From East To West: Bicoastal Verse, Fall '07

fall ‘07

from east to west: bicoastal verse

from east to west: bicoastal verse

Table of Contents: p. 3 p. 7 p. 13 p. 19 p. 25 p. 31

Tanka and ‘Ku from the Keweenaw Peninsula - Tom Blessing Stella’s Book of Patron Saints - Michelle Morgan Shorts – various poets Selected poems - Laurel Dodge Hawks from Handsaws: A Gaggle of Sonnets - James Lineberger Contributors

edited by PJ Nights and Ray Sweatman cover art by Michelle Morgan all works © 2007 by each individual poet and artist

Poetry by Tom Blessing

40 foot motorhome more money than i could make in a life of summer work

waiting for campers i think about cold beer a good book

in the morning bear scat by the dumpster seeds and plastic wrap

dry summer bears come shopping in the campground

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Tom Blessing

old mine shafts filled with dirt, water dreams of wealth

night falls i listen to raven talk

wild iris on this cold autumn day how i miss them

my windshield stained by spirits of butterflies

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Tom Blessing north wind folds heavy waves just beyond my sight not my hearing

across the lake the moon make a white pebble path these sad days i’m thinking of walking it

in my dream i walk the shore of a small pond where waves become mountains

between the iron clad wheel and the cannon's barrel a perfect spider web

the swan tries to fly out of the night sky no luck Cygnus your stuck up there just like i am down here

in the wet cobble shine of green worn shard of an old 7-UP bottle

i sip from my cup of strong Yunan tea i think of nothing but the bitter strength of the tea

early autumn wind across this wrinkled land soon soon into the cold oven of winter

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Tom Blessing

watching the trickle of water in the drying stream no fish, but! sudden scuttle of a crayfish

swept needles and leaves read basho long road into the interior i don't want to think about those miles

skate the butter around the cast iron pan salt, crushed garlic sliced potato two paper plates

with few campers ravens are reclaiming the campground they talk about renovations

two months of drought ended we light the burn piles flames far into the night

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art and poetry by Michelle Morgan 1. St. Anthony of Padua: The Patron Saint of Lost Possessions Stella lost her car keys under the striped couch & was not sure how they got there but that was where she found them nonetheless maybe at 5AM the previous morning they’d slid from her weary hand & maybe her cat Lola had bat them beneath the springs at play with the dust bunnies who promised each other in whispers that someday they would all escape hit the road in Stella’s Chevy & blow this joint.

2. St. Nicholas: The Patron Saint of Sailors, Merchants, Archers, Children & Students Because she was a good student & because books took her away from the fighting in the basement & on the front porch or in the kitchen & made her less of a target Stella learned at an early age how to set her compass by the longitude of a line.

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Michelle Morgan 3. St. Amand: The Patron Saint of Brewers, Innkeepers & Bartenders At a critical moment in her life Stella up & ran away to a city full of strange faces & she reveled in those first weeks at the anonymity newness provided Stella spent hours at the grocery store marveling at the fact that no one was familiar & Stella purposefully and painfully took care to never let one store become a habit so then not a single person would ever know her name or her face when Stella started bartending that all changed & suddenly it was as tho her life was again under the magnifying glass & what was reflected was large & vulnerably open & easy to read but distorted through a foreign lens.

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Michelle Morgan 4. St. Apollonia: The Patron Saint of Dentists Stella had a dream one night where her teeth had crumbled she bit down on something soft at the side of her cheek tho it hurt & bled & she winced at the pain nothing could stop her from opening up her mouth or from watching the black hole as she floated above herself looking down & looking in clotted pink powder at the corners of her lips an appointment reminder tacked to her alarm glowing & screaming in the streetlamp light seeping through the blinds

5. St. Cecilia: The Patron Saint of Musicians & the Blind There are several ways to describe Stella’s inclination towards musicians which we will describe in painful detail in the manner of catalogs beginning now : 1. As a child Stella’s father had played dueling banjos over & over again with feeling 2. Stella had won 2nd place in a National tap dancing competition when she was 15 in Orlando, FL & she never learned to play an instrument tho she can play her feet nobody thinks this counts 3. when she was a girl Stella owned 2 copies

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Michelle Morgan of Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits & she loved Cecilia because it jangled & made the sound of spoons and punches 4. Stella is blind to the obvious things like the fact that musicians always break your heart leave you for the younger blonde who can sing for real or ruin their talent with liquor & angst she jumps in anyway as though a vibrating string could change the meaning of anything.

6. St. Martin de Porres: The Patron Saint of Hairdressers Stella decided to go blonde but her hairdresser could not take her back so easily from black it came out orange even after three hours of sitting under a dryer with a bag on her head & so Stella put on her favorite sunglasses the huge ones that made her feel famous & she used them as a headband for 6 weeks while her hairdresser fought with her boyfriend whose name was Rocky over who was going to train the newest pit bull & prayed a holy rosary over the huge tip Stella had given her anyway.

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Michelle Morgan 7. St. Francis de Sales: The Patron Saint of Writers & Authors The irony of Stella’s imagined career as a writer is that it so rare resulted in sales.

8. St. Genesius: The Patron Saint of Actors, Comedians, Clowns & Dancers Somewhere along the way it had gotten into everybody’s head that Stella liked clowns tho she didn’t really what she liked were theatre masks which got translated roughly into something easier to find at Kmart or the county fair therefore by the time she was 16 Stella had so many clown figurines that clowns began to creep her out & her step mother who did love clowns & bought Stella more of this junk than anyone else never really figured out who the joke was on even when Stella twirled with her on the shag carpet to the music some of them played.

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Michelle Morgan 9. St Nicholas of Myra: The Patron Saint of Pharmacists, Prostitutes, Pawnbrokers & Thieves Let’s discuss Stella’s propensity for thievery which she developed early on around the time she began smoking at age 12 Stella & the neighborhood boys would ask the cashier at the corner store for a slushie & when they turned their backs Stella stuffed pack after pack of cigarettes into her bra they would then smoke all afternoon lazily on the back porch or sell them to the other kids desperate for a butt for $5 a pack Stella self-medicated her way through adolescence with a cigarette dangling from her lip hitching up her skirts revealing a universe of stars. 10. St. Venerius: The Patron Saint of Lighthouse Keepers, Hermits & Recluses Everyone Stella knows is always so goddamn enamored with the ocean or lighthouses & where she is from they’re as common as bowling pins all of them housing some stern need rigidly inside trying not to get knocked over still Stella understands why someone might want to live high in an ivory tower alone almost all the time except for when the boat brings a few supplies or when someone dies & Stella understands how it might feel to spend a whole lifetime flashing a strobe into the fog even though there is no one left who is looking for it.

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little poems with big punches An Easy Refusal Honey, you're crazy, she said, No man's ever turned me down! But really, she was the crazy one. I'm barely mediocre at my best. You could buy more charm for a quarter, if you found a half-good jukebox, and see better features on the moon even on the loneliest of nights.

~Graeme Mullen

hard nipples hold moonlites stiff shadows as I lift my mouth to kiss your eyes howl ~Peter Lord

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Shorts

~William Blackford A Dynasty of Paper Leaves Tonight there is no emerald in the wine the orchid boat is a peak of sorrow nothing climbs or contemplates the smoke stings my eyes Star River is a place too far to reach and emptiness the silken gown I close around me the door of night— a mist has brought the rain ~Dorothy Mienko

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Shorts

autumn Damp golden windswoop, dusk shot up flannel pants, bringing in firewood.

harvest Purple earth sideways moves moistened worms, white larvae, to mushroom harvest

Zen Ming mountains moving slowly to humps in dusk, old men of the planet. ~Craig Kirchner

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Shorts Aloof The lawn is a mattress of leaf-down where the wind hushed and hauled itself into a backyard corner for the night. Only apple leaves cling to the branch, lace-knotted as if to veil the white complexion of dawn. Her skin becomes mine as I rise and slide on the cold, smooth look of Winter. The Driveway She turns on the lamp, listens as cars slow then pass beyond her driveway. Shadows of a girl and garage window drag their story over the graveled lot. You wonder if someone is expecting sad news. The wind turns silent while the moon shows its slender jawbone, white as quartz, locked in a grim stillness only night understands, perpetuates by smudging time into long hours of charcoal. ~Wendy Howe

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Shorts

Brunch she sliced up one tomato while the girl on the radio sang about love

Here, Take It 4 Yer Mouth Nina put on the lashes they were tiny eye-wings hung with shadows He was late again

After Getting Home From White Castle he says his hands feel like sand no just 50,000 songs his hair the illusion of calm our bed is slip-covered in black shutters quit falling 6 minutes too late just unbutton my eyes and go deeper ~Tasha Klein

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Shorts

Dreamers how many versions of you do I see not counting the sleeping one whom all the dreamers think they know holding your beauty to their bed

The Shortest Day You still wake at the same time, trying to go where your body leaves off. Every day becomes shorter as you reach silently— To look until a mountain appears. ~Jill Chan

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by Laurel K. Dodge In the Picture (for Zina) The tiger was sneaking into her head; soon, her face would be disguised, as unrecognizable as his. Try to distinguish pine needles and dead leaves from the body of a little girl. The shadows on the water were slipping under her skin. Unafraid of the dark, she was watching the night sky blossom; firecrackers breaking open like chrysanthemums. The moat was dug to separate the animals from the human beings. Her baby blond hair pulled back into the tightest pony tail. With beauty comes pain. Said her mother, her father, a priest, maybe. The tiger left the exhibit; disappeared into his cage. I know what the world wants, she sang; she sings. Un-coyly. The world wants. The world wants me.

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Laurel K. Dodge

Occlusions The shadows are blue. The fence is toothed. The hands are not, in my view, touching. Flasks of perfume, of booze glow like amber. I want to smell like a million years ago. I want to swallow the occlusions without choking. Memory is never sepiatoned. I drive with my headlights on in the afternoon; I still can’t see where I’m going. The orange cones tell me where not to go but I ignore them. Sun, filtered through the deck, pinstripes the violets. Once, I drowned in a kiddie pool despite the fact that it was leaning against a wall. There’s nothing lonelier than a lone gull flying out to sea except maybe a man clinging to his guitar as if it were his penis, or a young bear lost in suburbia running across a street. That pile of trash, the shards of porcelain, the broken glass, the beams splintered, snapped in half, the sad, bared mattress? That’s where I once lived. I called those walls and windows home. Tonight, I will sleep on the drought brown lawn and dream of an abandoned library, the blue stacks as silent as a summer after all of the children are dead and gone.

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Laurel K. Dodge There are Keener Sorrows Than These and You Have Known Them It’s not about burying the bowl that held and spilled water or digging up the bone gnawed clean by the dead dog so long ago that you can’t recall what soup languished on the stove all that grey day or how long and cold that January was, how contained. Remember? You stood at the window watching the white world fall and wondered when it would end. It’s not about finding the perfect stone to place upon the grave— you searched the woods and fields until you found that rock, moon round, only to lose it years later to weeds. Here lies, the un-inscribed surface said. Here lies. It’s about interring a bulb in autumn and forgetting about that seed, until spring when your grief will bloom; regardless of the kind of flower, petunia, daffodil, lily, the color will be so vibrant, so unearthly, so beautiful, that you will begin to weep. And the petals, already browning at the edges will forgive you. It’s only mourning, the stem, the leaves will say. Father, it’s only beginning of another day.

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Laurel K. Dodge

Sybil I kissed the sole of your foot for a reason. Someday, you’ll peel a banana and eat it; you’ll step on a piece of glass and bleed. A wave will break over your head. A fish will swim between your legs. You’ll crave olives while pregnant with your first baby. You’ll chew the candles from your daughter’s birthday cake after she blows out the flames. You’ll paint your nails red. You’ll brush the sand from your husband’s back lovingly. And you will not think of me. But then in a hotel room so silent it will feel hermetically sealed, you’ll catch a whiff--the distinctive scent of departure and arrival when you unzip your suitcase. You’ll know without ever having held a gun in your hand, the exact weight of death. You’ll look down at your feet and see their beauty and ugliness. Then you’ll remember the boy on the beach. And where he went.

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Laurel K. Dodge

Because I Deem it So Time for you to go. Buried between the sheets like beets, even when our bodies are asleep our love is too red too sweet; too edible. The gleam of the moon on the waveless ocean only cheapens the feeling— skins slick as seals as we slip and slide in and out like pros, each motion so perfected, so practiced, so expected, so yawn, so known. Your devotion is as familiar as a sea that I can hear and smell but can’t see anymore. I want to be bitten by strange teeth. I want to remember what it means to yield to my unyielding. I want to be poisoned; I want to be the apple.

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Laurel K. Dodge

I Have Wasted my Life Tonight, as I waited for evening to come, I lost a little blood. A mosquito whined her tiny woes in my ear. Bats flapped low over the yard, attending to their blind hunger. Moths swarmed the porch light where spiders lurked like lions in the shadows of their webs. A lone cicada sang his ugly last days song along dark’s edge. Leaves rustled restless in a barely perceptible breeze that moved but did not sound the wind chime dangling over my head. As I listened to crickets sing because their lives depended on it, I realized that I’ve never in my life had anything that important to say.

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Poetry by James Lineberger you can just forget about mowing you can just forget about mowing she says that grass is up to your knees and you better consider too what will it be like when you have your next one and there's nobody around but me and you cause i tell you right now it'll be katie bar the door your son and grandson both racing over here fists in the air before they even get out of their cars ready to settle things all over again and prove which one loved you the most yelling in each other's face it should have been him or him out there not your dumb ass in the first place

we can be anything but what we were already there is no record of our passing no logged calls on the cells or photographs or convoluted gmails nor the doodles we made on restaurant napkins not even the toe ring you promised to wear always but exchanged for another and now that we're left with only the past itself what can we hope to save but regrets that pile up like powdering leaves when the heart has finished its every chore but grief

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James Lineberger the siamese bit me the siamese bit me last night and i looked on in wonder at the bright issue of my blood which flowed with such alacrity in a path down the forearm to the fingers yet with a seeming unperturbed grace as if unrelated to anything so foreign so suddenly trivial as the pain in that broken place we liken to the heart

the longest sun no not like this not in speech there are no words can even approach it and all the aspiring jim wrights who still dare to say that they have pissed their lives away are lying for when you get to the place we're headed won't be any need for an audience or even the keyboard to lay it out but arms upraised with a viper coiled around each wrist until our very passage seems madness to another and we can see the invisible light beyond the mirror

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James Lineberger

drought there's an old southern tale dating back to slave times that water is composed of lost souls seeking a place to rest but what was true back then has somehow gone awry much like the weather itself in this deadly piedmont summer where to hear tell it even your dashboard jesus needs a face mask and red dust rains in a crazed rapture upside down

ghost writer there comes a time we find we can't control it anymore can't forgive the past or mold the future or hold on to any clever scene that dances before us realizing at last that there's someone in the wings can do it better who watches and waits careful not to show off or jump in too quickly keeping to the shadows the way he was taught until we break and beg him for christ's sake to just take the thing and finish it

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James Lineberger bio been there done that except for this one: never very patient with letting matters assume their natural course (and what is natural anyway) i find myself musing more and more about writing notes making amends hugging strangers holding my wife's hand asking my son if he ever considers the damn fool things that might could happen keeping that loaded shotgun under his bed

aloning sure sure i'm okay didn't i say i was okay and i have i've just about gotten over it like those poems we all feel we have to write in order to keep going like when someone dies and the only thing left to do is find some words for it at least try and i'm standing there thinking you never looked like this that's not you at all and then someone comes up wearing your rive gauche and puts her arms around me this person i don't even know saying you okay and i say yeah doing ok

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James Lineberger

she used to hate the slugs she used to hate the slugs same as i did and cheered them on as they climbed up into saucers of beer to die but we've lived long enough to find everything reversed and now she will take a lost slug and place it gently in the grass and sometimes give it a few sprinkles of water to represent the dew that isn't there and we sit together in the old rusty glider on the patio these soft summer mornings waiting for the time when someone will pick us up too and lay us down way out beyond the blind meandering trails we've left behind

hand jive someday we'll forget most of what we shared but one moment will never disappear for me that day when you lay on your back and aimed the camera in close with your fingers framing your eyes as you signed i l y to make a vow i should have known wasn't worth the air it was written on

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James Lineberger self portrait from a fragmented dream a knock on the door and someone asks if there is anything i want yes someone else replies the doctor says he may have a sip of dark wine but how strange i think and in a way how luminous for suddenly i remember where this is coming from: one of swir's old poems about the polish resistance when all these years i had thought the piece was less a part of me than the barb wire cicatrice above my eye

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Featured Poets: Tom Blessing wrote Tanka and ‘Ku from the Keweenaw Peninsula at a state park in Michigan at the top of the Keweenaw peninsula during slow times when no campers were registering or in to ask questions. He is the editor of Quickzine and Peshekee River Poetry and blogs at knee deep in freezing water. Laurel K. Dodge lives and writes in northeast Ohio and blogs at Possum. James Lineberger is a retired screenwriter, sometime playwright, and full-time poet. His screen adaptation for Twentieth Century Fox film of the Devery Freeman novel Father Sky was filmed as Taps. He blogs at False Eye Beetle. You can also read more of him right here at east/west. Michelle Morgan fuses artwork and poetry in Auburn, Maine. She edits Panamowa: A New Lit Order with its companion blog here. Visit her MySpace for more blogging action.

“Shorts” Poets: Jill Chan blogs from New Zealand at Navel Orange. Her first book, The Smell of Oranges was published by Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop in 2003. Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives with her life partner and teenage stepdaughter in Southern California. She blogs at Tea Lights and Flowers. Craig Kirchner lives and works as a consultant on the east coast but considers himself a hobo of the universe. Get another dose of Craig at The Peaceful Pub. Tasha Klein blogs at Good Vibrations from Dekalb, Illinois and is the She is the founder of the on-line poetry board Salty Dreams. Visit this blonde brownie at her MySpace. Peter Lord’s hobbies are long balancing acts with short term memories, staying on the rite path even when it seems to be going the wrong way and women. He resides in Canada. 31

Dorothy Mienko lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her husband. They have no cats. Dorothy is the co-editor of the anthology Women of the Web. Read more of her in the east/west winter ’05 issue. Graeme Mullen

is a Stanford alum and wordslinger living in California. Visit his choices for “hipster of the week” at Hipsterista.

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