nicole    Calida Osti   Jimmy Pappas   Marjorie Power   Elizeya Quate   Maria Rouphail   
Page Seven: Lisa Ni Bhraonain   Charles Springer   Tim Suermondt   Nicole Taylor   Pepper Trail   Vivian Wagner
Page Eight: Laura Lee Washburn   Lesley Williams   BACK PAGE with Lisa Ni Bhraonain

Lori Chortkoff Hops

The Bursting Bubble

–Thousand Oaks, (CA) Day of Suicide, Homicide, Wildfires

Borderline Bar and Grill:
stink of smoke and bleach
after the fire
after the shootings
a collection of flowers
and bears
pinwheels catching the light
sidewalk cluttered
with rows of toys and photos
where people smile and pose
under a canopy of blue and green pop-up tents.

But this is no ordinary street fair
12 wooden crosses
on guard over their charges–
Where is the 13th cross?
the one for the expert marksman-turned-shooter–

Silently watching
invisible
intertwined all at once
between the moments:
‌         before,
‌         during,
‌         and after
the splattering of souls.

How does his family mourn him?
In his exile
he’s heard and seen
as the frame is marked
with his choices–
Stay at home or go out?
Join the group?
Or pull the trigger?
His final words posted on social media
swan song to a life we cannot
understand.

No time passes
before the fires eat our lives
‌         charred canyons
‌         burning animals
‌         exploding homes

We are on the map
strung together with cities never mentioned in the same phrase
before now:
Parkland and Newton and
Thousand Oaks and Squirrel Hill and
Columbine and–
‌         and
‌         and
‌         and
rattled off like gunfire.

Tears soak the earth as the fires burn.
People choke in the dark daytime air, mourning twin tragedies,
cleaning their corner of chaos.

So much blood fills the bar
that days later
the sharp smell of bleach permeates
the insides of cars passing along the highway.

But there is not enough bleach
to blot out the stain of the 13 slain.

 

Lori Chortkoff Hops, Ph.D., DCEP is a licensed psychologist and Reiki Master living and working in the Conejo Valley, which includes Thousand Oaks, CA, where the Borderline Bar and Grill shootings took place in November of 2018. The next day, wildfires caused a mass evacuation of the area. You can find her writing published in Energy Magazine, by visiting her website.

Tricia Knoll

Frigatebird

Awake with half my brain
to your sadness, woe
a sea you cannot cross,
cannot rest in for fear
of letting the mirror
of heavy water
pull you under.
Wings that will not
land. Not this day.

Awake I carry you
with half my brain,
one part in the sun
of mid-day;

the other wonders
exactly where you are
flying, what thermal
might lift you,
waking or dreaming.

The bird that mates
for life.

Self-Portrait with Clair

She’s number seven, a good dog in a long life of years.
Each new one finding home the day the last one dies.
Friends say too soon, grieve the ones that disappear,
give each their due, not privy to how hard I cry.
It’s not tail wags or tricks or snores at night,
it’s how I need that known quotient of fur.
I know as well as I see black and white
that the new dog does not come to transfer
feelings from old to new. She comes as light
to a soul in dodgy despair, a child of loneliness
eager to nose in deep, give a hand caress
to a mute, receptive head eager to be liked.
I bring home a faithful creature I need
for me, not her, such a self-serving deed.

 

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet looking into winter’s dark months, prime time to write about the vagaries of wind and relationships. Her work appears widely in journals and anthologies. For more, visit her website. 

Kristin LaFollette

Physics Lesson

At 20 years old, I lived in someone’s
upstairs bedroom, a blanket pinned
over the window to block out the

morning sun.

In the summertime, I could feel
the heat through my shoes as I
walked on black pavement to

a classroom—

Physics, afternoon lab in the room
with the tables, evening lecture in the
room with movie-theatre-type seats.

I had a pad of

graph paper that I would use to draw
lines and color in squares—I wanted
to be a doctor, the kind with sharp

tools for cutting,

the kind that wash their hands over
and over with soap and warm water.
In the upstairs room, I would practice

my skill with a needle

and thread—as a child, I helped my
father and brother field dress animals
in the corn, skins and blood still hot

against our hands.

Once, I watched as a knife slid into
the pelvis of a deer, watched as the knife
was drawn upward through the hide.

I nudged the pile of organs

with my foot, found a kidney, the liver.
It was then that I learned that each tree
in the woods grows with the nutrients of the

jawbones at its feet.

Kristin LaFollette is a writer, artist, and photographer and is the author of the chapbook, Body Parts (GFT Press, 2018). She is a professor at the University of Southern Indiana (Evansville, IN) and serves as the Art Editor at Mud Season Review. You can visit her on Twitter at @k_lafollette03 or on her website at kristinlafollette.com

Susan Landgraf

He Explains Why He Sleeps
on a Lawn Chair in His Front Yard

Walls are not two-by-fours but faces
speaking without a voice.
‌                    I call King TV. No reporters show.

Sitcoms and reality shows fade
in a swarm of mosquitos.
‌                    I stop separating garbage from recycle.

Tricksters circumnavigate. Someone
in the government gives them lessons.
‌                     Immigration doesn’t call me back.

Converts practice their code-making.
They don’t explain why the world spins faster.
‌                    I leave Oreos by the fireplace.

I call for the exterminators, but I am down
to dimes and nickels. The floor lamps
‌                    take reverse x-rays.

I leave pennies by the door.
The priest from St. Marks can’t come.
‌                    I practice self-absolution.

The electrician says he won’t accept cash;
he’ll bill me. Nettles root in my ears.
‌                    Over the stinging, the pharmacist

at one of those chain stores tells me
you need a doctor’s prescription.
          That’s when I know
‌          what I need to do.

 

Susan Landgraf’s writing exercise book, The Inspired Poet, was just published by Two Sylvias Press. Her poems appear in Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Margie, Nimrod, Calyx, and others. Other books include What We Bury Changes the Ground and Other Voices. Currently she’s Poet Laureate of Auburn, Washington, where she lives.

Gary Lark

Dan

Disheveled, soiled, stinking
he paces 2nd street
around the closed foundry,
counts the splotches,
avoids the curb for 26 steps.
Slumping shoulders,
the world in his head turning,
his mind connected to fibers
that speak from beyond,
whirring, hear the hum?
You don’t know
and never will know
what he knows.
Loo of Loo’s Chinese and American Cuisine
puts a small white box
of likely leftovers behind the dumpster
with a plastic fork stuck in the handle
where if it’s eaten or not
can easily be tossed.
Loo watches, sometimes.
Dan will pick up the box
smell it, put it down,
walk around the block,
come back, pick it up
and sometimes he eats.
The last of the dishes
roll out of the washer.
Dan turns around 3 times
testing the fibers for true south.

 

Gary Lark’s most recent collection is “Ordinary Gravity,” Airlie Press. Other work includes, “River of Solace,” Editor’s Choice Chapbook Award from Turtle Island Quarterly, Flowstone Press; “In the House of Memory,” BatCat Press; “Without a Map,” Wellstone Press; “Getting By,” winner of the Holland Prize from Logan House Press. His poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Willawaw, Poet Lore, ZYZZYVA and others.

Edward Lee

In Dreams

I wake from a forgotten dream
with the taste of salt
heavy in my saliva, and
the smell of seaweed
deep in my nose.

Did I almost drown
in my sleep, or
find a floating peace
so far unattainable
in the waking world.
Each day stretches cruelly
before me like a promise broken
before it is sworn.

 

Edward Lee is from Dublin, Ireland. His poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England, and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, and Smiths Knoll.  His debut poetry collection, Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge, was published in 2010. Lee also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, et al. See more at his website: edwardlee.wordpress.com.

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