Three Poems ------ Maura Gage Cavell

She Dreams Awake While He's Working

                            

She walks on the railroad ties

whispering his name, whispering his name.

So in love and cut through with pain,

her boot heels drifting along the lines

of man made rails and fallen leaves.

He works so hard his body's burning,

yet holds a sense of purpose in his eyes.

All night he's awake in production,

pushing past exhaustion, making it happen.

Steadily, he meets every responsibility.

She walks far out into the rain,

jumps away from the tracks when she sees

the moon-shaped light of a train.

She walks near the water, whispering his name,

the man of her dreams lingering in her heart.

He comes in from working, tired and beat,

gets clean and eats, falls into the trance of sleep,

too brief, much too brief.  Coffee, cigarette, work boots--

all in the dark before the work begins again.

The strenuous pattern of his week--muscles tight, fatigued.

When he's back home, she reaches for him,

rubs his shoulders, neck, and back

until he melts into a trance,

released from time, place, and circumstance.

relaxed and falling back as he whispers her name.

Blue Buildings

In a cold, empty alleyway

he stands directionless,

snow falling around him.

Somewhere across town a woman

thinks of him, sits by firelight

wondering if he is safe and warm.

Blue buildings loom around him,

block out all but a patchy sky.

The moon glows yellow in a square frame.

Lantern lights glow like false stars;

he looks up as if to find answers.

Wrought iron balconies loom overhead.

In a blue building across town a woman

longs for him, wishes he might return

from the shadows of night.

Somewhere lost between blue buildings,

his boot heels echo through the streets.

He finds himself among light and shadow

                                               at her door.

Your Life Like the Waters

Passes through All

My friend, your life

is a tapestry of love

threaded through

the waves of rushing

waters under your boat

as you fish.

My friend, your life

is chiming through the heavens

and touches all who know you

with the beauty of artwork

and a sound of waves that go out

from where you are and return.

My friend, your life

rings throughout the horizon

like a beautiful bell or

a song of love.  I see your

light upon the landscape.

You're the sun; the stars.

My friend, your life

has been calm and peaceful.

The love I have for you

waves out towards you,

holds you like a sun ray

and let's you be free.

--Maura Gage Cavell

Alison Mandaville ----- two poems

Anne the Fig

Damn. Is lonely. Is oldest

and only one. Is alive. And

others is half. Alive. Clotted

with love. And blood. What

doesn’t kill you, weakens. Who —

don’t ask the doctor. How. Long.

Brother: In Bed. Wondering:

Is this my last nerve? Is this

vein just POP? Is the cells

circulating? Or not anymore.

Unicycling. One leg working.

One groin netted against

the gravity. Thinner and thin:

red is still the biggest color they

won’t let you wear in Fresno.

Central

I have been so drunk

my heart is frantic for you,

frantic I say. Like the stars

in Fresno, seen, pollution

and all. Biked at two: twenty

am after maybe just one two

many but not quite enough

of anyone because they know

each other and you don’t. Oh

this is harder at forty-nine

than it was at thirty and Van

Ness waits in the dark like

camping, or a park shuttered

against the human. Budgets

and houses and street lights

wait for no man and one woman

stands at that corner, taco pop-

up behind her at an angle, football-

ing teens’ street throws, like con-

stricted trampolines, the edges of light

absolute: my dear I wish you

were here and I wish you liked

the funny way people always find

a living at the dirt side of nowhere.

Donald Gasperson ----- Three poems

                                                               

                                           The Cabinet

                                               

                                    the authoritarian scrabbles

                                                

                                    for the chemical cabinet

                                              

                                    dead to any intimacy

 

                                     

                                      with an nod and a wink at me

                                       plays at authenticity

                                                  

                                        suspend your disbelief

                               

                                Sensible Shoes

                             

                                for a short time

                                twigs will ripen

                                and leaves breathe

                                quiet the idle mind

                                an elegant nest

                                opulant egg

                                breeze

                                          

                                mindfulness

                                               Blue Bird

                                              

                                      old world shamanism

                                      sought God’s mythic bone

                                      and finds the right rhythms

                                     

                                        to cure hemarhoids                          

                                        laughing woman

                                        has ungovernable questions

                                        of her archetypical family

                                        for quiet contemplation

                                 

                          our odd little onion

                               

                                      loves the inflections

                                      of sun on the river

                        

                                      and green weather

Four poems ----- Ann Reitan

. 

In Mind's Eye

Through my dull green

Paned window

I observe a home

That fissures a line

Within me, a horizon

Beyond dim daylight

Thoughts evoke

The flesh, blood interiors

Of this home

In my mind’s eye

Perhaps it’s suppertime,

Perhaps a family is

Giving thanks,

Before partaking

In stuffing bellies

Like blind men

Seeking nurturance,

Hands join with hands

As clasped hands grasp prayer

In stories, threaded and sawed

Not of truth

But of approximation

The hope that fables instill

From that family’s skewed horizon

Glancing west toward the night

Darkness ever beseeching fictions

Of residual day birth

While the sun bleeds into clouds

The dusky moment captures

Time’s paralysis

The incapacity

To embrace

Relentless night

As goodnights depart with goodnights

And sweet dreams decay…

Yet I know the banked fires

By which these solemn myths refrain:

The comfort of an evening’s slumber

A hearth’s internal flame

The red brick tiles of their rooftops

Are rounded and full almost bursting

 ~~~

Insectivore

Your fingers pound the edges

Of the table as I hum

Above, around, beneath you

To touch your skin   

Your eyes, disdaining

At the very least producing

Slight arrest in you

As you witness me, dismissing me

As miniscule

And I bear witness

To my experience of being

Annoying, aberrant, shamed

Are you blind?

Can you not see?

My dashing skirt?

My delicate limbs?

My lightness of spirit?

My silver-winged body?

~~~

A Handmaiden of the Sun

The evening cools

Especially the bones

As the air stirs

Leaves reminiscent

Of the storm that never came

The settling sun permits

The caste-eyed

Lunacy of the moon

A half-blind eerie goddess

Made to wait upon his light

Staring straight but sullenly

She arches in the sky

Unblinking whispers solitude

She drifts below the earth

Moon light never

Self-acknowledged

Her glance, a muted glare

Captivated, envying

The countenance of the sun

~~~

To render self

In this room dust gathers

On permutable

Folds and tears in walls of skin

Of surface lies, an essence

I am almost there

Artificial light (it can’t be called

Anything else)

Situated in my eyes

I, only I, know this

A little particle, eternal

Dreams of something more

A spark, perhaps, resistant

To light’s obliteration

Within the glass, distortions

Mirroring of self

However non-committal

I am almost there

David Fewster ---- four poems

A POEM FOR MARION KIMES  by David Fewster

A cause for bitter reflection

(I think it was ’90, ’91)

was the time I went into an antiseptic, nondescript

Belltown deli on a lunch break

To find Marion Kimes behind the counter.

“Well Hello David,” she drawled,

smiling in stained white apron.

Although I had been vaguely aware

Marion had some sort of food service gig,

the unexpected reality of actually seeing

Red Sky Poetry’s gritty Texan queen of truth & beauty,

pushing sixty and slinging hash, gave me pause.

I couldn’t help but feel that

underneath that beatific smile

Marion’s life must often seem

hard and sad.

Nobody today lacks a backup plan, in case

truth & beauty don’t pan out.

They’re all software consultants, systems engineers,

technical writers, public service administrators, web design

specialists,

with benefits and security supplied by Amazon, Microsoft, or the

State.

(The last three entities, by the way,

are one and the same.)

They can go from their jobs to

their featured reader gigs at chic new Greenwood wine bars

without having to change clothes.

But every Sunday night, Marion would put on her outfit

of striped yellow and black,

like a bumblebee in the drizzly Seattle night,

and teach us to fly free,

gathering pollen where we may.

HOW THE HOBOES DINE UNDER MT. TAHOMA

Catch Michael of “Operation Keep ‘Em Warm & Fed” in front of the library

Before seven-thirty for a wake-up coffee and day-old pastry.

Breakfast at 9 at Hospitality Kitchen.

Brunch at Nativity House.

Back up to St. Leo’s for lunch.

They have a big flat screen tv there now.

Last time I was there, I think they were playing “Jarhead”—I don’t know,

There were guys blowing stuff up in the desert,

And afterwards they were in a canteen

Like some scene out of “The Breakfast Club.”

High tea a Nativity House is three-ish.

Hot dinner at the Rescue Mission at 5:30—

Liver, tater tots, beans, macaroni & cheese

Spaghetti and unidentified meat chunks, bleached bread, creamed corn,

Powdered eggs and bacon shards

Oatmeal laced with high-fructose, artificially enhanced, maple-flavored syrup

And thousands of stale but tasty doughnuts.

For a midnight snack, there’s always the lucky hope of

Raisin bagels at the St. Leo’s breadbin.

Institutions know the value of the High Starch Diet.

You can always tell when one of the women has come back to the Ave.

After a stretch in the joint.

They go in junkie-thin & meth-skinny,

Nothing but a bag of abscesses and bones,

And come out ready for the clean-up spot

On the Kiwani’s Women’s Bowling Team.

They call it the Purdy Diet.

Hell, I even gained weight on this stuff

After I got out of St. Joe’s.

So the next time somebody at the bus stop

Hits you up for a couple of bucks

“For Food”—

Keep in mind

The only reason to go hungry in this town

Is because you were so fucked up

On rubbing alcohol and crack that you

FORGOT TO EAT.

And nobody feels sorry for you

Because you got a bad memory.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR PICKING UP CHICKS

AT THE AA MEETING 



TEN

Most of them are single. Or divorced.

For the usual variety of predictable reasons.

NINE

You share previous interests in common.

EIGHT

Chances are they’ve never practiced

Safe sex.

SEVEN

Free coffee.

SIX

Smoker tolerant.

FIVE

Don’t need to be taught rules

Of co-dependency.

FOUR

Mutual 2AM sugar cravings

Only to be satisfied by a pint each

Of Cherry Garcia.

THREE

No family baggage,

Because neither set of relatives

Have spoken to us for years.

TWO

Won’t be so lonely during relapses.

And our top reason for picking up chicks at AA meetings—

ONE

At this point,

They really don’t expect to do

Better than you.




IT’S HARD TO GET A GOOD LUNCH, ANYMORE



In 1953, Morris Graves, the great painter of

Existential Birds in various forms of

Spiritual Crisis, invited an elite group to

Careladen, his home in the forest 30 miles from Seattle

for a special art opening.

The expectant connoisseurs arrived to the sight

of a deserted courtyard whose center piece was

a banquet table covered with the remains of a dinner party—

tarnished silver, withered bouquets, coagulated gravy,

fuzzy green roast beef, decomposed frommage,

while aural ambiance was supplied by classical music

interspersed with a recorded pig fight.

The “exhibition” was a symbol of protest

against the pretentiousness of art openings.

The guests were not amused.

In 2003, Laura Bush wanted to host a symposium

with the crème de la crème of the literati.

Delicious refreshments would no doubt have been provided.

Sam Hamill refused to go,

causing the greatest publicity debacle

involving a poet since Robert Lowell told LBJ

to stick it where the sun don’t shine.

The First Lady was not amused.

Administrators and artists,

Bureaucrats and bohemians,

Sit uneasily together at table,

Unsure of who will be poisoned today,

Caesar or conspirator,

while the caterers of this sad world

weep Evian tears into the foie gras

and wonder where all the love has gone.

                                                                         David Fewster

                                                                         davidfewster@netscape.net