Willawaw Journal

Online Poetry & Art

Willawaw Journal

About Poet Laureate Diane Raptosh

Diane Raptosh’s fourth book of poetry, American
Amnesiac (Etruscan Press), was long-listed for
the 2013 National Book Award. The recipient of
three fellowships in literature from the Idaho
Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise
Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho
Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016). In 2018 she
won the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in
Excellence. A highly active ambassador for
poetry, she has given poetry workshops
everywhere from riverbanks to maximum
security prisons. She teaches literature
and creative writing and co-directs the program in Criminal
Justice/Prison Studies at the College of Idaho. Her most recent
book of poems, Human Directional, was published by Etruscan
Press in 2016. Her sixth book of poems, Dear Z: The Zygote Epistles
was just published by Etruscan Press in early summer 2020. Her
seventh book, Run: A Verse History of Victoria Woodhull, will be
published in the form of a triptych by Etruscan Press in spring 2021.
For More information go to her website.

One Last Letter–Rachel Barton

Diane Raptosh’s poem immediately brought this piece to mind–if she can talk to her unborn grandchild, then I can share talking to my dead mother– though I am determined to dive into more epistolary poems after reading hers.

I read a book last month that dropped me down into a waterless lake where gasses ignited like fox fire and illuminated the glass of ice overhead, stars glinting through like fireworks, and the birds, trapped down there, rushing up to the translucent surface and stunning themselves silly. I wanted to go there with you. I wanted to call you and talk about what I had read–the wonders of Rick Bass, the wilderness of our lives.

Instead, I talked to my sisters who have been reading the same stories and we each tugged quietly on our own memories of living in the woods, the holler, or the bush, which contributed to our appreciation of this author’s sensibilities, his propensity for keeping his stories close to the wild.

I can see you now with your stacks of books beside your chair, an open book on your lap, chin in hand, your head just slightly bowed to catch the phrases spread across the page. Remember when Colette and Anais Nin swept through the house like a tidal wave? You missed Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man, Mom, and Brian Doyle’s Mink River. And the poetry—don’t get me started on the poetry! Which has come a long way since your Dylan Thomas. . . .

I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you, Mom, and that if you ever decide to come back, to continue reading, for instance, then know that I’m in—I will read with you, from whatever distance; we all have cell phones now, you know–well, all except Mary Agnes—and we can pick them up any time, day or night, and read our favorite lines to one another.

Goodnight, Mom. Don’t forget to turn off NPR before you climb under the covers or I’ll think that talk show host, mumbling though the walls, is you, talking in your sleep.

 

This poem was previously published in the Oregon English Journal, Winter 2018.

Notes from the Editor

This editor has been practicing “sheltering in place” for a couple of months, owing to a hamstring injury (which is healing very nicely, thank you!), so the opportunity to read and to converse with contributors this cycle was especially rewarding. Also, the delicious prompt, “At Klamath Marsh,” provided by Oregon’s Poet Laureate Kim Stafford summoned particularly rich work on the themes of place and rootedness. I hope our readers are transported to the home ground of our writers, or that they are stimulated to recall a home ground of their own.

Claire Burbridge has gifted us with the images of a half dozen pen and ink drawings. Her macro-to-micro universes unfold as mycelium, a thorn bush dreaming, a flash of consciousness, and more. She shares a detailed artist statement on the Back Page.

Many thanks to the poets and artists who make Willawaw come to life. Their work seeds the collective consciousness with beauty and truth enough to nourish our souls while the Spring Equinox signals new growth and the upcoming light of summer. May we make the most of the gifts before us.

Warmly,
Rachel Barton

Hugh Anderson

Cluxewe

Late October, the rains come, just
as the maples turn yellow, the alders brown.
The creek swells, deepens its voice,
an adolescent river, testing its tumultuous
pubescence against rocks that yesterday
stood well away. Where the tide eddies,
crimson salmon churn in the
pebbled scent of home.

Dawn eases out of night; mist hardly
distinguishes from cloud or forest’s edge.
Raindrops pock the water, ripple out.
A tethered fly whips out and back,
lights gently upstream and drifts back
on limp line, dragging silence.
Gulls cry famine, and across the stream
a small black bear sniffs a new rendition
of the ancient dance of water, fish and riverbed.

Time stretches, languorous like a cat.
Over its shoulder the rain has always
sung the salmon home. Someone stands
here always on the sandy bank to welcome them.
The bear will always push through salal
because winter comes and the berries will be gone.
The gulls cry again and there is only now.

 

Hugh Anderson lives on Vancouver Island in the unceded territory of the Snaw-naw-as people.  He has grandchildren and thus the world gives him both dreams and nightmares. Recent publications include Vallum, Right Hand Pointing, Praxis Magazine Online, Panoplyzine and 3elements review.  He has one Pushcart Prize nomination.

Susan Ayres

Unforseeable

–Remember that one grain of grit can ruin
 a whole dish—Katherine Anne Porter

Sometimes an otherwise fine Greek
meal will have grit in the spinach.
Your plate overflows with pan-fried perch,
sautéed baby portabella mushrooms, rice and spinach,
when you comment, “My, this spinach is gritty.”
Your lover, the cook, will rest his hand on the table
and glare at you long after you eat

the spinach and your words.
Sometimes an oak limb will suddenly
break, crushing a car or jogger one dry
summer’s day. Once, a limb crashed through
a bedroom window, killing a mother and
her toddler, who’d run to her bed
frightened by the storm. Once a limb crushed
a jogger, who lived to become a paraplegic

governor. Sometimes a green hummingbird will hover
inches in front of your nose more than one morning
when you are quietly reading in the garden.
And you will imagine it’s your recently
dead mother greeting you, showing off,
checking in. Just like she’s the mourning dove
perched on the eave, cooing
at daybreak. You see her everywhere

saying, take joy in being alive, love the grit.
Somewhere a dog is barking. A small dog
with the kind of bark that hurts your ears.
Two hummingbirds settle in a high vitex
branch, then fly off, looking for nectar, cheeping
in short, high-pitched chirps that sound like toy
ratchets. As usual, doves sit on the telephone
lines. Once I found a hummingbird nest lying
on the ground. Inside were tiny eggs
I mourned.

 

Susan Ayres is a poet, lawyer, and translator.  She holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a Concentration in Translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Literature from Texas Christian University.  Her work has appeared in Sycamore Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere.  She lives in Fort Worth and teaches at Texas A&M University School of Law.