Willawaw Journal

Full English Breakfast

is our waking to the wind biting broken teeth
into black clouds, rafters, drafts, handfuls
of wake-up hail thrown against the window.

He’s sullen, reluctant. One of us always is,
a turned lump turned away in a smothering
sauce of blankets. Somewhere, creaks

of the landlady—she warned us of the streets,
especially a lassie alone, a gentleman might
approach such a lassie, told us of her long-lost

channel crossing and the Moulin Rouge
like a dream that tugged her back to bed
to linger there, eyes closed. But we’re up

and packing, collapsible cups, single bar
of soap we share, plastic ponchos on top.
So bored with our own clothes washed over

and over in sinks, tent city of clean, that today
he wears mine, I wear his. Out the window,
pewter streets reflecting iron clouds,

a street sweeper clatters his cart of brooms.
Downstairs to that muscular bacon,
a wrinkled warm tomato.

Letter

If there is a lake, I hope you’re floating on it stoned
and pain is a sharp little star you wrote into your book

and shut. The last time I saw you, your body was so
thin. I hurried by. May I always taste that sour old coin

in the mouth. I hope your feet find balance in the bottom
of the kayak. May the bungees in the truckbed

snake their colors in the sun. May you rise from the trip
undizzied, reaching for the rail of the dock,

and journey home warm to wherever you will rest
or drink or seethe over everyone who didn’t call.

I keep writing you these letters.
I keep sending them like money.

Amy Miller is the author of Astronauts (Beloit Poetry Journal Press), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and The Trouble with New England Girls (Concrete Wolf Press). Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, and ZYZZYVA, and she received a 2021 Oregon Literary Fellowship. She lives in southern Oregon, where she works as a communications editor for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. https://writers-island.blogspot.com/

It’s not impolite to stare at a tree

Even a tree winter
naked. A tree that didn’t glory
in spare, sculptural nakedness
would never agree to be
deciduous, step from a gown
of leaves and be bare for so
long you’d think last year
was the last year. Dead, now

cast of lead. An oak, to take
an example, stubborn against
insistent Spring. Sap rises and once
invisible buds redden, swell
and the tree begins to glow,
like the hint of first light.

We don’t know if the pink swell
is pain or pleasure or
both in one, a pain you’d choose
again and again like February.

Twenty-eight Twelve Cesar Chavez Avenue

Alone, like an oil stain in the night street,
you sit drunk, sure east is north
‌                                                          and your
house just ahead under the reach of trees
you should know better.
‌                                             Your compass
spins. Your gyroscope junk. I can’t leave
you the dumb helpless I’ve been after my times
of too much, when I walked into a ditch
of blackberries, the runnel of water so cold
it stung,
‌               into a barbed wire fence instead

of the path, and once the road home
led instead to graveyard. I held out
against the cold against a headstone for first

light. Tell me your address, which I will barely
believe, and lean your greater weight
on my right shoulder,
‌                                        and I’ll carry
your Chinese take-out gone cold
in my left hand and we will forget

our fathers and become for a half
hour one man more bulbous and grotesque
than Saint Quasimodo,
‌                                          a chump
in a story with a goat and a woman
‌by the water,
and we will find
your house if it’s there. When your belt
slips below your hip, we’ll have to stop,
stymie any momentum, even
the bored moon then a little anxious
as you reel and hike up
your trousers.
‌                          Twice, you too fumble
fingered, I will have to wrench
them up for you, twice as one might reach

down into a barrel
‌                                 of foul water and look away,
the intimate stink too much. And you will
tell me how you had to poison
the entire city of rats tunneled beneath
an ancient backyard cherry stump. Dead
everywhere. And you will stumble
‌                                                              a half dozen

times but topple only once and I will wish
without hope for a winch or pulley
or a brother to help
‌                                    hoist you
to your seesaw feet and we’ll turn
and take the steps to your porch
as I end a charity that flakes
no sins from my spine
‌                                         to where
a slender woman ignores me, gathers
you like a bulky, wet great coat. Eases you inside.

John C. Morrison‘s most recent book, Monkey Island, was published by redbat books. His work has appeared previously in Willawaw Journal, as well as in numerous other journals such as Poetry Northwest and Rhino. A long time resident of Portland, Oregon, he teaches at the Attic Institute and is a guest editor for the Comstock Review.

Early Morning: March

Past porchlight, the barn sleeps still,
huddled beneath the snow-bound
trees, while a worm moon of oriental
gold glazes fence-posts and the frozen ground.
Galvanized buckets laced with frost,
each to each dimly burns,
perhaps in search of a season lost
or one that’s yet to come.
Now, though, is the hour of the halting heart
when time seems to slow and memories
and misgivings emerge and then depart
like breaths outside the body.
Yet, at this cold hour, only darkness stirs
and spreads like a burial shroud
across the earth; somewhere a bird’s
futile call, neither soft nor loud,
spills to ear while weary eyes
know how day will end: a fervent blue
blissfully rising and meager clouds dyed
like peace flags unfurling in pastel hue.

A resident of Connecticut and a lover of all things chocolate, John Muro has published two volumes of poems: In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite, in 2020 and 2022, respectively. He is also a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, a Best of the Net nominee and, more recently, he was a 2023 recipient of a Grantchester Award. John’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Connecticut River, Sky Island, WIllawaw, and the Valparaiso Review. Instagram: @johntmuro.

Nested Blizzard Books a la Hedi Kyle. Papers: Shizen, paste, origami, chiyogami, decorative.  6”x 20”.

Welcome to Our Hill

Sandals are fine:
it’s a mild, 10-minute climb.
From the top, looking west,
you’ll see fields of corn,
wheat, and alfalfa.
Its grassy eastern slope
descends to a housing development.
The patch of gravel at the south base
never fills with cars—
and from the north can waft the scent
of a hog farm the field of wind turbines
beyond doesn’t actually send our way.

Scattered oaks, prairie grass,
turkeys, rabbits, squirrels—unpretentious,
yet we locals troop regularly to the top
with its wooden platform and bench
where we cuddle our loves, mull our debts,
or eat sandwiches.

Coming here, you’re likely content
with the ordinary, foregoing Everest
style thrills and chills for the grounded
silence of Native Americans interred
in the bird mound near the hill’s summit.

A hill like ours can’t be boastful:
time and the elements keep paring it
down. Still, what good fortune
to have a hill because, sometimes,
a body feels the need to climb one.

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His work appears in Verse-Virtual, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, San Antonio Review, Amethyst Review, and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.

Fine China

My parents’ wedding china was Honiton Green—
gifted by my grandparents, dainty Honiton Green.

Delicate porcelain by appointment to the Queen,
teacups, saucers, side plates, platters, all Honiton Green.

Four settings made it down the years to me,
I keep them behind glass doors, the Honiton Green.

I remember winter afternoons when my family took four o’clock tea,
sunlight glinted and gleamed on Honiton Green.

Things are made to be used says my mother in my dream,
but I’m afraid I’ll break them, the Honiton Green.

You can fill teacups with hot black tea, stir in sugar and cream,
clink edges with a silver spoon, tough Honiton Green.

Creamers and sugar bowls, lacy gold borders, green filigree,
garlands of flowers, looping and scooping, all Honiton Green.

I yearn for that elegance, that riotous glee,
but I can’t bring myself to use, I can’t bear to lose, the Honiton Green

On The Umpqua

Smoke roils the valley air
hangs brown in the sky
weakens the sun
to an orange rheumy eye.
Afraid to breathe, we are grateful
for the yurt’s shelter.

Semi trucks shudder
down the highway
juddering brakes rat-a-tat
the night.

Early morning we flee
past an elk stag guarding
his sleeping harem, speed
to the ocean where west winds
battle the smokey east, push
the sky clear.

But that motionless stag,
protective, remains
in his green meadow,
the curtain of smoke
silently drifting down.

Vivienne Popperl lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Timberline Review, Cirque, Willawaw, About Place Journal, and other publications. She was poetry co-editor for the Fall 2017 edition of VoiceCatcher. She received both second place and an honorable mention in the 2021 Kay Snow awards poetry category by Willamette Writers and second place in the Oregon Poetry Association’s Spring 2022 contest “Members Only” category. Her first collection, A Nest in the Heart, was published by The Poetry Box in April, 2022.