CIRQUE, Volume 15, No. 1 A Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rim

CIRQUE

A Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rim

Volume 15, No. 1

Anchorage, Alaska

© 2025 by

Sandra L. Kleven and Mike Burwell, Editors

Cover Photo: Frosted, Jill Johnson

Table of Contents Photo Credit: Frozen Beach Ripples, Janet R. Klein Design and composition: Signe Nichols

ISBN: 9798297425323

Independently Published Published by

Anchorage, Alaska

www.cirquejournal.com

All future rights to material published in Cirque are retained by the individual authors and artists.

cirquejournal@gmail.com

From the Editors

Tom Sexton, Memory Eternal

On a luminous Alaska Sunday, July 13, the Georgia Blue Gallery filled with friends, family, and former students who came together to celebrate the life of Tom Sexton. Those gathered heard readings from Sexton’s posthumous collection Dark Cloud in Isabel Pass. In this issue of Cirque, editor Michael Burwell shares his tribute to Tom. Included are three poems from the new collection and two that have never been published. Tom was more than a friend to Michael and to Cirque. Sixteen years ago, Tom Sexton provided the synergy that made the journal happen and his support propelled us forward.

Notes on Content from First Reader Cynthia Steele

Associate Editor, Cynthia Steele, has been the first reader of submissions for several years. Cynthia “gets it.” She demonstrates a level of comprehension and perception that binds her to the writer. Cynthia understands. She provides the following introduction to the work in Cirque #29.

This issue features writing by at least four students — a phenomenal accomplishment, as their work stands out in voice and craftsmanship. Daniel Bliss (“Charm City Strangers”) is an MFA student at the University of Saskatchewan. Beatrice Skipton (“Toad”) is a Bainbridge Island high school student. Both Bliss and Skipton’s poems show the indelible, sometimes difficult connections we forge with others.

Another student is Pamela Huber (University of Montana). I met her at the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference and encouraged her to submit. She sent us, “To Catch a King,” a story of fierce independence and tension.

UA Fairbanks student Rachel McKinley’s “Offspring” describes the crushing pain of the tiny deaths we encounter in everyday life and our struggle to continue, nonetheless. McKinley’s disquieting tale gave me shivers. We get student submissions regularly and these four really stood out.

The choices made in selecting work for Cirque are agonizing at times as the work we receive is very good. As a result, the issues grow in page count well beyond that of a tight little literary magazine.

More great writing in this issue. Jeffery Brady of Skagway submitted “Behind the At” a father/son poem. Read slowly and savor its wonderful cadences.

Climate change is addressed in Martha Carstensen’s monarch disappearance lament “Home Town Hospitality.” Vibrant, sensual poems from Kersten Christianson, Dale Champlin, and Wanda Wilson remind us that thoughts keep us warm in winter.

Patricia Farrell is in the scientist-turned-poet group. Formerly a biologist and landscape architect, her poems are touchingly delicate, beautiful and brilliant, painful, harsh and visual. Her “Courtyard Reverie” is the kind of poem you like to imagine someone having written it about you.

Barbara Hood’s “Mother’s Hometown,” made me nearly weep for its intergenerational meaning and depth. Gary Lark’s two poems, “I Don’t Live There” and “Widow Creek,” contain a chilling, haunting simplicity.

Former Poet Laureate of Bayfield, WI, Lucy Tyrrell gives us “When the Shorebirds Return to Hartney Bay” and “Chaetura.” Tyrell’s writing is at once visual and physical.

In Fiction, Shawn Campbell, who never disappoints, evoked emotion with “Rolling Rock”— wherein a mother with a death sentence and the gritty realness of complicated family relationships leave a mark.

Some stories, like “Green Man” by David Mampel, made me a bit jealous of his writing with this psychologically complex tale of eventual healing and catharsis.

J.T. Townley’s well- crafted vernacular and life of a homeless man will have readers hanging on to the end. Almost like a car wreck, you know it is not going well, but you cannot look away.

A nonfiction piece “It is a Good Thing to Smell Like Whale” by Nancy Deschu invites the reader along to the precious event of a village whale harvest. Simply told but with plenty of ties, leads, and story-ing.

Judith Lethin, author of A Wonderful-Terrible God (Cirque Press), proves her worth in a bit of flash fiction “Everything About Coffee” that not only follows the contest theme of placelessness but has a happenstance shot of goodness mixed with pain.

For a suspense-filled, no sap, kayak tale, read “The Proposal” by Marcia Wakeland — a story with danger around every turn.

The sharp nonfiction edge is gained by “Salaloquy,” Canadian Lawrence Winkler’s shocking story of a salal trade worth killing for, picked by people living in desperation.

Finally, Bliss Goldstein gives us an irreverent, fun monologue on trying to turn our behavior and manners around in “A Letter to the Woman I Almost Came to Fisticuffs with at the Food Co-Op, The One Downtown, Not the One Near the Mall.”

Run the gamut of emotions and ire with us in these well-crafted submissions that we could not be prouder to print. The strength of the submissions received this round, made us wish there were no page limits.

With these offerings, we bring you, Cirque #29. Cuddle up with a good book. ~ Sandra Kleven, Cynthia Steele, Michael Burwell.

Cirque: A Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rims

Sandra L. Kleven, Publisher and Mike Burwell, Editor

Cynthia Steele, Associate Editor

Brenda Jaeger, Administrative Assistant

Signe Nichols, Designer

Published twice yearly near the Winter and Summer Solstice Anchorage, Alaska

Our mission: to build a literary community and memorialize writers, poets and artists of the region.

Volume 15, No. 1

POETRY CONTEST

Carey Taylor Displacement / Placelessness / Homelessness 10

Contest Winners 11-13

Finalists 14-28

NONFICTION

Nancy Deschu It's a Good Thing to Smell Like Whale 30

Judith Lethin Everything About Coffee 33

Rachel McKinley Offspring 33

James P. Sweeney Poacher's Last Run 37

Marcia Wakeland The Proposal 38

Lawrence Winkler Salaloquy 42

FICTION

Jean Anderson Time Travel 46

S.W. Campbell Rolling Rock 47

Vic Cavalli Chiara Steelhead 51

Pamela Huber To Catch a King 54

David Mampel Green Man 58

Ron McFarland The Job Hunter 61

J.T. Townley For Rocky's the One 67

PLAY — A MONOLOGUE

Bliss Goldstein A Letter To The Woman I Almost Came to Fisticuffs With At The Food Co-Op, The One Downtown, Not The One Near The Mall 73

POETRY

Jeffrey Brady Behind the At 76

Judith Burtner Little brass bug 77

Johanna Douglas Home Town Hospitality 77

Dale Champlin How Neatly I Dream 78

Kersten Christianson (Two Poems) Revived by Fang & Claw 79

Another Lunar New Year 80

Bonnie Demerjian (Two Poems) Spring Tide 81

The Poem That Got Away 81

Patrick Dixon Do the Math: A Photographer's Lament 82

Suzanne Edison Imagined Conversation with My Daughter After Roe v. Wade Is Struck Down 83

Dan Elliott Dear Jeanne 84

Helena Fagan I Don't Have Time 84

Patricia Farrell (Two Poems) Courtyard Reverie 85 Santa Ana Winds 85

Barbara Flaherty The Deep — Prince William Sound 86

Charles Goodrich Lucky 87

David A. Goodrum In the Storm 88

Paul K. Haeder Dreams of Cloud Servers Exploding Forever 89

Barbara Hood Mother’s Hometown 90

Marc Janssen I Am 91

Eric Johnson Running Mount Marathon 92

Penny Johnson Don’t say anything. Just sit with me a minute 94

Terry S. Johnson Firmament 95

Dane Karnick (Two Poems) Run Off 96 Stance 96

Dianne Knox Best Compliment 97

Gary Lark (Two Poems) I Don’t Live There 97 Widow Creek 98

Eric le Fatte (Two Poems) What's Left of the Harris Place 99 Warmth 99

Daniel Liberthson Still Life with Family 100

Linera Lucas How to hear an owl 101

Michael Magee Crowed 101

David McElroy Angkor Wat 102

Catherine McGuire Ruderal 103

Katy McKinney Sea Kindly 104

Judith Mikesch-McKenzie The Seventh Path 105

Linda Myers Island Aunties 106

Heidi Naylor My Husband’s House 107

Paul Nelson Winter in America (Again 108

Dion O’Reilly (Two Poems) The Shimmered Line 109 Joy: I am 109

Barbara Parchim strange orbits 110

Zacharay Paul King Tide 111

James Pearson Idlewild Motel on SE 82nd 112

Tami Phelps Once Upon a Time 113

David J.S. Pickering Bologna is Pronounced Baloney in the Language of My People 113

Timothy Pilgrim Putting doves to sleep 114

Shauna Potocky (Two Poems) The Tongass 115 Shelter 115

Nicholas Skaldetvind Pray for Me Back East 116

Beatrice Skipton Toad 117

Mary Lou Spartz New Arrival 117

Cynthia Steele The Hieroglyphic Muralist 118

Kathleen Stancik Respite 119

Leah Stenson Apocalypse 119

Dianne Stepp Already the Flower Bed is Thick with Bees 120

Richard Stokes Duet of Thrushes 121

Jim Thielman Sacred Waters 122

Judy Thorn Pelican Skeleton 123

Pepper Trail Elderberries 124

Lucy Tyrell (Two Poems) Chaetura 124 When the Shorebirds Return to Hartney Bay 125

Susanne von Rennenkampff One Year 126

Ken Waldman 3 on the Tree, Fairbanks 127

Matthew Wappett Autumn Walk (after Roethke) 127

Joe Wilkins Nestucca 128

Wanda Wilson Ms Peach 128

Derek Witten Driving the Pass 129

Tonja Woelber Sonnet for a Dead Salmon 129

FEATURES: A TRIBUTE

Mike Burwell A Tribute to Poet Tom Sexton and Some Last Poems 131

Cynthia Steele Through the Lens of Justice and Light: Matt Witt's Writing and Photography 135

REVIEW

Bethany Reid A Review of Mary Eliza Crane’s Last Call of the Dark Cirque Press, 2024 140

FEATURE

Cynthia Steele Time Beings in Homer: A Week of Writing, Watching, and Wingbeats 141

CONTRIBUTORS…144

POETRY CONTEST: Displacement/Placelessness/Homelessness

Carey Taylor

What is poetry which does not save Nations or people?

— Czeslaw Milosz

Soon after I was asked to judge the Cirque poetry contest on “Displacement, Placelessness and Homelessness” I put on my poetry hat and asked myself if there was another word that could tie these words together. A word that honored each of them but simplified my job as the Judge by providing an underlying and unifying theme. The word that surfaced for me was “untethered,” defined as that “which is not to be fixed in place tightly or firmly.”

Sometimes untethering is forced on us, sometimes we choose it, sometimes there is violence in the untethering, sometimes moments of gratitude or grace. In any case, the poems I had the honor to read addressed all the multitudes of ways we as poets speak truth to needing connection, especially in a world as untethered today as it was when Yeats wrote: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

In the end, three poems stood out to me as top winning poems, and I hope you take the time to read them and the other poems I recommended to Cirque for publication. Choosing a poem for publication or a prize is always subjective work (even with a rubric) but upon meeting the winners via a Zoom reading, I was even more impressed after hearing them read their poems. It was obvious they are all dedicated and diligent to the craft of poetry.

In First Place I chose “Tableaux Vivants” by Eva Müller. With clean, clear language this poem looks at homelessness through the eyes of an observer going about daily life. With a keen eye for detail the poet asks us all to look at the woman reach for the man’s rough cheek / her nails sharp as the evening’s / claw of the moon. And we do look. We do see. We look so as not to forget, to find compassion, to see the scholar of all things dark and wet.

In Second Place I chose “One Among Us” by Rachel Barton. This ekphrastic poem uses art itself to take the reader on a journey into the turbulent and terrifying nature of the world and our place in it, centering all our instability and uncertainty with the person in front of me. In these unsettling times where the world itself feels untethered, I felt comfort in feet moving forward, men pulling wagons of men and children, where their pilot moves forward unknowing, trusting goodness / doing what he can. Doing what he can. This poem looks at the truth of a world displaced, yet still leaves the reader with a glimpse of hope.

In Third Place I chose “My Now Forever Home” by Nancy Fowler. This poem juxtaposes the trauma of leaving a place due to war and all its losses; (eyes and legs, clothing, bombs, smoke, home) and living in a new place with its small gains (a coat that is too big, friends to play soccer with, water, canvas tents, and the miracle of lentils with chicken). The narrator navigates a sense of placelessness that exists between observations of a new reality with memories of home — a sea breeze remembered.

Congratulations to all of you who submitted poems and thanks to Cirque for giving me the opportunity to read all your heartfelt words. Poets, I truly believe, are the truth tellers the world so desperately needs.

CONTEST WINNERS

Eve Müller

Tableaux Vivants

In front of the church, two people lie tangled like thread amidst blankets and plastic bags. I avert my eyes, but not before I see the woman reach for the man’s rough cheek her nails sharp as the evening’s claw of moon.

* A man seated beneath a horse chestnut tree draws pictures with a pencil. He leans them against the wall of his tent. Most are silhouettes of women. My sisters, he says.

But one is the Virgin Mary in robes of sooty, rubbed-out stars, a serpent crushed beneath her small, bare foot.

* I wonder what damp treasures the woman keeps in her heap of sodden cardboard boxes. A tortoiseshell hairbrush. A bottle of Thunderbird to erase the day. A child’s drawing of blue house, red tree, empty promise of yellow sun.

*

These streets a pageant of lives lived in the open — men trimming their beards, rinsing their faces and hands, people in twos and threes, hunched over fentanyl and foil, the girl with the teardrop tattoo crying real tears and the boy who calls her slut ; the grief of someone whose spotted dog has died. *

A green-eyed man with dirty shirt and grocery cart reads a library book beneath the bus shelter. Rain batters the roof. I ask him what his book is about. He opens it and points to the epigraph — The naked don’t fear the water — this man who sleeps each night wrapped in tarps, scholar of all things dark and wet.

Rachel Barton

One Among Us

—after “Night Walk” by Yu Hong (2023)

It’s too much to navigate with your eyes open—biblical like fire and brimstone—the hot lava, the earth’s upheaval.

If you look at the sky, it terrifies—spirits battling, clouds roiling and spitting hot ash, the moon fallen so low, it sits barely above the water, an ominous eye to the feeble parade of blind men.

I put my faith in the person in front of me, moving away from the volcano’s oven of heat.

Our feet scorch on the newly blackened lava, uneven and puckered with cracks of red-hot magma, our faces highlighted in its garish orange hue. The blue of sky, near indigo at this hour, beckons to us—

Come away, come away! It leads us to water but not to peace. The water, too, wants to recede from the volcano in a tide so low the crustaceans would have no cover or to rise up in a wall so high it might extinguish the fire.

Neither choice a comfort to man. We wander, our staffs or arms gingerly touch the leader-by-default in front of us.

One young man courageously pulls a wagon of men and children, the weight of ten or more souls relying upon him. He, above all,

is exalted, his chin raised, eyes closed, as if he is communing with a higher power. In the children he carries the future.

Only the monkey chained to the handlebars gives voice to their terror. What should they make of the world of man?

Their pilot moves forward unknowing, trusting in goodness, doing what he can. Doing what he can.

Nancy Fowler

My Now Forever Home

For this moment, I feel peace, exactly here in this village of canvas tents and water carried to us by tanker trucks. Soccer balls were also brought. Gifts from friends I’ll never meet but held close in my heart. And I find joy in playing with my friends. Omar lost a leg and eye, his mother too, but joins our gang. He holds my jacket as I run, a red jacket, too big but precious still, and cheers each time a ball lifts high. We watch it float, in freedom. Today there are no bombs. Instead the miracle of lentils with chicken. A good day. I sometimes wonder where my neighborhood lies on the list for reconstruction. It is forecast it will take more than three hundred years to rebuild what existed in my homeland, if concrete and iron are allowed inside by others. If no unexploded bombs are found among the rubble, as the women search for their children. If a golf course is not built where once I lived, not far from the coast. A sea breeze remembered. Perhaps never felt again. But today there were lentils with chicken.

FINALISTS

Jim Hanlen

Where Are the Migrants

We died in your rivers. We died in your deserts. —Bob Dylan

I could have known Juanita. I could have played cards with Pedro. I would have taught English to Fredo. I might have lived next to Maria. Why doesn’t the old man, Work on the farm, no more?

Maureen Kane

Two Poems

Home

Your spirit wanders untethered like a Roomba that lost its base. Blindly bumping into walls, it knows there is an edge here, or there. Each day it bumps along asking Is the door here? Is this home?

For as long as you can remember, she told you that your spirit belongs in her rooms with shag carpet, and popcorn ceilings cigarette smoke, and blaring televisions.

You bumped along her terrain and told yourself “this is me.”

Now you know that was her house, her ring-stained coffee table, her pile of magazines, next to her spilled drinks.

It is time to map the lines of your home.

Find your heartbeat and breath.

Plant your flag in this center, tether yourself to it.

Now walk slowly in widening circles. Feel your home. Clean, wide wood floors, smelling of lemons.

Run your hands along the bright walls and notice where the doors and windows are.

Doors you can leave and return to.

Windows for fresh air and billowing white curtains.

Warm kitchen with soup bubbling and bread cooling. Clawfoot tub, bathed in candlelight, ready to greet you. Perhaps a fire crackling in the room of the living.

Pot Roast

Grandma’s letters speak of gardening, pot roast, and weather. Thin paper with faded roses, perfume and mildew scented, brown on the edges.

Her shaky writing speaks of the mundane life she longed for as an immigrant. In the quivering script, I can feel into her fatigue her hopes for her children, her fear and strength.

The pot roast was her way of telling herself it’s different here.

While she may be lonely, displaced, and has seen things she cannot speak of, here we have pot roast.

There, there was no meat. No predictability. No family dinner or future to dream into.

Here, each morning she carefully tied the meat, tucked in herbs and surrounded the bundle with carrots and potatoes from Grandpa’s garden, then tended the cooking for hours.

After the meal, she and Grandpa washed dishes and swept the kitchen together in an unspoken synchronized dance in which the choreography never varied.

Tidying the places of peace they made with their lives. Here in the kitchen, sweeping the peeling linoleum floor, and drying dishes, they had each other, and their rituals of plenty and order.

Bliss Goldstein

Holy Waters

The smell of the great unwashed assaults me as I enter this bastion of books and higher thought. The smell of armpits and crotches and rancid clothes rotting on the vine. Before approaching the divine to claim my book-on-hold, I stand in line at the bathroom door, waiting my turn. Behind a woman whose suede jacket matches her shoes. Older, like me. Her fingers wrap tighter around, her cane and she tells me how once she walked in on a woman — stark naked — washing her body in the sink. “At least lock the door,” she had said to the startled woman. When it opened again, as if by some unseen force, she saw the woman washing her hair. “You feel sorry for them.” The woman leans more heavily on her cane. “But still.” We let the two words hang heavy in the air, two women who can afford the luxury of water. Who would never be accused of being squatters if they should commit the sin of stealing space in a public place. As the hand dryer growls to life behind the locked door, I wonder who might be washing themselves now, or if there are two of them, washing each other’s feet.

Cindy Buchanan

For K, Who I Never Saw Again

While shelving books donated to a local women’s shelter, I turned and found you, slight and fierce, rocking heel to toe, heel to toe in front of a bookcase.

Your hair was dyed blue and green and pink and bright pajamas hung on your thin frame. You lisped a bit through missing front teeth. With two fingers, you stroked the titles like a mother caressing the face of her child.

You could not find what you needed and pulled a scrap of paper from your pocket. Shyly, you handed me a penciled list of books. You whispered that re-reading these is how you forget to harm yourself.

I drove to a bookstore that day, bought everything on your list, and offered them, careful not to shed tears in front of you. You had no need for those. You were not there the following week. I was told only that you had left. The books I bought were gone.

Linda B. Myers

Two Poems

Placelessness

The stray, a fluff of a thing, desperate but terrified of me. “Good boy. Would you like water, sweetie? A bit of food? Good boy.” The gardener next door replies, “No gracias señora.”

Fatalities in the North Cascades

I.

Wildfire chars bark and other wild skins crisp as chicharrónes. Trunks stripped naked topple down hillsides. Music of the forest has flown. I listen for hearts, sprouts, spoors, fireweed and fiddleheads to mend. Is this metaphor for my country’s uncontrolled burn or foretelling of my own ignited anger?

II.

I’ve crossed the fog line. I can’t find up in this ghost grey ocean of sky. Distant voices whisper stories from my eulogy. As I face the river, fog lifts. I remove the peel from an orange.

III.

I recall another fallen tree in another forest. Nurse log for a decade of kids who rode her like an elephant loving her broad back and burl-knot head.

IV.

Rules of migration may bring Western tanagers back one day yellow melody brighter than a burn.

Patty Ware

Six weeks later, the life she boxed up is delivered

Sharp thorn of my move new nest all twigs and damp lichen soft cotton center not yet tucked the missing of you and then news you will fly to this place I now live, boxes still stacked, packing paper strewn across the single space where guests can sleep.

I can’t muster meals, can’t guarantee neat, it will be chaos, yet still you come.

I mark your trip on my calendar, click all day on my phone, watch the weeks unfurl.

I have no chai, you don’t drink coffee, won’t do pastries, don’t eat meat. When we go out, you say Dutch treat and I squelch my urge to mention money unspent, the savings you’ve reaped — who needs airBnB!

I blame you for this cold I can’t seem to ditch you keep me out late, insist on more wine then a stroll through the city.

Damn your stories of friends back home, the snow on the mountains, the spruce tip beer, the gatherings I will miss. You fly back

to the place I am from.

Here, the trees unhinge their leaves, the rain smells like forever.

Diane Ray

Oh Say Can You See

them, she just shy of two, still papoosed in Papi’s shirt, her trusting arm ringed around his neck, both not so lucky as Moses in the bullrushes, just mortals with none foreordained to save them in the dry reeds of the muddy Rio Grande: Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and Valeria in her little pink pants, swept to the lip of land, dead

Kathleen Tarr

The Expatriate

I counted forty white swans, floating like lotus blossoms over Krakow’s mud-colored waters.

On daily walks along the Vistula, young lovers strolled arm-in-arm. I lost myself in crowds.

I crossed cobblestones, in this district home of Jews, where they once filled synagogues, stocked market stalls, played klezmer.

I caught a double rainbow, from my third-floor window. Rose-bright hues washed over St. Joseph’s and what was left of ghetto walls.

Below the castle, on that always-busy corner, again, I found the babcia stooped low beside her white bucket selling April’s daffodils.

All summer long, young men wore baseball caps backward and danced hip-hop in the Main Market Square.

Mimes came, too. I stopped for the winged one, St. Michael. Every inch of him painted gold. Do archangels defend us from our own despair?

15 No. 1

Those solitary nights, I turned to jazz, or headed to the café on Brasky. High above the entrance a spotlight beamed lines from Milosz and Zagajewski.

I listened for collective memories and murmurings, a cosmic mazurka of past and present, for myths as fresh as mountain music from Zakopane.

Shepherds and farmers came, resistance fighters, coalminers and zealous kings. I listened for the poets of sixty-eight.

Through heavy gates of time, they all stormed— one soul reclaimed.

Two Great Horned Owls; Chloe Has No Phone

Here in the driveway of our small, red house, these five-beat, six-beat cries almost in synch.

My sister no longer sleeps with the moon in a cardboard box.

Has her own place, does not mention what she misses except, after her fall that cracked one vertebrae, she cannot dance. Deep in cedar branches behind our small, red house, the owls are quiet — no wind, no wingbeats.

Royal Kiehl

Vishnu Sleeps

Vishnu sleeps while my family is missing. My house is in flames.

The Khmer checks my glasses, the tint of my skin, the roughness of my hands. Do I read books?

Useless! Blindfolded, I am taken to the fields.

Oh Vishnu, awaken!

Submitted from the killing fields, somewhere near Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Rachel Barton

Homesick: The Artist Reflects

—after Miki Hayakawa’s “Portrait of a Young Man” (1939)

It has been a while since I’ve allowed my eyes to wander, so intent have I been on my studies, paint-to-canvas.

But just look at the thick hand that cups this man’s left cheek, his palm showing both softness and strength.

I can see that his energy is flagging a bit, but what a face, radiating beauty, his features so well-balanced.

His eyes brown like mine, his brows dark like mine. And his hair, dark and lush. Like mine.

He leans at an angle that pulls the eye up to the right corner. I slow the rise by “capturing” him in the triangle behind him.

It’s just a wish on my part to hold him in the moment. As if. In his face I see my own vague dissatisfaction—and longing.

I want to know the whole story of this man dressed in dark suit and overcoat, wearing the obligatory blue silk tie.

He has mass. He holds space. I feel the weight of his head, the support of his hand. He looks at me with a question.

Do you see me? Do you see that I am alone? I wonder if he dreams in English yet. Is he homesick for his baba’s noodle soup, or awabi and uni from Hokkaido’s shorelines? Does he cherish Hokusai’s views of Mount Fuji?

Amerika

A rusted steamer tied up to the freight pier and disgorged a cargo of unwanted, tired, poor, homeless masses from distant shores.

A cardboard box at Father’s feet and a burlap bag in his hand, contained all that remained of the old world.

Mother cradled my brother’s head against her hip and clutched me to her bosom. We peered into the new world.

A barrel-chested, sweat drenched man, wearing oil-stained bib overalls and no shirt, glared back at us.

He jammed a fist into his pocket, strode across the pier, seized my brother’s arm and turned the palm up. He emptied the contents of his fist into my brother’s hand.

His upraised palm was filled with strange and unfamiliar coins. A child clutched the amassed wealth of our world. Father bought postage stamps and wrote: We are in Amerika.

Sharon Brown

Two Poems

Dislocation

There may come a time when you drift unaware to a place unknown, distracted by a hawk riding the clouds, or a white-tailed kite fluttering against the wind— you look out to the line of brown velvet hills, every curve you could trace in a dream, and there they are, but the colors are off, the angles slightly altered. This can’t be right, you might call out, unsettled by the unfamiliar landscape, but the only sound is the whirring of wings, like dragonflies shivering in the morning chill.

Seattle Bound

When we left California, our child was just one. Promise me we will go back, you said, but our little girl was already pointing to the hemlocks and the Douglas firs, saying Tree, and imprinting on the shapes and the smells that would become the default landscape of her youth.

She is in California now, with a family of her own. But the trees are all wrong, and she misses the purple sky and the soft, wet earth. Promise me we will go back she says to her husband, tracing lines of her future over faint shapes of the past.

And here we are still, you and I, in the land I’ve come to love, where the hemlocks bend like unkept promises, and you long yet for that golden California sky.

Robin Kroger

I See You

I see you sitting across from me.

You’re already gone.

I reminisce about the memories we once shared.

Now I’m alone.

I look for recognition in the sky blue cloudy depths. All I see is what used to be.

The smile glinting in your eyes, twinkling between your lips, your arms wide, waiting for my embrace.

I see you sitting across from me. I count three.

I remember you love me though all I see is what you used to be.

Your paper thin hands folded in your lap used to hold me.

Make me feel safe.

I keep looking for you even though you’re sitting right in front of me.

Barbara Hood

Recent College Graduate

The wherewithal you don’t have to buy a beer, or even coffee, still awaits when you are ready to claim it, is only hiding on a lark while you pretend it doesn’t matter, living under tarps in the boatyard, sawdust and fumes, the old boat a dream you know will die when the first storm brings you limping back along the breakwater, done with the romance of the sea.

It was comforting for a time, the voluntary poverty, the blithe dislocation, exciting because it was new and nothing like you, suspended in a world of dock talk, weather and fish. But now you see the false siren’s call, the murky depths it drew you to, the predictable winds pressing down the mountains setting you far off course.

Now you fill your gas tank with the last of your cannery paycheck and drive out of the harbor, north toward the comforts you cling to, the people you strive for, the life you planned for yourself, before the cool salt air, before glimmering tides at sunset, before the promised future with the man who loved it all, and you – the detour safely scuttled, left behind like flotsam in the surf.

Corrine Smith

Sanctuary

Rootless on a saturated November day, my car in a shop in the city, I settle at the public library near an office phone on a low table. Courtesy Phone. A thin young man, black hood up, kneels beside it, Can I stay with you while I get back on my feet? Can I have money to eat today? You’re the only one I can call.

Earlier I had pedaled on a creek-side path, tents tucked into dark forest corners, damp tarps strung spruce to spruce. At the coast, the silty inlet, heavy moist clouds slid down mountains behind me. The library is

warm respite. In facing armchairs, a woman speaks to a pregnant teen. What doctor did you see? Shows her how to lift to protect her back with so much weight in the belly. Men alone at tables near the coffee shop, silent, passing time, like me, waiting for someone to call, to say that what is broken can be fixed.

Men idle on benches outside. Black, brown, white, middle-aged, old. A young man looks like he might cry, his arms springing into the air, gesturing to someone not there. A scrawny dog is tied to a cart pulled by a bike, part of a caravan for a traveling carnival that lost its way.

The mechanic will call when my car is fixed. I will bike to the shop, pay money, drive the long way home.

Jill Johnson

Signs of Spring 2024

Crocus and iris unfurl impossible petals, Flung up and out veined purple and gold…

The bombs keep falling On homes in Gaza, the metal Exploding out and up Smoke and flash and blood.

Warblers migrate: yellow flits in my garden, crowd the feeders Then fly north to familiar woods And the work of nesting.

Palestinians flee south, Carrying little, Searching for weeds or insects To feed their children.

Soft rain falls on welcoming fields, Tadpoles hatch in the ditches, Plants stretch toward the Drops, open grateful leaves.

No water to be found Again today. In her arms, The baby has stopped.

NONFICTION

Nancy Deschu

It

is a Good Thing to Smell Like Whale

Standing outside of the house on this cold October night, the kitchen windows are so steamy that I can barely see what’s going on inside. Blurry images of several women bustling around carrying huge pots. I have second thoughts whether I should knock on the door.

I am an outsider to this far north Arctic village. I flew here from Anchorage two days ago to look for snowy owls. You cannot drive to this remote northern village; it is not connected to any road system. The snowy owls nest and hunt here in the summer, but by now most of them have usually flown away to better hunting grounds. But on this sleety, windy day, with only a few hours of daylight, I am happy that I have found several snowy owls on the tundra at the end of a muddy road a few miles south of the village. And then abruptly dead-ends. I wonder if these owls are lingering here longer to hunt the lemmings that were so abundant this year. I scan the tundra with my binoculars. Each owl is standing atop a small hummock in the foggy, spitting sleet. A field of white sentinels in a gauzy white landscape.

Other animals are also on the move as we nudge up to winter. The nearshore seawater is getting thick with slush, the waves are tamped down, soon to succumb to a sheet of ice. Grey whales and bowheads swimming southwards, loons and eiders have flown away. A flock of small white gulls tinged with pink are flying westwards. I return to the village to walk the beach. Grey whales troll in the shallow water so close to shore that I can walk along with a group of three. I can easily see their eyes as they gently roll back and forth to capture their food. I am pretty sure they are looking at me as I look at them.

My plan to spend more time snowy owl watching comes to an end when I learn that a whaling crew is returning to the village with a bowhead. The village pulses with excitement. The VHF radio crackles with news from the crew at sea. The talk everywhere in the village — at the gas station, at the Alaska Commercial Company store, in the Mexican restaurant, at the NAPA store — is about the bowhead whale. The captain’s wife raises the crew’s flag high on top of the house for all to see.

I wander through the village looking for the house with the whaling flag. The men in the village will work late into the evening flensing the whale on the beach. I see the flag from afar and walk over to see the flag and house close up. The captain and three of his crew are in the backyard, slicing bowhead meat into smaller pieces. Stacks of baleen and blocks of cut-up muktuk rest on blue tarps. The whale flipper lies heavy on a wooden sled. The ball-joint that connects the flipper to the body is the size of my skull. Blood trickles into the yard and the small road next to the house. The watery ground shimmers like garnets. The captain looks up from his work and speaks to me. He asks me where I came from. I tell him I came from Anchorage to watch snowy owls. He invites me to join the whale feast that evening.

I shiver in the freezing drizzle as I decide if I should knock on the kitchen door at the captain’s house. Perhaps the captain had only invited me out of a passing kindness of his culture? Then I begin to worry that I recall someone mentioned that it was not appropriate to wear red clothing around the whaling camp. Or was it no red at the feast? Or at the flensing? So, I take off my red jacket shell and turn it inside out and put it back on. Now the thermal silvery layer is on the outside and that seems to me even more startling than red. I don’t feel confident about entering the festivity but I want to experience this celebration. So, I gently tap on the window and then crack open the door.

When I appear in the doorway, the room falls hush. Then I remember my hat is red, so I pull it off. I glance around quickly but I do not see the captain. I want to turn and leave. But I take a moment and gather my composure. Then I quietly say that I am visiting from Anchorage and that the captain invited me to the feast. The women in the kitchen erupt into joyful greetings and wide smiles. They pull me into the kitchen, as if they knew me and were expecting me.

The kitchen is warm and humid from the large pots boiling on the stove. The women are speaking Inupiaq among

themselves, and switching to English to speak to me. They talk and laugh as they carry tubs of cooked whale meat across the kitchen and line the tubs up on a table. Each tub holds a different body part of the whale — this tub the blubbery muktuk, this one the tongue, the lip, the outer heart muscle, the inner heart muscle, the kidney.

A woman smiles and pulls me into the serving line. Now, three women huddle around me. One woman holds open a large zip-lock plastic bag which they intend to fill for me as we move down the line of tubs. At each tub I insist, with a smile, that a small piece is enough, just so I can try it. But the women move down the line, laughing and ignoring my request for less. At one tub, they pick up a piece of internal organ, dark red, tough and marbled. In Inupiaq they talk among themselves. Then, one of the women turns to me and says — “this one very tough, maybe not for you?” I nod in agreement. They toss it back in the tub. I am thankful because my bag is getting full of whale meat that may be challenging for me to savor, chew, and swallow.

I tell them once again that I don’t want much whale meat because I am flying home to Anchorage the next day. One woman looks surprised at my comment and then smiles broadly — “Oh! — even better! You share it with

Anchorage!” She says this with such sincerity and joy, as if my big city of over 400,000 was just another small village down the coast who should share in their wealth of food. The generosity of the offer to share this food with the people of my city startles and amuses me. But then I see the women are serious.

For a moment I say nothing, I have no words. For the first time in my twenty years in Alaska, I glimpse the inexplicable, the deeper meaning of a subsistence harvest, the joy of sharing a whale. I look down at the kitchen floor, rearranging my world view, feeling overwhelmed by the warmth of their generosity. Then I lift my head to see their expectant faces, and I smile, a smile that spreads through my body as I say, yes. Yes, I will take this home to share with Anchorage.

Now my bag is full and the three women pat me on the back to gesture me to find a place along the kitchen counter to eat some of the meat from my bag. The kitchen’s heat and humidity press down on me. I am overdressed and begin to quickly unzip layers of clothing. Around me swirls the smell of boiled whale meat, the sight of tubs of whale organs, the pulse of people gathered closely in the kitchen and the adjoining living room, talking and feasting together. My face is so warm that I’m sure my characteristic bright red circles have flared on my cheeks that make me look clownish. I feel conspicuous on so many levels.

I set my bag of whale meat on the counter and reach in for a warm piece of muktuk. Creamy soft fat with thick black skin on top. I bite into the fatty part. And suddenly — all the sea life strained through this whale’s baleen over many years, all those tons of small creatures that built this bowhead, all things in the sea concentrated, all of this wild ocean swims into my body. And I savor it.

Next, I nibble at a piece of tongue and then a piece of kidney, much tougher than the muktuk and an even stronger flavor. The women in the kitchen are busy serving and washing the big pots and tubs. They look over occasionally, smiling and nodding. I chew and swallow bits of the bowhead organs but I sneak most of the pieces that I gnawed back into my bag. For me, the flavor is so strong, so unusual, and my jaw is unaccustomed to such hard work. I am grateful they decided not to give me that really tough part of the whale.

A wary teenager who had been eyeing me comes over

and tells me there are cups of dessert on the counter — very good, she says, rice and fruit cocktail mixed with whale oil. I smile and nod as I pick up a paper cup full of the dessert. The dessert actually looks pleasantly familiar. I am determined to meet the teenager’s challenge and eat this dessert.

I dig in. My first taste is an overpowering jolt of whale oil. The flavor of the oil is so strong that I can only sense the shape of rice grains and cubes of pears and peaches. The teenager watches me. I smile and tell her, “I like it” which is a lie. She stares at me but I see a slight break in her stern expression, maybe signaling that it is ok that I am here at the feast, this white woman with bright red cheeks from the big city. Or maybe her expression signals that she knows I lied and that she has won this unspoken challenge.

When I get ready to leave, I gather my gifts of food and I lean into the circle of women at the kitchen sink to say thank-you and goodbye. The captain’s wife shakes her hands free of suds and turns to hug me and thank me for coming. Others in the busy kitchen call good-bye. I never did see the captain at the feast. I gathered he was still with his crew cutting whale meat and would arrive later.

I arrive at my lodging, a rundown two-story wooden hotel right on the edge of the ocean. I crack open the window for a few minutes, just enough to hear the waves. Then I place the whale meat in the small refrigerator, take a very hot shower, tumble into bed, and fall into a deep sleep. I dream of bloodied whale chunks transforming themselves back into whole beings.

The next morning when I awake, the first thing I am aware of is my hand near my face. It smells like whale. Lying there I recall my dream, and I believe the dream was real. In some way, the whale became whole again in the middle of the night. It felt real.

And then I am back in the arctic night. Freezing drizzle and wind. The whaling flag whips overhead. My bag of whale meat is warm in my gloved hand. I lick my lips. The creaminess of the muktuk oil remains. Even hours later, I lick my lips and the oil hugs tight. My clothes and hair are permeated with the humidity from the boiling pots of whale. Now I walk back to my lodging, smelling like a piece of whale meat.

Through the darkness I hear the waves of the Beaufort Sea. I walk along thinking about my red hat. I am still wondering if red is really taboo, and if so, is it taboo around a dead whale that one is celebrating at a feast? I am lost in thought, chastising myself for not thinking of my red hat before entering the captain’s feast. And wondering if it would really matter since I am an outsider.

I climb out of bed and pad over to the small refrigerator. I pull out the plastic bag and look at each type of meat. I nibble the fatty edge of the muktuk — its flavor is nearly as strong now as it was when it was freshly boiled. I feel glad in a strange muted way, to have a bit of the whale that brought food to this village. As I pack my belongings, I realize that everything — my jacket, my daypack, my layers of clothing, my camera and even my binoculars — everything smells like whale.

Before flying home to Anchorage, I stop again at the Inupiaq Heritage Center to look at their educational display on bowhead whaling. An Inupiaq woman who works at the gift shop opens the glass-doors of a cabinet to show me small ivory carvings. We lean in, admiring the detailed carvings of whales and polar bears.

She asks if I knew that a polar bear was seen wandering through the parking lot of the NAPA auto-parts store last night. No, I say, I didn’t know that. This is the very road I had walked along alone last night after the feast. She tells me that the people who were playing bingo at the community building near the NAPA store were warned before they walked home. But here I was, living on the outer skin of village life for a few days, walking back to my lodging, smelling like whale, in deep thought about my red hat, and unaware of the announcement that a polar bear was lumbering nearby.

As the woman and I pass the small ivory animals back and forth across the glass countertop, she looks up quizzically and says firmly, “You smell like whale”. I smile yes, I was at the whale feast last night at the captain’s home. I tell her I don’t mind smelling like whale. She smiles broadly. Then looking into my eyes, she says “It is a very good thing to smell like whale, yes, maybe once-in-a lifetime.” I nod, agreeing. It is unspoken between us that it is a gift to smell like a bowhead whale.

Judith Lethin

Everything About Coffee

“May I have some coffee?” I asked from the door of the staff room at the Northwest Medical Center in Seattle that Sunday morning. My husband had been hospitalized with blood clots in both lungs and left leg, and I’d been running on caffeine for two days. A small man with black curly hair turned towards me and smiled brightly.

“What kind would you like?” He asked in a lilting East African accent, indicating the espresso machine on the counter.

“What do you have?”

“Let me fix you my favorite, Verona. It is so mild, so mild, it tastes like it has butter in it.” He pushed the buttons.

“You know, I have an obsession with coffee — I just love everything about coffee. I’m from Ethiopia, and we love coffee in Ethiopia. I even buy the green beans and roast them in a heavy black cast iron skillet myself. When I do that, my whole street smells like coffee. All my neighbors say how wonderful it smells. I tell them, when you smell the coffee, just come over for a cup — I always say that, but they don’t come.”

“Ethiopia? You are a long way from home. What brought you to Seattle?”

“Well, let me ask you a question. What do you think made me leave Ethiopia and come to America?”

“Safety…and a job…and a place to raise your children?”

“Mainly safety. Everyone in my generation is dead.”

Looking away his lilt, like a river disappearing into the Rift Valley, barely audible, “I was a coward…I ran away.”

“I’m glad you are here taking care of the people in this hospital…I’m glad you are here sharing your favorite coffee with me.”

Looking up, he asserted, “All my friends are in the

ground. I was a coward. I ran away.”

“It takes a lot of courage to leave a place where you were born and start a new life.”

“I was a coward.” He said firmly, “But, what room are you in? I will come and visit you.”

But he did not come.

Rachel McKinley

Offspring

The snow is melting now, tiny trickles gathering into small rivers racing down the hill from my house. The gutters sing in harmony with the birds as I make my daily walk to and from campus. The beaming sun is a welcome sight, but I already miss the snow and the pain of that first breath of air at 40 below in Fairbanks.

In February, we watched boreal chickadees pecking at peanut butter smeared over empty toilet paper rolls dangling off our back porch. Shy at first, skittering off at the slightest movement from the window, they eventually get used to the shadows of my children’s shifting bodies eagerly scrambling for a better view. These birds don’t have the black cap I am used to from chickadees in Michigan, but their throat patches remind me of tiny bow ties, as if they are preparing for a fancy date, a night at the orchestra.

I told my son that, as a young girl, I used to sit, still and silent, in a tree behind my house, a handful of stolen birdseed in my palm. The chickadees were always the first to trust me, the pricks of their dainty feet so foreign on my bare skin. I could see the wheels spinning in my son’s head, calculating his own ability to tame a bird. He tried to stand as still as a statue on our back porch that day, at

30 below, with a handful of seeds in his (gloved) hand, but every time a bird came close or landed on the railing, he would turn just slightly to try and catch my eyes through the window, and they would fly off. After 20 minutes, he was too cold to continue, the feeling gone in his fingers. No birds touched him, but you would never have been able to tell by the delirious grin stamped on his face.

Now that the sun has decided to return, slowly, peeking up over the horizon earlier every morning and warming up the earth just enough to release the scent of dirt and worms and the slight rot of decaying plants, there are new birds. The other night, my husband told me about a group of birds the kids didn’t recognize in the chokecherry tree outside. The birds were tan overall with yellow patches across the end of their tails, dashes of red and yellow near the tips of their wings, and a notable crest. The blush behind their black bandit masks gave them away: waxwings. They have been one of my favorite birds since I was a child, but I didn’t know they live this far north. The name of this specific species, bombycilla garrulus or Bohemian waxwings, makes me feel at home. Our waxwings would, of course, be evocative of an unconventional and artistic life.

***

When I was a young girl, a pair of cedar waxwings nested in the pine tree outside our home. I checked their nest religiously, once making the mistake of gently stroking their eggs, bone-colored and peppered with dark spots. When I confessed to my father, he said the oils from my grubby little fingers on the eggs left a scent that might make the parents abandon their little family. The clutch hatched, but the parents never returned. I know now that birds have a terrible sense of smell, that birds are very dedicated to their offspring, that my gentle strokes had no impact on the death of three children. But I can’t forget the translucence of their skin, the watery bulge of their panicked eyes, the pathetic and garbled cries. And the silence.

***

When my husband and I were renovating our second house a few years ago, this one in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we knew early on that a squirrel had taken up residence in the corner of the storage shed out back. Despite our best efforts at barring access, at patching the holes and eaves with plywood and 2x4 boards, it kept chewing its way in. We didn’t know it was a red squirrel until my husband and brother-in-law, tearing old soffits

and fascia boards off the shed in preparation for redoing the roof, watched all eight of her tiny babies fall ten feet to the ground, the leaves that had been protecting them scattering in the wind. I wasn’t there; I was busy watching my own children inside the house. Paul told me he didn’t realize they were babies until he heard them mewing, saw their soft kitten-like bodies squirming on the ground. One was still — killed either from the fall or being stepped on. My husband said the kind thing would have been to use a shovel and end it quickly. But the sound of their cries, the squeals of helpless babies torn from their mother, was too much. I gave him a shoebox and some shredded paper, and he gathered the kits into their new nest and placed them on the ground between a few pine trees near the property. Surely the mother would find them. In the morning, the container was gone, torn to pieces, and the ground had been ravaged. The mother was still at the shed scrambling about the roof, peeking into holes, chittering at every suspected hideout. I watched her through the window, felt her desperation.

Last week, Paul and I took all four kids to a local mushing event. After a few hours of puppies, dogsled rides, and a slew of booths, and people handing out stickers, suckers, and prizes, we were all whipped. Paul gathered our growing piles of souvenirs including bags with broken handles (deemed essential by my son), fireman hats, police stickers, frisbees, and a copy of Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? I started bundling up the twin girls: hats, coats, mittens. One pulled off her boots and socks while I worked with the other; if we weren’t in public, I would have shouted at her. I turned to give Judah his coat, ready to lash out in frustration that he hadn’t put it on already. But he wasn’t there.

It had only been a few seconds. He wasn’t where I had left him. Or with the puppies. Or at a neighboring booth. Scanning the surrounding areas, I mentally calculated how many minutes needed to pass before I notified the police that my son was missing. How much should I panic? Then, I spotted him from across the room, staring in wonder as a lanky teen sank shot after shot at the basketball booth.

***

Every spring, a mallard duck nests on the pond behind my parents’ house in Michigan. Her chosen location, the tiny island no more than two feet across, is relatively safe from predators, and the man-made pond doesn’t have any large fish or turtles that would see her ducklings as a snack. One year, the mother disappeared after the ducklings were newly hatched, likely the casualty of the pair of eagles that also decided to make their nest on the property. Knowing the babies would all die without help, my mom decided to try and catch them and take them to the local wildlife rehabilitation center. Armed with a canoe, a pair of fishing nets, and the best of intentions, she headed to the pond with my sister. I don’t know how long they chased the ducklings that kept darting in and out of the weeds, on and off the water. Maybe minutes, maybe longer. The ducklings’ feathers weren’t waterproof yet, so they sank lower and lower as they became waterlogged. My mother and sister watched the ducklings drown, disappearing one by one below the dark surface, unable to save them. Eventually they gave up and left the few remaining to whatever kind of fate awaits such vulnerability. My sister called me later that day to confess. “We had to try,” she cried softly over the phone. “They would have died anyways.”

When we moved to Fairbanks in the middle of October last year, we arrived late in the afternoon and couldn’t get our Toyo stove, the primary source of heat for our cabin, to work. After Paul made several attempts to get the stove working, we gave up, booked an expensive, last-minute hotel, and decided to think about it in the morning.

My children love hotels. The crisp plush surroundings likely feel foreign to them, otherworldly, never mind the adventure of being away from home or the free breakfast loaded with sugar. Spending the night at a hotel is a close second to Christmas in our household. As soon as the door flashes a green light and we enter the room, they are off, sprawled on the beds, racing around the ottoman, making faces in the mirrors, playing hide and seek in the closets.

We usually try to check in early to give them time to wind down and enjoy the luxury before bed, but that night it wasn’t possible. Unloading the car, setting up cribs, and even changing into pajamas was pure chaos. Normally I never let the kids jump on the couch, especially in a hotel, but that night I was tired and distracted.

Then Paul was screaming my name in panic, and I turned to see Clara, our 2-year-old daughter who had just been brushing her teeth on the couch, on her back in a crib choking violently on her toothbrush, the tail end barely stuck out of her mouth. I panicked as everyone stared at me as if I knew what to do. Did it pierce her soft palate? Did a part of the toothbrush break? Could I pull it out? Should I? There was no time for these questions. She couldn’t breathe, so I had no choice. I grabbed the handle and pulled.

***

The summer I turned nine, my pet rabbit, Irene, gave birth to two kits, kits that I planned to sell in the fall to other local homeschool kids. They were only a few days old when cousins from downstate came to visit. Caleb, my younger brother, and Spencer, our cousin, were around four and five at the time and should have known better than to mess with babies of any kind. But they were curious.

I found the boys huddled over the galvanized water tank, focused intently on something in the water. They had put the kits in the water to swim and were taking turns pushing them underwater to see if they could hold their breath. Devastated, I snatched up the soaked babies and dashed inside to tell my mother. She sat with me in the bathroom, a kit in each of our laps, as we gently dried them off with a hairdryer. I worried they would still die, somehow, from water in the lungs, from shock, from exposure. She worried, too, and told me to pray. I did, but not in the way she meant. I asked God to punish them. ***

When my firstborn, Silas, was around eight months old, he sliced his finger open turning the pages of a book, the first papercut of many to come. I put a tiny kid-sized bandage over the finger, trying to prevent bloodstains from cropping up around our apartment. He ignored the cut and went on with his day as cheerfully as usual, babbling and bouncing in his saucer while I cooked dinner. I hurried to the bathroom while the pasta simmered on the stove and came back to a still-happy, red-faced baby and a puddle of vomit on the floor. Then I saw the tiny

Band-Aid, now soaked, sitting in the pooled vomit; he had sucked it off and choked on it while I was gone, something I had never considered.

It was not Silas’ only choking incident. The day my mother completed infant CPR training, she cut a raw apple into what she perceived as small pieces and offered them to him on a plate. I was there, watching, but they were in his mouth before I could grab them or voice my concern. He started gagging immediately and I panicked, trying to swipe the piece out of his mouth before it became stuck, inadvertently causing the piece to become lodged farther back. We crossed it so fast, that line between life and death, breathing and choking. I watched, frozen, as my mother picked him up, flipped him over, and began making sharp blows on his back. I don’t know how much time passed or what colors shaded my son’s face as he fought to breathe. I was a stone, prepared for the worst. Eventually the apple piece dropped to the floor, obviously too large for such a small child. I held my son in my arms and met my mother’s eyes across the room as she leaned against the island, both of us sensing the unspoken question. What if …?

My mother has an “everybody lived” approach to parenting. If I don’t want my kids to play unsupervised or to take unnecessary risks, she is always quick to chime in.

“Let them live a little. We let you kids do all sort of things and nobody died.”

Sure, there were broken legs, numerous rounds of stitches, scratched corneas and more. But to her, those

injuries were fine, a normal part of growing up. Everyone lived.

She thinks the audio-video monitors in my children’s bedrooms are overkill, a sure signal of helicopter parenting and an unhealthy obsession with safety. When I tell her that I only realized that my daughter’s leg was stuck between the slats of her crib because of this monitor, she shrugs indifferently. “I don’t know how we managed when you were little,” she tells me. I don’t know either.

I know that, when she was a teen, my mother-inlaw babysat a little boy and was told to leave him during nap time, that he would eventually stop crying and settle down. He didn’t stop and became inconsolable, filling the house with wrenching sobs. When she checked on him, against instructions, she found him dangling over the edge of the crib at an odd angle, his leg wedged in a crack. The leg was broken.

When I was nine, one of my friends fell trying to make a flying leap from a slide to the ground on a rickety wooden playground and impaled herself on a loose piece of the picket fence. Another friend tripped running up her front porch steps to get an ice cream cone and smashed out most of her front teeth on the cement. One of my sixth-grade students tripped during a game of tag, fell just right, and ended up with a stick pierced straight through his calf.

My daughter wrapped a loose string from her blanket so tightly around the end of her pointer finger that the circulation was cut off, turning the tip a deep shade of purple. I didn’t know this was happening at the time. She had been sitting up on and off in her bed whining, just a toddler at the time, and I had been scolding her to lie down and go to sleep, oblivious to her pain. By the time I realized what had happened, her finger was so swollen that I had to use tiny sewing scissors to make a small cut in her skin to remove it.

The “what ifs” of these types of moments take up a large part of my day. What if I don’t cut hotdogs or grapes small enough? What if I didn’t put the medicine high enough on the shelf? What if the car seat is the wrong size? What if they dart into the road? What if they run too far ahead on a trail and encounter a moose? The sheer number of ways a child can die or be seriously injured is paralyzing. Death is everywhere. In the squirrel’s crumpled body by the crosswalk, its head still intact, the beady eyes daring you to look closer. In the two halves of the vole next to my porch, a victim of the commercial mower and poor timing.

I have to fight the urge to hide my children from the world, to keep them firmly under my wing. They don’t know how much they should fear or how much can hurt them. But I wonder if, in some small way, my mother is right. That part of living is taking risks. They don’t see the death I do in the world, and maybe that’s a good thing. They fall down, scrape a knee, get stitches, or break a leg, and keep on going. Despite all the threats to their lives, to all our lives, that’s all we can do. Instead of fearing death, we have to embrace life.

***

Summer is ending, and the sunset has finally returned, sand-dune clouds over a watercolor of pinks, purples, and blues that ripple like waves on the shore. The change in seasons fills me with a sense of longing. Goosebumps on my skin and the sinking sensation of cold seeping into my bones make this place feel like home again. The crabapple tree in the front yard is full of tiny blushing jewels, but the birds are absent, have yet to feel the hunger pangs that winter will bring. My children are a year older, and they cry when we encounter small dead creatures on walks in the woods, but they always ask to return. They find joy in birds and beetles, in searching out the window for signs of life on the horizon.

James P. Sweeney

Poacher’s

Last Run

The small blue and white helicopter hovers above the valley floor creating a tornado of snow. Each time it tries to land, it is engulfed in white, so that the pilot has to pull back to see.

The helicopter flies off, circles once and comes back for another try. No cigar this time, either. The bird takes off on another loop and this time slows down as it flies over. Garble from a bullhorn gives Mark Norquist and Matt Howard the message. It’s too dark and there is too much snow flying around for the helicopter to land. Dave "The Poacher" Pettry will spend the night of March 14 next to Tincan Creek.

Matt straightens Poacher's stiffening arm next to his body while Mark retrieves Poacher’s skis and gear from next to the landing zone they packed out for the helicopter. He

stands his skis next to where Poacher lays. His poles lie next to him. Mark looks around, he doesn’t want to leave Poacher here. They ski twice a week together. But Matt is hungry, thirsty and wants to let his wife know he’s okay and is already breaking trail on the long traverse towards the Seward Highway. A little less than a quarter of a moon is pasted to the sky above Turnagain Pass and stars start poking through the cobalt blue.

There is no way for Mark and Matt to spend the night with Poacher. They’d just freeze. It’s been four hours since Poach died. Mark is lucky that they hooked up with Matt today, otherwise Mark would be alone right now.

Matt is 18 years younger than the 71-year-old Poacher and fifteen years younger than Mark. They thought it would be smart to ski with Matt because then they’d have a young buck to break trail.

Matt’s value increased the moment Poacher died. He’s been here before. When Steve Garvey died rock climbing in Portage Valley, he had to leave Steve's body to notify the authorities. Matt knows this game. His patience and caring nature helped Mark make decisions.

The contradictions are many for Matt. It had been a beautiful day. He got to ski with a legend of backcountry skiing. He was with Poach on his last run. Poacher’s last words were spoken to Matt.

Garvey’s death was violent but Poacher's last run and passing was the opposite, and Matt was honored to be there.

After the trio's first run, they climb back up for another. On top of Tincan peak, they hook up with Dave Brailey and Ryan Taylor. There is no wind. Bluebird would be the best word to describe the day. They have a safety meeting while peering down at the fresh powder below. It’s four o’clock. The snow is sparkly. Their first run had been excellent. Poach keeps up a dialogue of history, humor and ski bumness while on top. Brailey and Taylor disappear down the west side and Matt leads Poacher and Norquist down the south side.

Poacher has an unmistakable style. He skis telemark and always has. He tap dances his way down the mountain with Fred Astaire grace. The mountains smile and Matt keeps his camera trained on him.

Poacher skis the thousand foot run non-stop. Watching him ski, you wouldn’t have a clue about the passing out and fainting spells. He says he went to the doctor about his conditions and the doctor gave him medicine, but he quit taking that and says that proper hydration was the key to controlling these occasional issues.

Poacher wears a grey bandana with black and white designs over his head. He has a brown jacket and light colored pants. Poacher has a hundred days of backcountry skiing so far this winter. It seems impossible that anyone could ski this many days or even half that many. He's been getting this many ski days in for thirty years.

Matt watches Poacher ski impeccably towards him. He faces downhill always, his poles and boots go slightly up and down but his body is silent. He’s smiling. He hits the flats and plops down. I’m passing out, he says. Matt takes off his skis then Poacher’s. He lays Poacher down and cradles his head in his lap. His breathing is erratic and after five or six breaths that keep getting weaker and farther apart, he quits breathing. Matt tries CPR but it’s hopeless because he’s up to his waist in deep snow. When he tries chest compressions, Poacher just sinks in the snow.

Matt looks uphill for Mark. It's been five minutes. Mark has a broken heel piece on his binding and is being careful. Finally, he appears on the slope above. It feels like forever, and then he’s next to Matt. Mark thinks Poacher has passed out and will be up and better soon. It has happened before.

Matt says, "he’s not breathing."

They try CPR together, but it’s useless. Poacher has no pulse and is not breathing. They accept that Dave Pettry, the Poacher, has passed.

Time: 4:20 p.m.

Diamonds in the snow swirled around Matt's skis and boots as he breaks trail on the long traverse back to the west side of Tincan Mountain. He‘s on a mission to get safely back to the road and his truck. He needs to call his wife and let her know he’s okay. The quarter moon lights the way. Mark breaks trail for a while. Just a little further they take off their skins and it’s downhill to the flats before the highway.

They reach the road at 10 p.m. A truck with its headlights on waits in the pullout. It’s Jordan Rymer, a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service. Jordan interviews them for a half an hour. Matt and Mark get home to Anchorage at 11:30 p.m.

Dave Pettry, the Poacher, earned his moniker after sneaking in on a ski run during filming of a ski movie by Greg Stump called “License to Thrill.”

The Proposal

There had been so many times he could have asked me to marry him on that idyllic kayak trip on Kachemak Bay. With a week off from work, we planned to take his double Klepper kayak across to Halibut Cove and then travel in and out of the pristine bays between there and Seldovia. The names themselves were intriguing: China Poot, Peterson Bay, Tutka Bay, Sadie Cove, Jakilof Bay. We had dropped off my parents at the airport that

morning; their ten-day Alaska visit had also been the time I anticipated that Steve would ask my father for my hand in marriage, especially at the dinner the night before they left. So had my father. But there had been no taking my dad aside, no mention of marriage. I had begun to wonder if I was reading our relationship wrong. Right from the start we had both made it clear we were looking for a marriage partner, discussed all the values and priorities we held and were ready to commit after months of testing the relationship in the Alaska wilds. So what was he waiting for? Maybe this trip?

We got up early to drive the five hours to Homer, but as we stopped at the top of the hill just before town to catch the stunning view of glaciers and mountains, whitecapped waves swept the bay, crashing onto the famous Homer spit. Winds were too high for a crossing in our small vessel. Waiting at the harbor, we set up the Klepper, snapping in all the parts, inflating the air sponsons, spreading out our provisions and re-checking gear. By early evening, the bay had calmed.

The Klepper has the reputation of a vessel that can cross the Atlantic, so surely it could make it across Kachemak Bay. But I didn’t grow up around oceans, so I was both excited and leery as we stuffed the kayak full of gear and launched from the marina in Homer harbor, gulls screaming overhead. I was in a tiny boat going into big water, water that hovered around 34 degrees. Not a lot of forgiveness there. In my anxiousness, I paddled too fast at first, just wanting to get across the bay that night while the water was calm. Steve and I clanked paddles, not used to each other’s rhythms, further rankling my nerves.

Yet I was soon soothed by the delicious feeling of skimming the water, watching the bow break through the surface tension, gliding forward. As we left the protection of the harbor, only gentle swells met our boat, lifting and dropping us as we traveled that sheen of turquoise blue. Cormorants plunged after fish around us, colorful puffins paddled away nervously as we approached, and friendly otters swam beside us on their backs, whiskered, sleek and curious. Despite my old fears of ocean, I was at the same time feeling very close to it, not just physically, but as if experiencing a new rhythm. Our paddling smoothed out as well, and we grew quiet, just listening to the sounds of this watery world.

As we paddled out, Steve pointed up the bay about four miles to where his father, Bill, had homesteaded on McNeill Canyon in 1946. Escaping to the wilderness after serving in the 101st Airborne during WWII in Europe, this country had healed him. Bill had found home again. He

often told us stories of how he built a cabin there and “proved up “on the land as required in the Homestead Act. Making a living fishing, transporting goods and taking photos had earned him enough money in the prior two years to write to his girlfriend, Marilyn, in Kansas and ask her to marry him in 1948. That would mean joining him in the Last Frontier and leaving her life as a teacher. The marriage proposal was unusual, more practical than romantic. It would be prophetic of my own.

Bill wrote Marilyn and said, “If I have a good fishing season, I’ll come to Kansas for the wedding. If it’s mediocre, I’ll meet you in Seattle. If it’s a bust, we’ll be married up here.” Even though they had only met a few times through his sister, she accepted, matching his dream of adventure. They were married in Seattle, an obvious reflection on the productivity of the fishing season. Their honeymoon was aboard the Aleutian, one in a fleet of the Alaska Steamship Company, traveling from Seattle up the coast of Southeast Alaska to Seward. Bill’s homestead cabin was too far from available work now, so they settled into the bustling town of Seldovia. They often joked that their primary entertainment was to lie in bed and watch people come out of the local bar through the scope on Bill’s 30.06. Three children arrived in quick succession in the following four years, with Steve the youngest.

Though he, of course, remembers nothing, there is an oft-told story of Marilyn losing grip of his snowsuit as they were climbing down the ladder to the boat they were boarding, and he being caught in the nick of time before hitting the ocean. And now, twenty-six years later, here we were back on these same waters where he first knew home.

We were paddling easily and efficiently now, seeming to be pushed along. When I felt the first brush of something

alive under my leg through the canvas skin of the kayak, I tensed. Then the head of a seal popped up beside me, and I was delighted. Soon others joined in, popping up to surprise us and maybe play. What a world we had entered.

The closest beach was near Peterson Cove and by 9:30 on that yet light August night, the kayak bumped up against dry land again, and I breathed out, happy we had made the crossing and also that my relationship with ocean was changing. We made camp near a place where we found fresh, running water to drink. As we climbed in our tent, silver salmon were jumping in the little cove and a big seal was swimming by, finding his own dinner. A spreading pink sunset gave benediction to this remarkable day. We were still a little happy drunk and kissed. It seemed like a romantic place, a perfect time. But he only went about the setting up of camp.

“We’re tired tonight,” I thought. “Maybe tomorrow on the beach he will ask me.”

We paddled serenely up the bay into Halibut Cove by late morning, this place where Bill and Marilyn had close pioneering friends in Clem and Diana Tillion. The Tillions had homesteaded Ishmael Island at the same time Bill had arrived and homesteaded across the bay. Steve had spent many times on the beaches here around a fire, eating giant king crab from boiling pots of water as he played with the Tillion kids.

We were in protected waters now, and we slid by huge beds of kelp, rocks encrusted with barnacles, and longlegged shorebirds. The spreading red house on the hill was the Tillion home, Clem now president of the Alaska Senate. The pet seal of Tillion’s youngest daughter, Marion, was hauled up on their extended dock sunning itself as we glided by.

We made our way deeper into the Cove where once there was a thriving herring fishery. As we neared the end of the Cove, we paddled into what is called the slough, to watch salmon returning to the hatchery at the far end. It was full of water when we entered, but this is an area of twenty-four-foot tides at times, and we knew we would need to scurry back before the low tide when rocks would block our exit.

It was four in the afternoon when we returned to the mouth of Halibut Cove, not knowing yet that late afternoon is when the breeze picks up. We had barely turned to the southwest when we were caught up in waves that were breaking over the bow, blinding me with saltwater in my face. Cold saltwater. I found it hard to breathe, but Steve yelled, “Paddle hard. We’ve got to keep

hitting them straight on or they will tip us.” But with the strong wind pushing back at us and the water engulfing us at times, I yelled, “We’ve got to turn around.” Steve didn’t reply. I could tell he wanted to push on. Another wave hit me. Finally, he said, “If you want to do that, we have to turn completely before the next wave or we will capsize.” I nodded.

“One, two, three — NOW!” he yelled. I think every ounce of adrenaline in my body was used to turn that boat. The waves carried us back to a rocky shore several hundred yards down the bay. When we landed, Steve popped the skirt off the top of the kayak, jumped out and pulled the boat onto sand. “Wow, that was great!” he said. And then, just like that he said, “I’m going to run up to that ridge and see what it looks like on the other side,” and took off.

I, on the other hand, could barely get out of the boat for shaking. As I extricated myself from the small space packed with our gear, I stood up and, for the first time in my life, understood what it meant to be so scared that your knees knocked. I had to collapse back on the sand, shivering from the assault of cold water while Steve ran up the hill and didn’t look back. In hindsight, it was probably good he didn’t ask me to marry him then.

We regrouped when he returned, finding a little campsite in a cave and started a roaring beach fire to dry our clothes. Steve set out a shrimp pot, but when we checked later, a big starfish had eaten our catch. After a hearty meal, a glass of wine and a hot sponge bath, I had forgiven him, although he didn’t see that he had done anything insensitive and slept as if still rocked by waves.

The morning dawned clear and bright as we watched gulls diving for fish and small boats of fishermen angling out in the ocean. And as if the ocean had taken on a different personality from the day before, the water was like a glassy lake. We paddled on to China Poot Bay where the rocks ahead came alive as a herd of seals noticed us, and in union, splashed into the water with a flurry, grunting and groaning, then bobbing up and down beside and around us, their heads coming up like periscopes. I sat so still, in wonder of this sleek shiny community of life now including me.

We paddled steadily up Eldred Passage now toward Sadie Cove, the seas still calm. Over the next four to five hours, we barely talked. The dip and pull of our paddles was our physical mantra. This was enough. We were in unison now as we stroked, each thrust of the paddles splitting the surface of the green ocean. The waves lapped on the nearby cliffs and birds dove, flew, dabbled and

paddled all around us. Porpoises occasionally burst up from the depths and skirted our boat. My muscles, that were so sore from hard paddling the day before, relaxed and warmed. The pain eased, and I was back in wild time as we turned in Sadie Cove before the afternoon breeze would come up again. (We learn quickly.) We pulled the kayak far up on the shore and into the woods as the tides were high that night. We set a shrimp pot, but the shore was littered with starfish, and we didn’t have high hopes. But the starfish were enough — colors of blue, green, red and orange, some with too many legs to count. Settled around a huge fire that night, stomachs full and Steve playing his harmonica, I thought, “I’d say yes tonight.” But the only conversation was about our plans for the next day and securing the kayak.

Rain pounded the tent all night and into the morning. After 13 hours of snuggling in our sleeping bags we emerged and gave up hope of the weather improving. We launched around noon and saw a crab boat pulling pots in the bay. We ventured closer to watch, not wanting to interrupt their work, but one of the fishermen called out, “Hey you want a king crab?” He didn’t need to ask twice. We paddled alongside the boat, and he deftly threw the huge mollusk on the boat skirt between Steve and I. It immediately began crawling up my neck and head as Steve grabbed it from behind. As we shouted our thanks, he threw a Tanner crab at us as well. We were laughing hysterically as we tried to paddle and keep the crab onboard. I don’t remember how we corralled them — maybe in a stuff sack — but we headed onto Tutka Bay, a gorgeous green bay that extended back maybe ten to twelve miles. Near the mouth of the bay, we found a deserted camp where someone had erected a Vis queen shelter, three times the size of our tent — a great place to get out of the drizzle and unpack. I read a book as Steve went fishing, bringing back no fish but enough wood to start another blazing fire. We had brought a big tin pot with us, filled it with saltwater and once boiling, plunged the crab in for a few minutes to cook. When we pulled them from the pot, cracked the huge legs and dipped them in melted butter, it was literally the most delectable feast I had ever had. We gorged ourselves, drooling butter, muttering our words of amazement to each other and not missing the fact that life can be this generous, this present, this pristinely perfect.

It would have been the perfect night after we feasted and talked about our perfect day — just the right moment for Steve to drop to one knee. But he didn’t.

Next morning the tide was very low and as we walked

the beach, clams squirted up at us in a watery chorus. The rain returned as we packed and paddled further up Tutka Bay, and then across it to explore a big lagoon where there was a lot of activity. It was an Alaska Department of Fish and Game salmon hatchery, where workers were huddled over a table, cutting the eggs out of the spawning salmon and throwing the carcasses out into the lagoon. A throng of eagles perched like guardians around the lagoon, just waiting for the people to depart so they could feast on all the dead salmon washed up on shore.

As the rain poured down, we hunkered under a thick spreading spruce for lunch, feeling soggy. With the rain discouraging us from exploring anymore on foot, we paddled out of Tutka and in and out Little Tutka Bay. Without a break in the drizzle and now paddling almost on automatic, we were at McDonald Spit a day ahead of schedule. The long sloping beach required us to carry the kayak for what seemed a half mile to a place where high tide wouldn’t tug it away. We made camp in the rain, watching more seal and porpoise playing in the bay, clams squirting. Steve had set out the shrimp pot again, at last successful. Under the dripping tent, we warmed our souls with leftover crab and fresh shrimp creole. The rain was steady so no fire.

Not the perfect setting for a proposal.

The next day dawned sunny and when we peeked out, the tide was within a few yards of our tent. The long haul of the kayak had been a smart precaution. Boats were entering the cove for clamming, but we had had our fill of seafood. We set our goal to make Seldovia that day. Luckily the water was calm as we pushed the Klepper into these clear waters, but we had to paddle against the tide all morning. Now on our sixth day on the water, we could

pack and unpack the Klepper in just minutes. I easily slid into my seat that I had padded and adjusted so it was just perfect. My shoulders felt strong, and the wobble of the waves didn’t bother me anymore. The sun came out and I exchanged my rain hood for a cap. I rolled up my sleeves and took in the warmth of the rays. Knowing our trip would end that day came with some sadness — and no proposal.

We pulled into the docks at Seldovia and began to unpack and disassemble the Klepper so that it fit back into two waterproof bags. Then we wandered the docks hoping that Bill and Marilyn’s long-time friend and Steve’s namesake, might be in the harbor and back from fishing. We finally saw him sitting out on the deck of his handmade boat, the Normandie. He had “come into the country” in the 20’s and ended up fishing in Seldovia all these years. He also ran the mailboat from Seldovia to Homer and back and loved to tell the stories of when he also delivered pregnant women in labor across the bay.

He was a great storyteller and quite the wit. As Steve and I walked up, he looked at us and without blinking an eye, said, “Well, look who shows up when you don’t have a gun!”

He and his partner, Dean, had come in the day before, but the fishing had been poor. We sat inside the galley of his boat for a lunch of Pilot Bread, peanut butter, apples and cookies as they recounted their days at sea.

It was always good to sit with Steve Zawistowski and hear the tales of his early days in Alaska. He chuckled often as he talked, the sun lighting up his silver hair and bright blue eyes. I felt a deep quiet in him and the contentment of someone who has lived his life just as he wanted.

He told us that the Alaska ferry would arrive a few hours later, so after walking around Seldovia, we hopped onboard for the short ride to Homer for just seven dollars. We decided to drive back home that night, planning to catch the Seward Highway opening, before it closed for construction at midnight. So tired, but happy, we loaded up the gear, still a little soggy, dreaming of a dry bed and hot shower.

Sometime as we were driving north, Steve said out of the blue, “Well, if you’re going to put that garage addition on your house, we should start it now before freeze-up.” I looked at him, confused.

“What garage addition?” I asked. “I don’t have plans for a garage addition.”

“Well, you’ll need one if I’m moving in,” he replied.

There was a silence.

“Are you moving in?” I asked.

“Well, I assumed I would if we got married,” he replied. I took this in.

“Are we getting married?” I asked.

“Well, yeah,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t say “yes” as I was too stunned. In all my ideas of how I would be asked to be married, I didn’t think it would be as a construction proposal. But then, Steve was a builder. I guess this was how it made sense to him. I think we must have talked about what the garage would look like and about building a room above it, when to start, how much it would cost— those things. I was still a little flummoxed about the proposal. But when we reached his apartment and I came in with him, he said, “I guess I didn’t do that very well. I was nervous about what you would say.” And then he knelt down and said, “Will you marry me?” And finally, I could say “Yes!” It wasn’t romantic, but it was practical. And as Steve would say, “It got the job done.”

Forty-six years later, it did get the job done, but looking back now, I’m no longer so traditional. I would ask him.

Lawrence Winkler

Salaloquy

Man’s life is like a drop of dew on a leaf —Socrates

Robyn and I made a Japanese Garden. We had two ponds full of shubunkins, on either side of our big old teak front doors, until the neighbourhood herons and kingfishers found out. They missed the one last survivor who, weighed down by the violent loss of the rest of his clan, sank to the bottom, where he still resides.

One of the little treasures of the garden was the patch of azaleas, in front of the survivor’s pond. For one dramatic week every spring, they dazzled us with vermillion flower fireworks. Only their embers flame, these last few years. The azaleas themselves began to fall prey, to a green, leathery-leafed native interloper that flexes and bends, rather than shatters, under the weight of the seasonal Winter snowfalls. Where there was once Satsuki, we now have Salal (Gaulthria shallon).

The Chinook called this member of the heather family kikwu-salu and we, in our fashion, made the name more

white-eyes tongue-friendly. In 1826, David Douglas introduced Shallon to Britain, as an ornamental cover on shooting estates, where they hunted pheasants. Twenty years earlier, near Fort Clatsop, Oregon, Lewis and Clark described it for Thomas Jefferson: The fruit is a deep perple berry about the size of a buck shot…10 or 12 issue from a common peduncle or footstalk which forms the termination of the twig of the present year’s growth…the Elk fed much on its leaves. The Elk, as it turns out, were only enjoying an amuse bouche, compared to the current voracious consumption I will tell you about.

Salal grows from California north to Baranof Island, in Alaska. It survives small along dry roadside edges and clearings, but thrives in deep shade under tall trees, growing up to 6 feet high in some untouched canopied refuges. It has deep wide root systems which, after a forest fire or a logging crew rumbles through, so completely outflank hemlock and western red cedar for root nutrients, that the Canada Forest Service has declared salal a ‘menace to regenerating conifer stands in Coastal British Columbia.’ One of their research scientists has even proposed the introduction of Valdensinia heterodoxa, a fungus with

octopus-like tentacles that explodes spores all over the underside of shallon leaves, as an ‘environmentally friendly method of control.’ The main problem is that this little fungal assassin flourishes only in cool conditions, excellent for killing the lush salal under the canopy, but useless for controlling its growth in regenerating forest. In the scientific community I operate in, we call this a ‘glitch.’

Salal berries are fleshy sepals. They taste like dry, musky, mentholated blueberries, that haven’t bathed for a few days. They are best after two autumn frosts. Kwakiutl women wore special cedar bark to harvest them. The Coastal Natives ate them fresh, sometimes mixed with huckleberries, or Oregon grape. They stored dried cakes in baskets or wooden boxes and dipped individual berries in eulachon oil, a First Nations fish sauce that produced the extensive trading ‘grease trails’ of the Pacific Northwest. The Haida mixed salal berries with salmon eggs to create a sweet casserole. European settlers made jams, preserves, pies, and wine with it, but its culinary evolution has likely reached a pinnacle at the Sooke Harbour House, where Sinclair Philip has perfected his grouse glaze and uses the leaves to flavor fish soup.

The leaves are beautiful. Known also as Lemon leaf, they can stay green forever. The florists who use them in arrangements have created a world demand, a covetous culture, and a trail of tears. There are 13,000 salal pickers in British Columbia, most here on Vancouver Island. A hectare of salal can fetch $2500. The Government estimates that BC earns 40 million dollars a year, but Kenny Crompton, of Kirby Floral Storage in Burnaby, thinks it is more like $500 million. Near the end of the picking season on the Island now, there is not enough. Despite the deep, wide root systems, the greed is deeper. You could land a small jet plane in some of the open-air markets in the Netherlands, where salal goes to die. In BC it is a NTFP (Nontimber Forest Product); further south, they call it an SFP (Special Forest Product). The difference is staggering.

Salal picking in the U.S. experienced its first boom during the Depression years. Washington State established a Brush Picker’s Association was established in 1952. It went bankrupt two years later, because of the anti-union efforts of the buyers. Cambodian refugees constituted most of the pickers twenty years ago, but now Hispanics, known as Pineros, are: the unraveling thread of Mayan manhood from Guatemala on north. They are slip-sliding away on

the new grease trails, exploited and expendable. They pick 150 to 200 bunches of 25 stems each, per day for 70 cents each, sixty dollars a day. If they get paid. After a 5-10 percent charge for picking on timber company land, and the fee to drive them to the picking site. A van driver was arrested, in the Olympic National Forest, for having 17 pickers in the back, who had paid $20 apiece to be sardines. Another, in 2004, when authorities caught a van so full of salal and pickers (including a 13-year-old boy) that they had to be pried out of the confined space. In the past two years, van crashes have killed seven pickers. If the driver drops a picker off at a place where he doesn’t have a permit, he has a choice — pick illegally or starve.

Living and working conditions are out of view. Vans abandon pickers in remote work camps for weeks at a time. Home is a blue tarp and a roll of toilet paper or, if luckier, sleeping for a season packed 10 to a trailer. They pick in wet, pounding rain and snow, the illegals working at night undetected, burying their bunches, digging them up at dawn. They live with no insurance, the fear of deportation, and the threat of violence. Circumstances

have created a vocabulary of desperation. Slowrolling is a van decelerating, looking for a place where illegal pickers can bail out and scatter into the woods. Rat patrols watch for rustlers in vans with darkened windows, seats pulled out to make room for brush, license plates caked with mud. Bandits robbed Son Chau, a picker in Matlock, Mason County, of 20,000 stems at pistol point. They shot another in Grays Harbour County in 1997 because he was picking in a coveted patch. Shelton deputy sheriff, Ted Drogmund, recorded 100 arrests last year for fistfights, slashed tires, and broken windows. The ethos is simple — take what you can, don’t get caught, carry a gun.

Alfredo Menjevar, from El Salvador, was 21 years old when he confronted Leonolo Martinez for poaching the salal he had picked in Aberdeen, Washington. Alfredo shot Leonolo full in the face through an open van window, reaching across his wife to pull the trigger. Melissa was sixteen, and pregnant with his baby when he died. She started a scrapbook after the shooting. On one page, pressed between plastic, is a single salal leaf, still green.

FICTION

Jean Anderson

Time Travel

I’m in an airport with my mother, who died thirty years ago and never traveled. She’s walking ahead of me fast, climbing an empty staircase, the two of us alone on the stairs in a busy airport — not an escalator — all this impossible though it feels completely normal. Is it Chicago-O’Hare, where I’ve actually been only once, one very cold winter during Mom’s final illness? Maybe Seattle-Tacoma where I’ve spent so many hours? Anchorage — familiar too — or Albuquerque where my daughter lives — or where? Anyway, I manage to stay close by hurrying along behind her, and I’m glad of that because she suddenly falls. At the landing at the very top of the stairs: an outright fall, flat-bodied, veering left, landing on her side.

I race up the last individual steps — not exactly frantic; this all feels so oddly calm and normal, as I said — and I do get to her fast. But she’s already up, righting herself: brushing her dark floral-print skirt with both hands, standing erect, calm, her handbag still on her shoulder and her mask in place.

“I’m off to the restroom,” she says, patting at her still-black hair, at a gauzy scarf tied around it like a small hat. “We have time, don’t we?” She looks pretty, looks calm, healthy, almost young. “Is it this way?” She points left.

“Yes,” I say. “Sure. I think so. Are you OK?” I’m trying to stay as calm as she seems to be.

“Of course I’m OK, Michaela — I’m fine. Ah, there’s the sign: WOMEN.” She never calls me Michaela, the name she and Dad chose for me — their firstborn — when they were young and in love. I was named for him. Though I didn’t get his red hair, which I’ve always wanted. She never calls me “Mickie” either, like everybody else automatically does — though I hate it. She calls me Ella, which I love and have tried all my life — unsuccessfully — to claim in the wider world as a lovely sound meaning exactly me.

Now she’s turning left to enter to The Ladies’ while I follow, still ten paces behind. Though I’m hurrying, trying to keep up, walking fast as I can, pulling a heavy suitcase on wheels that must hold her clothes too, not just mine, while she speeds ahead.

The Ladies’ is how I think of it, even in modern airports, and, of course, it’s crowded. I can’t tell which stall Mom’s taken, so I look for her black shoes under the doors, being polite, unobtrusive, quick as possible. But I can’t find her anywhere. I hurry on toward the huge, open baby-diaper/changing-table/family stall at the end of the long row. Though I’m by nature careful, an obedient follower of rules, and I have no valid access to this stall. Am I a follower in general? I wonder that now, thinking back, though in the dream I didn’t even consider it. In the dream, I’m only busy trying to keep up with Mom. She’ll be lost in this huge airport if I don’t hurry.

As soon as I sit, the wide door flies open and a family comes in: maybe I didn’t latch the door right? “Occupied!” I shout that in a voice that sounds angry, even to me: “Occupied!” But nobody seems to hear me. There’s a small group of them: a tall, thin, harried-looking youngish woman I assume is the mother, three girls maybe ages eight, five, four, and two toddler boys, maybe twins — all wearing masks. And backpacks. Which they drop to the floor: six backpacks on the floor, my huge suitcase, the family, and me — by now I’m standing up in the crowded stall.

“Ookraine,” says one toddler boy, looking me in the eyes — or I think that’s it: long OOO. And suddenly I’m not mad anymore. Everything feels oddly OK. Maybe it’s that strange word? Or maybe, as humans, we are all family? And I remember what Dad used to call the bathroom at home when I was a child: “my office.” If anybody needs me, I’m in my office. Dad loved to joke. Or maybe — as they say — all this is “only a dream” and I know it now. I dream of travel a lot in these strange post-pandemic days: Ah, I’m traveling again, I think. At last! Even in the dream.

S. W. Campbell

Rolling Rock

“I’m going to be leaving on Monday.”

You stop brushing your mother’s long silver hair, it taking a moment for you to understand what she’s getting at. She’s always been this way with you. She calls you the sensitive one. Back when you and your sister were children, you were always the one who squealed when your mother caught a knot with the hair brush, back when the present roles were reversed. Your mother never squeals when you catch a knot while brushing her hair. She’s never been the sensitive type, at least out loud. In many ways you were always an enigma to her, but she always tried to cater to your needs, even the ones that were only in her own mind.

The first thought that pops in your head is to ask if she’s moving back down to Florida, but of course this makes no sense whatsoever. After all, she moved back up to live with you after that dog got a hold of her out by the dumpster in her retirement community. Your mother has never liked dogs, and that was over a year ago, back before the pain in her gut started growing, signaling the return of an old friend. You feel kind of stupid when the gears click over in your head and her more probable meaning snaps into focus, which makes you a bit sick to your stomach. However, despite this, you can’t help yourself from asking anyways.

“Where are you going?”

She looks up at you with a look she’s given you since childhood. Her don’t be stupid honey look, which she does her best to hide because she thinks you’re sensitive and she doesn’t want to upset you. But of course such attempts fail, your trained eye well learned in the nuances of your mother’s features. You can tell she’s mulling over whether or not she should answer, so you start brushing again to at the very least fill the silence, stopping when she smacks her lips, her signal that she’s made up her mind to speak.

“Monday is going to be the day I’m going to die.”

You pause, long enough to give a sense that you’re mulling it over, though it’s entirely for your mother’s benefit. It seems like a declaration that should be mulled over, though there’s not much to really think about with it. Your mother has always been a strong willed person, and undeniably she’s going to die at some point in the near future, the growing pain in her gut proof of such a prognosis. Arguing about the precision of the prediction seems like a bit of a waste of time, like arguing about curfew or what boys you should be allowed to date when you were a teenager. Debate has never really been much of an option with your mother, or least never a productive option, so you go with the old standby answer, carved deep in the ruts of repeated reuse.

“Okay.”

You start brushing your mother’s hair again. She nods once, putting a period on the conversation, and then sits still, not moving a muscle even when you catch a knot with the brush. As your hand and arm move rhythmically, you wonder if perhaps you should call your sister, but you quickly dismiss the idea, after all she isn’t the sensitive one. You wonder too if perhaps you shouldn’t have said more in reply to your mother’s proclamation, or at least felt something more, but you didn’t and you don’t, and there is never much point to worrying about such things. Besides, today is Tuesday, so there’s still plenty of time.

You didn’t need the doctor’s prognosis to know what was wrong when your mother increasingly began to complain about a pain in her gut. After all, years ago a different doctor had said it would only be a matter of time. She first described it as the feeling of a rather annoying person digging their thumb into her belly. You suspected even then, but she seemed uninterested in going to the doctor and you weren’t really all that enthusiastic to confirm anything beyond the unknown and the possibility that it might just be one of the normal aches and pains of being old. Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way for long, and what started as an annoying poke blossomed into a hard jab, then a punch, and then a permanent fist squeezing and twisting. Even then your mother wasn’t willing to go in, not wishing to confirm what both of you already knew, not acquiescing until the steady intake of ibuprofen proved no longer up to the task.

“I want you to pick out any of my clothes you want. Your sister is too thin to fit into any of them.”

You wait for a moment to see if there’s anything more to be added, but when there isn’t, you go back to spooning

apple sauce into your mother’s mouth. It’s one of the few things she can eat, her throat too sore to swallow anything more solid. Your mother isn’t much of one for mushy foods, but she likes applesauce, so she eats a lot of applesauce. It’s Wednesday, only five days more to the declared departure date, but neither you or your mother have discussed it any until this moment. You still don’t know really how to deal with the situation. You told your sister about it over the phone when she called yesterday, but she overall seemed rather unconcerned, declaring that as usual you’re being too sensitive. You aren’t sure if she meant too sensitive to the fact that your mother is going to die on Monday, or too sensitive in that you’re willing to pretend the declaration has any merit in the real world. Either way, as usual, your sister remained rather unconcerned, willing to take the world as it comes along, thus absolving herself of any responsibility related to worrying about the future. Now your mother is silent again, and you feel you should say something, but of course what you say completely avoids the main topic of conversation.

“I don’t know if there’s any of it I can wear. Most of it is pretty out of date.”

Your mother scoffs at this. “Nonsense, it’s vintage. I read the other day that vintage is all the rage right now.”

You keep spooning applesauce, biting your tongue because you don’t want to tell your mother that vintage usually involves people having wanted to wear the clothes when they were new. Your mother has always leaned more towards affordable and sufficient rather than fashionable. However, you don’t see much to gain by arguing with an old woman about how her clothes were never in vogue, and never will be, especially an old woman who plans on dying in five days. It just seems better to keep one’s mouth shut and keep spooning applesauce. Unfortunately, your mother has never been one to let others decide when a conversation is over.

“Go through my closet this afternoon, pick out the things you like. But just the clothes, wait for your sister for everything else. I won’t have you two fighting.”

You really doubt your sister has any interest in anything left of your mother’s. After all, she’s not the sensitive one. You don’t really want to go through the clothes. You have better things to do this afternoon than go through your mother’s wardrobe, pretending to pick things out that you will never wear. All the clothes are in the closet in your mother’s room, so there can be no faking it. Even with the growing pain in her belly and stupefying cocktail of pain medications, she’s still somehow a light sleeper.

“Okay.”

The word has a slight bitterness to it when it leaves your lips. Your mother nods once, then goes back to letting you feed her applesauce. That afternoon, you do as requested, though your mother shows little interest in the proceedings. It’s not until that evening that you begin to wonder if perhaps the entire thing was just your mother’s version of a backhanded compliment regarding your weight.

When your mother had felt the growing pain in her gut the first time, she had been much more gung-ho about doing something about it. After all, that was five years earlier, and there was still a lot of unknown left in the situation, even when the prognosis had been just as feared. Your mother went to three different doctors before she was satisfied that what they each were telling her was true, but once convinced, she pursued the treatment with a stern-faced gusto that had been the hallmark of every task your mother had ever set herself to doing. She was not the most pleasant patient to be around, though this had more to do with overall personality rather than the situation, but she was meticulous and no nonsense when it came to following directions. One does not successfully raise two children on one’s own by fretting about things out of one’s control and dilly dallying around. The rounds of treatment most definitely were not pleasant, but of course your mother refused to give even a hint of her discomfort, at least to you. After all, you’re the sensitive one, and, therefore, had enough on your plate just dealing with your own emotions.

“There’s her tits again.”

It’s Friday. You’re watching TV, sitting in a chair next to your mother’s bed. You don’t usually watch TV with her, but given she’s theoretically going to be dead in three days, it seems appropriate to try and spend more time with her. If it bothers her, she has made no sign, likely chalking it up to the strange unfathomable habits of sensitive children. She has made no further mention of her coming demise since the day before, though you know she has discussed it some with your sister, mostly with regards to post-passing planning. You’ve overheard them talking on the phone. Your mother wants to be cremated and spread out in some meadow somewhere, where exactly doesn’t matter, nothing fancy. You’re not sure why you couldn’t be trusted to find a place that burns up bodies, given you don’t live on the other side of the country, but such tasks have always gone to your sister, the more sensible one as your mother is fond of claiming.

Your mother groans a bit and shifts in her bed. You look over in concern.

“You okay? Need a new pain patch?”

Your mother completely ignores the question, choosing instead to gesture at the topless woman on the TV.

“My tits looked better than hers, back before I had two kids.”

You eye your mother for a moment, focusing in on the straight line of her mouth and the tightness around her eyes, then go back to watching the program. You doubt your tits ever looked as good as the woman’s on the TV, and you’ve never even had kids.

Your mother never really went to any lengths to hide the fact that she was having your sister handle the post-event arrangements. Such things were just a matter of well-established practice — something to which even the most sensitive of people should be accustomed. When you raised the subject with your mother, she had simply stated that your sister had it all taken care of, and therefore there was nothing to worry about. Your sister had the same nonchalance as your mother when you called her that evening. When pressed about details, she simply stated that she wasn’t calling anybody until there was actually something to call about. After all, even if by some coincidence their mother did die on Monday, how hard could it be to find someone willing to burn her body? Though unable to see her, you could still imagine your sister nodding once before hanging up the phone.

Your mother groans and shifts again, but you don’t say anything. Once the show ends she falls asleep, she sleeps a lot anymore, and you very carefully replace the pain patch on her arm with a new one. She rolls and mutters a bit when you do it, but she doesn’t wake up. You’ve gotten good at such things over the past two months.

Your mother had taken to treatment quite well the first time around. All three of the doctors she routinely went to had all been impressed with her recovery, at least at first. Unfortunately, all three had to temper any celebrations with a grim proclamation that the only way to definitely be sure that the pain wouldn’t come back was to cut some things out. The idea of this did not dissuade your mother; she had spent a lifetime cutting out things and even people, at least until she learned exactly how much cutting out the doctors were talking about. You can’t really blame your mother for the choice she made. After all, you’re pretty sure you wouldn’t want to spend your last years shitting in a bag either.

“Your sister should be here by this evening.”

You stop in the hallway, the basket of laundry in your arms, your mother in her bed framed by the doorway. It’s early Sunday afternoon. This is the first you’ve heard about it. Your mother goes back to watching TV. You bite your lower lip, doing your best to control your features. You just talked to your sister on

the phone the night before. You had told her you had gone ahead and made a few calls to some crematoriums, and you could have sworn you heard her eyes rolling on the other end of the line. Not one word had been mentioned about flying across the country the next day. You shift the laundry basket a bit to redistribute the weight better.

“What time is she supposed to be here?”

You try to sound nonchalant. However, the nearly imperceptible flicker of annoyance in your mother’s eyes prove your failure.

“Some time this evening.”

Your mother doesn’t even look away from the TV.

“Okay.”

You continue down the hall, your fingers hurting with the tightening of your grip on the laundry basket the moment you know you’re out of sight. This evening turns out to be nearly after midnight. Not wanting to leave the door unlocked at night, you wait up for her to arrive, watching TV with the volume turned down to a whisper. A loud knock jolts you from a slight doze, and for a moment you panic before the world comes crashing back in. When you open the front door, she’s standing there, a younger and thinner version of your mother, smiling with an overnight bag over her shoulder and a half rack of Rolling Rock in her arms. She says hello, hands you the half rack, walks in, and throws her bag onto the coach. You stand dumbly by the open door, still trying to blink the sleep out of your eyes.

“What’s the beer for?” you finally manage.

Your sister gives you your mother’s don’t be stupid honey look and then answers matter of factly.

“If Mom is going to die tomorrow, we might as well let her celebrate a bit.”

“Mom isn’t supposed to have beer,”

You’re still in a bit of a daze. Your sister walks over and takes the half rack back from you.

“Not going to really matter if she dies tomorrow, will it?”

You don’t have a chance to answer. She takes the beer into the kitchen where you can hear scraping sounds and the clink of glassware as she clears space in the fridge. There are so many things you want to say, but your sister doesn’t give you a chance. The moment she comes back into the living room she’s yawning and declaring how tired she is, brushing off your attempts to open discussion with an ease perfected since your shared childhood. Instead, you find yourself pulling blankets out of the hall closet and bringing her a pillow from your bed, setting up everything for her so she will be nice and comfortable while she changes into shorts and shirt right in the middle of the living room. Everything prepared, you make one last attempt to at least get some kind of recognition of the unexpectedness of the visit.

“We can talk about it tomorrow,” your sister assures you.

“Okay,” you answer, knowing that the conversation isn’t going to go any further.

You wake up late the next morning and find your sister sitting with your mother, the two of them talking in low voices punctuated by the occasional laugh. The way they look at you when you come into sight in the doorway leaves no doubt that you were likely the butt of at least a couple of their jokes.

“What are you two gabbing about?” you ask, trying to sound curious, but unconcerned.

Your sister flashes a smile. “Just making plans. After all, today is the big day.” Your mother is beaming with delight. The moment you walk out of the doorway you can hear them laugh and start talking again.

You bring applesauce for your mother and your sister volunteers to feed her. It’s a strange dynamic. When you all still lived together, your mother and sister had fought like cats and dogs, but now that they only see each other occasionally, they’re as thick as thieves. You shower and do the rest of your morning routine, then make you and your sister breakfast. Normally you just have a bowl of Special K, but since your sister is there you make bacon and eggs. She eats them without comment, then leans back in her chair, folding her thin arms behind her head and looks over at you.

“You should get out a bit while I’m here.”

Your eggs and bacon are only half done, but you put down your fork anyways. You bite your lower lip.

“If she’s going to die today, I’d like to be here.”

You sound a bit ridiculous, even in your own ears.

Your sister is smiling. “Don’t worry, she assured me she doesn’t plan on dying until this evening.”

You look down at your half-eaten breakfast, then pick up the plate, scrape it into the garbage, and put it into the sink. Your sister is still smiling at you in that way older sisters do when they know best. You rinse the plate and put it into

the dishwasher.

“Okay.”

You get dressed and go out to run a few errands; then since you’re already out, you go and see a movie too. You get back to the house by mid-afternoon. Loud polka music is playing when you open the door. Your mother is sitting upright in her bed, a Rolling Rock in her hand, and a feathered Bavarian cap on her head. Your sister has a Rolling Rock in her hand too, not her first judging by the small collection of green bottles on the dresser. She’s laughing and dancing around the room, and your mother is swaying back and forth in time with the music, a happy grin plastered across her face. They pause for a moment when you come in, but then your sister grabs you with her free hand and drags you protesting around the room, your shoes sending loose bottle caps skittering across the floor. Between songs, she opens you a beer, and then goes back to dancing again. You sit down in the chair next to your mother’s bed. She takes a drink of her Rolling Rock and grimaces in pain, but the smile doesn’t leave her face.

“This is a pretty good beer,” she says. You take a drink from your bottle and nod, unsure what to say. Your mother doesn’t take her eyes off of your sister. “I’d forgotten how good a beer tastes.” She takes another drink, her eyes visibly wincing the moment she swallows. Her speech is a bit slurred. “I think I’m going to postpone my departure for a bit more.”

You take another drink of your beer.

“Okay.”

Your mother looks over at you. “I think if it’s cut up small enough, I could probably eat a brat with sauerkraut. I’d love to taste a brat with sauerkraut again.”

You look at your mother, and do the best you can to keep your features still.

“Okay.”

Both of you go back to watching your sister dance, her face red and covered with sweat. You let yourself sway with the music, and take another drink of your beer.

Vic Cavalli

Chiara Steelhead

When she was a little child, Chiara Steelhead’s dad, Tom, used to take her to the Okanagan River. Her earliest memories were of silver oxygenated water rushing and swirling around rocks punctuating pebble mosaics in the sunlight, the mosquito-shoving-away wind blowing in the shrubbery and thickets lining the edges of the rivers. There along the edges of emerald swirling pools steelhead would burrow and push their snouts into the thick weeds along the edges of the river hunting minnows, inhaling them like silver flames. The days were hot, and the sun was striking and white; the skies were strikingly blue, and the water was cold and fresh. There as a child Chiara became fascinated by glossy lures, especially spoons, spinners, and flatfish. Her dad bought her a large accordion-like tackle box. It was a treasure chest that Chiara would open in the privacy of her room. She’d unlatch it and open both sides of the lid and rest them on the floor, then pull the layered shelves open — three shelves on each side, and in silence

she would absorb her beautiful collection, especially the beautiful flatfish lures in their white, little, almost coffinlike narrow display boxes, each one brilliantly coloured and glazed and glossy. Some were burnt orange and dark olive green and yellow with spots; some simulated frogs; some were bright fluorescent pink; some red and white; some spotted; some gold; a seemingly endless continuum of combinations of colours. All of the flat fish had two treble hooks jangling so that when Chiara cast the lure into the water while sitting with her dad in a small 10-foot homemade wooden rowboat floating on Little Heffley Lake, her dad slowly rowing, surgically dipping the oars and pulling back and careful to not disturb the surface too much, Chiara would smoothly turn the handle on her Mitchel spinning reel and retrieve the line and pull it in in respooled wet circles and the flatfish would be wiggling and flicking and jangling its treble hooks and she could see rainbows coming up out of the cool deep to inspect it. Seven times rainbows followed bright pink flatfishes as they wiggled towards the surface but then turned back down into the dark when they saw the white sheet of surface sunlight cutting edges around the marine white reflection of the boat and the liquid wavering lines and shadows of her fishing rod. Chiara loved the lake tackle. She loved the river tackle too. Two kinds of water: one at rest and the other a melting snow rush. Her mother Johnny came with them always on the camping trips when she was young; she enjoyed cooking for them and organizing the campsite, but most of all Johnny loved fishing with Chiara, and whenever they went to the river it was beautiful. Tom would sit in the shade under a tree and watch Johnny standing nearly waist level with her fly fishing waders on, casting her favourite dry fly into the river, watching it float down, thready and swirling, anticipating the strike — silver swirling water, the Tom Thumb fly like a prickly cork tied with deer hair, buoyant on the surface, slowly then faster then swirling, then rushing past, then picked up again, crystal beads of cold water shooting outwards from the taut thick white floating line, and recast, a fluid loop stretching out against the sky and coming to rest and then motion again. And closer to the shore and downstream thirty steps, Chiara would be watching and learning. Chiara fished with a float, a lead weight, three feet of leader, and a thick pink rubber worm designed to attract rainbows. There were no spectacular rises and leaps but instead muscular silver wacks. Big, thick, silver rainbows with pink sprayed on lines on their sides.

Tom cleaned the fish. And back at the campsite he

would ready the camp stove, pump the propane tank, and light it for Johnny. With the blue propane wreaths of fire underneath, within minutes the cast iron frying pans would be bubbling with hot butter and then the floured trout would be dropped into the butter and the smell of the fish cooking blended with the evergreen scent of the surrounding forest and created memories that Chiara would never forget. Carefully removing the crust, the crunchy skin, peeling back the flesh, the pink trout flesh off the thin bones, the sun going down, the kerosene lamp burning on the picnic table, the occasional flying squirrel crawling down to smell what they were cooking — like a dried pelt nailed to a nearby tree with its arms outstretched, its walnut-size head with bright black dot eyes craning upwards against gravity, looking at them, then suddenly scurrying reversed away — and after dinner and campfire stories and music, those nights in the tent hearing black bears rustling in the bush in the distance, feeling safe there with Dad and Mom. Those were Chiara’s early memories.

In elementary school there were many subjects to study. She loved science. She loved reading. She loved to draw and had good teachers. Her grade 4 art teacher, Miss Blanco, once asked her, “What are all those blue lines?” And Chiara answered, “Those are rivers.” And when she drew a forest, her teacher asked, “Why are those trees coloured blue?” And she said, “Those aren't trees. We are flying in a plane and those are the rivers below us.” Her sense of perspective surprised Miss Blanco.

When Miss Rosen was conducting the grade 5 art project evaluation, she put Chiara’s 14 x 17-inch drawing on the easel where all her classmates could see it from their seated positions in a half circle. The piece was striking, and to Miss Rosen it seemed to be composed from the perspective of a child looking up into a West Coast old

growth forest canopy after a spring rain, shimmering with piercing shards of sunlight. To Miss Rosen, it looked like a picture of a benign giant standing on a blue globe, his muscles flexed, covered in blue pencil crayon veins, and he was holding up a huge globe, and on that globe were other giants also holding up globes, all of them flexing their muscles, all of them covered in blue veins. And she thought to herself, What kind of creatures are those? And she said to herself, They are the good giants. They are the giants that create rivers. They are the giants that move like rushing water. They come down from the Andes as the snow melts and they begin as rivulets and then become streams and then become stronger and start to erode the rock and bring soil with them until eventually they are like beautiful white lace draped over endless jagged rock, all moving back to the ocean, building in force, thundering back to the sea. The giants are the power and the multidirectional branching of the whole water system in the world, the whole water system in the world. At times like these, Miss Rosen would be surprised by her internal vocabulary and sentence structure, and especially surprised by her mythic vision and tone. She reminded herself that she was standing in front of a class of grade 5 students and asked Chiara, “What is your picture about?”

To which Chiara responded in an objective, almost scientific voice, “It is migratory rainbow trout habitat.”

And then Miss Rosen asked, “What is it about fish that makes them so special?”

Her classmates were attentive as she answered.

“They live in a different world,” Chiara said. “I like the idea of different worlds. Mom said when I was a baby growing inside her I was in a different world. Mom said I didn't breathe the way I do now with lungs. I was curled up inside nice and warm surrounded by liquid and I had lots of energy and lots of oxygen, but I didn't breathe. I guess that's how it is for fish. They probably don't even think about how they don't breathe. They're just there in all that liquid full of oxygen and they are alive. Maybe I like fish because it makes me think of babies and when I think of babies I think of fresh starts and sunrises and flowers opening up and fiddlehead ferns glowing in the sun, stretching up, stretching out their leaves, uncurling themselves, and the massive yellow heads of sunflowers following the warmth of the sun, and the sun on the water and the heat against the cold and under that silver bubbling swirling reflection the beautiful reflecting pinkspotted fish breathing in a different world sparkly and pink and alive.”

Miss Rosen was silent, absorbing Chiara’s response.

Looking into Miss Rosen’s eyes and surrounded by her silent classmates, Chiara smiled, stood straight, and thought to herself. Alive. A heart beating deep in the water, sunlight shining down like a massive sheet and shaft, the fish shadows, the silver shimmering on the surface, the deep olivaceous green backs of the fish, the perfect glossy black pebble-like speckles, the perfect camouflage from above, and a heart beating and the river flowing and the fresh air blowing and luminous trees green and yellowish green in the sun and wind waving their branches clean, and the fish deep in the river close to the bottom, close to the spawning gravel where the eggs are laid, where the cycle of life begins again and everything becomes new. Like human babies, baby fish have a heartbeat; every human baby starts with the beginning of a pulse, every salmon egg, every steelhead, every brook trout, every egg is fertilized and soon a heartbeat starts, a heartbeat in the world, in the water, on the land, everywhere heartbeats, the wood ducks, the mallard ducks, all of the glorious birds, the seals which come up the river, their glossy black heads shining in the sun, their whiskers like silver wires visible even at 300 meters. Down they go. Under the surface muscular and swimming, seeking salmon. The fish instinctually moving up the river, drawn by gossamer DNA cords, struggling to lay their eggs, struggling to begin the cycle again, the cycle of the heartbeats, millions of heartbeats, oxygenated heartbeats. Everything with a nervous system is selfish; everything with a nervous system wants to keep living, wants to feed, wants to absorb light, wants to exist.

Today the river is quiet. The sun shines on the surface; the water's deep; no one's around; it's a work day and the area is the spawning channel; it is quiet and then there's a click in the bush and a louder crackle and branches break and the noise accelerates, louder, rushing, louder, then exploding out of the riverbank a deer leaps into the river, plunges in, swims, pushes off the gravel, the spawning bed, pushes off, pushes across, pushes to the other side, and then darts and leaps and stoats and jumps and climbs through the forest and disappears up the mountainside, and then the sound of coyotes rustling in the bush, frustrated, knowing it has gotten away, hungry, their hearts beating, racing, but no food, the entire beautiful ecosystem, the whole world, all the rivers, the oceans, all the water moving, flowing, nourishing the plants, the plants pushing up from the black rich soil, pushing up through cracks and rocks, struggling, thickening and growing, accelerating under ideal conditions and all between, everything pushing towards life, everything

seed and growth.

After two minutes of stunned silence, Miss Rosen said, “Wonderful, Chiara.” And she asked the student next in the queue to bring up his drawing and place it on the easel.

By the time Chiara reached grade 7, it was clear to her teachers that she was far from an average thirteenyear-old. Not only was she an A+ student in all her classes, excelling especially in science, but she was also a gifted illustrator — a youth who would bring thick folders of diagrams, pictures, watercolors, and pencil crayon drawings to school. She was a teenager who could realistically draw flowers, the faces of animals, especially their paws or their fins, their eyes, in a way that was both beautiful and natural, almost photographic, and yet mysterious. Some were simple watercolor paintings where against a white background she had gushed a pink wash then speckled it with black dots and then added touches of gray, and there it was, the side of a rainbow trout glowing in the sun. Other works showed ospreys crashing into mirror-like surfaces with their talons stretched open. On the verge of her transition to high school, her teachers realized there was something different about Chiara Steelhead and they knew she would be a river scientist.

Pamela Huber

To Catch a King

The trick to catching a king, their guide says, is patience. He rows the two oars in their sockets and they ply the gentle rapids of the Kasilof River. June 10: the beginning of the Chinook salmon run in Kenai Peninsula. Most fishers on the river are tourists like Ilana and her father, David. True Alaskans wait until the sockeye run in earnest and the government declares dipnet season open, in July.

The gray sky hangs her illuminated clouds above, the sun seeping along their edges, a gold lining. Ilana has grown to love these days that hide the blue sky and threaten rain, because they make the turquoise glacial waters pop out in relief against the emerald trees. A bright day would wash the scene out, blind her from the eagle fishing along the gravel bed and the flyfishers casting helpless hooks into the current.

“Are they fishing for kings too?” David asks their guide, Baxter.

“Sockeye,” Baxter says with a shake of his head, his

triceps flexing as he rows. The Kasilof doesn’t allow motors until the mouth. Drift-only. One of the last pure rivers in the state. Ilana had to go into the deep backmuds of Delaware Bay estuaries to find such peace back home.

“They’re wasting their time though,” Baxter says. “Running reds won’t bite bait. Spawning salmon don’t eat. Don’t need to. They’re headed for the big rainbow beyond the sky.”

“So why would they — ” Ilana begins.

“They bite roe like the kings?” David interrupts.

“Yeah, but not on flies. These guys all got scammed. Wanted to flyfish salmon. Shit. Now there is a technique, Kenai flip. Basically, you toss the fly into their mouths and set the hook. You’re essentially tossing it right in their mouths. Don’t even need a fly.”

“And that’s legal?” David asks as Baxter stops rowing and kneels over the cooler to pull out fresh roe. It stains his gloves and waders with highlighter pink streaks. The roe is treated; it’s pinker than Pepto Bismol or a Caribbean sunset. It’s strawberry juice bright. To Ilana, it’s surpassed any appetizing quality of caviar and ventured into toxic alert territory. Baxter already instructed them to never touch the roe on their hooks and contaminate them with human stink — kings are alerted to rival fish’s roe by smell as finetuned as 10 parts per billion.

“Yep,” Baxter answers. His curt answers prompt her father to keep asking questions. As if asking the right question will prove to this twenty-year-old guide that her father too is an expert fisherman in his own craft of catching bass. Twice more David interrupts Ilana. She pulls her second beer of the hour from her backpack.

Baxter baits their hooks. Tells them where to cast. Father and daughter set their rods in holders and watch their lines for a lurch. Ask anxiously with each bobble if that’s a bite. Baxter assures them each time it’s the current. Sometimes it is a nibble and when they say “Is it?” excitedly he commands Wait and they all hold their breath to see if he’ll row back hard to set the hook. They lose four bites this way. He instructs them to reel their lines in. The roe on them is half gone, unclear whether to the current or bitten off. Baxter pulls more roe from the cooler and they repeat.

You planned this for him, Ilana reminds herself. So long as he’s happy, it’s a worthwhile expense. It’s his money anyway.

“Do you guys want to play music?” Baxter asks. Ilana is trying to enjoy the silence, but she feels relief at the suggestion. Music will drown out that the only person talking on the father-daughter fishing trip is her father asking Baxter questions. Never mind the three months

she’s lived in Alaska he could ask about, or the homestead she is building herself, or her suggesting on the drive down that she try bringing a woman as her plus one to her cousin’s wedding next year.

Ilana connects Grateful Dead to the speakers: Looks like rain, Springfield, MA, 1978.

“This is my favorite song,” David says.

“I know.”

Ilana is pleased simply to be on the water. She doesn’t care about catching fish. Never has. The whole affair is quite boring, and she’d rather read while her father fishes. On the rare trip home, she doesn’t even pretend to fish any longer. Just pulls out another book of poetry as her father casts his line.

But she has always wanted to catch salmon.

Kings are impractical, getting rarer and rarer. But they happen to be what’s running when her father visits.

The fact that sockeye are already running on the Kasilof comes as a surprise to her. She messed up her research. When the next boat over catches a red, she curses under her breath. She booked them the wrong trip. Hour three and still nothing on the line.

For some reason, she thought maybe there’d be other families on the boat. No reason to think that, other than other families on the boat would make it easier for the pair to finish their conversation from the drive down.

David is still trying to impress Baxter. Surely their guide will grow annoyed soon. Ilana feels the need to serve as a buffer.

The wind picks up. Turns the water gunmetal blue. She pulls a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the backpack for herself. Offers David a slice of roast beef and an iced tea. He is smiling, his cheeks round apples flushed pink from the wind.

David’s rod lurches. Father and daughter shout, not quite a word as an alert, “Ho!”

“Wait,” Baxter says for the fifth time. They hold their breath. He braces his feet and rows both oars back.

“Reel,” he commands David.

David reels with grace. He is practiced here. His expertise can finally shine.

A foot of silver hits the surface. Looks small. Three, maybe four pounds. Ilana does not know what a king looks like. She only knows the spawning reds of sockeye, the humped backs of pinks, the curved nose of coho.

Baxter sets the anchor and pulls the net from the hull of the boat. He scoops the fish gently. Lifts it up.

“Dolly Varden,” he proclaims.

David has never heard of it.

“Make good eating?” David asks.

“It’s alright.” Baxter says. “Like trout. They don’t spawn and die like salmon. They keep breeding each year. Get bigger. This one’s small. Got a lot of years of spawning left.”

David frowns. Ilana’s heart sinks. Not a salmon, and can’t even keep it. David enjoys catching and releasing bass, but he’s paid hundreds of dollars to try to catch kings.

“I’ve never heard of Dolly Varden before,” David says. “Is that a rare fish?”

“It’s unique to the north.”

The silver fish will turn pink with striking yellow spots on its belly when it spawns. It is so common in Alaska, scavenging salmon roe, that it is considered a pest.

“You said it’s a trout?”

“Char. Still makes alright eating, when you can keep them. Want a picture?”

Ilana snaps a photo of her father, his round cheeks rosier now. He kisses the fish and sets it back in the river.

“Raised my daughter to kiss her fish. She’s kissed every bass she’s ever caught.”

Ilana smiles. Sips her beer.

“I’ve never caught a Dolly Varden before,” he adds with admiration. “A lifer.”

“We still need to catch a king though,” Baxter says. “My group caught two this morning. They’re here. They’re just not biting.”

He pulls the anchor and drifts them down toward a gravel bar. Ilana hops on the bank to pee behind driftwood. Baxter offers her toilet paper. She declines, insulted. Then

she gets pee on her leggings and sits in her own wet for hours afterward. Ilana does not believe in Freud or penis envy, but she does hate squatting beside the riverbank.

Hours of ambient solstice daylight ahead still, but the sun is hidden now. She puts her jacket on. Baxter points to a pool at a curve in the river ahead.

“There,” he says. “For sure.” He instructs Ilana to switch the music to country music. She plays the only song in the genre she has downloaded.

“A little FGL, now they’ll definitely start biting,” he proclaims.

Her father is happy to have caught something, but they all want the king. A sockeye will do. Something they can keep. Ilana refrains from telling David he jinxed them when he called his friends from the boat launch to ask if he could store fish in their freezer. He’d been so busy chatting in his manic excitement, he hadn’t noticed Ilana waving him into the boat, Baxter standing in the current holding it for him.

They drift into the hot spot. Cast their lines.

I’ll try to bring up the wedding again on the drive back north, Ilana tells herself.

She doesn’t actually have a date in mind to bring. She merely wanted to introduce the idea of bringing a woman home, so her parents would not be shocked if it ever did happen. Like how she gave them five years’ notice before she got a tattoo.

It’s not that her father said he disproved. He didn’t react much at all. Merely said, “It’s none of my business.”

And then he managed to steer the conversation back to himself.

The line lurches.

“Baxter,” she yells.

“Reel,” he commands as he rows back, sets the hook.

She reels fast, thinking her quick action will really catch the hook.

“Easy,” Baxter says.

“Finesse,” her father reminds her.

The hook skips across the surface, baitless.

“Go slower next time,” Baxter instructs. He drifts them to the center of the river. It’s a straight shot now to the ocean. The temperature drops. They are past the four hours they paid for, but Baxter won’t take them out until they both catch something. He asks if they have anywhere to be. His eyes are hungry. They keep casting. He is earning their tip.

Why does she even want the king anyway? One at market would cost about a third of the trip, but money aside, what does she want? To prove to David she can

catch a fish? She’d done that many times over in her youth and it brought her no joy then. No, she wants Alaska to answer her call. To give her a sign she belongs here. Ideally, in front of the man who told her she was crazy for coming here alone, told her she had no idea how to build a house or make her own way. Never mind she’d been on her own a decade now. Never mind she wouldn’t be alone if she didn’t let the fear her parents would insult a partner into leaving stop her from getting close to anyone.

She prays for a sockeye. Something she can hold, keep, devour.

The line bobs. It’s not quite a lurch but she won’t let another bite go this time.

“Baxter, bite.”

The boat reverses.

“Go.”

She grips the rod. Reels slower this time. Steady. She exhales, four counts. She cannot see below the waterline, thick with condensed glacial silt. But the resistance is there.

And then it is gone.

“I think I lost it,” she says. She reels in anyway, slow still, just in case.

A silver flash.

Her heart leaps.

Her father is at her side, telling her to stay easy, good job, stay easy on it.

Baxter scoops the fish into the net. This one is larger than the Dolly Varden but still small: at least seven pounds, the length of her forearm. Its silver belly transitions to a lavender stripe of shimmering scales along its back. The lavender softens to a teal spine the same shade as the river. Freckled spots of darker purple and blue race down its back. No spawning colors yet, which makes for good eating, but she cannot recognize the species without their distinct spawning regalia.

“Is it a keeper?” she asks, breathless.

Baxter lifts the net.

“That’s a king.”

Her heart aches. A happy, sore warmth spreads. She has only ever looked to her father to know if a fish she caught was worthy, but here, without having to look at him, she knows.

“That’s a decent size,” her father says, approvingly. It’s small, they all know it, but he has complimented her fish.

“Can’t keep it though,” Baxter tells her.

The boat strains on its anchor line.

“Is it too small?” she asks, confused. It’s a king, after

all! They’ve got the stamps on their licenses. They’re allowed two each. It’s the only king they’ve seen caught on the river all afternoon.

Baxter reaches over her shoulder and points at the small second fin on the fish’s back.

“That’s a wild king.”

“And?”

“Can only keep hatchery ones.”

Ilana doesn’t know this rule yet. It’s a special rule, just for Chinooks, to protect the declining wild population’s natural spawning patterns. Hatcheries snip the adipose fin by the tail while the fish are still fingerlings to help identify them.

“You can keep a picture,” Baxter offers.

“It’s good, Ilana,” her father says. “Some people wait their whole lives to catch a wild king.”

She takes her picture and lowers the camera. Looks into the fish’s black eyes. Its roving iris wanders the sky. Its mouth gapes, the hook a garish accessory. This wild punk has eggs to lay or sperm to spray. No point in delaying it. It needs to return to the water.

Let’s get a move on lady, its flashing gills murmur. She nods to Baxter. “Wild knows wild,” he says, like a prayer. Then he unhooks the fish and throws it upstream. With a splash, it’s gone.

“What do you folks want to do?” Baxter asks.

“Five more minutes,” David insists, his Dolly Varden forgotten now.

“Dad, it’s been five hours and we’ve only paid for four.”

“You paid for a six-hour trip,” Baxter says.

“Really? I thought it was four.”

“No, it is four,” he admits, smiling. “Five more minutes is fine.”

They cast for another 20. They’ve entered the endless dusk of Alaskan nights in high summer.

“I suppose we can head out now?” their guide asks, sheepishly. He has not packed dinner. “It’s still a mile of rowing before I can use the motor.”

“Let’s go, Dad,” she says. “We each caught one. We did good.”

She pulls another two sandwiches from the bag. Offers one to her father, her own to Baxter. Her pants are still wet. Her heart is still fluttering. A wild king.

Baxter rows with the current now, letting them pick up speed. She hands her father his binoculars and they peer at eagles on the banks.

“That was a mighty fine fish,” her father says to himself. “People wait their whole lives for a fish like that.”

“It wasn’t big.”

“No, but it was wild.”

Baxter reaches the pylon that tells him he can turn his 10 hp motor on. It’s not much faster than rowing, but it’s one-handed, and Baxter can check his phone now, tell his summer lady he’s finally on his way. The motor creates a small hum of privacy for father and daughter.

“Dad, about what I said. In the car. About the wedding? I was hoping for something more supportive.”

He scans the trees, eyeing the eagles.

“It’s hard to find wild these days,” he says. “Some things, you just don’t believe them until you see them. Like the home you’re building. I didn’t think you could do it, especially alone, but there it is.”

He is still peering through the binoculars, so they do not need to look at one another when he says this.

They count the eagles in the trees. First a pair, then three more. As they approach the landing in the dusk, they count out twelve of the bald raptors in the canopy, perched above the river, white heads shining, welcoming them back to land.

David Mampel

Green Man

The snappy beat of a swing jazz trio at The Lodge is the perfect escape for the night. I swear she looks at my toes tapping to the beat. Hiding behind a sip of ginger beer, I steal a glance. She's dressed in black leather pants and a floral blouse. My heart races, but not because of her. It's something else. I want to sketch an image. What about that gray bust I found in the attic at my parents' house?

I can't stop thinking about the medieval-looking head — an old, gnarly face that reminds me of thunderheads blowing wind out of puffed cheeks. I hate how my hands cramp up when I draw pictures of people, but maybe stone heads are different — an artist once told me sculptures were easier to draw than human models. That gray head might look interesting on paper.

I walk up to the reception desk and borrow a pen and notepad. Scrolling through my phone, I open a picture I had taken of the plastered head and begin sketching — thin whisps of hair and leaves curled around his scalp, nostrils shaded against cheeks and lips, bold eyelids and soft, sunken cheekbones. In a few moments, I have the basic face. I add darker details and smile with satisfaction — my hands didn't cramp up!

The woman with black leather pants stands up, walks behind me and looks over my shoulder.

“That’s a cool sketch,” she says.

“Oh. Thank you.” A little embarrassed, I put down my pen and pad.

“I might steal it.” She laughs, coming around the sofa.

I chuckle in return, thrilled that someone likes my rendering of the bust. She sits on the hearth next to the couch. Picking up the notepad, I turn to her and shake my head. "It's funny. I just gave up my art business, but this sketch came out easier than I expected."

"Really?" She tilts her head sideways. "Why did you give it up? Your sketch is great!"

"Well, I guess there's a few reasons. I'm a caregiver now and I don't have enough time or energy. Plus, I haven't sold anything all year, so I had to shut down my website — couldn't afford to keep it up."

"I'm sorry to hear that." She gives me a cute, empathetic pout. "I hope you decide to come back to it someday. You're really good. I love your sketch."

"Thanks." I look at the drawing and rub my chin. "You know, maybe I wasn't painting the right subjects."

"What did you used to paint?" She straightens up.

"Mostly landscapes and abstracts, but to tell the truth, I was getting tired of it. This sketch on the other hand…" I study the inky image.

“Actually, the story behind this drawing is pretty weird.” I sit up, grab my phone and scroll through my photos.

“Check this out.” I lean over and hold up a shot of the gray bust. She gives me a curious look. “I found this sculpture in our attic. Something made me want to draw pupils on its blank eyes."

I show her the before and after shots.

“Oh my god, that's too weird. You made the face come to life!" She stands up, walks around the couch and sits next to me. "I was just in Italy visiting a sculpture garden with heads like this." She grabs her phone and scrolls through her pictures. Out pops an image of a giant, moss-covered stone head — its wide-opened mouth revealing two over-sized front teeth. In the picture, she's standing inside the ogre's mouth.

Lightheaded, I shake off a rising queasiness. The trio takes a break. I look at flames in the fireplace — my scalp starts to tingle.

“I have to go there,” I mumble.

“Yes. You must!” Her eyes light up. “There’s so many weird sculptures scattered about! Hannibal’s elephant mangling a Roman soldier, Ceres with a bush growing out of her head, a leaning house, and this huge one." She points to the picture. "People used to dine inside of it so they could hear themselves chewing their food as if the monster was eating them while they were eating.”

“Are you kidding me?” My brows squeeze together in disbelief.

“Who built it?” I sit up.

“Some rich guy commissioned it in the sixteenth century to cope with his grief after his wife died.”

Grief. Her last word echoes in my mind.

I remember my therapist, Monica, asking if grief had something to do with me finding that bust in the attic. When I stumbled upon it, I had been feeling dejected, storing away old paintings I couldn't sell, and suddenly those blank eyes had caught my attention. I had reached over to the bust and lifted it off the wall like Hamlet picking up poor Yorick's skull. Monica had asked why I impulsively dotted the eyes of the gray head with a black marker. The eyes seemed to blink open like a Jinn escaping a polished lamp. I had lurched back, screeching a little at the creepiness of a solid object appearing to come alive. The new eyes watched me like the gaze of an old portrait following a viewer across the room. Monica had asked me if the gray head reminded me of something from my past, from my childhood.

The waiter walks over to take the woman’s order, interrupting my memory.

“I’ll have another house white,” she says.

The waiter leaves and the woman moves to the sofa across from me. Some friends of hers arrive and they start chatting. I smile and sit back, sipping my drink while I touch up the sketch. Sounds and sights fall away as I draw leafy vines across cheekbones and a stem with tendrils around his closed mouth. Time slips into another world. I wonder if the gray bust is warning me to pay attention to something?

I flinch when I remember my therapist asking me to close my eyes. How did you feel when it happened?

I was eight years old, slumped on the stairs, clutching the handrail of our two-story home. I was in shock, staring at the gray face of my father lying in a puddle of blood at the bottom. My mother raced around me to attend to him. Everything goes black.

I get up to take a walk outside, wondering why the sculpture would remind me of that horrible moment in my childhood. What did the two have in common? When I return, the receptionist at the hotel desk waves to me. “Mr. Iverson, you have a phone call.”

“Thank you.” I nod to the receptionist as she walks back to her office.

“Jack!” My sister’s voice sounds ecstatic on the other line.

“Marie? What’s up? Is everything okay with mom and dad?”

“Oh! Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, brother. It’s more than okay. I won a hundred grand at the casino!”

“A hundred grand? Are you kidding me?”

“I can’t believe it, Jack. Look, I’m going to take some time off and take care of mom and dad so you can finally take that trip to Europe. You deserve it, Jack. You've sacrificed so much to care for them. I’m going to schedule it for the middle of May.”

My throat catches in a cross-current of emotion. Thoughts race ahead. Is Marie doing this because she feels guilty that I shoulder most of the caregiving duties? “Marie…that is so generous. I…I can’t believe it. Europe? Oh my God, sis! I was just talking to a gal up here about this cool sculpture garden in Northern Italy.”

“That’s great! Now you can go see it.”

As I say good-bye to my sister, I'm unable to move away from the front desk. I stand trembling when the receptionist walks back from her office and gives me a concerned look. “Everything okay, Mr. Iverson?”

“Yes." I pause, holding the receiver to my chest, not sure what I'm feeling — a mixture of fear, gratitude, and growing excitement. I steady myself. "Yes, yes," I say as I hand her the phone, shaking my head in disbelief. "Thank you. It's more than okay."

A winter of therapy passes in a blur of gray, wet days. In a few weeks, I am off to Europe, to the sculpture garden.

I arrive in Viterbo at the Park of the Monsters and get out of the Renault, happy to see no one else is around. Shouldering my rucksack, I walk in a twilight daze along a winding path of grotesque mossy sculptures. I stand alone with stone monsters, grassy hills and whispering trees. Where are all the other tourists?

At every turn, my breath deepens with queasy amazement at the bestiary of stone gods, fish, horse, bird, elephant, and a leaning house. I stop walking. Orcus, the fearsome monster with the gaping mouth, a holdover of pagan worship, the predecessor of the medieval wild man, stands in front of me with the inscription under his nose: All reason departs

Something like a tight string breaks in my gut. My heart races as I walk into the dank mouth of Orcus. I lower my head to avoid bumping a large front tooth and squint in the darkness. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I must be out of my mind. I sit on the floor of what can only be the monster’s tongue. Taking off my rucksack, I cross my legs and pull out a bag of raw vegetables. Eyes closed, I chew my snack like a holy wafer. The crunch of carrots echoes off the roof and cheeks of curved stone. Am I eating or is Orcus eating me?

The growing blackness within the large mouth becomes the dark stairs with a pool of blood at the bottom. My dad is laid out in front of me with an ashen face. I close my eyes.

I'm eight-years-old again, only I’m not sitting on the stairs reaching for a banister to clutch, but trying to hold onto thin air in the giant mouth. I begin to weep, then sob uncontrollably for what feels like eternity. I fall asleep.

When I wake, I think, How can I let go, if there’s nothing to hold onto? There’s no reason to replay my childhood trauma. It has been a prison, an ID number for more than thirty years. I shudder and open my eyes with a sigh of relief.

The sun sets and a new moon rises outside of Orcus. Am I locked in? Night shadows tint the lawn with Prussian blue streaks.

A soft laughter creeps through my veins. I begin taking off one shoe, then the other. I pull off my white socks, remove my belt, stand up, unzip my faded jeans, and lean against the cool stone to yank them off. I slip off my underwear and tee shirt, tuck them in my rucksack and walk out of the giant mouth. Standing barefoot in the grass under a few stars, I see treetops waving in the breeze as if to call me over.

I run, laughing through a meadow, naked. I am Jack-in-the-Green from pagan times! I drum the head of Ceres, make up nonsensical words and dance to silent music, sticking out my tongue at Hannibal’s Elephant.

Out of breath, I sit on the grass and look at each sculpture glistening in the twilight. I reach into my rucksack and rifle around for my sketchbook.

One by one, in my nakedness, I walk over to Hannibal's Elephant, Ceres, the leaning house, and Orcus, sketching them with the fast and free hand of Monet at the Garden of Giverny.

Ron McFarland

The Job Hunter

When Jack hit fifty — single white male, divorced, no kids — his handful of friends feted him with a snarky party at his favorite bar, his younger brother sent him a get-well card, and his parents, who lived three thousand miles away in Florida, composed a letter explaining to him that he wasn’t old and wasn’t “really even middle-aged.” That same day he got an invitation to join AARP. Schadenfreude ultimately won out.

He deserved it, he agreed. Self-directed Schadenfreude. Why waste it on others? He had earned it. He’d left a promising career in marketing for a major corporation headquartered in Houston, a city he’d grown to dislike over his twenty years residing in a state he’d grown to despise. His maternal grandfather had left him a tidy little trust fund — not munificent, not enough to live on exactly, at about twenty thousand a year, but enough to convince him he might escape the corporate pressures of getting and spending and laying waste his powers (yes, Wordsworth — he had majored in English at Emory) and enroll in a graduate MFA program in fiction writing far from the Lone Star State that would enable him to produce the novel that had been perking inside his gut for the past dozen years.

He had done that. He’d turned his back on sixty-hour weeks and on weekends crammed with humping it for Corp and kowtowing to a “rapacious wench” (a male colleague’s descriptor) of a vice president or “vicious bitch” (a female colleague’s descriptor) and had run off to UM in Missoula to garner his authorial credentials. He’d loved every minute of it, even though the move cost him his marriage. Jodie lasted less than a year in Big Sky country before heading back to Texas, where she landed a job in advertising at ExxonMobil headquarters near Dallas. The pay was fabulous, Jodie was gorgeous, and she married an up-and-coming Baylor grad who was four years her junior. Jodie liked to say they’d “never been cursed with children,” and alimony hadn’t been an issue, so Jack and Jodie were converted into the past tense and without regrets.

He’d been “forty-something,” as he liked to put it, when he left the corporate world of groveling enterprise. Now, after three years spent on the fine arts degree and nearly three more years squandered on the “novel-without-end,” as he reluctantly put it, Jack conceded he must reenter the job market, the marketplace. He had nearly burned through the savings he accumulated from his six-figure salary in marketing. Now he must market himself. He almost looked forward to the challenge, although truth be told he supposed it wouldn’t prove very challenging at all.

Therein, he was wrong.

“So welcome back, Jack,” he told himself, “to the realm of ‘unintended consequences,’ surely a major buzz-phrase of the 21st century.” He had taken to talking to himself a little in the years since Jodie bailed on him.

Oddly, he thought, it was only after Jodie left that he realized how irksomely young the women in the UM creative writing program were. Nearly all of them were in their twenties, and forty-something Margaret, twice divorced and reasonably attractive, a quondam “ranch wife,” was pretending to be thirty-something. Casual run-ins at grad student parties and drinks at the Ox were sufficient to convince him she had other plans for herself.

But the most peculiar of the unintended consequences of Jack’s decision to repudiate the world of big biz was his infatuation with Missoula. The son of a bird colonel in the Army, Jack grew up everywhere, as his probably never-tobe-completed novel (a good four hundred pages and counting) would testify. Born near DC, he spent fragments of his boyhood in Greece, Germany, back in DC (the Pentagon), Hawaii, and Florida, where he finally lingered long enough to graduate from high school before heading off to Atlanta. He fancied himself an accomplished cosmopolite, a man-ofthe-world even before spending two years in the Big Apple prior to the Houston years. Unrooted, rootless, root-free! A rootless man who occasionally boasted of the fact, but now, apparently quite of a sudden, he wanted very much to stay put. He could not account for it.

“Think of Faust,” he warned himself. “That devilish, Mephistophelian bargain. If he can get the übermenschlich Faust to slow down, to pause for a moment and say to life, ‘stay, thou art fair,’ then his soul would be forfeit.” Such was the deal Mephisto made with the Lord in the prologue scene. Jack’s command of German thanks to his father’s two years in Stuttgart was sufficient for him to make his way through the text in the original with little need for recourse to the Worterbuch. Well, of course Mephisto resorted to underhanded methods. He’s the devil, after all. Alas, poor Gretchen.

Now, like the aging Faust, poor Jack wanted to set down roots.

And so began the job hunt: single white male, age fifty but looking and feeling much younger, with extensive experience in the corporate sector, highest quality undergraduate liberal arts education, solid graduate degree, excellent writing and editing skills. He lined up an impressive body of Letters of Recommendation dating back to Emory and Houston and including his two favorite profs at UM. He supposed himself, per regionally appropriate cliché, “loaded for bear,” more specifically, “for grizzly.” Not that he’d become a big game hunter, or even a fly angler for that matter. Not even a skier. He was a competitive swimmer in high school, and he considered himself a better-than-average tennis player and an acceptable golfer.

He enjoyed good wine, prided himself in his cooking, and over the past couple of years had become a self-styled “master gardener,” whose success enabled him to endow friends and neighbors with an array of heritage tomatoes that ranged from Big Beef and Brandywine to Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra, and Yellow Pear. He admitted to being a bit of a gourmet. Master chef of boeuf bourguignon and stroganoff, and a fair hand with seafood, a lover of oysters on the half shell. He stayed abreast of the news, read broadly, enjoyed going to plays and gallery openings, and although he’d become something of a loner in recent years, he flattered himself that he was “good with people.” He considered himself companionable, although if one were to ask him to name his best friend, he would be hard pressed to name him. Or her. Affable, convivial. He tried out an array of adjectives that might apply personally. Gregarious? Well, no, not quite that, but congenial. Yes. He suspected he was exhausting his inner thesaurus.

Imminently hirable, he informed himself with understandable confidence.

One slight problem did come to mind: he must stay here in Missoula or at least in the vicinity, even if a second mortgage should prove necessary. He could not quite explain or rationalize his sudden obsession with rootedness. He adored his two-bedroom 1920s Craftsman, and of course there was the garden. After a lifetime of acquired diffidence toward where he had found himself in the world, he now found himself “here.”

“Why there, of all places?” his mother wrote him last Christmas. She underlined “there” in the card. His parents had lived at a retirement enclave in Florida for seven years and could not understand why their son would want to “dwell in the land of ice & snow” (Father’s note). His older brother Bob, his father’s favorite, went to Texas A&M and would retire in another couple of years as an Air Force major. Jack believed himself his mother’s favorite, but he had no conclusive evidence. Perhaps it was more hope than belief.

He applied for a job as assistant director of admissions at UM. His credentials seemed to make him a perfect fit, and although he somewhat enjoyed teaching composition courses for two years as a grad assistant, Jack felt no keenness to return to the classroom, at least not to stagger under the burden of three or four comp classes per semester. He loved teaching an undergrad creative writing course in fiction one term, but those jobs weren’t open and wouldn’t be in the foreseeable future. If he wanted a shot at intermediate creative writing jobs at the undergrad or graduate level, he’d need to complete that novel and hope it scored big time. But the labor-of-love that had occupied him over the past three years had not given him cause for optimism. Initially, he liked the notion that he was “undergoing a novel.” It made for good conversation. What was it about? No, not just the plot, but the ideas, the themes. What’s your main character like? Do you know how it ends? When do you think you’ll finish it? Do you have an agent yet?

Of course not. Of course, he had no agent. That was the trick. Even a mediocre graduate creative writing program in fiction or nonfiction, and UM was clearly better than that, would inform students of the absolute necessity of a good agent. Not that such a program would likely provide sure-fire advice on how to acquire said agent. And no professor of prose writing would be generous enough (or dumb enough) to share his or her agent with even his or her #1 protégé. Had Jack managed to become any prof’s protégé? He thought not. Lucky poets, he supposed. No one — but no one — would be willing to sign up as an agent for a poet. One very promising MFA poet who graduated a year before Jack was employed as sommelier at The Mad Scot and seemed likely to become a fixture.

So, he applied for the position as assistant director of admissions, polished his résumé, accumulated his LOR’s, and waited. With surprising speed, he heard from Human Resources via email. The office welcomed his application and provided a form for him to fill out. If they found him basically qualified, they’d move him to the next stage. They did. He was fully qualified. This did not surprise him, as the basic qualifications amounted to a college degree and some sort of work-related experience. Jack correctly perceived his corporate career in marketing would prove “fungible.” This had become the buzzword of the 21st century that accompanied the buzz-phrase, “unintended

consequences.”

Time passed and Jack was reminded of previous job-hunting experiences when he felt “hung out to dry.” But these events, after all, had borne fruit. He invested a few days in resuming work on a draft of the novel that he would impose on the professor who directed his MFA thesis. Intermittently, he started to overturn the garden bed. The Ides of March neared. Fortunately, Professor James was comfortably tenured, single, and willing to share his wisdom in exchange for drinks at the Stockman’s or the Ox. Unfortunately, Professor James had never tried his hand at a novel, his small reputation standing on a slender volume of short stories that was longlisted for a Pulitzer. That collection of exceptional stories remained in need of a mate. But Ed James appeared content with his lot, and he was well liked by his students and colleagues. A tad eccentric, he had become another (as in “yet another”) member of the writerly microcosm that was Missoula.

Before Jack finished the portion of the draft he planned to pass along to Ed, he was informed that his job application had reached Stage Two, which required a writing sample outlining what he might recommend by way of raising enrollment at UM, increasingly under pressure from Montana State University in Bozeman, and what specifically he might say to a prospective student in a person-to-person interview in order to cajole said student into signing up at good old UM instead of MSU.

“Depends on the student’s interests,” he wanted to say. “Depends on her or his intended major.” He knew how to juggle his pronouns. Go with plural nouns (students) and pronouns (they) when you can. Instead of dumping a draft of his novel on Ed James, he presented his two-page write-up and a bottle of Laphroaig, both of which passed muster. Ed offered only a few suggestions on word choice and punctuation.

Jack’s write-ups won favor, and he was advanced to the next round, which entailed online interviews with a fiveperson hiring committee. The director of admissions, well into her sixties, was an institution within the institution, as Jack understood it, so he suspected the new assistant might soon be in line for promotion. Moreover, he suspected the assistant director would be saddled with more than ordinary responsibility for improving the numbers. Three other members of the hiring committee were much younger women, one of them very attractive but, as it happened, “more than a little condescending,” as he informed Ed James after the event. “So,” she asked, “just when was it you graduated from Emory?” Jack watched her face calculate his age.

The lone male on the committee was bearded and wearing a red plaid flannel shirt that struck Jack as overly casual even for a Zoom conference and for the outdoorsy Northwest. He was introduced as the office’s “absolutely indispensable computer genius.”

“Why would you leave Houston?” the pretty but snippy blonde asked.

Jack reiterated his position, as stated clearly in his application letter — his desire, really his need, to escape the corporate world. “It was devouring my soul,” he wanted to say but did not, nor did he mention the novel he felt (still) he was destined to write.

“You left a six-figure job to come to Missoula?”

“Money isn’t everything,” he said lamely. But sincerely.

The male on the committee, who appeared visibly bored, took a deep breath and asked about Jack’s hobbies. “Hobbies?”

“Yeah, like what do you do in your spare time, you know, like when you’re not writing? You into fishing? Backpacking? Hunting?” He paused. “Stamp collecting?” Smirked.

Jack saw the guy was being facetious. And dismissive as well. But he must come up with something, so he said, “Gardening.” To which the bearded man’s response was, “Huh.”

When the call did not come the next week as he’d been advised, but two and a half weeks later, he was informed how very appreciative the committee was and how very impressed they were with his credentials, and how very wellwritten his write-ups were, the best they saw, but they’d decided to offer the job to the other finalist. He must take some satisfaction, he was told, from the realization he was one of the two finalists. They were confident he’d find employment elsewhere in the university and they wished him the very best.

Not just “the best,” he reflected over an Old Fashioned at The Depot.

Nothing daunted, or at least not entirely daunted, Jack scoped out the availability of other jobs on campus and came up with an even better fit: assistant to the academic vice provost for communications. He checked every box and

mentally added a few boxes the vice provost hadn’t even considered. The cliché “in like Flynn” came readily to mind. And as it happened, he was invited to join the vice provost himself for coffee at the commons, and they hit it off. The vice provost was retired military, served in Nam as did Jack’s father, both of them in Army Security Agency, intelligence. Jack and Provost Price admired the red wines of the Pacific Northwest — Oregon pinot noir, a nice petite Syrah from Walla Walla. Had Jack visited the wineries there? He had indeed. Saviah Cellars? Yes. Splendid reds. Did he happen to know their “Jack” series? He did. Excellent wine. Firm handshake.

The coincidence struck Jack as little short of an iron-clad job offer. Imagine, then, his what? Astonishment? Chagrin? Indignation? When ten days later the vice provost’s secretary called to inform Jack that the office had decided against filling that position. They’d decided on “a different tack.” Whatever that meant. The vice provost deeply and sincerely regretted any inconvenience, and he wanted Jack to know how much he enjoyed meeting him personally, and how confident he was that Jack would find “something suitable,” and soon. Perhaps they could get together some day for a round of golf.

Jack responded to this setback by increasing his nightly intake of cask strength Maker’s Mark bourbon even though he was beginning to feel the squeeze. He was not yet feeling fiscal duress, but he knew it was coming. He’d gone through most of his savings. He reprimanded himself for having stalled so long before launching his job search and for having invested so much of his time in the novel. He was naïve. He was a fool. Clearly, he must widen his parameters. He must search outside the bounds of academe.

And that was unfortunate, because what he’d learned about himself over the past half dozen years in Missoula was that the academic world suited him to the proverbial T, even though he had no great interest in the classroom. He was an excellent student, after all, and he rather enjoyed teaching, but he knew from the outset that it was not his métier. He recalled how as an undergraduate at Emory he would stroll about the campus some humid evenings humming or whistling “Gaudeamus Igitur” and how nostalgically right that seemed, and how when he first got to Missoula that old college hymn came back to him: “Juvenes dum sumus.” Let us rejoice while we’re still young. Once we get old, it all turns to humus, doesn’t it?

He turned his attention to various prospects off campus, but with dwindling optimism. He applied for a PR job at St. Patrick’s Hospital and for supervisory positions with the U.S. Forest Service and the City of Missoula, but these, along with two or three other desperate stabs at openings that seemed increasingly less likely, given his qualifications, came up empty. Or not quite “empty,” really. Eight out of ten times, by his calculation, he made the finals, or at least the semis. In at least one case he was informed that he was “regrettably overqualified.” They would love to have him “on their team,” but “it wouldn’t really be fair to him.” They hoped he’d understand. In fact, all his potential employers seemed kind and reassuring, and they did hope he understood, and they wished him the best, and of course they would hold onto his application materials should something more suitable come up.

Case in point, the following from the City of Missoula Parks Department, which was in search of an assistant to the Director:

“Thank you for your application, and for your interest in joining our team! Because we continue to receive so many fine applications from terrific folks such as yourself, it can be challenging to make a final selection! And although we’d love to extend an offer of employment to everyone, we obviously can’t. As such, we have decided to offer the position to another applicant. Please check back with our website from time to time for other potential opportunities. We’ll hold onto your application materials just in case. We appreciate your interest in joining our team and do wish you the very best in your future endeavors!

Kindest Regards,

Art Frei, Director of Parks”

Jack did not feel particularly “terrific” after reading the email, and he could not help wondering about the proliferation of exclamation marks. And that phrase, “as such”? Oh well.

In April he got together with Ed James at the Stockman to talk over the two hundred pages of would-be-novel his former prof had allowed to roost on his back burner for more than a month. It was raining, a daylong drizzle, and Jack’s seedlings were eager to get planted, but he’d wait till the first of May. Ed encouraged him to get on with it, to get that novel wrapped up and find himself an agent right away, and he sympathized with Jack’s job-seeking frustrations. “You should try sub teaching at the high school,” he suggested. “I did that back in the day. Wasn’t a bad gig. Met some lovely

ladies.” Sadly, Ed could offer no advice as to agents. They started with a round of Old Fashioneds and proceeded from there, both of them getting sloshed. The prof called his girlfriend to drive them to their respective domiciles. She did not seem pleased.

Jack had always prided himself on never, ever yielding to depression. Upon occasion, in fact, he’d sneered at friends or acquaintances who’d “fallen into the Slough of Despond,” as he put it. Did anyone, even English profs, still read Pilgrim’s Progress? Probably not. He was determined not to give in to it. He recalled a student in the MFA program the first year he was in Missoula who tried to kill himself — young guy he didn’t know well, a year ahead of him. Sad case. His mother drove up from Denver to take him home, and no one heard from him again. How many notable writers had gone that way? Hemingway, of course, and Plath, Sexton. Virginia Woolf. And David Foster Wallace, whose reading he’d attended in Atlanta.

“No one reaches his middle years without having thought about it, at least in passing,” he heard a professor at a conference claim when addressing Hemingway’s suicide, “if only to dismiss the thought out of hand.”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t do it the way Papa did,” some wiseacre cracked.

“How would you do it?” A woman’s voice from the back of the audience.

“Enough of that,” the professor said. Who was it? Baker? Samuelson? Reynolds? One of Hem’s many biographers, Jack reflected. He dismissed the prospect.

In a Renaissance lit course he took at Emory he encountered Richard Burton’s encyclopedic Anatomy of Melancholy, portions of which he read with only mild pleasure. But he found himself now feeling sufficiently desperate that he recalled that bulky tome in which Burton warns against the ills of isolation and promotes the remedies of conviviality and sociability.

So, on a whim he called Margaret, who had spent the past several years teaching as an adjunct at UM. Following a somewhat awkward prologue during which he explained what he’d been up to these past couple years — not “job hunting,” but “undergoing a novel” — she accepted his dinner invitation. Dead end. It seemed Margaret had decided to take a different turn with her romance life. And by the way, the adjunct’s life — the incessant grading of infinite pages of essays — was every bit as horrible as he imagined.

Jack was reminded of an old junior high bit that goes, “Cheer up, things could get worse. I cheered up. Sure enough, things got worse.”

As his spirits sank toward dejection (he thought of Coleridge’s ode) — but not, he told himself, toward depression, Jack found sleep increasingly hard to come by, but because he had always worked late into the night, he insisted he was immune to insomnia. Absolutely. It drove Jodie to distraction when he’d haul out of bed after midnight to jot down a few sentences for “the novel” only to allow the sentences to morph into paragraphs. She had an annoyingly nasal way of saying it: “Yes, Jack was up all night again with his na-a-aw-vel.”

He talked with Dr. Simmons and lined himself up with an over-the-counter “sleep enhancer,” as the doctor euphemistically put it. “Not habit-forming in the least,” he promised. They worked wonderfully. “Now,” Jack prodded himself, “if only I could work!”

His next job quest led him to Ed’s suggestion that he try his hand at substitute teaching. Here, at last, he experienced

a modicum of success. Right away he got a full week at Frenchtown High, just sixteen miles up the interstate from Missoula. But as quickly as it came, it went. He spent a week schmoozing in the teachers’ lounge and babysitting two shop classes and three classes in U.S. government every day. The teacher he was replacing had taught at FHS forever, coached basketball and track, and had only the slightest interest in U.S. or any other government. The teacher left vague assignments having to do with the 18th and 19th Amendments — booze and women. He was grateful it wasn’t the 2nd Amendment. Although he threw himself into it, Jack found himself incapable of arousing any enthusiasm over either topic. Also, despite Ed’s assurances, his fellow teachers of the fair sex proved, with two notable, married exceptions, to be not terribly attractive.

The subbing ordeal, as he came to think of it, lasted for only a couple more venues, three days at Loyola Sacred Heart, where he monitored biology classes, and two weeks at Hellgate High in Missoula, where he was fortunate to be assigned sections of sophomore and junior English. Erfolg! he predicted. Success. And he embarked on his preparations with glee. One of the junior classes was doing a two-week unit on turning personal experiences into fiction — right up his alley. The sophomore classes were doing To Kill a Mockingbird. What could go wrong? Well, for one thing, he received a visit from an irate parent at the end of the second class spent on Harper Lee’s classic. She accused him of forcing Critical Race Theory on her poor son, who now felt, Mom complained, “racially demeaned.”

Jack congratulated himself for not hiding behind his position as a mere substitute, and he offered a mild defense of the novel — and by the way, had Mom read it? No, of course not, but the minister at her church had warned the congregation against it. Jack promised to inquire into the matter, thanked her for her concern. It’s important for parents to be concerned about what their children read. Does Mom read a lot herself? No, Mom isn’t much of a reader. In another week it would be someone else’s problem. So, it didn’t take Jack two full weeks to realize the high school classroom was an alien environment. More like two full days. But he stuck it out because he needed the money if he was going to plant his beloved heirloom tomatoes this spring. Götterdämmerung! In retrospect, however, he would submit that two or three of his female colleagues in crime were quite attractive, as Professor James promised.

He celebrated the Ides of May by visiting The Happy Gardener to pick up his tomato sets, as usual, along with crookneck squash and cucumbers. Some he’d plant as late as Memorial Day, reliably safe from even mild frost in Missoula. The nursery’s part owner Warren Coldwind, part Blackfeet from Browning, one of the older guys, was working in the vegetable section that day. Jack had talked with him the first time he bought gardening supplies four or five years ago. Turned out Warren had known the writer James Welch from “back in the Dick Hugo days,” as he put it. They’d hoisted a few over the years, Coldwind said. “He was a Jim Beam man.”

“Good guy?” Jack asked.

“The best.”

You didn’t stay in Missoula long before those names came up, the Montana poems of Richard Hugo like “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg” and the novels of Jim Welch — Winter in the Blood, Fools Crow. Bill Kittredge’s nonfiction. Jack had been smart enough to read up before he applied to the MFA program. Long gone, but not forgotten. “Never forgotten,” Coldwind uttered gruffly by way of resisting tears.

“You ever read Death of Jim Loney?” he asked Jack, pretty much out of the blue.

“Afraid I haven’t. Pretty hard reading I’ve heard.”

“It’s a tough one.” Coldwind paused, read something in Jack’s face or in his tone of voice, and changed the subject. “Bet you’re after your heirlooms.”

Jack noted that Coldwind always called them “heirloom.” He usually said “heritage” himself. Same thing, he figured. They wandered among the sets, Coldwind suggesting he try out a couple of different cultivars this year. “Try the Eva,” he said. “You’ll love her. Very sweet. The Eva Purple Ball — comes out of Germany.”

Jack sighed and immediately wondered where that sigh came from.

“So,” Coldwind said, “what’s up with you? How’s that novel coming?”

“Slowly. How’s business? You look pretty…”

“Oh, we’re swamped. You know, this time of year. We need to make some hires.”

“Well.” Jack paused.

This would not be an opportunity to reascend the six-digit corporate ladder, or to acquire a comfortable post in academe with a far more modest salary (with benefits), but maybe to stumble into an hourly job, not a career, but a job

where you might hope to get forty hours a week part of the year with sporadic overtime. If you were careful, you could afford your mortgage payment. But you could wear whatever you wanted to work, and you wouldn’t be taking your work home with you, and you’d get a discount on your heirloom tomatoes. So, Jack paused, and he hesitated, but not for long.

J.T. Townley

For Rocky's the One

Rocky says my cans rattle too loud. My bottles got too much clank or crinkle pucker pop. They’re my bread and butter. Rocky don’t like that one bit.

Tough titty, says I.

That sets him off thinking about milk then cheese then pizza. He likes the kind with the egg on top. Nasty to me but you know what they say about taste. Rocky tells me beggars can’t be choosers.

I blow a little ditty on my mouth harp. Quit talking in flatitudes, says I, and let’s get on with the job at hand.

There’s cash every which way you look. All a fella gots to do is open his eyes. In the gutter on the grass. Piled into trash cans overflowing onto the goldurn sidewalk. I’m not talking pirate’s booty rubies diamonds gold doubloons. It’s nickels and dimes chump change but don’t knock it them things add up. Every little bit helps.

What don’t help is Rocky. Won’t stoop to pick up can one though he’ll scarf a mound of half-eaten hot wings or a New York slice he finds in a planter. Always got food on the brain. Talks about it twenty-four-seven. Enough to drive you batshit crazy when you can’t recall the last time you had three squares.

A trash truck growls past. Yuppies in high-dollar moccasins give us a wide berth.

What you need, says I, is a hobby to take your mind off things.

Rocky gives me a sourpuss. Wants to know what I might have in mind.

I put my thinker to it. Spring sunshine peeks through the clouds then disappears. Breeze buffets paper bags and dead cherry blossoms against parked luxury sedans.

I take a gander inside a spanking-new example of fine German engineering. Nothing visible worth considering wallet purse laptop. I scratch my chin. Rocky picks at a half-eaten apple he discovers at the base of a Chinese maple.

Then a bolt from the blue. Here’s an idea, says I. Let’s pay Milk a visit.

Rocky sneers. Keep us outta trouble, says I.

He chomps the rest of the apple core and all. There’s more to life, says I, than stuffing your face.

Me and Rocky first met up in Forest Park. I came to on a bright summer afternoon with a rock for a pillow. Crick in my neck and mouth full of cotton. Don’t ask me how I got there. Nothing but fir trees and blue sky and birdsong. Took me a minute to get my bearings. The old carcass wasn’t real responsive so I just laid there aching and wondering. After a time I summoned the fortitude to wipe away the drool. Soon sounds of pawing at canvas back behind me somewhere. Took a hundred years but I willed myself upright. The whole world swam in a blur of color while the blood drained from my head. I hawked and spat. Couple deep breaths I managed to kneel and swivel.

Hey Mister, says I. That’s private property belongs to yours truly.

The little SOB just snickered then pilfered my last candy bar. Ripped into it and gobbled it up right in front

of me. Pitched the wrapper into the ferns.

Ain’t you got no respect? says I.

By way of response he burped. Then he asked me didn’t I have anything else to eat?

Who do you think you are? says I.

Hairy little rascal introduced himself as Rocky. I gave him my name or maybe somebody else’s. I yanked my knapsack from his grip and took stock. Zipper was fubar’d. Canvas was smeared with mud and torn in a couple spots the shape of claws. Rocky stood there waiting. I dug out a bruised apple a bag of crushed potato chips some beef jerky which he promptly swiped from my hands and stuffed down his gullet. Didn’t even bother to unwrap it.

Goldurn, says I. You got an appetite on you.

He backhanded plastic shards from his lips.

I uncapped a liter of Agua Fría and guzzled it. Came up gasping for air but grinning.

We sat listening to the birds twitter and squeak. Rocky looked right at home out there among the spruce fir hemlock. He also looked bored—though I later learned that was his hungry face. He wore it twenty-four-seven.

What say we get gone? says I.

Rocky didn’t have no complaints.

I dug out my trusty compass. North was that away. Only trouble was I wasn’t wholly certain where in holy hell we were. Down the hill maybe thirty yards was a trail that went one way and the other. I scratched my head and chin and left armpit. A godawful stench of green rot wafted up off my person. Winter was one thing when it was always raining and nothing ever dried out but this was the middle of summer last I checked.

Got any idea where to locate the nearest Y?

Rocky said he could take me there.

I knew there’d be a price and I knew that price would be heaping mounds of dim sum ramen drunken noodles.

When I climbed to my feet I had to fight back the woozy. Rocky tried not to stare and failed. I coughed and spluttered. I searched for the day week month but couldn’t beat back the cobwebs.

Well, says I, lead on friend.

Rocky scampered through the ferns and up the trail. I did my durndest to follow.

Milk ain’t posted up at Union Station like usual. Don’t find him at the bus barn next door nor the park two blocks south. I sidle over to a pair of stumblebums propping up a brick wall.

Y’all seen Milk?

But they’re snickering over a piece of tin foil and a lighter so it ain’t no use.

Rocky gnaws on a foot long corn dog he rescued from the dumpster.

Under the bridge past the train station the tinted window of a silver Mercedes hums down. A man with sunglasses and dreads says, What you need?

Looking for Milk, says I.

When he grins his gold tooth glints in the glare.

I shift my bag of loot from one shoulder to the other. Rocky shakes his head at the rattle and clank.

You seen him? says I.

A mask falls over the man’s face. Seen who?

You hard of hearing? Milk.

The man scans up the block and down. Quit hollerin, cracka. He nods us over.

Me and Rocky drift that direction. Rocky paws at a hunk of burrito he picked up from the gutter. We stop a couple feet from the luxury sedan. Price of that vehicle would carry me the rest of my goldurn days. What sense does that make? I whistle and nudge Rocky.

Nice wheels brother. Musta cost a pretty penny.

You and me ain’t brothas whitebread. He spits at my feet.

Rocky must feel the overspray on his bare legs but he don’t let on none.

No offense intended Mr. Moneybags. This here’s Rocky and I’m—

He holds up a meaty fist. No names goddamnit.

I shrug and rock back on my heels. Okey-dokey, says I. Now you know where Milk’s at or don’t you?

The man eyes us up and down. Rock, right?

I turn to Rocky, who scarfs the last of his burrito and licks his paws clean.

Come again? says I.

Or blow I got blow. He sucks his teeth. But I think y’all hit the rock.

A surge like magma in my chest. Em-eye-el-kay, says I.

He taps a shiny pistol against the windowsill. Simmer down, cracka.

I put up my offhand and rattle back a couple steps. Rocky skitters behind a bridge pillar.

Don’t want no trouble Mister, says I. Just looking for our old buddy Milk.

His eyes pop. That bitch-ass muthafucka who got himself busted?

When was this?

Last night last week the fuck do I care?

I tongue the hole where my tooth oughta be. You his replacement?

He grins a golden grin. Something like that.

I shift my bag to the other shoulder and glance at Rocky. I wanna show him what all this is about.

You got any he-man? says I.

You got guap?

I dig in my dungarees and flash my filthy wad.

We broker our trade.

Next time, says the man, ask for Wheezy.

Me and Rocky are itching for a taste. Only I got my cans to swap for cash first so don’t nobody nab them while we’re indisposed.

Machine’s busted as usual so we gotta wait for a hand count. Rocky snakes a box of powdered donuts and wolfs them down. With her smiles and small talk Kim as reads her employee nametag is too friendly. Whole thing takes forever and a day.

Count the cans, I think or say. All day’s how long we ain’t got.

The royal we, she says. I love it.

Meantime Rocky snags a bag of BBQ potato chips and sets to work.

You’re gonna be sick as a dog, says I.

He crunches away and licks his paws.

Cash at last in hand me and Rocky explore the vast array of bottled waters on offer. This here store’s upscale catering to the well-heeled residents of the Diamond District so they got every brand under the sun. I don’t go for bubbles so I concentrate on the still varieties: Vita Brevis, Biogen, God of Water, so on, so forth. I come to from a bout with he-man always got this powerful thirst. Hope for the best plan for the worst as the fella says. So I load up on all the Agua Fría my greasy bills will buy.

Then me and Rocky find us this alcove round the corner. Used it previously on several prior occasions. It’s public but private. I understand the location foot traffic presence of interested parties authorities and otherwise. I know the score. Right across the street from a high-end coffee house full of yuppies with cash to burn. I once inquired about the possibility of acquiring a cup of their finest Joe. Eight bucks a pop daylight robbery!

We settle in and watch the world go by. It pays to be patient. We already caught more than one sidelong glance and dirty look as we lumbered from the store to our hidey-hole we don’t want to alert nobody else to our presence. Incognito’s the way to go. Me and Rocky try not

to talk but we both know from experience that has a way of not working.

Hot diddly damn, says I then blow a few notes on my mouth harp. We got it good good good me and you.

Rocky grins nods then tells me he’s hungry.

I shake my head and chuckle. Hoo wee Rocks you’re a bottomless pit.

He snickers then reaches into the shadows for cheese and assorted cold cuts he swiped from the grocery store and stacks them on a borrowed French baguette.

You got some light fingers brother.

His eyes sparkle but his mouth’s too stuffed with sandwich to speak.

Once he’s had his fill and we’ve vanished from plain sight I declare the hour of he-man upon us. Rocky pats away the crumbs and wipes his mouth. We don’t gotta worry about tin foil lighters pipes syringes. What we got from Mr. Mercedes is the same exact thing our buddy Milk gives us a simple pill comes in a pill bottle looks like the real thing. Which is what it is if you think about it right curing us of the ills of an unjust world.

Through the lips and over the gums, says I, look out belly here she comes.

Rocky follows suit.

Takes a few minutes to kick in. Meantime I play us a ditty on my mouth harp a real humdinger something I heard or imagined one time.

When he-man takes ahold of you there ain’t no wondering. Happens all at once and in a big way. That medicine crushes everything in its path worry anxiety nightmares bad memories evil thoughts. Ain’t nothing I ever heard of can wriggle outta its grasp. That’s the whole point.

Rocky tells me my teeth hurt.

How’d you know that? says I.

He flashes his own enamel yellow-stained and razorsharp.

Soon the whole world slows way down. Everything sounds like being underwater feels it too if water was made of concrete. Every breath takes an hour a week a year a whole what’s it called epoch. Sometimes light spatters in sometimes the whole world goes dark. Lose track of where I am who I am that I am. Hard to remember when you can’t feel your face when you don’t have hands when you slip outside yourself but don’t gotta look back at who you was cowering in some dirty alcove battered and crumpled and in dire need of a wash. No need to reflect on your only friend a hairy SOB who thinks of nothing but cadging his next meal. The he-man takes all that away. The filthy glares and nasty comments. The squinty eyes that look right through you like you ain’t even there. Better than a golden boxcar ride down the coast at sunset. Better than a steel-toed boot to the head.

Rocky don’t speak for the longest time. I don’t even remember that I have a mouth a tongue thoughts I might want to spew into the world. The mindless chatter from the high-dollar café across the street comes to me like twittering birdsong to a cadaver at the bottom of a muddy pond. Puttering scooters snarling buses growling pickups. Even when somebody’s canine companion growls lunges barks three inches from my haggard face I never flinch. Don’t have to. Not my job anymore. That’s what the heman’s for.

But oblivion don’t last forever. It can’t. Many times as I wished it would like it done for other gents I met vagabonding hither and yon. Took their meds bumped their heads woke up dead. When my number’s up I’ll gladly say goodbye but I ain’t about to take the shortcut home. I ain’t no coward.

Yank off the Agua Fría cap and tilt the bottle up till I got pure mountain spring water streaming down my gullet. Sweetest thing I ever tasted. Polish off two bottles and I’m heaving for breath as I uncap a third.

Get you a drink Rocky, says I sliding back under. Nothingness. How long it lasts is anybody’s best guess. Feels like a split second and forever. Not something

I recognize till I begin to rouse at the squirt and stink of something wet up my nose.

Sir? says a gravelly voice.

Somebody shakes my shoulder. I force my peepers open. Uniformed SOB sporting a badge and rubber gloves. Something goldurn official writ proud above the chest pocket

You ain’t taking my friend away, says I.

We’re here to help, sir.

For Rocky’s the one who saved me from the forest. He’ll eat you outta house and home but he’s true blue.

Call EMS, says a gravelly whisper.

Ain’t no reports of a mask-wearing varmint inside the city limits, says I.

It’s okay, sir. Do you know where you are? Can you tell me your name?

All at once my mind feels clear as it’s been in months maybe years. Course I know my goldurn name, says I.

Only when I go fishing for it I draw a blank.

But I ain’t gonna tell you, says I. I wasn’t born yesterday.

Can you tell us your age? asks the other uniformed officer a girl.

So you sorry SOBs can use it against me? No chance. I shift against the wall. No longer numb my legs go pinsand-needles on me.

Do you know what you took?

I chew my cheek. You think I’m dumb as dirt cuz I’m living hand-to-mouth? says I. Now where’s Rocky?

Who?

My bosom buddy my brother-from-another-mother my partner-in-crime. That’s a figure of speech, says I, not a confession of no sort whatsoever.

We’re not the police, says the guy with the badge.

We’re here to help, the girl says.

An ambulance pulls up lights flashing but silent as death. Now here comes a crew of three in blue jumpsuits with tackle boxes and a gurney. They chitchat with the uniformed flunkies for a spell. I cower deeper into my cave wishing I had a lit torch to drive the barbarians away.

Sir? says the girl. Eyes wide okay? Stay with me.

They get their instruments out and start taking measurements before I know what hits me.

High-and-mighty yuppies from the coffee place crowd into the street to rubberneck. Traffic gets snarled. Folks murmur and sip high-dollar drinks but don’t never offer me even a sip. What happened to the charitable gesture?

The jumpsuit crew read out my measurements then

babble in gobbledygook aimed to keep me in the deep dank dark. Now they wheel over the gurney and without a goldurn by your leave hoist me up and strap me down.

Gotta admit the thing’s softer than a hunk of cardboard and a curb. Soon’s they start pushing me to their flashing hearse I set them straight.

I ain’t going nowhere without Rocky, says I. Who? asks the nearest jumpsuit.

We already been through this, says I. Either Rocky comes or I stay.

There’s much ado ballyhoo hullabaloo. They ain’t got the first clue.

Short, says I, hairy sports an old-timey bank robber mask. Dove for cover soon as you dogooders came sniffing around trying to Shanghai me to the morgue or worse. You want to find him a dozen eggs raw will do the trick. Their powwow breaks up. The jumpsuits wheel me to the hearse and shove me into the back end.

You can’t do this, says I. I got rights.

They’ll get you the help you need, says the girl.

I didn’t ask for your goldurn help, says I, and I don’t want it.

They’re hooking me up to all kinda equipment. I’m yelling out the folding doors.

Caffeinated yuppies go tippy-toes to catch a glimpse.

I know there’s some magic string of words to make all this stop. I scratch and claw and dig through the detritus but can’t come up with nothing.

The driver slams the doors shut.

I ain’t going nowhere without Rocky, I yell. Take it easy, says the jumpsuit manning the instruments. Your friend can meet us at the hospital.

Over my dead body, says I. I start to wondering if that

what’s happening here. Day had to come sooner or later but I ain’t ready. Not by a long shot. I can’t kick off without telling Rocky goodbye.

The hearse rocks and lurches. Rubberneckers must clear outta the way cuz now we’re rolling slow at first then faster and faster. Next thing I know we’re around the corner and down the block accelerating into the dying light of day.

PLAY — A MONOLOGUE

Bliss Goldstein

A Letter To The Woman I Almost Came To Fisticuffs With At The Food Co-Op, The One Downtown, Not The One Near The Mall

Dear Leeanne,

I am so sorry that I cut in line in front of you when I dashed back into the Community Food Co-op. Mea Culpa. What can I say but that it’s now official? I’m an Asshole. The situation’s been getting progressively worse over the last few years but I didn’t know how bad until yesterday when I raced you to the register.

What our little competition revealed was that my vinegar-swigging, water-worshiping, lefty-leaning ways were just a facade. To be fair, I wasn’t the only one peeled back like an organic grape to her Basic Human Shittiness. Would you consider taking some responsibility? You fired the opening salvo, after all. You saw me heading back from the pneumatic front doors towards the cash register and took off first. Your worn Birkenstocks slapped faster than my new Hokas to make it to the cashier before I did. So what if I started to trot?

I don’t know your name, but in my mind, you are Leeanne. I hate the name Lee. Growing up in Georgia — before I moved to the Pacific Northwest where I truly belong — I noticed there were many boys named after the Confederate General. Most had an abundance of ear wax and a Great Great Gramps who fought on the “right” side of the War Between the States. Assholes.

But whatever the reason for my Asshole tendencies, this was your lucky day to bring out the worst in me, as in racing you to the cashier. The same cashier who’d been so angelic to me when I was in her line, a mere two minutes before.

“How are you?” The Angel asked, her voice gentle.

I believed she truly wanted to know. As she’d rung up my pesticide-free avocados, we’d had a lovely, all-too-brief chat about my wellbeing. I’d left her register filled with light.

However, that inner glow didn’t last long.

On my way to the parking lot, through a cloud of cumin and natural deodorant, I’d spotted a fern for sale. I wouldn’t expect you to know this, but ferns hold a special place in my heart. I’d snatched my darling from the shelf, brushed her fronds against my cheek, and turned back to purchase my emotional support plant at The Angel’s register.

As I pivoted, Leanne, I saw you, heading with great purpose in those frayed sandals toward my register. Our eyes met. You picked up speed. I picked up speed. You swerved. I leapt, in almost a pirouette, towards the register. If I could glide to the head of the line before you laid your processed groceries down at the rear, I could win this thing.

Just as you were about to heave your basket onto the conveyor belt, I thrust Fern into The Angel’s hand. You probably still have PTSD from the sight of my arm reaching out so long it looked like it was made of sustainably sourced rubber. Do you recall how The Angel looked down at Fern, looked up at me, looked back at you, then looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here, the Conveyor Belt of Doom?

That’s when your gravelly voice had hissed like a furnace behind me.

“Rude, rude, rude, rude,” you said.

“Excuse me?” I kept my voice serene and put on my most placid face.

As I have caused you distress, Leanne, I owe it to you to highlight the crappiest behavior on my part. When talking to misbehaving dogs, I have found it best to quiet one’s voice. I used that voice with my children when they vexed me, and, I used it on you. I deeply regret that. I am embarrassed to admit I said to you in the most dulcet of tones, “Why are you doing this? Putting such unpleasantness out into the world? Isn’t there enough unpleasantness out there already?”

I will never forget the moment the smoke swirling out of your ears burst into flames. “You will not put this on me!” you screamed.

I turned back to the cashier. Her doe-like eyes had widened till the whites bulged. The poor woman was caught in

her worst customer service nightmare. That night, she would probably drink something stronger than unfiltered vinegar. I imagined her staring at the wall with a vacant look, stroking her cat into the wee hours. I had to rein it in for her sake. Plus, I’m not too proud to admit to you, my stomach was in knots. Maybe I had contributed a tad to this unpleasantness. Perhaps I’d even escalated it? Was there even a small chance, a remote possibility, that from a certain perspective, it might actually be my fault how far south our exchange had gone?

When I lived in the South and someone was acting out, we’d say, “Bless your heart.” We didn’t mean it. The next time I feel that constriction in the part of my gut that leads directly to my sphincter, I promise you this, Lee — may I call you that? — with your G-d as my witness, I make this vow. I will put a hand over my heart, and as a way to become a better person, I will bless myself for real. I will remind myself that I can be a good person with a big ol’ sloppy heart instead of one giant self-righteous Asshole. And I will transmute the Bad Vibes into Good Ones before they exit my body in one rose-scented, spiritually-uplifting fart.

But enough about my spiritual evolution, dear friend. Now that we’ve been to war together, but on opposite sides of the conveyor belt, I must apologize and mean it. Next time we run into each other, when I reach into my backpack, please don’t be alarmed. It’s not to withdraw a hand-knit mitten to throw to the ground to challenge you to a dual at dawn, but to gift you with a certificate to Values Village so you can replace those worn Birkenstocks.

Please accept my apology and remember that to err is human, but to forgive divine.

I am counting on you to confer with your better angels.

Yours Truly from the bowels of the National Asshole Recovery Program.

P.S. I’m sorry to report I’m not the only one here. There are 330 million of us. We’re a little on edge, and just trying our best to learn how to be worthy of shopping at the Co-op.

P.P.S. A cot just opened up across the aisle, if you’d like to join me.

POETRY

Jeffery Brady

Behind the At

It’s as if he never knew where we were going, or where he’d been.

On a trip to the beach I’d ask where we were, and he’d always reply, “Behind the at.”

He’d let the thought sit with us a few seconds, our father in short sleeves behind the wheel, winking at my mother, the tall pines rushing by, slowing down for the South Carolina border towns wrapped in magnolias, telling us to look for the signs— Pageland, Cheraw, Bennettsville, Clio— and shout out their names from our station wagon occupation, until at last we saw the ocean, the car stopped, and we ran and jumped in, our clothes still on, at the destination behind the at.

“Where were you?” I asked later when he forgot to pick me up at school on a chilly fall day. “Behind the at,” he said, but it didn’t feel like a joke, or that a lesson would come later. Work, maybe, or more likely a long business lunch, or a beer after the back nine, smoking and playing poker at the club house.

So I told him what I thought, “I know where the ‘at’ is.”

“You do?” he said. “Because I don’t.” But rather than guessing, I laughed, and he laughed, and soon I was in high school and could conjure “behind the at’s” of my own instead of telling him about setting off M-80s by the lake, toking up after practice, or riding around drinking beers and chucking empties into yards.

Only once, after he got sick, when he asked where I’d been, did I tell him the truth: “I jumped off Gunpowder Creek bridge last night.” And he smiled and said he had jumped off the taller Highway 127 bridge over the Catawba at my age after older boys made him strip for freshmen initiation. “They did that then?” I asked, and he said that’s when he learned to say “behind the at” to his mom, his wife, his son.

Months later, his cancer came back to ravage his spleen: his body’s primary blood filter, guardian behind the at.

And I wonder, where did he go.

Judith Burtner

Little brass bug

Little brass bug sits stunned on the wet gillnet deck shining like a proud button on a gray uniform. I lie down in oil slicks to see it better: delicate legs wave, then prance forward purposefully, goose-stepping toward my orange glove.

Bug’s bronze shield twinkles and thin legs march, not up onto my finger out of the slosh of sea, but bulldozing against me. It’s a digger of trenches awaiting battle. The glove moves away, and brass bug’s first leg salutes. No shelter or aid wants he, Brass bug, little soldier, gone to fight the sea.

Johanna Douglas

Home Town Hospitality

Monarchs are a symbol of summer in Eastern Montana. Then the trees turn the color of their wings, they cloud the sky, fleeing our northern clime.

I too once fled the cold wind and empty prairie. Butterflies take generations to return.

Home again, in my childhood house, with none of my childhood pets the counter cracked and carpet long gone. It took lifetimes to come back.

The room I spent cocooned in is its own winter. Stripped bare save a movie poster on the ceiling. I spent sun soaked days, exploring

collapsed homesteads, where the butterflies enthroned themselves on dry rotting wood. If not rot, then wind reaches into everything here. I am no exception.

I work now less than a hundred yards surrounded by deep purple alfalfa flowers, a favorite of our monarchs, From the house where I had my first kiss, the butterflies gone by then.

The summer has passed since I migrated home. Wet June light, dried to September. There were no butterflies this year.

Dale

Champlin

How Neatly I Dream

—after Pablo Neruda

asleep with my hands tucked tight my posture closed as a clamshell. I sleep oblivious of wicked thoughts, in an unfeeling mood. I sleep with all my jewelry removed. White circles indent each finger— my geology of years like the rings of a tree, circles around the sun.

I should like to dream as a panther, black nighttime as my cloak, my tongue rough as sawteeth, my sex chapped with desire. Speaking to no one, I would leap over the landscape, over raw mountains and rivers. In my slumber, I hunt deer

dispassionate as the lake below. Night flows through me like dark water.

At times, I might plummet, plunge and tear across bare deserted snowfields.

Sometimes asleep I claw through black-ice night, flecks

of starlight caught in my fur. enormous in feline flight, my boundless chase carved into granite mountaintops. I promise to care for your dreams, with the swarthy obscurity of my slumbering prowess, a growl from my relentless maw.

Kersten Christianson

Two Poems

Revived by Fang & Claw

The North Klondike Highway runs 330 miles from Whitehorse to Dawson City. The road braids its way through the boreal to meet, greet, and at times, offer tender, temporary goodbye to the Yukon River, before reuniting again with an open-mouthed kiss upon your arrival. You can’t travel this artery without a finger on the pulse of memory. You remember his lazy, left-handed, two-fingered steer, windows open, his lower lip packed with Copenhagen Snuff, his right hand on your thigh, your hair blowing in the wind like a Bob Dylan song. Eyes wild, kindled by cuss and spark, loonies and toonies clanking in the console, not jazz, but Tragically Hip cranked on the stereo: radio / cassette / CD / streamed. This time, you trip this road like a missile, brake hard to watch Braeburn elk, iPhone photo-shoot a grizzly bear clawing through packed dirt and root for sun-worshipping ground squirrels. Even a deer catches your eye, and you marvel at this unscreened wild; no filter. Not even the acreage of still-smoking wildfire can slow you down. You have a 3:30 appointment with Double Denim Tattoo; Bee is ready to ink Zhùr, a 57,000-yearold wolf pup on the arm of your writing hand. A 57,000-year-old-wolf pup who still has stories to tell: That her last meal was salmon, that she was crushed in her den, that she still travels north from a museum display to attend Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nations gatherings, like Moosehide. That she was found by miners in a goldfield outside of Dawson City. That she first appeared in a poem of yours in 2016, a haibun quite like this. And later, your finger traces this new art resting on a bed of flaming fireweed in your skin, you close your eyes and imagine the unruly nature of her copper pelt, that baby-soft animal fur of her. And later, you check into the magenta-trimmed Bunkhouse, walk the muddy, pot-holed street to the Back Alley Pizza Window. There, the old owner says to you in a thick, Italian accent, Where is your man and your daughter? as if no time had passed, as if seven years had not passed.

To answer, I grasp at straws, the story too sad for such fine pizza.

Another Lunar New Year

and I find myself in the bughouse, again, my heart in my eyes, and buzzing through the door at the Elks on a Friday night for his chicken lo mein and eggrolls. It’s the Year of the Dragon,

and my monsters are nothing but ardent. Bright-eyed and amorous they are fiery-tongued, and word-slipped as they tend to be in flatlined winter. When his shift is over, and he’s

ordered a pint, I pat the barstool next to me, settle in close for stories, and his good company. We’re not public like this, it’s a first, but he’s a dimber cove, and I tease him that without my readers

he could be the actor Jeremy Allan White of Calvin Klein ad fame, only his older, hotter brother, rooftop cavorting in his skivvies, his arms stretching for the blaze, reaching for me in sizzling moments. He tells me

it’s time I have my eyes checked. He’s no quick smiler, but his hand touches my arm, shoulder, every time I think he will. And later, when I text him thank you, his fiery reply, “’Night beautiful!” keeps me smitten; keeps me warm.

Bonnie Demerjian

Two

Poems

Spring Tide

Minus tide in June the pathway minutes wide bridging life and death.

Down past the blades of sea grass, stepping though the gentle pop of bladderwort, then zone of barnacles and anemones with folded arms, toward the tissue-thin sea lettuce draped on just-bared sand. Now, at the tideline, the land is muted. It’s the ocean’s turn to speak. The sparrow’s voice is drowned by the waves’ rhythmic stroking of eelgrass tresses. Further now, where stringy dreads of kelp lie smothered in eggs, those glistening pearls, some to thrive and some to fill the humpback’s maw. Cockles explode with brine beside the empty shells of their kin. Here, a crow’s three-toed print tells of the ever-hungry belly. The sea is hungry, too — yesterday’s boot prints will be gobbled up, while freshwater tumbles on its way to salty oblivion. And here slumps a pouch of orange-pocked flesh, the cucumaria, sifting mouth stilled, soft tentacled feet curled beneath. Yes, sorrow for a sea cucumber.

A long pull outward silent, unstoppable the ocean exhales

The Poem That Got Away

I’m here on this lambent morning in June to catch a fish. The sun is still asleep, the lines are in while the boat pushes through the water’s gentle chop, slow but determined. Everywhere potential prompts show their shy faces—cedar branches bow with grace, a thrush trills its dawn message, and waves softly slap against the hull. I sit with notebook, ready with poised pen and the comfort of coffee bidding a poem to bite, to take an image and run with it. Why won’t those jeweled starfish, draped on the rock face, spark a metaphor? Or those scales of beaten metal on the thrashing fish and the surge of happy muscles when it’s netted, now landed? But the poem gives an agile twist and escapes the notebook. Today it will swim free while the hungry poet heads back to the dock with salmon for dinner.

Waves glisten Kelp fronds stream away Elusive beauty

Patrick Dixon

Do the Math: A Photographer’s Lament

I pull the lid off the plastic cylinder and drop a roll of the slide film I used to use into my waiting hand: Fujichrome Velvia, 36 exposures, ISO 50. Another lifetime ago, I took my Canon A-1 out of the bag and photographed Alaska: gold birches in the low autumn sun, emerald northern lights, the scarlet Amanita, the crimson currant.

And you, before we were married: young, laughing, dancing with the dog, pensive in the mirror, sleeping, hair curled around your head, the shape of you under the sheet.

Thousands of photographs of fishing, mountains, snow, moose, eagles and the local caribou herd crossing the road as we drove the kids to school; pictures of volcanoes erupting across the inlet, birthdays, Halloween and glimmering stars.

All those images rewound into 35mm film containers, tucked inside small plastic cannisters mailed off to mature in the chrysalis of a photo lab— emerging as small cardboard boxes containing 36 individual moments of a decades-long chronicle— thousands of fractions of seconds that seem so significant, yet don't even equal an hour of our lives.

Don’t believe me? Do the math: take an average of a 60th of a second for each time the shutter was clicked, multiply by 36 exposures. The answer is 0.6 seconds. Take that times a thousand rolls (or 36,000 individual pictures) and you have 600 seconds or 10 minutes… or a lifetime.

Suzanne Edison

Imagined Conversation with My Daughter After Roe v. Wade Is Struck Down

If she says, I’d never have one but it’s ok if others do I would not tell her about the country where it was illegal

and I was 21, the same age she is now. Then, I did not phone my mother, fearing— I thought you were smarter than that—

A tourist, I was unschooled in Malay, and though women wore hijabs, my bare head drooped like the Ru tree leaves.

I remember giant sea turtles scraping divots on the beach to spawn, their eggs highly prized—

I was alone in the room with the English-speaking doctor and a strange woman held my hand

because the man I loved didn’t want me to do this. I listened though to the bleating in my head,

fear’s voice about being unconscious, all the ways I might die, and refused a sedative and anesthesia.

Even now my belly tightens remembering my guts being sucked out, uncontrollable

shaking. But I would say, dear daughter, may you never have to stand with a scale in hand, sword in the other, weighing a life.

This poem first appeared in Naugatuck River Review

Dan Elliott

Dear Jeanne

In bed after a shower, shave and dinner of sorts, I thought of writing a poem plainly obsessed with the absence of you.

I’m like a plow set too high to turn the earth, a horse in a charge that’s lost his rider, a magnet trying to lift a fixed piece of metal, fruit in the cellar of a solitary man anything made for something not doing what it was meant to do.

I am on the moon without you.

Helena Fagan

I Don’t Have Time

To care if the white grout turns the color of pavement— at least not enough, never enough, to get on my knees with a toothbrush.

To worry about the extra ten dollars for the fancy toilet paper at Costco— aging bodies deserve small luxuries.

To fuss about no invites for New Year’s Eve— home alone transforms from the mark of loser to gift of solitude.

To feel over or underdressed, to only choose age-appropriate clothing— if you don’t like my overalls, turn away.

To let the weather distress— miss the joy of a day because I want something different. with relatives swayed by toxic rhetoric— my heart still yearns for theirs.

To blame others for any misery along my way— or tape my mouth with a victim label.

Now when I travel, my grey hair a beacon— men, unasked, lift my bag into the overhead bin.

As hatred bounces like a ball, out of normal boundaries, no ref in sight— might this tiny form of kindness, this seeing, bound as easily as enmity, as fear?

No time to hold tight to conflict, aversion, someone else’s standards— turn to the light with me, let’s find our way quickly.

Patricia Farrell

Two Poems

Courtyard Reverie

I want to be that hummingbird ruby-jeweled throat plunging into curtains of beaded water— & later I will visit you as you sleep, then—like the fable of the Hummingbird & the Agatha Tree— I will hover at your cheek & probe my slender bill between your lashes to draw out the cottonwood fluff & the lint of your dreams spin them into a parachute & sail over this wall back into our life

Santa Ana Winds

Red flag warnings all week but no pings bells vibrations reached me so I sat oblivious your house burning & you wept alone safe inside your half-packed car askew in the library lot as if the nearness of books was sanctuary enough as embered gusts lifted flaming fronds towards the sea & later local news broadcasts the library’s hull smoldering like a ship beached among burnt ripples & your home once glass and wood now only chimney surrounded rubbled twisted debris & there in the ashes your concrete Aphrodite faces black hills her chin on soot covered palm

Barbara Flaherty

The Deep — Prince William Sound

This ferry moves through ice floes, large and small. Glacial releases melt down one million tons each day. Greater vessels have foundered on them, but the deep digests them into itself, the blue compacted ice, the crushed and delicate silt, the heavy-laden gravel.

The hull sinks deep beneath our weight. The engine endlessly vibrates under us. How different from currents of air these water rivers where life leaps out of the void like memories or dreams, porpoise, dolphin, whale out of nowhere.

It is like that with the deep things, isn’t it? The tender and the hard things, like fear or grief or falling in love. You remember that madness, don’t you?

Through not as deep as the gulf the waters of the sound are deep enough to drown in. A man died this week, a ton of gray whale upended his small boat.

His brothers, overturned themselves, hauled him out of the waters to bring him back to life. Those who tried to pull their dying brother from the depths had to save themselves as well. You know what that is like.

I won’t go on and on about it or the swells that rise from undersea quakes, tidal waves, the big grey whale of your soul breaking through your life at the fluid edges of ice

Charles Goodrich

Lucky

After graduation, I hitchhiked to Portland and faked my way into a job as a line cook at Lucky’s All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.

My only kitchen experience had been washing dishes in the college cafeteria but I used my budding literary skills to gin up a résumé.

Lucky’s was a gravy-colored, cinderblock building with a single window: one-way between the manager’s office and the kitchen. Our customers heaped fried chicken, pork roast, mashed potatoes, baked beans and macaroni salad in steep mounds onto their plates.

I was good at opening #10 cans and boiling spaghetti noodles in a giant vat, but the deep fryer tested me, smoking and spattering grease on my hands. Fantasies of working outdoors festered in me.

So I wasn’t particularly upset one day in my second week when Charlotte, the greasy-haired, gargantuan head cook, draped her meaty arm across my shoulders and said, “You’ve never cooked a day in your life, have you?”

David A. Goodrum

In the Storm

lamps and candles left unlit inside we undress earth’s scent

still clinging to our soaked clothes and wait as our darkness

unfurls its limbs we sink into each other’s flesh my head held in your hands faces close eyelashes brushing breath shared

cloudbursts rattle the panes and with no reason left to resist

we kindle the marrow in our bones and like shore pines mimic the storm’s shape twisting stems matting branches inhaling each other camellia wild rhododendron

“Storm” first appeared in Big Windows Review

Paul K. Haeder

Dreams of Cloud Servers Exploding Forever

… a scent deep within cedar…

a scent deep within cedar I could be plowing Caribbean coral reef or basalt cliff discombobulating aging not with grace but with gravel trapped in kneecaps, elbows

a bear ends up warm, lifeless lady in car burnt by air bag, steam from four cylinders, wet last exhale bear tilts upward

young fellow, black fur unmated, sleek lumbering along, chasing visions of sugar thimbleberries, car meets bruin

what do the ancient walkers think, a future like this, rushing 60 miles an hour, Mach 8 stars replaced with nuclear power wrapped in aluminum the dream was never to settle, holding rivers back plunging feces into still lakes, nor a nightmare of fences, then, geospatial digital barbed wire, nightmare held in embers, cave man cave woman dreaming

biped seasoned for long distance, land bridge-traversing horses on Turtle Island, crossing the East Asian line back into Lakota land imagine the iron horse spitting brother pine, fir fire

spotters holding 60 million buffalo in steel sights, a blast furnace those neurotic superstitious pioneers taking sacred grounds for plots of potatoes, no peace pipes allowed, devils the lot of them

nomadic, semi-hunter/gather anthropologically European destroyers of human beings hunting grounds spring camas digging

fallow now poisons turned over in loam mother soil cancerous the takers flogging leavers, nomadic cruise ship nonsense castles, churches troweled over astral ancient viewers, pyramids pulled up for holy water ramparts

life an engine clouds a digital server, now unforgiving robots brain anchored bipeds held at bay in virtual reality as life on earth goes 5-D

where does the lumbering old lady go, seeking shells wrack lines, piers mussel-filled

her dreams soft on down pillow no Chromebook imagination just thinking of old times, gardens, pleasant high teas, butterflies forever gone?

we wish for server explosions, three stories turned to ashes we can still dream without uploads history downloaded we can flip real paper pages thumb through paragraphs without 2001 Space Odyssey HAL 9000 kill all the brutes bytes, gigabytes towers of AI Babel we can only dream . . .

Barbara Hood

Mother’s Hometown

When I asked my older sister if our mother loved this place she said, no, not really, she was glad to leave. Yet eighty years after our mother left, we drive slowly past the old church and cemetery, past the empty storefronts and weed-choked lawns, down gravel roads lined with cows, into the corner of farmland as familiar as our childhood, approaching every long-gone relative’s house as if it is a shrine, and we are pilgrims.

Marc Janssen

I Am

God said to Moses, "I am who I am" —Exodus 3.14

Capricious, violent, uncaring Arbitrary, bombastic, overbearing.

I do what I do.

Muddled, indifferent, hated Loved, feared, stated.

I am who I am.

Today white Tomorrow black. Random Or just chaotic.

No need to defend myself Or even think of an excuse before ducking behind the scenery again.

Whether father all things Or am the bastard of weak minds; Whether control the universe Or just the origin; Whether kill for pleasure Or am dead myself, Simply not telling.

Instead I spend my time with a few word puzzles.

Eric Johnson

Running Mount Marathon

An Alaskan 5 kilometer race up and down 3,000 feet

Lined up at the starting line, the crowd of runners bend forward, fingers poised on wrists to start their timers. The air soundless until: the gun goes off.

Now only the sound of countless soles smacking pavement as we run up Main Street bunched until we turn the corner heading up into the valley before leaving the road over gray shale gravel.

Then the real race starts at the base of the mountain. I veer off along the creek and up a rock face pulling myself up by alders hanging over vertical sides of a cleft in the cliff.

The trail slick with mud from last night’s rain disappears into ferns and devil’s club. Single file, I see nothing but bushes and butts. I grab branches to keep from slipping back into those behind me. There is no passing here. The adrenalin has worn off and my calves want to cramp. I’m drenched with sweat.

I break above the tree line and a cold breeze hits me. I can see the town of Seward well below me. I'm halfway up now where the leaders on their way down from the top cross through us skipping down the slope to our left. I press my hands into my knees to push myself uphill.

The trail steepest yet I pull myself hand over hand on the sharp rocks. Next year I'll wear gloves. I sing an infernal hymn to the peak: Where the hell are you?

One damn false summit after another.

Finally, I break up over the edge of the tundra plateau at the top. I watch those ahead dissolve in a cloudy mist that surrounds the boulder and flag at the back of the field. A clammy cold soaks to the skin as I make the turnaround and head back down.

Over the edge, a relic snow drift sits in a swale. Sliding is faster than trying to run on the steep wet taiga. A sharp shard of shale in the old snow slices my left glute. When I stand at the bottom of the drift, blood runs down my leg.

The trail now broken bits of rock, like running on a mattress. My legs feel they can't keep up with my body and though the tops of my shoes are taped, they begin to fill with pebbles.

Crossing the up-trail, I careen down a long narrow talus chute. My feet slide three feet with each step. It feels I'm falling until I hit a rock outcrop hiding just below the surface, with a sudden jarring jerk compressing my startled body.

Near the bottom of creek valley I take a trail to left avoiding cliffs ahead which I leave to the experts. At the end of side trail I reach the short rock cliff I climbed coming up and swing down onto the same alders I had pulled myself higher.

Dropping down to the road the pavement would feel a godsend but my legs rebel after sprinting straight up and down and I run drunkenly a hundred yards. My shoes chock full of rocks feel like lead weights around my ankles. I'm slogging hard, trying to keep those behind behind.

I approach the finish line, hearing the thumps of heavy shoes following me. I can't let them pass after all I've been through. I want my body to sprint, but it screams at me and it's all I can do to ignore it.

In the finish area, I puke and declare I will never do this again, until next year when I do.

Penny Johnson

Don’t say anything. Just sit with me a minute

because how can I blame you for dying? Well, maybe a little. Not for dying itself but never considering my own high-dive into aloneness. The arch of my body. I am still waiting to hit bottom. No. Not a continuance of life as we knew it. No. Your anger at being severed. Anger that I get to go on as if you never mattered at all. Look at how wrong you got it. Look at this half-hearted thing withered in a petri dish.

Come sit with me. On the couch. No. Not on the couch. Come sit with me on the bed. I’ll bring coffee. Fix your pillows. Comforter. Propped in the corner. See, my eyes are shut. I see you now awash with neon from the dash of the big truck. Idaho. Night time driving. Your wrist on the shift. No. Now suspended in the air. Now on the shift. Your nose is so big like a beak. Don’t be afraid,

Pat says on the phone. She had cottage cheese. No. It was a protein drink with pineapple. She says her horse, Traveler, is shedding and we both know that Traveler is nothing if not hair. Feathers down to his hooves. A gypsy horse twirled in black and white. She says without her horse why would she get up in the morning? Why would she bother eating dinner? You know how much I loved cooking. How I timed it

by miles per hour. Coq au Vin at the rest area in Pennsylvania. Candle flickering on the dash. We licked our fingers, the carrots, the mushrooms, tiny bottle of wine simmering, grease rising off the chicken. We licked each other’s fingers, climbed between the blue and green flannel sheets. Such a skinny bed in the back of the cab. Now the screens open to a Nebraska breeze. Next month, fireflies.

Now, I stopped cooking. With my own two eyes I’ve seen this happen to many old women. No, you don’t believe it? Well okay. I still make rice and beans and sourdough. The sourdough that rises and falls. Rises and falls. Clings to the slick sides of the mason jar. Such a slow climb to the top before it tumbles back down.

Terry S. Johnson

Firmament

The moon, my lone companion, lances the glacial winter sky.

I dream your warm body spooning mine. Fate foreclosed our future.

Your silent face in silhouette, a death mask. Wake up, wake up!

A cracked window summons night's crisp air to cleanse the Reaper's stench.

Absence tolls my time. I miss your swell breaking over my shore.

I know the moon doesn't sweep the sky. It's our earth that spins everlasting.

I imagine joining you in the heavens. As dust, as spirit?

Daylight is too bright. I have become the night. The stars, your eyes.

Dane Karnick

Two Poems

Run Off

The prairie murmurs Along unending mounds Of dried grass braided

Like ponytails around Fence posts imitated In reflection by

Churning melt water That drains the crush Of winter still shoved

Against our chests with A poverty of green Buried under our breath

Stance

After ninety-eight years

A desert cabin

Postpones collapsing On stiff cellulose

Restricting its knack

To remain upright Against the desire To relieve soreness

Between two by fours Yanking each other Until they forget What a home should do

Dianne Knox

Best Compliment

I don’t think of myself as good in the kitchen so when you tell me my salmon spread is the best you’ve eaten or that my ribs are tender and delicious or my Lefse tastes as good as my Mom’s I really don’t believe you.

But, if I consider the feeling I put into each stir of the spoon and the thoughts of you pressed into each ingredient I realize you are tasting my heart.

Gary Lark

Two Poems

I Don’t Live There

I go there, sometimes, where they have good clothes and plenty to eat. They’re friendly. Some even shake my hand. But I don’t live there.

They write checks to the animal shelter and talk carefully in their big houses where it is warm and dry. But I don’t live there.

They look through heavy drapes and talk about the decline of history and ingenuity. The view is nice looking out over the trees. But I don’t live there.

I glean what I can from the back shelves and gather herbs for my stew. I walk in twilight between the gleaming hills. But I don’t live there.

Widow Creek

I don’t know if it had a name before. Maybe the Indians called it something. The Campbell family homesteaded what we call Elk Meadows up above the mill-site.

The creek comes out of a draw and slides through the meadow grass as pretty as any Eden. You won’t find much now.

People used to find an old blue bottle now and then and wish for more.

Lisa Campbell grew up there when they were logging the hills. She married a logger and stayed, coming to town when she had to.

A log rolled on her husband when she was no more than thirty and she stayed.

She got by on venison and trout and bringing her handwork to town. Her pine needle baskets were so tight they would hold water. No kids.

She lived like that for near sixty years. Lisa could be spotted in the woods or ghosting into town.

If somebody really knew her they’re gone too.

It’s called Widow Creek on forest maps.

Eric le Fatte

Two Poems

What's Left of the Harris Place

Near the sun's last light, the wind rattles seed heads of yellow grasses that sweep down the hillsides to the floor of the canyon.

The charred timbers of the old Harris homestead moan about better times, and rusted plows, wagons and reapers creak on their hinges.

The season is willing to harvest its take with us or without us, and the Deschutes, which cuts through this bare land, begins to measure the progress of night

by the crescent moon's reflection as it scythes an arc through a field of darkness from the east canyon wall to the west, leaving the chaff of stars behind.

Warmth

The farther apart, the harder it is to find. This doesn't mean warmth can not span a distance and embody, for instance, the sun; or travel as a comforting voice on the phone. Oil and coal aren't needed. An embrace is as good as wool socks and half a dozen blankets. The cold is no match for an open hand, a nod, an eye-catching glance. Warmth has no boundary. Feel its touch on your shoulder, your hair.

Daniel Liberthson

Still Life with Family

My fierce, piñon-scented campfire sharpens the cold dry air of Taos where Dad never went or dreamt and lancet stars jab at the new moon— but I'm remembering a milder night: cloud wisps and two shy planets peered through moist, bygone Ohio air from which branches twine into now and leaf out with his absent presence.

Tough, bitter, insoluble to me, his cup brimful of disappointments, even stoned on ciggy-filtered pot he’s still the guarded intellectual stockaded within walls of thought, insisting “This drug won't do anything— never has.” Jaw tight, he stares unmoved, unmovable, cameoed against the smoke of our dithering, oak-fed fire till the moment his face softens, eyes wide with dope and firelight, and he crawls toward the flames speaking in a voice we've never heard, full of wonder, milky as the night. “Look, don't you see, it's a caravansary— dromedaries wend among the dunes, a sacred procession files past, and yes… Look there — A sacrificial maiden rides Led by a red-robed hierophant!”

Transported beyond his walls, free of the self-wound chains that have held him back but naive to freedom's mirages he lunges at the fire. I've hated him for blocking my path but now I must hold him back, embrace that hard, ex-wrestler's body. Sis and her husband titter and point, relishing Herr Doctor's folly: he who thinks he knows everything is sky-high, in cloud cuckoo land. But it's friendly laughter, gentle ribbing at his fall from the high tower, and delight at this new Dad, the rapt child we didn't know he'd been, might still be if not for life's treachery.

Warmth and reverie shrank with the fire and the dark swallowed our shadows. How could we have known that guileless child would never rise again? The charmed circle had to collapse— the world ground on and caught him in its gears.

In Taos, rain slowly starts. A single drop ravels down my face as a single tear wet his cheek when, full of regrets, he took his last breath.

Onward Sheary Clough Suiter

Linera Lucas

How to hear an owl

Wake in the middle of the night. Oh, wait. First, move to the country, an island is best.

Open the west-facing window. Exhale, sink into the mattress.

Consider what seeds to plant in the newly dug bed outside your window. Consider your own bed— whose ghost lies next to you? There. That was it. A low owl sound. If you missed it, there will be another. Roll over on your back, breathe in the night air. The owl is breathing the same air. The owl is listening for a mouse underground, listening for the mouse’s heartbeat. You hear your own heart beat.

Michael Magee Crowed

Today I saw a dead crow shiny on the sidewalk lying on its curved back like a raincoat, a city slicker that had come to rest its wings splayed apart.

Like an emblem in the dark surrounded by gray as if the bird inside had flown away and left us here with this vest— a soft imitation of what had passed, its dark nest.

Tossed away while I wondered where was the bird wearing it?

Sharp-eyed needlework and full of fight and flight without its black oil-slickered jacket left behind zipper broken.

Was it laughing at us somewhere on the edge of creation, cackling at death, a joke at our expense. Somewhere beyond our thinking— is a blackness where the crow has swallowed even the sunlight.

David McElroy

Angkor Wat

Old stones tell the story of one war after another. Sanskrit and Khmer detail the greatness of this king or that. Ironwood and silk-cotton trees support the raising up of a leafy heaven a hundred feet or more.

Moat water supports temple foundations a thousand years. Ropes and levers winched power for ranks of elephant, herds of men and the women who fed them. They inched tons of stone thirty miles to stand up for each ruler’s pride.

Row on row of chiseled soldiers sound the tramp tramp of naked feet marching into blood and vomit. No wars are clean, none finessed to get the bad guys only and not the horses or children. Oun’s grandmother in Laos said

that my country bombed her village every eight minutes for nine years. They lived in caves. Someone we sent set hot chilis on fire at an entrance that smoked and killed the neighbors inside. But here on temple walls someone chiseled

Apsara, the dancer with big bare breasts and tiny waist. She seduces us into the grace of art with one slack hip. The stone she is moves her slowly over time with restraint we can’t resist. Leaves, fish, and birds wave, swim, and fly below the soldiers’ feet

in old stone, while the great trunks of ironwood rise clean and thick into the sky we see today. I can’t read this story word for word, but scribes knew the ignorant future I so clearly represent would need pictures to make the idea perfectly clear.

David McElroy’s new poetry collection Forced Landing is forthcoming from Cirque Press

Catherine McGuire

Ruderal

adjective: colonizing or thriving in areas that have been disturbed, as by fire or cultivation.

Frog-green hummocks swell along the edge of each roof shingle, spread mushroom-like, a Mondrian abstract on my garage. Below, the gravel blooms with cress and tansy — this chill winter slows, it does not kill. The mud is barely sleeping.

Visit the scars of any lost homestead blackened beams and joists draped with ivy, once planted in a garden gone rogue; vetch punching up past old iris stems, while fleabane constellations star the shadows.

A new science emerged to study that which re-forms on the edge— the hardy, the stubborn, the opportunists jumping in where the old order was destroyed. There are always some who brave hostility; who never feel the need to knock.

Katy McKinney

Sea Kindly

When subjected to heavy strains in working her way through high seas, a vessel is said to labor. If she takes the large waves easily, she is said to be sea kindly.

—Chapman Piloting and Seamanship, Charles B. Husick

In the beginning, I was afraid of everything. I was afraid to set out on the ocean, afraid of the way the boat heeled, the rail in the water, my world aslant. I was afraid of waves, ones on the beam that rolled the boat sideways, contrary waves that made headway impossible, those waves up north that brought green water over the bimini. I feared the wind, its fickle unpredictability, the way the northers would race down the sea, whip dangerous chaos from calm. Our first winter up in the Sea, my husband, who loves to explain, tried a comforting lesson, laying out how the weight of the keel keeps the boat from tipping over, how wind spills from the sails when the heel’s too great. But if the boat fills with water, he continued, that lead in the keel is taking us straight to the bottom. Waves, not despairing, but fatalistic washed over me. I gulped. We were doomed. Boat life was new to us both, as was sailing. In Mazatlán, where we’d bought the boat, after a week of prep and three afternoon practice sails, we set off across the Sea of Cortez, a 187 mile passage. Oh lord — into big swell, confused chop, wind and waves jerking and bashing the boat up, down and around. Instantly, I wanted off, I wanted out. I practiced Zen: Be Here Now. I’m still alive, we have not sunk, I have not puked. Water was not my medium — a child of the forest, I was used to stable ground, to wind, when it came, to not upend me. Months went by that first season, and while the wind could still freeze me with its fury to where I’d lie belowdecks shivering, the boat rattling me like dice in a cup, gradually I became accustomed to life on the water. The starry nights at anchor, the mist at dawn, the pelicans, the unknown — a sea change, if you will, began to sneak over me. My old pal, anxiety, would let me set out with anticipation rather than dread. Days underway where we’d ride the waves easy as dolphins, easy as the long slow slide of a blue whale’s back, days the waves would carry us, not fight us — these were the days that taught me that the wind could be a force to welcome, not fear. The perfect set: mainsail full, jib poled out, wind just past the beam, me at the helm. Bracing against the slight heel, I feel the boat respond to rudder, to gusts, to wheel, the play of sails and keel. Yes, play! The sea an oceanic amusement park on days like these. Of course, we still pay our dues, water and wind inevitably the ones in charge (that most shapeshifter of elements, water— so malleable, so mysterious: flat calm one moment before churning up waves from dainty to dangerous.) I’ve come to know that I’m no more in control of the sea than I am the galaxies, but I can try — deep breath — to stay calm when the wind builds, to shake a stern finger at my fear, to get a grip, to aim to ride as our boat does, easily over the high seas. To aim to be sea kindly. To want to set out.

Funny how things turn out — it seems we’ve become boat people, the world of water our home twelve seasons so far. They’re a part of us now: the sea, the waves, the wind.

Judith Mikesch-McKenzie

The Seventh Path

The one who taught us how to hold fireflies wore wide and colorful skirts from lands too far for us to imagine, skirts that

swirled around her tanned ankles as she swayed under the stars, breathing a sigh meant to quiet us while she held

out her hands to the cloud of shifting dancing light, offering her invitation as her hushed voice urged us to follow

the glowing presence settled soft in the cavern between our two palms, and simply shone, without panic

without anger, without attacking to find release, it simply let its light transform our hands into a rose— colored castle where it

rested. From time to time, wings the consistency of newborn hair brushed against a palm or the back of a finger and it

was like being touched by a deity unknown to any we had ever conceived of, and we open the house made of our

hands and peer at the creature resting there, who, like an elder rising from a nap, stretches and opens, and, with a sigh

rises in the air to join its fellows. All across the hillside, we were a silent troupe of children with a cloud of light rising

from our hands, hushed in the face of a life we’d never imagined, full of desire for long skirts that swirl, for a life filled with

cool evening flight and living light, even under a sky where clouds are gathering.

Linda Myers

Island Aunties

I uncovered that hot pink comb today the one from the off-brand pharmacy haoles wouldn’t find or favor if they did.

Plastic pick one end, sharp teeth the other foldable to tuck into a tropical hibiscus tote. We gave it a go, your Black Polynesian Chinese curls thick with defiance while my limp blonde mop, the only thing about me that’s ever been thin, surrendered as spines shredded my head.

How you loved to barter for a priceless black pearl or last season’s muumuu. It mattered not. What mattered is how I sidekicked in your shadow led astray by a six-foot-two Pele lookalike.

I was laughter on a second scooter flashing through Makalapua Mall two crazy aunties careening into Macy’s underpants department to replenish your old size tens with slinky sixes after your weight washed away in a toxic stream of too many ills, too many pills.

You gave me that comb. And pearls. And glee. Then you died as hard as you lived. The island fires are the second time Hawaii broke my heart.

Heidi Naylor

My Husband’s House

The way no door was square and that the thin carpet wattled but the yellow kitchen sang,

a narrow wall beside the creaky bath. How he slept full summers in the thick grass of the orchard

waking to measure the grand wheels of stars as the pigs snuffled in the pen. He was the boy with so few photos—

last of his kin, a red side-yard blur in a high school graduation gown What else? Three tractors, finicky

baler, a wagon, a barrel of gas on stilts the solace of sprinklers over alfalfa wild blue cats in the milk barn.

Baby calves carried, damp and kicky downstairs to the cellar, and him talking softly, let’s get you warm girl, it’s okay buddy.

A person acquainted with him then said “that kid could go either way” and I think, did they see him? Or know him at all?

Paul Nelson

Winter in America (Again

Wanda’s words were: “when underthegun who has time to keep a war journal” so lays down the task for Reality Government 2.0, WWF-style FBI & CIA ought to scare the lion-hearted, yet here we sit, wonder how the common people prosper, how withstand bomb cyclones of the atmospheric & cultural, make friends with all “enemies within.” We once called it “intersectionality” & found harmony lacking tho Brenda said Occupy gave us clues. In partial November sun, we seek allies. Winter’s but one season tho this one’s run’s set for one thousand, four hundred, sixty-one days not counting last days between the neo-liberal & WWFification of We, the People. An eagle at Zazen’s end’s in need of breakfast, past the candlelight guides Thursday meditation. Vow to harm nothing here. Vow to enter dharma gates, one of which may be this Winter again in USAmerica. This is not bottomless dark. There is no bottom but sk y, no sky can’t be nourished with what the small intestine won’t need, no beginnings except after endings we must respect choking on the fumes of the neoliberal. Tu Fu watching the “auras gold and silver grace nights.” Michael reducing it to a Grahhr. Olson pleading the polis which he knew somehow in the 50s was eyes. Joanne in the Bolinas backyard quail counting the last days of eco-poetics. “Worried nature poetry” is Brenda’s definition of ecopoetics & w/ each whiff of worry redirected into the prayer rug we remember our vow to free the numberless beings. The crow murder hightailing it to the roost before the bomb cyclone. The Doug Fir smashing the empty metro bus. Those who would guard congressional bathrooms rather than legislate for the polis. So goes the end of empire which can’t withstand the depths of the Aquarian age or whatever juju stands in the way of he who won’t be named and his cabinet of predators. My war journal has begun as you are my witness & as history attempts to repeat itself in the home of the brave.

8:44am N.21.2024

Casa del Colibrí

Dion O’Reilly Two Poems

The Shimmered Line

…what an enskyment…

Robinson Jeffers

The hawk crashed in; the white bird fled in death’s direction, hit glass, and her eyes, soft as night, snuffed— the unhampered air, once her friend, hardened—the price of choice mis-taken. Let’s not call it choice. Let’s call it an end to ache—all that weight of not-dying, gone. When I saw the red tail lift the stunned dove to the top of the pine, saw him pull her threads to slake a hunger, I found it easy not to hate the shimmered line between living and what will take me, at last, in its glorious beak.

Joy: I am

born to it, Whitman loafing, Alaskan sky, green-flecked midnight, lost Eden, forgotten under waves, selva-cenote behind a feathered snake.

Listen. This was taken from you. Not all of it—but now

you’re old, desire brings it back. Desire

loves joy like a lion stalks a goat. Silent. Hungry. Each step, a prayer.

Barbara Parchim

strange orbits

when the hush is thick in the alders dusk silvering to gray a single shot opens a wide silence— still enough to hear bat’s wings

a life seeps into the loam of prairie or maybe a miss this time— and a buck runs the maze of fences to reach the shelter of forest

I toss apple drops over the fence that will disappear during the night clean and fill the galvanized water tub until the rains begin in earnest

our neighbor said casually he had killed a buck in his front yard speechless, stunned, I look into a middle distance I don’t really see wondering if it was one of the 3-pointers we watched since they were fawns

tomorrow morning, my neighbor and I might pass on the road and wave we are infinitesimal specks on a finite planet, orbiting the same sun, each of us in our terrible strangeness as different as fire and water

Zacharay Paul

King Tide

No one believes me. But I tell them anyway. About the time you stopped Earth. The myth of the docks, you told me, is that water rises and falls. It doesn’t, you said. We spin through a bulge of water caused by a cosmic tug of war. Sun and Moon pulling, stretching the Earth. Drowning sands, revealing them again. Like most days, you didn’t go to school but waited to see the bus before heading back home. Watching the buoys sway, you actually sang Otis Redding. That’s the part I don’t believe. The water didn’t look higher than usual, but you knew. Reading the morse code of the waves, you knew. Understanding to never turn your back, you faced the Ocean. Despite knowing that rocks become sand you stood. Dug in your heels and stood. With planetary force you strained and stood, until Earth ceased to rotate. Just stopped. Earth stopped yet waves continued. Slashing, splashing, and bashing your face, your torso, your skull. A slight grin on your face, you stood — unwavering, your gravitational force attracting the totality of destruction. No, that's not a fat joke. I want to thank you for those you saved that day; I can never know your joy. Almost forty with no job, people bemoan your wasted potential. If only they knew. If only they knew you were still standing there, twelve years old, holding the world in place, salt water burning your ever open wounds. I see you. I love you. Pick up your feet. Spin.

James Pearson

Idlewild Motel on SE 82nd

A cheap room, midweek—

Four walls and a toilet, mirror on the wall

Double bed with an orange coverlet

Holding down the crushed carpet

A painting on the wall, above the bed— Old tumbledown barn

Waterwheel and a shallow crick

Some made-up world that never existed

We keep the curtains closed but the door open

To listen to the middling rain

(This intentionally lost night)

And the highway noise on a Wednesday, 10pm

Second floor of the Idlewild Motel on SE 82nd

I stand outside, against the railing, beneath

The overhanging roof where

Broken glass raindrops tumble down

To smoke a cigarette and watch cars pass by in the rain

Red taillights smeared on the wet street

I sip at whiskey on ice out of a plastic cup

While you sit on the bed, your back to the wall

Toilet paper between your toes

A little brush of nail polish

That television flickering with the sound turned off

Cigarette burning in the overfilled ashtray on the mattress

Cinders and ash freckling the blanket

Over my shoulder, through the open door, I look at you

Turn back to the street and my drink and the Portland night

No one in the world knows where we are

We can pretend we are other people

And play at being married

A miracle anniversary, together six weeks

We will be the ruin of each other

Tami Phelps

Once Upon a Time

Foil-sculpted rabbit-ears, like Cinderella’s bejeweled crown, brought her to us in Living Color for the first time.

Enthroned there with our TV trays we savored now exotic mixed vegetables, mashed potatoes, brown meat, and a treat, organized in aluminum compartments like pearls in mom’s jewelry box.

This most enchanted evening, breaking the no-TV-during-dinner rule.

We knew the glass slipper would fit perfectly, if only given the chance, but never imagined the possibility of a glass-ceiling-shattered dream.

David J.S. Pickering

Bologna is Pronounced Baloney in the Language of My People

A big bologna sandwich on white with iceberg and mayo is a nooner orgasm. Extra points if the lunchmeat is fried. I know. It’s not as healthy as Spam, but I like what I like. I only ever aspired to the middle class—luck and managing up got me there, so I kept my bartender/gaspumper/roomcleaner

roots done for years, every month just me and the toothbrush and the Lady Clairol Lexus Red #5, but in retirement I’m brazen for ketchup on my ribeyes

and I’ve got the creative swearing skills of a pissed-off teenager. Erudite or not, Social Security pays me every month so why not let it fly, right? Anything happens these days. Fires consume paradise. Idiots rise to the imperial. Empty content streams and streams. Stephen Miller lurks. So if I was still

drinking, I’d plant my fat geriatric ass in a dive, live on shots and pickled eggs until my IRA investments ran dry then end my days wet-brained in a trailer.

Such is the allure of the bottle for me, so being sober is a big plus. I’ve made of myself a sigil charged with angels and redeemed reprobates, a mezuza

tacked on my right-hand doorjamb with Ma Joad rolled inside. Ma, who said, We’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. I did a long stretch

in HR management, damn near died from stellar performance evals chased with Stoli. This afterlife is my fried, red-band deliverance. I keep it close

Timothy Pilgrim

Putting doves to sleep

Single mom, Bellingham street, birthday party, balloons, cake, her son turning five, I drop by with wand, red cape— chance to move beyond chats of lawns, roof repair, recipes for quiche. Kids giggle, wait— I bring out Paloma, gray dove of peace. Open cage, she hops free, eyes bright, feathers sleek. Tuck tiny head under a wing, cut off light, ferris wheel her round—

dramatic circles — set her down. Paloma thinks it's night, goes to sleep. After a bit, wing drops, in comes dawn, Paloma wakes, fluffs, flies away. Kids clap, you bow, mom smiles. Your magic lasts all night somehow.

Shauna Potocky

Two Poems

The Tongass

Rain is my long song hear how freely I sing it to you

My loves, here you can drink the sky

Shelter

Do not underestimate the power of dead branches

They are where the birds hide In the midst of heavy rain rhythmic gulp at a time into darkness. A requiem.

Nicholas Skaldetvind

Pray for Me Back East

Where night falls before yours. The known stretching itself further from limitations. My prayers are also evolving away from answers back toward the familiar first curtain. That strange dark of red eye and daylight so clarifying that I’ve gone, it hurts me. These times of woe afford no time to woo, pray instead for the washed-up abalone at Swami’s and the language pressed into poetry, into prayer, scripted into vanities we buried in a small cauldron as a quiet thought in the shape of a shell on our way home by the agua hedionda.

Pray for the surf breaks named after cross-streets, like a birth at the ocean’s vaginal and radiant core failing against the light.

For bleeding moons past. For the yoginis who saw the light set southwest, a shadow interrupted from the west, monsoon-full but no typhoon and wanted for something else and this land quaked under the sun’s dead end. For the health food stores of Rancho Santa Fe and the trails beaten by electric bikes and frightened rabbits and the nearly dead milling across from the Y.

For the dead who just want to remain dead and not dance into the speech of men. But if they did I imagine them saying birds flying, aloe, water reflecting, there is only this. There is only flight.

For the little dogs and their sullied muzzles. For every gas station mural. For the interstate. Even for Oceanside’s seed, goddess greens our last meal, before the tide of traffic fell.

For our antisocial neighbors. For our thrifted marble credenza.

For my return to Orpheus Park, where you’ll be waiting with a new dog to walk dripping in a Spring mist.

A Prayer for you, queen of the salt air, and my many happy flights over the ocean’s pounding afterlife, its pull of gravity that stops me from taking your hand that led to these hillocks spasming in color behind you.

I ran into the gray February ocean with your dad’s surfboard and you thought, Am I going to have to wait on this rock all morning just to get a picture of him when I rose from the water and stepped across it and waved.

Mary Lou Spartz

New Arrival

In a farmhouse lives a poem growing inside a man’s breast, “a fester,” he tells his wife when she asks why he sighs.

Beatrice Skipton Toad

The girl smears her pale waves across her cheek, one brow tilted down.

“Why?” she looks up at the trees.

“But, why?”

She turns to her father, his eyes half open to the majesty of the forest. He leans down

Opening up his mouth

Opening up the world

Full of stories and truths

Facts and knowledge

Scientific Names and categories

Sometimes he doesn’t have an answer

That’s when the savant bard becomes

Another toad on the rock

Croaking up tales to pass the time while waiting for another fly

Then he says “salal is part of the heather family”

And again the girl looks up at her father

Leaning in for more

Every day he walks the path wearing a heavy coat feeling changes in his body breaking dead grass under his weight. From his house with the green roof to the shed with its old copper canner he shelters the poem, feels it kicking and crying under his breast.

He wonders should he have it cut out “like a cancer,” he tells himself. His wife says he’s pale today and the gray cat he no longer wants to move, sleeps on his chest.

He will speak to his wife tell her of his condition watch her face as he breaks the news as daylight coming through the kitchen window shows off dusty air.

When the time comes he doesn’t tell her. He is alone. The poem lives.

Cynthia Steele

The Hieroglyphic Muralist

The velociraptor swooped in to take my father’s brain, to devour reason. It stood, wings spread, in front of his door, demanding seclusion — shrieking at my not-quite-gone father.

From an upstairs apartment, a five-year-old girl slipped down through a crack in the pavement. She did not fear velociraptors — all part of the story for her.

She’d grown used to bogeymen, even faced one down, screaming at him: “Back! Back under the bed!”

With an “And stay there!” — so this was nothing new.

All my father, in the end, could and could not say, she penned on the wall. In bright colors, she scrawled rudimentary symbols — cave murals.

She was neither my sister nor I (we were grown), a mere teller of our father’s descent into a madness that had always — to some extent — plagued him.

Here, in his oasis/trap — this downstairs home— precious little remained of his brain in the end. While she drew, the creature snored up against the door.

The pills Father took to stave off his madness worked! He said who he had been, laid out his life. She recorded it all — a page for the Book of the Dead.

For the story to be told just right — make no mistake— there had to be hieroglyphics. Then, she was forbidden to visit him— and the crack in the sidewalk closed.

The madness in his brain demanded silence.

A broom handle pounded holes through the sheet rock, but nothing could stop the shrieks.

The child — now grown— who was she, this dark-haired daughter of an upstairs neighbor? Haunted by furious claws — hieroglyphs under old paint?

Had the ink stayed covered? Had it seeped through? In the end, my sister and I gathered the artifacts— But that wall, a photo untaken — I could never look again.

Vol. 15 No. 1

Had she put her finger to her lips and said to him, “Shhhh... I’m working. I’m telling a story,” or had she simply sung the song of his slow descent?

All the bottles of chemicals—in a huge black plastic bag— spread its wings and shrieked at me. It shrieks at me still— montage madness through a crack in the sidewalk.

Respite

Soft suede of duff beneath my feet. Umami of damp earth. Air shrewd with the cries of crows. Here I can breathe. Let me be.

Leah Stenson

Apocalypse

The Fires in Athens, August 2023

Greece is burning,

Land of antiquity, myth, classical philosophy. Homer’s wine-dark sea.

Black smoke billows over the Acropolis, shrouds the Parthenon, temple of Goddess Athena.

In the distance, Mt. Parnitha, the “lungs” of Athens, engulfed in flames.

What does the oracle prophesy— a conflagration so near the heart of Athens, birthplace of democracy?

A half century ago on a solo Odyssey I fell in love with Greece— the pure cerulean sky portending a bright future.

Today I see scorched earth, a tragedy wrought by men lacking wisdom, antithesis of a Philosopher King.

Dianne Stepp

Already the Flower Bed is Thick with Bees

I aim the spray low through the forest of stems so as not to disturb them, remembering Grandpa Jake in his bee hat, a welt on his eyelid from a sting. And those long drives up the Columbia in his old white truck delivering hives to the alfalfa fields in Hermiston. My ten-year-old self at the farm table — watermelon, corn fresh from the field. The soft gray moths that clustered on the screen while we ate.

The bees forage in the tangle of blooms— borage and zinnias, cornflowers, arugula’s yellow flags like tiny moths fluttering above the marigolds.

The sun pours its gold onto my shoulders. Shadows thicken in the underworld of stalks.

This is my bit of balm, my bit of honey.

Richard Stokes

Duet of Thrushes

Propping myself against a large spruce above the reach of the high tide I wait for the setting sun to paint the sky, spill sunset hues across the surface of the cove.

From the forest a sharp note cleaves the peaceful whisper of surf sweeping sands, and Swainson thrush song spirals into the heavens. And from a nearby thicket hermit thrush song flows like little bells tinkling downscale.

First one, then the other, the Swainson’s ascending, the hermit’s descending, again and again, as if the songs were one song, a call and response.

As the notes race up the spiral, and tinkle down over and over the sinking sun reddens the orange of the cove. My world, a harmony of parts.

Jim Thielman

Sacred Waters

No water, no life. Abundant water, abundant life.

I was at a party at Idaho’s Pend Oreille River nearly 200 miles north of Richland and said to a local, “This water will flow past my riverside home.” Rivers occur even in the ocean, ordinary things that bring forth an extraordinary amount of life.

The next week in a place called Seven Bays on the Columbia River above Grand Coulee Dam, my son took us on a boat ride upriver, to the nearby confluence with the Spokane. I grew up in Spokane and knew its river as fast, furious, and dangerous. But a short ride from Seven Bays, the Spokane River was smooth. I dived in for a swim as pine-covered mountains watched.

Then, we came home to Richland, shrub-steppe land with Russian Olive trees next to the river and pines replaced with sage and rabbit brush. Of course, the waters I saw up north flow past my home, and two more rivers pour into the Columbia nearby:

The Yakima River flows from the Cascade Mountains and ends with a beautiful delta near me, with islands that let pregnant deer give birth, safe from coyotes. A sometimes slightly sunken island draws fish to spawn, and I once saw oodles of newborn fish thrashing their way through inches of water and weeds to the river.

Delta islands are rare in Washington State, which generates most of its electricity running water through turbines sitting inside massive dams. Behind each dam, rivers become more like lakes that drown any chance for a delta to form.

The Snake River comes all the way from Wyoming to pour directly into the Columbia without a delta. The Spokane joins the Columbia shy a delta. So, islands on the Yakima River delta are a rare gift. Of course, the clean electricity the dams produce is another gift to creatures like us who like to breathe.

Cataclysmic Missoula floods washed away a good portion of eastern Washington, creating rugged scablands and causing the Evergreen State to accept browns, yellows or subtle shades of gray green, since sage and rabbit brush flourish in a dry climate.

Most days, I take a bike ride along the Columbia. I enjoy views of the river and semi-wilderness where grasses, tall puffs of dandelions, and wheat that never faces a thresher grow wild, freed from the whack of mowers.

I sometimes stop, overwhelmed with joy at the dance of species reaching for sunlight, on a blue planet that prospers life in wild delight.

Judy Thorn

Pelican Skeleton

The skeleton of a pelican, a bottlenecked prince in his short lifetime, lips aflutter, wings longer than horsetails, came up clean and dry on Crescent Beach overnight. The flies had worked for hours and hours on his bones. It was tickscented dusk when they finished, and still the studious flies licked for more versions of his airborne flavor. He tasted like planes and frost, rain and raisins. His texture was very special. The fact of his sudden death reached his family, who went out regardless to the buoys to eat, and the sandpipers, who like rats enjoyed the chaos and sadness immensely in their effortless routine ballets. The sunrise also brought cavalcades of corvids, pigeons, and even a lily-drunk hummingbird down to the rows of sand. It was this conglomerate scene that I stumbled upon with my boots printing molds of upside-down houses in the earth, sinking softly as I searched for a place to lay my blanket. In my leatherbottomed backpack I had placed a stained glass picture frame with tulipomania metalwork details from an antique store nearby between my peacock-tail edition of The Waves and a black water bottle. I still held in one hand a to-go cup of coffee with an intimate vagueness of my transsexual maroon lipstick on the mouthpiece. When I at last noticed the outburst of flies about a yard to my left, which had been my right when I was reading on my stomach, I got up and investigated the commotion of gray beasts, opening my phone camera to document the discovery. The naturally anxious ephydridae scattered at my imposing shadow. There lay what was formerly a bird, a lone wolf of consumption and interest; bright swirls of fish, evanescent clouds, precious arches, lecherous, thunderous paths, and the loneliness of a life spent aloft. The pelican, king of mouths, agent of a vast economy, was nothing but a raiment of cartilage. I took a short video of the cruciferous ribcage of the bird. I took a picture of the last remaining feathers. This was the year before the unfairness of life came to whack my family. I had an interest in documenting the remains of animals, as if to prepare myself by exposure to the justified and organic nature of that process. My kind-hearted and morally exemplary stepfather, a journalist committed to the preservation of truth, raised on Long Island, will be killed by time and cells, like a breaking coastline; a disaster that had origins deep in the trench of his blood and did not announce itself until the pain had spread and shaken the starlings out of their reed beds.

If you could be dry, would you, would you be dry. If you, would you, lay him in the sand.

Pepper Trail

Elderberries

Late September, the dust heavy on the mountain roads

Fading leaves brittle in the amber light

It is time to gather elderberries again

The open-handed umbels offered to the birds

More seed than pulp, but enough, just enough

The berries an acquired taste, or a remembered one

Their flavor deserving of its own name—eldery

Musty yet with an enduring tang of green

The youth that lives on in the old

Last ripening before the frost

I stretch awkwardly, grasping for the fruit

The canes are hollow, easily broken if bent too far

And I do some damage, despite my care

The highest clusters seem the best

Their berries' bloom an untouched blue

My gathering basket full, I carry the harvest home

Clean and crush, stir sugar into the boiling juice

Pour the jelly into bright glass jars, seal them tight

Preserve, as best I can, the elder tartness

Flavor for winter's hard pale bread

Lucy Tyrell

Two Poems

Chaetura*

Above the county courthouse, a square shaft of brick chimney rises into dimming-blue sky.

Nearby, in loose black silhouettes, like torn bits of construction paper, swifts dart and sweep the air,

chattering loudly between gulps of mosquitoes and biting flies.

I was advised to arrive at sunset,

8:51 p.m. on this June 2 evening, but earlier if it were cloudy or rainy. Perhaps the stratus wisps dimmed the light.

It’s before sunset, but I’m late for the show of swifts as they funnel into the chimney — a few at a time—

relentless numbers until dark. Already the count is more than eighty; he has kept track. He suspects

the migration won’t continue too many more days with swifts roosting communally here like this.

Stall and drop, he calls it.

I witness forty-something more birds pouring in swift disappearance

to shelter inside the rough brick. They have fluttered and soared all day, ceaselessly flying, feeding — they can’t perch.

But now they’ll roost and rest, tiny claws and short bristle-tails gripping the walls. How do they remember this chimney?

How do they align themselves inside? Do they recall in some DNA strands the hollow trees where they used to roost?

How will swifts survive when clay stacks are lined with smooth metal flashing or when unused chimneys are capped or gone?

Their wingspan is but half our handspan, each body not even an ounce; a swift life might last only five years.

I’m grateful each graceful swift carried its mysteries here as it plummeted into the chimney for rest.

We depart under darkened sky. Streetlights glow like tender night lights for the brackets and rows of sleeping swifts.

*Greek for “bristle-tail, the genus of Chimney Swift

When the Shorebirds Return to Hartney Bay

Thousands of shorebirds choreographed in a swirl like smoke come from beyond the rugged peaks, skim above the empty mudflats where the Copper River purrs nutrients into the salt of the bay.

They fly as one — rising and falling, drooping and gathering — turn in unison in rippling, shapeshifting pattern of light, then dark, and light again. A peregrine falcon darts from nowhere, pierces the cloud, comes up empty— unable to pick out a single prey

from the synchronous ball of birds. The sphere pours onto the mudflats, transforms into separate birds— thousands of dunlins and sandpipers, with feathers on their backs and wings in overlapping dazzle of chocolate and rust, quick-skitter and probe the mud, find invertebrates on an outgoing tide.

I feel small in this wild landscape of mountains, of mud, and of sea, of shorebirds that thrum in sky’s silver as if the unfettered transit of these wings are wing-songs of sadness— their abundance, impermanence what I cannot have, who I cannot be.

Susanne von Rennenkampff

One Year

It’s dusk, the frozen creek beckons. This is my favourite time, twilight still sooner than seems possible, the new year not yet familiar with itself.

The sun sets in secret today. All day a gauzy mist refused to lift, wrapped bare branches of poplar and hazel, birch and elder in a gossamer dress.

I think of veil or shroud, depending on mood.

A year ago my brother was buried. He never saw this creek but he is here with me now. He, too, would have felt the peace of this half-hidden day.

Between the branches, darkness gathers. With its skin of snow, the creek is bright enough to see, even in the gloom.

In vain I listen for the owl, watch for any sign of life. Only tracks of coyote, hare and squirrel, a deer’s dainty prints. It is good to walk like this, where change happens slowly, bark peels here and there, a branch dry that was alive a year ago, a tree leaning a little more after last summer’s floods, but still there, holding out.

Matthew Wappett Autumn Walk

(after Roethke)

Light takes these trees gold on blue noon sky birch autumn aspen ragged leaves edge cerulean stars through capillary branches; they wake in the wind, they let us sleep there, on that ground where we walk, softly as we fall away as always. This shaking keeps us steady, their shape keeps us sharp. I tremble with you beside me, lovely, in the lively air we go where we have to go.

3 on the Tree, Fairbanks

That first Fairbanks winter, my Chevy van went VVV-VROOOM when I turned the gold key, pressed the gas. The cold engine ran easy. The sad column shifter, though, was stuck frozen as I sat bundled for sometimes two dozen minutes, heater blasting, until the balky transmission thawed just enough for me to force the stick, put vehicle in motion. Lord that was almost forty years ago. I recall those times in van, fighting chill, waiting, thinking. How I loved that dear subarctic light: valley silvered by snow, a Thanksgiving weekend spent fiddling, writing, the iced rig finally grinding into gear.

Joe Wilkins

Nestucca

[Stagaush] word for a part of the river or a point on its banks or the people of the river

She says creek & means the verb, as in Let's creek from here to Alder Falls. So hand in cold hand in slippery, silt-fingered hand, we do. Along the bank larkspur lift their blue chins, like flyaway hairs candy-flowers sprout from the mossed heads of boulders. Plump gray dippers bob & dance & lead us always farther on. Into glassy waters we reach— our suddenly kinked wrists! — & gently lift caddis larva, their tiny, perfect homes of rocks & sticks & leaves, even bits of bone. Now over us soars eagle-shadow, & eagle herself, winging upriver as if we’re in this together— in such a world we place carefully our every step. Still, depths surprise & currents unthread. One of us slips, falls. This is what creeking teaches you — hold on to one another. Hold on.

Wanda Wilson

Ms Peach

Tho we are long over I remember our honeymoon drive through Mississippi stopping by the Black man as dusty as the road clouds as the barely held together boards of his stand. You hesitant to purchase from the rows of his grocery bags filled with tiny hard green peaches I know I smiled “wait” The next night ripened naked sloppy with golden juice & the sweet mix of Mississippi peach and the sea

Derek Witten

Driving the Pass

Way below Roger's Pass an army camo valley splays within a frame of metal guardrail and the vinyl of a Civic interior.

In nature no vacuum but a suc tion to the cupped valley of nothing but black spruce, shepherd for the mountains' serious shadows descending to the dead. Is there a paradise in there, early evening sunlight snaking through, an assemblage of maybe a doe or a rill whose bank could host an uncommon kind of shore lily, a chickadee sifting its wing although it is clean, and would you feel at home there?

Sonnet for a Dead Salmon

Scarred and bleeding on a swollen bank, six feet from spawning kin, four red lines score fading flanks, jagged tears mar silent fins. Crushed berries smear the fern-lined trail, sudden breeze brings scent of swift decay, salmon flash dissolving silver tails as sow and cubs wait for close of day to claw a winter’s worth of fish from this silty, shallow stream, to feed their slowing hearts and fuel their hunting dreams.

FEATURES A Tribute

Mike Burwell

A Tribute to Poet Tom Sexton and Some Last Poems

Alaska poet, teacher and mentor Tom Sexton passed away on March 12, 2025 in Anchorage. Cirque editor Mike Burwell wrote the following tribute to Tom and read it at three Zoom events celebrating Tom’s life and poetry. Tom’s 17th book Dark Cloud in Isabel Pass is forthcoming this fall from Loom Press

Tom Sexton was Alaska’s version of the wandering Chinese poet. Tom made the microcosm of flower or bird large and spacious, and brought the macrocosm of mountain ranges and rivers close and made them intimate. Marybeth Holleman captured the essence of Tom as wanderer in a recent Anchorage Daily News profile of him when she said: “I don’t know, there’s just something about that that’s so beautiful and so unusual for us now…he studied the Chinese poets, who just were wanderers. And so I feel like he kind of continued that lineage, this ancient lineage and brought it to us in contemporary culture.”

In a 2010, 49 Writers blog post his advice to writers was to “pay attention to detail and know what you are writing about.” In 2014, when his poem was installed on a plaque at the Independence Mine, he told the Frontiersman reporter: “If you just describe a place and don’t unlock something, you have nothing.” Over the years, he owned a number of cabins in the Alaska wilderness where in the quiet and solitude of place many of the poems we remember from him were written.

and in their search for the writing life. His students are many, and I know he was proud of each one of us. It was Tom who told me in 1986 to go to the Eagle River Campus with a proposal to teach a new series of introductory writing classes. Twenty-four years later I was still teaching them. It was Tom Sexton who encourage me in 2008 to start the literary journal Cirque; 16 years later we are still going strong and working on our 29th issue. Tom’s later poems appeared often in Cirque, the most recent in Issue #27. His intense devotion to teaching and his students kept him from his own writing craft, and it was not until 1994 when he retired from the UAA Creative Writing Program that his own body of work grew and prospered. From then on, he produced a new book of poems consistently every two or three years. He served as Alaska’s Poet Laureate from 1995 to 2000, and was a founding editor of the Alaska Quarterly Review.

Over the years, Tom Sexton’s poems continued to unlock these wild places and their special light with his 16 books, and his 17th collection: Dark Clouds in Isabel Pass forthcoming this summer from Loom Press.

Tom was also a nurturer to many writers. To this day, I continue to discover students who fondly remember Tom’s generous influence and inspiration on their writing

Sexton grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, and his difficult working-class childhood later became another important element in his poetry. He produced four hardhitting books of his early life: The Lowell Poems in 2005, A Clock with No Hands in 2007, Bridge Street at Dusk in 2012, and Cummiskey Alley in 2020. The draw of New England grew over the years and he and Sharyn spent many winters at a second home in Eastport, Maine.

Tom, no matter where he was, was a poet of stillness whose vision was continually captured by the quality of

light. Maine writer Dana Wilde in a 2019 profile of Tom at Eastport asked Tom about the “differences between the poetic material found on the two edges of North America.” Tom pointed out that it had to do with “‘different qualities of light. In Eastport, it’s a soft light, often wrapped in fog, rising over Campobello [Island]; in Alaska, at the bend toward Asia, it’s a hard light, intense and very clear… you can almost see through Denali.’”

In his 2009 new and selected poems entitled For the Sake of the Light he reveals his romance with light and its ultimate importance to him in the title poem’s last three lines:

For all our sadness, melancholy and regret,

At times it is possible, even necessary,

To believe we are here for the sake of the light.

Tom is still out there somewhere wandering through the wild Alaska that he loved, and we will always be out there at his shoulder journeying with him through his poems and looking deeply with him as he sings of the virgin landscape and its changing light.

This poem by Tom might best sum up his poetic wanderings and yearnings:

Thinking of Tu Fu on a Summer Evening

At the end of a long day stacking wood for winter, I sit on the cabin’s stair and drink a glass of wine. My thoughts soon turn to Tu Fu’s long life of exile and wandering. I imagine that I can see a path into the mountains beyond the marsh. If I were to set out, I would come to a stream flowing into the Range where no one has ever traveled and there I would find Tu Fu chanting a poem to the mountains. He would ask of my long journey, and I would tell him of the swans nesting on a thousand small lakes, that the fisherman’s net is heavy that brown bears roam the meadows, how the hair on your neck stands on end when you sense movement in tall grass. But most of all I would tell him of the summer light: how at dawn it is like a silk fan beginning to open, and how long after midnight has passed when that one is almost closed another fan is opening far to the east.

Tom sent poems to Cirque consistently and we published him often. When Tom passed away, we still held five poems that we had not published. We publish them here.

A Blue Moon, October 2020

A full moon is rising over the mountains glowing with the season’s first snow. It’s the color of honey when held to the light. Some say Basho was a fool to spend his life wandering the Japanese countryside seeking the perfect place to watch it rise. The corona virus has emptied the path. That’s a rare blue moon I say to a chattering raven who’s also looking up.

Addressing Li Yu While Drinking Wine Alone

I’d been 80 for less than a month when I first read Li Yu’s poem about the racket a wandering monk made knocking on a moonlit gate, a poem written when he was also 80. A fellow crank but what a poet I sighed, then lifting my cup I said, “If an old man knocks on your gate tonight, let him in.”

This final version appears in Dark Cloud in Isabel Pass

In

a Whitehorse Bar

I was drinking a few beers with a man who claimed to be the great-great-grandson of Sam McGee. in a seedy Whitehorse bar not far from the Yukon River. He’d just arrived from Tennessee and he tended to shiver. He’d come North to see where his ancestor, Sam McGee was almost turned to ash in a jerry-built crematorium. While we talked wind hammered on the barroom door, and the sleepy-eyed bartender seemed about to snore.

“He looked like a smoked ham when he came home to Tennessee, and he was always stoking the stove.”

I was tempted to tell him that Robert Service used McGee in his ballad only because McGee rimes with Tennessee but I couldn’t shake the image of his great-great grandfather looking like a smoked ham when he walked into their parlor, so I asked him how long his great-great-grandfather was away from Tennessee? He grinned then said, “That’s for another day.”

Obsession

Another spring with only a breath of moisture following a brief winter of too little snow. I’m keeping a close eye on the first almost ripe strawberry in our backyard garden.

I have new competition this year, one of a flock of European starlings with feathers that resemble a starry night and a reputation that rivals Putin’s.

He likes to strut his stuff while keeping one eye on me. My wife claims that male starlings weave flowers into their nests, so perhaps I’ll let him have it if he’s quick enough.

“Come inside and have your breakfast,” she calls, “and while you’re at it take that silly black hoodie off.”

At Teslin Lake, Yukon Territory

When the camper van’s sliding door slid open, a couple wearing what I took to be matching wool jackets and lederhosen leaned out and asked, “Good place for wolves?” They were Germans and rented the van in Vancouver. A half-century ago, in a kind of grisly competition, most highway lodges had a wolf pelt or two nailed to a wall. Their glassy eyes didn’t leave you for a moment.

That’s what I was about to tell them. Lederhosen? But their joy, the beatific glow on their faces, caused me to point to a game trail leading to the lake where decades ago, my wife saw her wolf. It glanced her way then it was gone. It’s the perfect place, I said, but don’t say a word, or step on a twig.

This final version appears in Dark Cloud in Isabel Pass

Cynthia Steele

Through the Lens of Justice and Light: Matt Witt's Writing and Photography

Before the first rays of morning sunlight stretch across the Southern Oregon landscape, Matt Witt is already preparing for another hike. From his home in Talent, nestled near the edge of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, he checks his gear: a Nikon D5200 DSLR with an 18-105mm f/3 lens, prized for its versatility; and an identical Nikon D5200 DSLR fitted with a 70-300mm f/4.5 lens — ideal for wildlife shots, from raptors wheeling in the sky to a fox yawning while resting on the forest floor.

For Witt, photography isn't just a hobby — it’s a continuation of a life rooted in attention, justice, and storytelling. The stories we shared included a Zoom interstate chat and follow-up questions. His writing strikes as powerfully as his images. We begin with now, his photography, and show how each art form emerged from the other. But, make no mistake, they coexist.

After a four-decade career in the labor and social justice movements—supporting groups like UPS drivers, flight attendants, and health care workers across the country — Witt turned to photography not as escape, but as transformation. “I wanted to be present in the moment,” he explains, “to find peace and pay close attention to the world around me.”

Witt’s process is as intentional as his politics. He often starts before sunrise, seeking the low, slanted light that reveals texture in the land. His hikes take him through familiar places — Upper Table Rock, Grizzly Peak, Hobart Bluff — but he’s not retracing steps so much as deepening them. “Even when I go back to the same trail, the light and life are different. It keeps me engaged and grounded.”

In winter, he's drawn to the soft blues and whites of snow-draped terrain; in spring, to bursts of Arrowleaf Balsamroot and the return of migratory birds. His Nikon D5200 allows quick focus and reach for capturing these quick, distant subjects. He often waits quietly for the

scene to unfold — a towhee hopping into a shaft of light, a layer of mist rising from a spring-fed creek.

He doesn’t create images with artificial intelligence. “There’s so much false imagery out there,” he says. “I want my photos to reflect the beauty that’s real — to help people appreciate what’s here and worth protecting.”

His latest book, Monumental Beauty: Wonders Worth Protecting in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, shares 132 photos of a region in southern Oregon and northern California that is world renowned for its biodiversity. The area received national monument status from the Clinton and Obama administrations, prohibiting mining, logging for commercial purposes, new grazing, or other development. Now, the future of this and other national monuments is uncertain as a result of political attacks. All of the money generated by Monumental Beauty goes to local nonprofits defending and promoting public lands.

Witt’s plaintive passion for public awareness is palpable.

“I don't know how it is where you live, but I find that even some people who've lived around here a long time don't really know what a national monument is or how that designation provides some protection for the land. When I start naming places in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, they say, ‘Oh, yeah. I've hiked there. I took my out-of-town visitors there.’ There’s so much at stake if our

national parks and national monuments are destroyed. I hope that people read Monumental Beauty and see the photographs and are reminded of the importance of our public lands.”

A former chair of the Klamath Tribes, Don Gentry, wrote the forward to Monumental Beauty: “In our culture we have a saying that if you harvest berries from a bush, you don’t take them all, and if you collect duck eggs to eat, you leave some so there will still be duck eggs in the future. Today, protection of the land is urgent as climate change puts our watersheds and forests, and even our homes and our culture, at risk.”

Witt’s commitment to communication about our public lands mirrors his decades of organizing. During his years in labor communications, Witt was often behind the scenes — training union members to write op-eds, framing campaign messages, documenting marches, and helping grassroots voices be heard.

Matt dedicated his career to labor and community organizing, beginning at age 21 when he volunteered to help coal miners in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky in their fight to democratize the Mine Workers union.

Matt mentions the name Yablonski. “You might have heard of the murder of Jock Yablonski and his family?” he asked me.

I hadn’t, yet I felt I should have. Fortunately, Matt was a cog in the wheel and could fill me in. Yablonski challenged corrupt United Mine Workers (UMW) President Tony Boyle in a 1969 union election — an election in which the incumbents controlled the vote count. After Boyle claimed victory, Yablonski called for a federal investigation into election fraud. Three weeks later, Yablonski, his wife and daughter were murdered in their Pennsylvania home.

The Yablonski murders, which Boyle was convicted of ordering, finally sparked a federal investigation and lead to major reforms within the UMW.

Matt explained: “So that's when I came into it — when a new election had been ordered under Labor Department supervision. With a level playing field, the reform movement won, and I ended up working for the Mine Workers union for almost five years.”

I asked if his folks were pleased with his switch of gears at that time to volunteer.

“They were not pleased that I dropped out of college (after two years at Harvard), but they came to see the value of what I was doing instead.”

“I assume the miners fed you and took care of you while you were helping them win that second election.”

“When I say volunteered, we got a stipend of $50 a week. We had food.”

Matt Witt and Earl Dotter joined the staff of the United Mine Workers Journal in 1973 after miners ousted Boyle and began to democratize the union. Witt served as managing editor, then editor, with Dotter as photographer. During their tenure, the publication won a National Magazine award in specialized journalism and the two were finalists for reporting excellence.

Long-term bonds formed early. Matt met future wife Linda through her sister, a union coworker of his, and Witt wed Linda when he was 25. By age 28, his first book, In

Our Blood: Four Coal Mining Families (1979), a cooperative venture with photographer Dotter, was published. His wife had her own work, founding and serving as principal of an alternative high school. Likewise, Matt continued to work with Earl Dotter for many years on various projects.

In Our Blood tells stories of miners' families and communities and how they organized on issues like environmental and occupational health, racial justice, indigenous rights, and workplace democracy. “The objective is clearly to show exploitation as still the order of the day in coal mining, whether it involves strip or deep mining, black or white workers, Appalachia or Navajo country,” commented a review in the Appalachian Journal. All proceeds from In Our Blood supported education projects for miners.

Matt went on to work as an organizer and trainer with schoolteachers in Maryland and sawmill workers in the South and collaborated with environmentalists and unions in New Jersey to reduce toxic exposures. He also spent two years in Mexico linking union members there with their counterparts in the U.S. and Canada who have a common interest in better wages and conditions in all three countries. To that end, he created a short film: “$4 a Day? No Way!: Joining Hands Across the Border” that provides an engaging look at workers in Mexico, the U.S., and Canada organizing together against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and global corporations like Ford and their political allies.

After relocating to southern Oregon nearly 20 years ago, Witt became part of another community — one of photographers who help elevate their craft.

Matt’s photography influences involve a kind of fate or openness instead of seeking. When photographer David Lorenz Winston and his wife who came from the East Coast moved to Talent, Winston had an open house to meet people. “Somebody I knew had already met them and said I should drop by. I ended up talking to him, and we had coffee, and then we showed each other our photos. He said, ‘You know, I'm in this group (Southern Oregon Photographers Forum). You should come and see if you could join.’” Notably, David’s photos are published by UNICEF, National Wildlife Federation, Hallmark, and others.

Matt was welcomed into SOPF, which he describes as “not very institutional. It's just people meeting and helping each other. They saw potential in me, but I needed a lot of mentoring, which I got there.”

Matt explained the group’s value in feedback, which reflects his own learning streak: “One of the things that really stuck with me is a question that one member of the group often asked. As a photo was projected on the screen, he said to the person who took it, ‘So in your mind, what is this photo about?’ He didn't want to make assumptions about what the photographer was trying to do; he wanted to hear that from the photographer. He or others then might say, ‘Well, if that's what it's about, then you might have thought of this or you might have tried that.’ The group helped me use photography not just to show other people what I saw, but what I was feeling when I saw it.”

He gradually found his own groove. “For a while, I had images in shows around here and in Northern California.

Even in Barcelona and other places. But eventually, I lost interest in that.”

He served as an artist-in-residence at several national parks and public lands, including Crater Lake National Park and the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

In recent years, Matt merged artistic practice with his organizing roots, supporting, through photography, local efforts around affordable housing, climate action, and environmental protection. After a devastating fire in 2020 destroyed much of his town’s affordable housing, he collaborated with community groups to provide framed nature photos to 300 fire survivor households.

He continues to photograph community actions, from anti-pipeline protests to racial justice demonstrations. All income from photo sales through his website goes to local nonprofit organizations.

The “Feather Atlas of North American Birds” aka the poet and naturalist Pepper Trail referred Witt to Cirque many years ago for submitting writing and photos. Trail, known world-wide for his expertise in bird identification, began publishing his own poems in Cirque in 2011 and his writing continues to appear in the journal.

Witt published two pieces in Cirque. "They Say the War Is Over,” a nonfiction piece about his response to the Draft, appeared in Cirque #24 (July 2022) in which he describes an encounter between a veteran and a bus driver who asks the veteran to make less noise.

“You think I’m scared of you?” the veteran shouts, with his hands waving wildly in the air. “I’ve been to fucking ‘Nam and you think I’m scared of you?” “Go ahead,” he says to the driver and begins to chant in an unnaturally slow, steady cadence: “Shoot. Me.” The story delves into the different perspectives and realities of the Draft depending on class status.

Likewise, Witt’s poem and photo “Mileage” appears in Cirque #14 (July 2016). In “Mileage,” a long-haul trucker's mileage is GPS tracked to the extent that the boss knows when he sleeps and for how long, so relevant now as companies use apps to track employees’ movements. Still, companies don't know what they can’t track, such as what the trucker sees at a lake he passes:

…They don't know that he walked along the curving shore in his t-shirt that used to be white and watched the young sun light up the ridges in the salt-covered mud…

Witt’s poem shows a multidimensional person. The company doesn’t know that the trucker thinks about climate change and sees evidence of it everywhere. The poem’s relevancy strikes me.

By 2016, three of Witt’s images had appeared Cirque, then four, then eight in Issue #26 (September 2023), and so on. His work is a treasured and culled staple of the

journal. Witt and others are attracted to Cirque’s photos and writing in response to environmental issues and many other themes across Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and beyond.

That duality — beauty and urgency — is intentional. “I try to convey both the beauty of the natural world and the urgency of protecting it,” Witt says. “It’s not either-or.”

He curates an online gallery at MattWittPhotography. com and, at age 74, still hikes regularly. Observation continues to be central to his practice. “I spend more time watching than shooting,” he says. “The photo is just a way to say: ‘Look at this. Isn’t it worth noticing?’”

Many of his favorite backpacking trips have been with his son Hays and/or daughter Maria. “Both of them have the patience to humor me when I need to invest some time in a photo opportunity in the backcountry.”

Through his lens, the world is not just beautiful — it’s interconnected, fragile, and deserving of both awe and action. Whether framing the arc of a hillside or the fire in a protest chant, Matt Witt continues to see — and to help others see — what matters.

REVIEW

Bethany Reid

A Review of Mary Eliza Crane’s Last Call of the Dark Cirque Press, 2024

The 67 poems collected in Mary Eliza Crane’s Last Call of the Dark offer an antidote to despair. So many people are content to live their lives indoors — in cars, in offices and warehouses — but here we find a woman more often than not outdoors, living hand-in-hand with the wild, natural world, whether “alone in the woods / at peace with the wolves,” “under the shift of blue-gray sky,” or falling in love “with a hazel catkin.” Even in poems set inside — doing laundry, slicing leeks for an omelet — her preferred wild world is not merely present but insists on a starring role. Yes, this body is ours, the poems admit — clothed, civilized — and yes, this body is alive and at the mercy and pleasure of so much else. It’s wild. Even in a short poem ostensibly embracing despair over a natural disaster, “After the Bolt Creek Fire,” it’s the body that reports back to us, exploring a kind of pleasure with all five senses in play. We taste the “fine particles” of ash, and smell “the stale scent / of scorch and burn.” We see, feel, and smell the moon shining “like a bone / on the ravaged flesh;” we hear the birds as they “vanish into silence;” feel the day as it “breaks cold and damp as a sweat.”

In other poems, color drenches the senses. In “Earth Tones,” the use of color becomes a craft lesson:

You wanted to write in color, in hues of verdigris and tangerine, you wanted the light of emerald dragonfly wings to awaken some new need, a ruby-throated hummingbird fluttering beneath a scarlet columbine…

The lesson continues: “Let others describe light through a / garnet, luster of agate, autumnal evenings of saffron…” The poem ends with “berries, obsidian black, by the / side of the road.” I’ve emphasized color words, but notice that other words suggest color, “light, “luster of agate,” “autumnal evenings.”

Again and again what I found in these poems was attention. The poems wake us “with a wild mammalian quiver,” and remind us of how ravaging, how fleeting life is. The poem “Logjam” is a good example, opening with chaos, “tangle,” “turbulence,” and ending with:

Even trees grow old and die and fall to rest in the bed of the earth.

I have grown, procreated, will decompose, and reconfigure into future forms of being.

I can embrace this as a spiritual thing, but being alive in this moment is more linear than I care to concede.

Let’s rest a while by the mouth of the river and commune with a dead tree. Let water rise over our feet.

The penultimate poem, “Extinguished,” opens with what looks like an homage to Elizabeth Bishop (evident elsewhere — a conversation I’d love to have), and advises:

Lose all that you know how to lose.

Youth, teeth, faith, and lovers. It’s good practice. The woods are filled with wisdom and madness.

Your hands are only so big, even cupped to the brim, you must spill out one thing to pick up another.

In his introduction to The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy (Wisdom Publications, 2017), John Brehm writes, “No poem can last long unless it speaks, even if obliquely, to some essential human concern” (xviii), and continues by explaining how the poems he has chosen speak to the theme of impermanence:

Of course our culture encourages us not to pay attention, to live as if we will live forever, as if we can plunder the earth unceasingly and without compassion…But living in alignment with the truth of impermanence opens a secret passageway to joy. (xv)

Last Call of the Dark casts a wide net. From the beautiful cover art by Tami Phelps, and the book’s dedication to the late Seattle poet Thomas Hubbard, to the final set of poems that range across the globe, far beyond Crane’s home in the Pacific Northwest, it’s a book that does not let us forget that we are part and parcel of our larger natural world. But wherever the poet takes us — the West Bank, Siberia, County Kerry in Ireland, Siberia, or her homeplace near Duvall, Washington — she is wearing out her hiking boots, getting outdoors, and taking us with her. And everywhere, joy lurks, ready to surprise the tongue: “Salt infused sweet, blackberries and rose hips / by the beach, plump and ripe as the afternoon.” (“Road’s End”)

Our thanks to Bethany Reid and Raven Chronicles where this review first appeared.

FEATURE

Cynthia Steele

Time Beings in Homer: A Week of Writing, Watching, and Wingbeats

Where the Sterling Highway turns into Lake Street then Ocean Drive, it rewards — as always — with arrays of mountains, fishing boats, and waterways in Homer, Alaska. But as I meandered side streets, something swarming pulled my Highlander into the Sweetgale Meadworks and Cider House lot. Fumbling, I grabbed both cameras. A single stark, hand-sized, red poppy, rich with motion, stood brimming with a mass of overwintered, darker Carniolan Western Honeybees — then tipped into an emptier bloom beside it. Watching them amass, I thought of the writers flying in from across the country for the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. We, too, were arriving to gather, to pay attention. Hunkering down in Homer — not for the winter, but for a week. To watch. To listen. To buzz.

Along the drive — and in the days leading up to it — I’d heard several of the writers slated to appear. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies, with its startlingly tender and unsettling moments of parenthood, ambivalence, and shame. Everywhere You Don’t Belong by Gabriel Bump, with that unforgettable opener: “If there’s one thing wrong with people,” Paul always said, “it’s that no one remembers the shit that they should, and everyone remembers the shit that doesn’t matter for shit.” And Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow, with its grief-lit meditations: “That is what it means to lose someone…we must learn the ways in which we preserve parts of them in ourselves.” All these words sank in — disrupted me, folded into my own family stories. They found purchase.

For bringing these and other writers to Homer, including Ernestine Hayes, we have poet Erin Coughlin Hollowell, executive director of the Storyknife Writers Retreat, a residency for women writers, and the director of the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, to thank. Her poetry collections include Pause, Traveler, Every Atom, Corvus and Crater, and a chapbook Boundaries

Twice, I’d get to hear Soto Zen priest and author Ruth Ozeki. One evening, she gently led us through the parallels and creative process behind her novel A Tale for the Time Being, which entwines the story of a suicidal Japanese teenager with the life of her great-grandmother — a Zen Buddhist nun. While listening en route to the book on Audible, I found myself craving something more linear, more sense-making — but the novel didn’t offer that. That craving surprised me. That lack freed me. I remembered that writing doesn’t require linearity.

In a large lecture hall that felt both intimate and electrified, Ozeki spoke about becoming a Zen teacher, and how that path helped her through creative blocks. “We are time beings,” she said. “I am not the same person I was when I wrote the book.” Her reflections on impermanence, identity, and the Dharma offered a kind of space — a perspective I needed, especially in moments of doubt or inertia.

time — even when nothing came, even when doubt took over. When she feels like a fraud, she said, she accepts it and returns to her “happy delusions.” She admitted there are days when she “can’t chew a sentence.” “Every book,” she said, “is unknown or unknowable until it’s finished.” And then this: “Writing is like being desperately in love — not knowing if it’s requited. And that feeling can last for years.” I scribbled that line down as if I could tattoo it on my brain.

We shuffled between speakers and workshops, carrying those words like half-buried seeds, into the 40- to 50-degree days, relatively mosquito free. Between bouts of rain, sharp sun would break through. Some of us talked craft; some fell quiet. “I don’t know if I’m a different person than when I wrote something from long ago,” a fellow writer said. “I mean, I’m still me. Maybe not entirely the same.”

Jasmin Iolani Hakes, author of Hula, folded readings and writing prompts into her session on Place as Character. I found the scribble time especially helpful later when trying to recall the feeling of her talk. “When I’m writing about the rhythm of a place,” she said, “it really boils down to almost a suspension of self.” We don’t have to list every scent, sound, or texture — but as writers, we must consider them. If we leave them out, it should be intentional. “Presence is not default. It’s an act of paying attention.”

She admitted to feeling pulled in many directions, to losing traction, to struggling with momentum. I knew those feelings intimately. Her advice: push through when you can, rest when you must, but don’t delete. “Nothing is wasted time.”

She spoke of tracking the psychological evolution of her characters — how staying close to their shifting emotional lives helped her stay close to the work itself. That, too, shifted something in me. Her idea of a “time being” — a person inseparable from time — reshaped my understanding of the novel, and of myself. She ended one of her sessions with a short meditation, and encouraged us to reward ourselves for persistence, not just publication. “Even rejection,” she said, “is proof you’re showing up.”

In another talk, Ozeki reminded us: “Literary citizenship has never been so important,” especially in times like these. She described carving out sacred writing

In my own notes, I found myself writing about Wasilla in the ’80s: “A train running through the middle of town, ch-ch-ch, slow traffic on Main Street because of that one cop who needs to meet a quota and warns everyone once. When hearing a siren, immediately thinking, ‘tourist.’ Slot machines in teen clubs — ping, bing bing, boom boxes busting out rock. Still have that itch to push buttons, paddles flipping, whirr, pop, taking my mind off larger things.” Our early technology. These sounds will go somewhere. They mean somewhere.

Hakes offered deceptively simple insights: write short chapters. Let people read just one more before work. Let the rhythm of place seep into body language. “The way I walk to my car is different here than in LA” It’s not just geography — it’s cultural. Embodied. She read from Hula, and from Eva Müller. Her voice transported us. Time paused.

She explained that she couldn’t write Hula while still living in Hawaii. “I needed that kind of creative distance to distance myself from my own relationship with home,” she said. “It gets complicated sometimes.”

“In Hilo, we are the 'āina. Its mist is our breath, its rain our tears, its waters our blood. Our veins run deep, our song louder than their noise. Roots too deep to extract… It is the pull of the tides, the beat of the surf against our cliffs. It is our hair, our teeth, our bones. Our DNA.”

As a nature enthusiast and amateur birder, my mind often split between classrooms and outdoor play. Like my itchy pinball fingers, my shutter finger tracked every sudden movement: birds overhead, grass in wind, clouds cracking open. I lunched with the likes of Episcopal priest Judith Lethin (A Wonderful Terrible God, Cirque Press), Eric and Marilyn Johnson, and in every other spare moment, I wandered to Beluga Slough or some nearby waterway.

There, at the edge where freshwater from Beluga Lake meets the saltwater of Kachemak Bay, I stood still — a designated Critical Habitat Area. I spent time with former Alaska writer laureate and birder Nancy Lord and others who took to the trail. I walked Mud Bay before the Spit and at other times the lilac-tipped Timothy grass fields near my tiny house Airbnb, where Sandhill Cranes stood standoffish but close — close enough to hear their wingbeats as they took off and landed.

Over the course of the trip, I spotted more than twenty-six bird species. The striking Harlequin. The quietly intricate Gadwall. The fluffy Greater Scaup. The sociable Greater White-fronted Goose. The standoffish Common Merganser. And the dark, blunt-billed Brant — a species I hadn’t even heard of before this trip and saw well twice along the shoreline and flying in its swift, oddly overlapping mass.

Whether indoors or out, birdwatching or notetaking, I felt it: the presence of time. The attention to it. The way writing, landscape, conversation, and silence all began to weave together.

Like Ozeki said: We are time beings. And here, in Homer, I remembered that fully.

And next year we have Jane Hirshfield, poet, essayist, and translator, known as "one of American poetry's central spokespersons for the biosphere" to look forward to.

CONTRIBUTORS

John S. Argetsinger is an Alaska Native autodidact versed in various forms of artistic expression. As well as releasing novels and chapbooks, he has been an active photographer since 2005. Since his inception in the craft, he has wholeheartedly embraced using film for the entire journey. He also creates surreal Paper Craft images from vintage magazines using razor blades, scissors and glue.

Jean Anderson and her husband Don and their young son came to Fairbanks in 1966, Don accepting a job, planning to stay a year, as an adventure. Like so many Alaskans, we’re still here, still adventuring, with a second child born here and a lifetime of adventures. Jean started writing in childhood, always wanted to “be a writer,” and writes mostly short stories (her favorite form), usually in third person. Her recent collection is Human Being Songs: Northern Stories (University of Alaska Press, c2017).

Rachel Barton, poet, writing coach, and editor, has been published in print or online in the Whale Road Review, Oregon English Journal, Main Street Rag, Moon City Review, Cirque, and more. She has taught poetry workshops independently and at Linn-Benton Community College, the Northwest Poets Concord, Willamette Writers on the River, and the Oregon Poetry Association Conference. She has been the editor of Willawaw Journal through eight years and twenty issues and was a longstanding member of the editorial collective for the woman’s journal, Calyx. She serves as associate editor for Cloudbank Books. Barton’s short stories have been published online and in print (BeZine, Kindred Journal, Blue Cubicle Press, Clackamas Literary Review). Her recent book, This is the Lightness (The Poetry Box, 2022), her newly released Jacob’s Ladder (Main Street Rag, 2024) are available through her website: Rachel Barton Writer.com

My name is Elizabeth Belanger and I am a self-taught artist living in Anchorage, Alaska. I love portraiture and figurative art. I also love to weave stories and symbols through my art.

Pamela Bergmann grew up on a farm in Nebraska, but migrated north to Alaska over forty years ago, where she fell in love with the landscapes, wildlife, and people. An avid traveler and photographer, after retiring from public service, she began sharing photographs, stories, and poems via her website at https://pamelabergmann.net Twice a Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been published in AlaskaWomen Speak, Poetry Breakfast, the Anchorage Daily News, and a UCSF MERI Center Poetic Medicine Anthology.

Judy Björling: I have been a painter for over 60 years now, and color and texture never cease to amaze me! I have recently been integrating collage, drawing and painting into each of my works. Although a watercolorist, I won a National Scholarship Art Awards competition and scholarship to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; other interests demanded my full attention until 1989 when the owner of an early watercolor located me and asked, How could you not be painting? Since 1993 her watercolors, drawings, collages, and sculpture have appeared in numerous exhibits. Her artwork is owned by private and corporate collectors here and abroad. She has taught painting and sculpture both privately and through various organizations. She now lives in Woodinville, WA, where she continues to exhibit and sell her work. See Judy Bjorling @ jcbjorling on Instagram and Bjorlingstudios.com

Jeffery Brady writes from his cabin on West Creek on the traditional lands of the Lkóot in Dyea, Alaska. He studied creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill in the late 1970s before discovering Alaska and branching off toward a 37year career running a community newspaper. Now retired, he has returned to his love of poetry and fiction, drawing from south and north. His poetry has recently appeared in Cirque Journal, Tidal Echoes, and on the 49 Writers. org pandemic broadside. He recently won a contest for a short story published in The Missouri Review (spring 2025). He is co-director of the North Words Writers Symposium and Alderworks Alaska Writers & Artists Retreat and a proud owner of an independent bookstore.

Jack Broom is a Seattle native who retired in 2016 after 39 years as a reporter and editor at The Seattle Times. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Western Washington University in 1974. His work in photography began in the 1970s as a reporter/photographer for The Wenatchee World, where he worked before going to The Seattle Times in 1977. In recent years, his photographs have won awards at state-fair competitions in Washington and have been featured in previous issues of Cirque. He is a past president of the Edmonds-based Puget Sound Camera Club.

Sharon V. Brown currently lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. A retired English professor, she writes poetry from the enriched perspective of an older woman, reflecting on loss, change, and fragility. Her poems have appeared in a number of literary journals and collections.

Cindy Buchanan grew up in Alaska, has a B.A. in English from Gonzaga University, and studies poetry with Jeanine Walker (Jeanine’s Poetry School). She is a member of two monthly poetry groups, is an avid runner and hiker, and lives in Seattle. Her work has been published in Cirque, ONE ART, Hole in the Head Review, The Inflectionist Review, and other journals. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her chapbook, Learning to Breathe, was published in 2023 (Finishing Line Press). Find her at cindybuchanan.com

Judith Burger is a multi-disciplined artist based in Pendleton Oregon. Her favorite quote is from author Jack London: “You can’t wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a club.” Judith follows that philosophy in both life and in art. Her current favorite media are photography, soft pastel, and acrylic paint. Nature and human interactions inspire her work.

This is Judith M. Burtner, a lover of historical stories. I have been a teacher and commercial fisherman. My first book, Robinson Family Governess: Letters from Kauai and Niihau 1911-1913, delved into the lives of the plantation elite. I am working on a book about commercial fishing out of Naknek, Alaska.

Douglas G. Campbell lives in Portland, Oregon. He is Professor Emeritus of Art at George Fox University where he taught painting, printmaking, drawing and art history courses. His poetry and artworks have been published in numerous periodicals. His artwork is represented in collections such as The Portland Art Museum, Oregon State University, Ashforth Pacific, Inc. and George Fox University. You can see Douglas’ artwork at: http://www.douglascampbellart.com

S.W. Campbell was born in Eastern Oregon. He currently resides in Portland where he works as an economist and lives with a house plant named Morton. He has had over forty short stories published in various literary reviews in three countries, including Witness, Tin House, the Bellevue Literary Review, Entropy, and BlazeVOX. If you’d like to read more of his writing, check out his website: www.shawnwcampbell.com

Teri White Carns publishes photographs, as well as haibun and tanka prose. She also writes law review articles and reports on justice system research, and holds an MFA from Antioch University in LA (2017). She has lived in Anchorage, Alaska for fifty-plus years, with childhood and college roots in southwest Michigan.

Vic Cavalli studied the visual arts and photography as a young man and later in life discovered the potential depth and force of literature. In graduate school, he concentrated on the complex interpenetrating relationships between literature and the visual arts. He has been teaching Creative Writing at the university level since 2001. His fiction, poetry, photography, and visual art has been published in literary journals in Canada, the United States, England, and Australia.

Dale Champlin is an Oregon poet and artist. Many of her poems have appeared in The Opiate, Timberline, Willawaw, Cirque, Triggerfish, and elsewhere. Dale’s poetry collections are: The Barbie Diaries, Callie Comes of Age, Isadora, Andromina: A Stranger in America, and Medusa

Kersten Christianson derives inspiration from wild, wanderings, and road trips. She has authored Curating the House of Nostalgia (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2020), What Caught Raven’s Eye (Petroglyph Press, 2018), and Something Yet to Be Named (Kelsay Books, 2017). Additionally, she is the poetry editor of the quarterly journal, Alaska Women Speak. Kersten lives in Sitka, Alaska where she keeps an eye on the tides, shops Old Harbor Books, and hoards smooth ink pens.

Nard Claar: I have been many things in my life. A few of my favorites are maker, artist, guide, and teacher. I try to make the world a little better with my passing. Life is short, so paying attention is important. Mixed media art gives me the option to express my voice in a variety of ways to be tactile and include the senses. I am a landscape painter. I paint in a direct manner using what I see and how I feel about the environment. I feel compelled, like my ancestors, to create symbols and use that language that document my existence for this brief span of time. Each work is a reflection of place and time, in my journey of my life. My mixed media work includes stories and poems. I want people to pause and enjoy and appreciate life. The planet is a magical place of creation. I am delighted to offer and share my perspective, see nardclaar.com

Katherine Coons: Currently I live in the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont. I have been active in my studio and the arts scene for the past three years showing and exhibiting in local Vermont gallery spaces. Also, other places I inhabited are Los Angeles where I completed my formal studies and Anchorage, Alaska for seventeen years where I taught Art at the University of Alaska. My work is about place and nature and inspiration that comes from living in extreme areas. I have benefited from each location and my art makings are direct expressions that reflect these challenges. My work is expressionistic, gestural and autobiographical. I complete large paintings and also sculptural free-standing objects and presently work on smaller pieces about birds and the current landscape that encompasses a universality of spirit from the collective unconscious.

Mary Eliza Crane lives in the woods in the Cascade foothills in western Washington. A regular feature at Puget Sound readings, she has read poetry from Woodstock to LA, and internationally with Siberian poets in Russia. Mary has two volumes of poetry, What I Can Hold In My Hands and At First Light published by Gazoobi Tales Press. Her work has appeared in many journals and northwest anthologies, including Raven Chronicles, WA 129 Poets of Washington (2017) and Bridge Above the Falls (2019), and has been translated into Russian. Mary co-curates and co-hosts the monthly Duvall Poetry reading series. Her poetry collection Last Call of the Dark has just been published by Cirque Press.

Bonnie Demerjian writes from her island home in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, a place that continually nourishes her writing. Her poetry has appeared in Tidal Echoes, Alaska Women Speak, Blue Heron Review and October Hill Magazine, among others. She has also written four non-fiction books on the human and natural history of the region.

Nancy Deschu writes nonfiction and poetry based in natural history, science, and sense of place. As a field scientist she worked in Alaska and the tropics. Her fieldwork has provided her with a rich source of primary material and a wealth of stories.

Patrick Dixon is a retired educator and commercial fisherman living in Olympia, Washington. Published in Cirque Journal, Panoplyzine, Raven Chronicles, National Fisherman magazine, The Smithsonian and the anthologies FISH 2015, WA129 (2017), and I Sing the Salmon Home (2022). He was also included in the Washington State Book Award anthology, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate (2020). Dixon is on the Board of Directors of the Olympia Poetry Network. He is a past poetry editor of National Fisherman magazine’s quarterly, North Pacific Focus (2010 - 2019). He received an Artist Trust Grant for Artists to edit Anchored in Deep Water: The FisherPoets Anthology (2014). His poetry chapbook Arc of Visibility won the 2015 Alabama State Poetry Morris Memorial Award. In June of 2023 he won the Cirque Poetry of Place competition. His memoir, Waiting to Deliver, about his 20 years fishing for salmon on Cook Inlet, Alaska, was published in 2022.

Johanna Douglas is a poet from Billings, Montana. She earned a degree in English at the University of Montana in 2023. Johanna spent her formative years growing up on a small farm just south of the Yellowstone River. She is inspired every day by the world around her and her experiences growing up in the valley. She still resides in the Billings area with her two dogs and two cats, and partner.

Suzanne Edison is the author of The Body Lives Its Undoing and The Moth Eaten World. She teaches writing workshops for caregivers, patients, and medical providers.

Daniel Bartlett Elliott II was born September 18th, 1944 in Cadillac, MI. He earned a Master’s degree in English from Johns Hopkins University with a thesis on poetry, and taught English at the University of Wyoming before coming to Alaska in 1969. For a major period of his life, Dan lived in a log cabin he built north of Talkeetna, where he raised a family, working seasonally as a Master Guide; as a commercial fisherman in Ketchikan and the Bering Sea; in the Laborers’ Union on construction of the TransAlaska Pipeline, cleanup of the Exxon Valdez disaster, and other projects; and became a respected expert in the cultivation of apple trees in Alaska, participating in studies with the University of Alaska and speaking throughout the state. “Dear Jeanne” is his first published poem from an extensive collection that reflects his life.

Dianne Erickson is a member of Gallery 114. She owned a graphic design and marketing business for twenty-five years in Silicon Valley. Born in Portland, she moved to Jacksonville, OR from Palo Alto, CA, in 2001, and Portland in 2012. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Studio Art from Southern Oregon University in Ashland. Dianne was a founding member of AMBUS Contemporary Art. For a number of years they had a co-op gallery in Jacksonville, then Medford. She was Chief Business Officer of the International Encaustic Artists (IEA), and also Board President for a number of years at the Pacific Art League of Palo Alto, CA, and more recently on the Board of Directors of The Geezer Gallery. Dianne works in her studio in the Multnomah Village area of Portland. She is represented by Gallery 114, Portland. Her work can be viewed at www.dianneerickson.com

Helena Fagan lives in Juneau, Alaska where she writes poetry, memoir, and young adult fiction. Influenced by the beauty of Alaska, the love and losses in her life, and her long career as an educator, her writing has been published in Tidal Echoes, Cirque, Alaska Women Speak, Ground, North Coast Squid, and Exist Otherwise

Patricia Farrell lives in rural western Oregon. Formerly a biologist and landscape architect, she completed the Certificate of Creative Writing program from Linfield University in 2021. Her poems have been published in journals such as Paper Gardens, Camas Literary Journal, Verseweavers, The Thieving Magpie, Wild Roof Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. In 2023 she won first place in the New Poets category of the Oregon Poetry Association contest.

Barbara Flaherty’s poetry and essays have been published in several literary journals and anthologies. She has two published books, Holy Madness (Chanting Press 2007) poetry, and Doing It Another Way: the Basic Text (Chanting Press 2009) short essays on Franciscan spirituality. She is the Contributing Editor of Manifestations Art & Literary Journal, and a winner of the Drogheda Amergin Poetry Prize, Ireland.

Nancy Fowler was born in Boston, but recently returned to the coast of California after having lived for many years on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Her writing asserts that acknowledgement of a specific person, place or action is an initial step in understanding, respect and love. Witness can also motivate action or acceptance. Nancy’s work has been previously published in Tidepools, Gemini, Songs of the San Joaquin, Naugatauk River Review, Cirque, Porter Gulch Review and other literary journals. Additionally, it has been exhibited on posters for Bainbridge Island’s (WA) Poetry Corners event, and thrice been included in the Port Angeles (WA) Fine Arts Center’s Poetry in the Park Program, with yearlong displays in the Webster Woods Sculpture Park. Her work can also be found in the recently released Women in a Golden State, an anthology of poetry by women over 60.

Bliss Goldstein is a Pacific Northwest writer whose work has appeared in HuffPost, the LA Times, and CALYX Journal, for which she won the 2022 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. She has an MLA from Stanford University, where she co-founded the journal Tangents. Ms. Goldstein taught writing at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington where she lives now. She’s currently at work on a book of essays titled How Not to Be an Asshole. Her website is blissgoldstein.com

Charles Goodrich is the author of four volumes of poetry — Watering the Rhubarb; A Scripture of Crows; Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden; and Insects of South Corvallis — and a book of narrative essays, The Practice of Home, co-editor of two anthologies, Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest and In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens. His first novel, Weave Me a Crooked Basket, was published by University of Nevada Press in 2023. He writes and gardens near the confluence of the Marys and Willamette Rivers in the traditional homeland of the Ampinefu Band of the Kalapuya in Corvallis, Oregon. FMI: charlesgoodrich.com

David A. Goodrum is the author of the collection Vitals and Other Signs of Life (The Poetry Box) and the chapbook Sparse Poetica (Audience Askew). Recent and upcoming publications include Tar River Poetry, Gyroscope, San Antonio Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, I-70 Review, SHARK REEF, Banyan Review, Tampa Review, among others. Born and educated in Indiana, David now lives in Corvallis, Oregon. Find out more about this poet/ photographer at www.davidgoodrum.com

A child of the Azores and Europe, Paul Haeder ended up in Arizona, in the Chiricahua Mountains as a newspaper reporter in Bisbee. He followed that avocation to Washington, Oregon, Mexico, Vietnam, Central America. He’s widely published as a nonfiction writer, storyteller and poet. His collection of short stories, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing From Vietnam, was published by Cirque Press in 2020. He’s got novels under his belt, and lots of narratives from south of the USA border ready for unpacking. His penchant for social and environmental justice takes him places most people fear to travel. He’s been a college teacher, social worker, homeless veteran advocate, and faculty union organizer. He lives on the edge of the Pacific, in Oregon, with a wife, snake and cat. He is Projects Editor for Cirque

Jim Hanlen won the First Place, William Stafford Award from the Washington Poetry Association, 1992. He has poems recently in Abandoned Mine, Willow Review, Salal Review and Reflection

Annekathrin Hansen grew up near the rugged Baltic Sea beaches in North East Germany. She attended Waldemar Kraemer’s drawing and painting classes at Art School in Rostock and Heiligendamm, Germany. She studied and received an Engineering degree and worked in Germany and Australia. Anne interpreted aerial photos and created many types of maps in land surveying and for architectural offices. She is skilled in sculpturing, photography, print making, painting, mosaic and Mixed Media. Anne graduated from various workshops. Further self-studies led to her recent artwork. In 2010 she moved to Alaska.

Charles Hertz is a retired gastroenterologist, who has traveled to some 30 countries on all 7 continents in the past 20 years, photographing wildlife, people, and places.

Barbara Hood is a retired attorney and businesswoman who writes poetry, commentary, nonfiction and occasional fiction in Anchorage, Alaska. She is a past president and executive director of 49 Writers, the Alaska writers’ organization.

Sandra Hosking is a photographer and writer based in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in West Texas Review, 3 Elements Review, Wild Roof Journal, Red Flag Poetry, Edify Fiction, Red Ogre Review, and more. She holds M.F.A. degrees in theatre and creative writing, sandrahosking. com

Pamela Huber is an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Montana who was raised on the water. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals including Atlanta Review, Furious Gravity, and Delaware Bards Poetry Review, and has received awards from Glimmer Train and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She splits her time between Palmer, Alaska and Missoula, Montana and she lives online at pamelahuberwrites.com

Marc Janssen has been writing poems since around 1980. Some people would say that was a long time but not a dinosaur. Early decrepitude has not slowed him down much; his verse can be found scattered around the world in places like Pinyon, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading series, the occasionally occurring Salem Poetry Festival, and was a nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.

Eric Gordon Johnson was born in Fairbanks in 1948 and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. He earned an MFA in Creating Writing in poetry at the University of Alaska, Anchorage in December 2020. He won an honorable mention for a short story in the University of Alaska, Anchorage and Anchorage Daily News writing contest. He has published poems and a short story in Cirque Journal. He published a memoir in Anchorage Remembers published by 49Writers. He also has several broadsides published by 49Writers. He has published poetry in the Alaska Humanities Forum. He is a member of Drumlin Poets, Poetry Parley and 49Writers. He has taught poetry classes for Opportunities for Lifelong Education.

Jill Johnson splits her time between Alaska and Eastern Oregon. Feels lucky.

Penny Johnson lives at the base of a mountain in Central Washington. She and her horse run the farm. Johnson provides glimpses of extraordinary lives that have lost some scaffolding but radiate genuine and quixotic vulnerability. She was a resident of Devereux, received her BA from The Evergreen State College, and MFA from Goddard College. Johnson was the recipient of the Kirkwood Award for Short Fiction through UCLA Extension. Both Johnson’s novels, Memories of a Female Truck Driver and Double Back, are available from Amazon. She is a contributor in the WA129 anthology. Johnson has most recently been published in Yakima Coffee House Poets where she won the Tom Pier Prize, Shrub-Steppe Review, and Cirque Journal, with a Pushcart Prize nomination, Cleaver, Fall 2023, Honorable Mention judged by Diane Suess and Quartet Journal. Her chapbook, Hags on Tractors was published in 2024 by Poetry Box.

Terry S. Johnson recently settled in Alaska after a lifetime in New England where she performed as a professional harpsichordist before serving as a public school teacher. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Driftwood, Edge, Journal of the American Medical Association, Main Street Rag, New Verse News, Passager, Slipstream, Technoculture and Theodate. Her collection, Coalescence, won a 2014 Honorable Mention in the New England Book Festival, and her second book, Plunge, launched in 2019. She won first place in both the 2023 and 2024 annual Alaska Writers Guild poetry competition. www. terrysjohnsonpoet.com

Maureen Kane lives in Bellingham, WA with her family. She is a mentalhealth therapist in private practice in Washington and Idaho. Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals. She is a Sue Boynton Poetry Walk Award winner. Her books of poems are: The Phoenix Requires Ashes: Poems for the Journey and Mycelium: Poetry of Connection. Her workbook A Guide Back to You: A workbook for exploring who you are and staying true to yourself is a Chanticleer International Books Awards First Place category winner.

Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and lives in Treasure Valley. His poetry has appeared in One Art, Umbrella Factory and The Poetry Box

Royal Kiehl was born on the Great Lakes during the time of burning rivers and the sea lamprey invasion. He grew up in a nearby agricultural community notable mainly for the fact that not very much ever happened there. He moved to Alaska in 1974 and continues to live there, working as a psychiatrist and writing poetry and short stories. Dr. Kiehl is not a published writer, and as such can neither be considered “up-and-coming” nor “significant.” However, he unashamedly loves his own writings and hopes that others might also enjoy them.

Janet R. Klein's photographs and writings have captured life along the shores of Kachemak Bay since 1978.

Joseph “Josh” Kleven, an artisan and photographer based in Cheney, Washington, draws inspiration from his Alaskan roots. Known for his craftsmanship, Kleven combines new materials with rare wood to create gallery quality Adirondack chairs and related designs. Recently, his work has gained attention for its artistry and functionality. As a photographer, Kleven captures the natural world with a keen eye, further showcasing his creative versatility and passion for the world outside his door.

Sandra L. Kleven is a poet, publisher, and creative force in Alaska’s literary scene. Known for her evocative poetry, Kleven captures the rugged beauty of Alaska’s landscapes, as well as the intensity of human connection. As publisher of Cirque, a journal celebrating writers and artists of the North Pacific Rim, she fosters a vibrant community of voices often overlooked in mainstream literature. Her work delves into themes of resilience, nature, and cultural identity, creating poems that resonate with clarity and emotional depth. Kleven’s commitment to storytelling has made her an influential figure in regional and contemporary poetry. Author of several books, Defiance Street: Poems and Other Writing, is a good starting point for readers.

Dianne Knox is a University of Iowa graduate, worked for Rockwell International in Business Development, owned a small shipping business and taught at Black Dragon Tai Chi, a business she owned. Knox is the author of Red Hot Pepper, her first poetry collection. Dianne has been published by Olympic Peninsula Authors in five anthologies, Tidepools Magazine (Peninsula College), Poetry Corners (Bainbridge Island Press), Poetry in the Park at Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, and reads frequently at Blue Whole Gallery, Third Friday, and other Northwest open mics.

Robin Koger is an Alaskan, born and raised. A poet, photographer, fiber artist, and retired English teacher, she holds a B.Ed., membership in the Alaska Writer’s Guild, and 49 Writers. Her work appears in KTNA’s Susitna Writer’s Voice, the FisherPoetsGathering 2023, 2024, and 2025, Alaska Women Speak, and Cirque, A Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rim. Doing much of her writing in the Upper Susitna Valley, approximately forty miles from the summit of Mt. Denali, and at a remote fish camp at the base of the active volcano, Mt. Iliamna on the West side of Cook Inlet, memories, sensations, and observations of nature and relationships inspire Robin's work.

Gary Lark’s most recent collections are Easter Creek, Main Street Rag, Daybreak on the Water, Flowstone Press and Ordinary Gravity, Airlie Press. His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Rattle, Sky Island and others. https://garylark.work/ Eric le Fatte was educated at MIT and Northeastern University in biology and English. He has worked correcting library catalog cards in Texas, and as the Returns King at Eastern Mountain Sports in Massachusetts, but currently hikes, writes, teaches and does research on tiny things in the Portland, Oregon area. His poems have appeared in Rune, The Mountain Gazette, The Poeming Pigeon, The Clackamas Literary Review, The Raven Chronicles, Windfall, Verseweavers, US#1 Worksheets, Perceptions, Clover, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Clade Song, Deep Wild, Pangyrus, Cathexis Northwest, Canary, and happily enough, in Cirque

Judith Lethin is an Episcopal Priest, Chaplain, and Retreat Master. She is the author of the newly published memoir, A Wonderful-Terrible God: In The Light of Love, There Is No Darkness, A Journey of Spiritual Awakening in Native Alaska. “Everything About Coffee” is a piece of Flash Non-Fiction following the theme of Displacement, Placelessness, Homelessness.

Dan Liberthson, PhD has published five books of poetry and many poems in small journals, including The Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, South Coast Poetry Journal, Chaminade Literary Review, Triggerfish, and Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine. He also has written a middlegrade fantasy novel and a spy thriller. Dan’s awards include second place in the William Stafford Memorial Award Poetry Contest (2020) and the Maine Poets Society contest (2022). He was Secretary of the Oregon Poetry Association (OPA) from 2019-2022, and currently lives in Cottage Grove, OR and San Francisco. Website: www.liberthson.com

Melanie Lombard makes experimental cyanotypes, merging natural imagery with abstraction. By working outdoors, she collaborates with the environment, embracing its unpredictability in her art. Melanie lives in Alaska and holds a BA in Studio Art from Mills College in Oakland, California. More of her work can be found at melanielombard.com.

Linera Lucas’s poetry has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Briar Cliff Review, Cirque, Eclectica, I Sing the Salmon Home (winner of the 2023 Washington State Book Award,) PageBoy Magazine, Quartet, Redactions, Spillway, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection Answering Chaos: A Handbook was published by Kelsay Books in 2024. She is coeditor of When Home is Not Safe (McFarland). Lucas has a BA from Reed College, an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and has taught at the University of Washington Women’s Center and Hugo House.

Michael Magee’s latest collection: Shiny Things is published by MoonPath Press (2025). Budapest After Dark came out in February 2024. His last collection Terra Firma: Sacred Ground 1970-2022 was published by MoonPath Press, 2022. He just participated in a reading for the Jack Straw Series in Seattle reprising his Jack Straw Residency. He has traveled in Morocco, Turkey, Malta, Italy and lived in England where his play “A Night in Reading Gaol with Oscar Wilde” was produced in Derby, England. He lives in Tacoma, Washington.

David Mampel is a caregiver, former minister, semi-retired clown and artist. He writes fiction and poetry to bring a little sun to the rainy darkness of the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared in Copperfield Review Quarterly, The Aurora Journal, The Remington Review and others. Follow his work online at: http://www.davidmampelwriter.com, https:// www.instagram.com/davidmampelwriter/ https://www.facebook.com/ DavidMampelWriter

Kim Marcucci, a Portland-based artist with over 35 years of experience perfecting her abstract expressionistic painting style, recently returned to Oregon after nearly five decades in Alaska. Marcucci was born one of triplets in Springfield, Oregon. Her large-scale canvases are distinguished by bold brushwork, vibrant colors, and captivating design, focusing on color, texture, and movement. She is often covered in paint from head to toe, reflecting her uninhibited exuberance for painting. Inspired by nature, travel abroad, and her Chickasaw heritage, Marcucci’s work resonates with the beauty and power of the natural world and the influences upon it.

David McElroy lives in Anchorage, Alaska. He recently retired as a bush pilot in the Arctic. He has worked as a smokejumper, teacher in Guatemala, and taxi driver in Seattle. He attended the Universities of Minnesota, Montana, and Western Washington. He has been published in national journals including Antaeus, Cirque, The Nation, Poetry Northwest, The Chicago Review, and The Alaska Quarterly Review. He has four books of poems are: Making It Simple, Mark Making, Just Between Us, and Water the Rocks Make. He is a recipient of grants from the National Council on the Arts, and the state of Alaska Council on the Arts and Humanities. He was given Cirque’s Andy Hope Award for poetry.

Ron McFarland was born in eastern Ohio, grew up in Cocoa, Florida, taught a couple of years in Texas, took his PhD at the U of Illinois (Urbana), and ended up in Idaho, where he thought he’d linger only 3 or 4 years— instead, it’s been 55. Turns out the West sort of wears on ya.

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep concern for our planet’s future, with five decades of published poetry, six poetry chapbooks, a full-length poetry book, Elegy for the 21st Century, a SF novel, Lifeline and book of short stories, The Dream Hunt and Other Tales. Find her at www.cathymcguire.com

Tom McIntire: I am a Seattle-based painter and filmmaker. I believe in the miracle of right now and the tragedy of the passing moment. Stories and our perception of precious time that stories attempt to capture are what drive me. Driving narrative in ways both logical and absurd are reflected in my painting, writing and filmmaking. The different media fuel one another and present new approaches to tangling and untangling the strings of story, color, character, framing and line. My intuitively created paintings build and break possible narratives for the viewer with juxtapositions of characters, locations, viewpoints and vibrant color. Many paintings also play with place, time and repetition, presenting a filmic journey in a single frame.

Rachel McKinley is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fourth River, Southern Quill, and Plan B: A Journal of Reproductive Justice When not writing, reading, or homeschooling her children, she enjoys hiking and baking.

Katy McKinney divides her time between her home in rural Trout Lake, Washington and in the winters, a sailboat on which she and her husband can be found cruising anywhere from Mexico to Panama. Her poetry has been published in a number of journals (The Sun, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Windfall, and others) as well as in several anthologies. Her first book, Fireproofing the Woods, was published in 2013 by Dancing Moon Press and was the winner of the 2019 North Street Book Prize in poetry. It’s available through www.katymckinney.com

Rebecca Meloy: Rooted in Scandinavian heritage, a descendant of Finnish farmers, pioneering Norwegians, and Swedish ministers, Rebecca’s visual voice is instilled with a strong connection to the environment and spirit of nature. Her art has been seen across the US, was in the 2023 live MONA auction; featured in a Nordic Museum solo show, exhibited at the Aula Gallery in Helsinki, and she has received residencies in Alajarvi Finland and Centrum. Rebecca owns Meloy Gallery in Bellingham, was a landscape gardener and master union carpenter. She studied at Cornish College & WWU.

Judith Mikesch-McKenzie is a teacher, writer, actor and producer living in the Pacific Northwest. She has traveled widely, but is always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul. Writing is her home. She has recently placed/published in two short-story contests, and her poems have been published or are upcoming in Calyx, Her Words, Plainsongs Magazine, Cirque, Wild Roof Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, and over 40 others. She is a wee bit of an Irish curmudgeon, but her friends seem to like that about her.

Kassandra Mirosh is a long-time Alaskan resident who is inspired by the birds that make Alaska their home. Her sculptures are made with recycled and handmade paper, maps, handwritten poetry and correspondence, cardboard and repurposed items found on her many adventures across the state. Each feather is hand-cut and folded to give the sculptures texture and life. All of her pieces contain something that was destined for the landfill. In renewing and transforming these items, she hopes to honor conservation efforts and show appreciation for the work that is being done to preserve the natural habitats of these amazing creatures.

Eve Müller lives in Eugene, Oregon with her sweetheart. She has recently published in Camas, Cirque, Empty House, Marrow Magazine, Sea Wolf Journal, Sequestrum, Thieving Magpie, Timber Review and The Writing Disorder. Some of her work has been anthologized, and her first book, Guide to the Ruins, was published by Plan B Press, with a second book, Birds and Saints, forthcoming. She was awarded a PLAYA artists’ residency this year, and her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. When Eve is not writing, she bakes, hikes, conducts research on autism, hangs out with her mom and two feral daughters, and skinny-dips whenever/wherever she can.

Linda B. Myers traded snow boots for rain boots and moved from a marketing career in Chicago to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula where she is now part of the old growth. She has Indy published ten novels, is newish to poetry, writes a monthly op/ed piece for the Sequim Gazette, and is a cofounder of Olympic Peninsula Authors, a group devoted to promoting the many fine authors out here in the wild. Her poetry has appeared in Cirque Journal, Poetry Breakfast, Unleash Lit, and is published in Empty Bowl’s Madrona Series, and several other anthologies.

Heidi Naylor is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and made her way to Idaho in 1990. Her story collection, Revolver, was published in 2018, and her poetry collection, February Light, will appear soon; both books via BCC Press. She’s a two-time Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices nominee and received a fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. She loves Idaho trails and her family, including two little granddaughters. Find her at heidinaylor.net

When she is not writing, Cynthia Neely paints in both oil/cold wax and acrylics. Her first full-length poetry collection, Flight Path (2014) was an Aldrich Press Book Contest finalist. Broken Water (2011) won the Hazel Lipa Prize for Poetry chapbook contest from Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, and Passing Through Blue Earth (2016) won the Bright Hill Press Chapbook Contest. Her poems are found in numerous journals and anthologies. Essay work has appeared in The Writers’ Chronicle and Cutthroat. Her latest full-length volume, I’ll Dress Myself in Wilderness and You is forthcoming from Fernwood Press.

Poet/interviewer Paul E. Nelson founded the Cascadia Poetics Lab, the Cascadia Poetry Festival and co-founded the Poetry Postcard Fest. Books include DaySong Miracle (Past 62) (2024); Cascadian Prophets (Interviews 1999-2023) (2024); Haibun de la Serna (2022); A Time Before Slaughter/ Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020); American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018); American Sentences (2015, 2021); A Time Before Slaughter (2009). Co-Editor of Winter in America (Again: Poets Respond to 2024 Election (2025, Carbonation Press); Cascadian Zen Volume I: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here and Now (2023, Watershed Press); Make it True meets Medusario (2019) (Spanish & English) and other anthologies. He’s Literary Executor for the late poet Sam Hamill and lives in Rainier Beach, alongside dxʷwuqʷeb Creek.

Dion O’Reilly is the author of three poetry collections: Sadness of the Apex Predator, a finalist for the Steel Toe Book Prize and the Ex Ophidia Prize; Ghost Dogs, winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, The Independent Press Award for Poetry, and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Poetry Award and The Catamaran Poetry Prize; and Limerence, a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition, forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, The Slowdown, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads poetry workshops, and is a reader for Catamaran Literary Reader. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, she lived for nearly a decade in Washington, mainly in Fremont under the Aurora Bridge.

Andris Ozols is an old fart that resides on Kodiak Island and lives in the past. Some days are better than others.

Barbara Parchim lives on a small farm in southwest Oregon. She enjoys gardening and hiking and volunteered for several years at a wildlife rehabilitation facility caring for raptors and wolves. Her poems have appeared in Allegro, Isacoustic, Turtle Island Quarterly, Canary, Windfall, Pedestal, Jefferson Journal, Cirque and others. Her first book, What Remains, was published by Flowstone Press in October 2021. Her second book of poetry, Muscle Tree, was published in September 2024 by Flowstone Press.

Zachary Paul is a father, husband, schoolteacher, and poet. Originally from the Oregon Coast, he has since moved inland.

James Pearson is a writer and photographer living in Eugene, Oregon, with his beautiful wife, a painter, their two children, and a currently baying hound dog.

Tami Phelps: I am a visual artist who has called Alaska home for over five decades. My cold wax paintings have received international and national recognition, including the London Art Biennale 2023, and the U.S. 5th Annual National Climate Assessment Report from Washington, DC, 2023. My artwork is influenced by a 20-year teaching career as a public Montessori teacher and the pedagogy of Dr. Maria Montessori. Music, nature, relationships, and antique stores are additional inspirations for me. And a dash of humor never hurts. My mixed media paintings incorporate ideas, concepts, and my life as an Alaskan woman. I invite viewers to create their own interpretations. A combination of cold wax, oils, and perhaps assemblage, brings my conceptual, sometimes representational, paintings to life. Telling authentic stories through art is a cathartic process that scratches an itch I cannot reach any other way. tamiphelps.com

David J.S. Pickering is a native Oregonian, having grown up and lived much of his life in the working-class culture of the North Oregon Coast. His first poetry collection, Jesus Comes to Me as Judy Garland, received the Airlie Prize in 2020. His poetry is published (or forthcoming) in a variety of journals including Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, Passager, Tar River Poetry, Mantis, Fireweed, Lips, Reed Magazine, and Gertrude. David lives with his husband in Portland, Oregon where, even as you read this, he has likely had too much coffee.

Timothy Pilgrim, a Montana native living in Bellingham, Washington, has more than six hundred acceptances from U.S. journals such as Seattle Review, Red Coyote, Cirque and Santa Ana River Review, and international journals such as Windsor Review in Canada — along with two poetry books. See timothypilgrim.org

Shauna Potocky is the author of Yosemite Dawning: Poems of the Sierra Nevada (2023) and the forthcoming book Sea Smoke, Spindrift and Other Spells, both published by Cirque Press. Her work also appears in Writing Through The Apocalypse (2023), Alpinist Magazine, and Beyond Words International Journal. Shauna served as Artist in Residence for the Sitka Conservation Society in 2024. As a poet and painter with a deep connection to the natural world and a particular love of high peaks, jagged ice, and rugged coasts, Shauna is grateful and ever in awe to call Seward, Alaska home.

Artist, mother, photographer, yoga teacher, gardener and writer, Mandy Ramsey self-published her first book Grow Where You’re Planted in 2019, blending her poetry, photography and love of yoga through the seasons in Alaska. Her writing and artwork have been published in Tidal Echoes, Alaskan Women Speak, Cirque, Tiny Seed Journal, Elephant Journal, Young Ravens Literary Journal, Poets Choice, Alchemy & Miracles Anthology, and Still Point Quarterly. She has been living off the grid in Haines, Alaska since 2000 in the timber frame home she built with her husband, holds an MA in Yoga Studies and Mindfulness Education, and believes that movement, flowers, and the natural world can heal, inspire, and sprout friendships. Connect on mandyramsey.com

Native New Yorker Diane Ray has lived in the Seattle area since ‘92, longer than anywhere. Former modern dancer and more recently retired psychologist, she is a frequent Cirque contributor with writing also in Canary, Sisyphus, Common Dreams, Poetica, Voices Israel, and elsewhere. Ray is surviving our perilous times by, along with her husband, forming a movement: Save The Steal of Democracy: STS, and also hiking, biking, grandmothering, and watching Saturday Night Live reruns, especially anything with Gilda Radner.

Bethany Reid’s stories, essays, and poems have recently appeared in One Art, Poetry East, Quartet, Passengers, Adelaide, Kithe, Descant, Peregrine, and Catamaran. Her fourth full-length collection of poems, The Pear Tree, won the 2023 Sally Albiso Award and is due out this winter. Learn more at http://www.bethanyareid.com

Brenda Roper is an artist whose love of travel corresponds directly to her love of photography. It comes alive when crossing borders of the foreign kind or at the 4-way stop at the end of the street. She is leaning into the authenticity of the times: abstract walks around the hood, iPhone in hand keeping tabs on that fine line between apocalypse and hope. Follow her at https://brendaroper.substack.com

Nicholas Skaldetvind was born in New York.

Beatrice Skipton is a high school student in Washington state. When she is not helping out with the school’s literary magazine or writing, she is busy running, swimming, and biking. Her poems have been published in The Rock, Bainbridge High School’s literary magazine, and she regularly attends spoken word night at her local library to read and listen to poetry.

Cami Smith is a Seattle-based multimedia artist with deep roots in fiber art and over 30 years of experience working in textiles and mixed media. Her intuitive process often blends acrylics, collage, watercolor, and photo transfers—layering materials and meaning to explore memory, emotion, and transformation. A lifelong creative, Cami grew up in a home filled with art, books, music, and imagination, shaped by her mother’s vibrant artistic lens. Her formal studies in France, Mexico, and the Netherlands, along with time spent with Indigenous artists in Ecuador and China, continue to influence her practice. In addition to her studio work, Cami serves as the Media Manager, Writer, and Juror for Fiber Art Now, where she helps shape conversations within the contemporary fiber and fine craft community. She is currently developing a large-scale installation project that explores memory through material and form, with completion planned for 2026.

Corinne Smith has been published in Cirque Journal and will be in the next issue of Alaska Women Speak. In 2023 her poems won awards in the annual contests of both the Alaska Writers Guild and the Anchorage Daily News. She lives in Talkeetna, Alaska, with her husband and a curly white dog.

Mary Lou Spartz is a poet, playwright, and long-time Alaskan and Juneauite. Poetry, writing, or reading never ceases to challenge and delight her. Capturing the joyful and the not-so-joyful never loses its appeal. Cheryl Stadig lived in Alaska for 18 years, calling several places home including Anchorage, Teller, Ketchikan, and Prince of Wales Island where her two sons were raised. Running the wilds of Maine in her youth helped prepare her for life in rural Alaska. Her Alaska resume includes work at a 5-star hotel, a university, a village general store, and as a 911 dispatcher/ jail guard. She would happily consider the job of hermit should a dot on the northern map be in need. Her work has appeared in previous issues of Cirque, Inside Passages, and other publications. She is currently living in Maine with her 100-year-old father who is still at home and cutting firewood.

Kathleen Stancik lives on the eastern slope of Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Her work has been published by Cirque, Portland Review, Typehouse, Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal, Yakima Coffeehouse Poets and others. She was awarded the Tom Pier Prize by the Yakima Coffeehouse Poets in 2018 and 2024 and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 by the editors of Cirque

Cynthia Steele is a Pacific Northwest loving, lifelong Alaskan, except for those five concert-going years in Washington State and the bouncing around of her early childhood. She writes poetry, nonfiction, and takes hundreds of photos a week, and some of these end up in Cirque. Her book 30 Before 13 is in its final stages. She is a dog whisperer of seven and has fostered dozens. She holds a Medical Assisting Certification, an MA in English, and a BA in Journalism and has thrice been an editor. She has two adopted adult children and lives with husband Bill.

Leah Stenson is the author of three books of poetry — Heavenly Body, The Turquoise Bee and Other Love Poems, Everywhere I Find Myself—and a hybrid memoir Life Revised. She was a regional editor of Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest and co-editor of the awardwinning Reverberations from Fukushima: 50 Japanese Poets Speak Out She hosts the long-running Studio Series Poetry Reading & Open Mic in Portland, Oregon.

A retired therapist, Dianne Stepp lives in Portland with her husband. Her poems have appeared in various journals and reviews including Tar River Poetry, Naugatuck River Review, Cider Press Review, Sugar House Review, Glassworks and Windfall among others. She has published three chapbooks: Half-Moon of Clay, Sweet Mercies, and The Nest’s Dark Eye. She is also a gardener, fabric artist and beekeeper.

Richard Stokes is a Juneau resident of over 50 years. His prose and poetry work usually reflects his love of nature, his aging or his boyhood in the sharply defined black-white world of rural Georgia in the 1940-50’s. He graduated from Emory in Atlanta in 1961.

Sheary Clough Suiter grew up in Eugene, Oregon, then lived in Alaska and Colorado until her recent relocation back to the Pacific Northwest. Her encaustic fine art is represented in Anchorage, Alaska by Stephan Fine Art, in Camas, Washington by the Attic Gallery, in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado by Stones, Bones, & Wood Gallery, and in Colorado Springs, Colorado by Auric Gallery. When she’s not traveling in her camper van along the backroads of America with her artist partner Nard Claar, Suiter works from her home studio in Springfield, Oregon near the Willamette River. Online at @shearycloughsuiter and www.sheary.me

James P. Sweeney is the author of two books, The List and Alaska Expedition Marine Life Solidarity. His stories have been published in Cirque, The Alpinist, Homer News, Alaska Public Radio, Anchorage Press, to name a few. He lived in Alaska for 35 years, but currently, is taking care of his mother, her dogs and cat in Chico, California. He still skis and climbs and is an avid vegetable gardener. He is currently working on a series of short stories about dead friends he loved and admired he hopes will become a book. His Substack account carries much of his recent work. https:// jsweeney295.substack.com/publish/home

Kathleen Tarr from Anchorage, is the author of the spiritual memoir, We Are All Poets Here (VP&D House, 2018). She is a Thomas Merton scholar, and the former program coordinator of the low-residency, MFA Program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her articles, essays, and poetry have appeared in a wide range of anthologies, magazines, and literary journals. Kathleen holds an MFA in Literary Nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh.

Carey Taylor is the author of Some Aid to Navigation and The Lure of Impermanence. She is the winner of the 2022 Neahkahnie Mountain Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, runner-up for the Concrete Wolf Louis Poetry Book Award, and has been published both nationally and internationally. She has a Master’s Degree in School Counseling from Pacific Lutheran University. Carey has lived her entire life in the Pacific Northwest and had the rare childhood experience of living at three lighthouse stations. She lives in Portland, Oregon. https:// careyleetaylor.com

Jim Thiele worked as a photographer for a biological textbook company for several years before moving to Alaska in 1974. He has worked for The Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the University of Alaska as a biologist. He is a recently retired financial advisor. His photographs have been seen in several publications, including Alaska Magazine, Alaska Geographic, and Cirque. He lives in Anchorage with his wife Susan. Taking photos forces him to stop and really see the world.

Jim Thielman lives along the Columbia River in Richland, WA. He studied at the Iowa Writers Workshop. He published two books of poetry with friends: Postcards from Jim with Jim Hanlen and Reflections Life, the River, and Beyond with Jim Bumgarner and Lenora Good.

Gary Thomas: I am currently living in College Place, Washington. A retiree who loves to share the outdoors and interesting artistic endeavors including Photography, Ceramic creations and Poetry. I have lived in the Northwest US most of my life, yet I love exploring other cultures both in the US and abroad.

Portland based writer Judy Thorn (she/they) was raised by a family of workingclass artists in the US, the UK, and Canada. She attended Concordia University in Montreal/Tiohtia:ké where she received the Irving Layton Award for Fiction. Judy’s meticulous multimedia work is concerned with memory, history, art, cities and seasons, friendship and love, the queer, and the baroque.

J. T. Townley has published in Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, The New York Review of Books, The Threepenny Review, and many other magazines and journals. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (five times) and the Best of the Net Award. He holds a PhD in Sociology from University College London, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and an MPhil in English from Oxford University, and he directs the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies program at Oregon State University. To learn more, visit jttownley.com

Pepper Trail is a naturalist and writer from Ashland, Oregon. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Catamaran, Cirque, and other publications, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Awards. His collection, Cascade-Siskiyou: Poems, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in Poetry. He is a long-time board member of PLAYA, the arts and sciences residency program in Summer Lake, and serves as a science advisor to conservation efforts throughout Oregon.

Lucy Tyrrell sums her interests as nature, adventure (e.g., mushing, canoeing, and travel), and creativity (writing, sketching/art, photography, quilting). After 16 years in Alaska, in 2016, she traded a big mountain (Denali) for a big lake (Superior) when she moved to Bayfield, Wisconsin. As Bayfield Poet Laureate 2020–2021, she organized and edited A is for Apostle Islands — a community collaboration of art and poetry. She serves on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission (2023-2025).

A long-time farmer and gardener, Susanne von Rennenkampff often takes her inspiration from the natural world and her travels. Her poems have appeared in a number of literary magazines in Canada and the US, including Room, The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, Grain, The Banyan Review and Evening Street Review. A chapbook of her poetry, In the Shelter of the Poplar Grove, was published by The Alfred Gustav Press. She lives in rural Alberta, Canada.

Marcia Wakeland stepped off the plane in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1975 and found home. She has spent the last fifty years exploring its wild places and is deeply satisfied that she will never explore them all. She is the author of two children’s books, The Big Fish and Loon Song, a memoir, The Long Walk Home, and non-fiction articles in Presence Journal and Deep Wild She continues to scavenge to find just the right words to write about the Alaska experience.

Ken Waldman has drawn on 38 years as an Alaska resident to produce poems, stories, and fiddle tunes that combine into a performance uniquely his; 12 CDs mix Appalachian-style string-band music with original poetry; 20 books include 16 full-length poetry collections, a memoir, a children’s book, a creative writing manual, and a novel. Since 1995 he’s toured fulltime, performing at leading festivals, concert series, arts centers, and clubs, including the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, Dodge Poetry Festival, and Woodford Folk Festival (Queensland, Australia). www. kenwaldman.com

Matthew Wappett is a disability researcher, advocate, and part-time poet. He grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, and currently lives on the border of Utah and Idaho where he has access to Idaho rivers and the Utah desert. He holds a PhD in Disability Policy, an MEd in Education, and a BA in English from the University of Utah. Although much of his writing is academic, he continues to write poetry as a practice of leaning into the light.

Patty Ware spent 38 years in Alaska prior to moving from Juneau to Portland Oregon in the fall of 2024. When not squeezing in time to write, she’s reading Bob books to her two grandchildren and trying to adjust to bright sunshine. Her first chapbook Family as celestial body is due out from Finishing Line Press in summer of 2025.

Richard Widerkehr’s fourth book of poems, Night Journey, was published in 2022 by Shanti Art Press, which has also accepted his new book, Missing The Owl Main Street Rag brought out At The Grace Cafe in 2021. His work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, Rattle, and others. He won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan, three prizes in The Bridge’s annual awards, and first prize for a short story at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference.

Joe Wilkins: I am the author of two novels, The Entire Sky and Fall Back Down When I Die, both from Little, Brown. I am also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and four collections of poetry, including When We Were Birds, winner of the Oregon Book Award, and, most recently, Thieve. My work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Harvard Review, Ecotone, Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Sun, and Orion. I live with my family in western Oregon. Wanda Wilson: I have been writing since I was 8. Readers Digest published a story I wrote on Hurricane Betsy in Thibodaux, LA in 1956. Mainly though I’ve been writing poetry since I was 13 and began writing to a Vietnam Vet when he was still in the war. I met Allen Ginsberg in New York City when I was working for MTV. He invited and encouraged me to attend summer classes at Naropa which I did. Guessing somewhere around 1984, I studied with Allen & Philip Whalen and Diane Di Prima and Derek Walcott & William S Burroughs. I also took classes with Alice Notley at St. Mark’s Church on the Lower East Side for about a year. Attended readings in NYC which included Carolyn Forché (just back from El Salvador with first chapbook) and Wendell Berry and Galway Kinnell. In 1991 in Charlottesville, VA, I began Slam Poetry sessions with a poet friend. This later was connected to the University of Virginia. I’ve had one tiny chapbook published and used to publish other poetry but mainly gave readings. I taught Poetry & Writing classes for 10 years in Virginia and Colorado from 1989-2009.

Lawrence Winkler is a retired physician, traveler, and natural philosopher. His métier has morphed from medicine to manuscript. He lives with Robyn on Vancouver Island and in New Zealand, tending their gardens and vineyards, and dreams. His writings have previously been published in The Montreal Review and many other literary journals. His books can be found online at www.lawrencewinkler.com

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer in Talent, Oregon. His work may be seen at MattWittPhotography.com. He is the author and photographer for the book, Monumental Beauty: Wonders Worth Protecting in the CascadeSiskiyou National Monument. He has been Artist in Residence at Crater Lake National Park, Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation, CascadeSiskiyou National Monument, Mesa Refuge, and PLAYA at Summer Lake.

Derek Witten: I was born and raised in Alberta, Canada although most of my adult life has been spent living, working, and studying in Vancouver. I am currently completing my PhD in English literature at Duke University. I live in Durham, North Carolina with my wife and 1-year-old son. I have had the honour of being longlisted for the Mitchell Prize ($20,000) and have work upcoming in the next issue of the Nashwaak Review

Tonja Woelber: I love the mountains in all weathers and enjoy Asian and nature-inspired poetry.

Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle based artist and art instructor. A former ceramicist, she received her BFA in painting (UW). She switched from 3D to 2D and has remained there ever since. She works primarily on paintings, prints and collages. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections. She has exhibited on both coasts, extensively in the Northwest, including shows at Seattle University, SPU, Shoreline Community College, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers and the Pacific Science Center. She is a member of the Seattle Print Art Association and Women Painters of Washington.Pacific Northwest Writers Conference.

Melody Wilson is a pushcart nominated poet whose poems appear in Pangyrus, VerseDaily, The Fiddlehead, Crab Creek Review, San Pedro River Review and elsewhere. She is pursuing her MFA at Pacific University. Her chapbook, Spineless: Memoir in Invertebrates came out in 2023. Find more of her work at melodywilson.com

A Lullaby for Lincoln A Lullaby Lincoln

Ann Chandonnet Ann Chandonnet

Ann Chandonnet

Raised on a colonial land grant, author Ann Chandonnet swallowed a deep sense of history as present. A former college English instructor and police reporter, Chandonnet intends her lullaby to reinvigorate interest in Abraham Lincoln’s formative years. Abe was a country boy, just three generations from the Linkhorns of Britain. How did an obscure frontier lawyer and government representative rise to become America’s greatest leader?

Chandonnet has won a national prize for wilderness poetry as well as national and state awards for educational writing. She has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. She is also the author of the “Alaska Food” article in the Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink (Oxford University Press).

Lullaby for Baby Abe

is lullaby imagines scenes from Abraham Lincoln’s life, from his 1809 winter arrival in the world to his third birthday (1812). Period objects, foods, verbal expressions and manners are twined into the text. Scenes described are typical of life on the Kaintuck (Kentucky) and Indiana frontiers. Research began with Carl Sandburg’s two-volume biography; and, some years later, embraced the details of Sidney Blumenthal’s A Self-Made Man: e Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849 (2016).

Characters are generally true to history with the exception of the preacher, the tinsmith, the shoemaker, the Yarb Woman and the Widder. Although ctional, these characters are typical of individuals who would regularly visit remote homesteads.

Cousin Dennis Hanks is one of the few family members whose pronouncements about the future of baby Abraham were recorded.

With precise, poetic language, Chandonnet evokes the early years of America’s 16th President. Young readers interested in history will enjoy the glimpses of Abraham Lincoln as a baby, as well as the accompanying notes explaining historical and regional terms as well as culinary delights. e book encourages a vivid imagining of early childhood in Kentucky, presenting readers with the cultural and societal in uences that shaped Baby Abe. —Emily J. Madsen, Assistant Professor of English, University of Alaska Anchorage

Sandra Kleven

Michael Burwell

Editors & Publishers

Bury Me in Cherry Blo oms

POEMS BY ERIC BRAMAN

Bury Me in Cherry Blossoms

by Eric Braman

“ There is such wild beauty in Eric Braman’s debut collection of poems Bury Me in Cherry Blossoms. Reading it, you will feel as though you’ve wandered into some place untouched, are witnessing some creature—exotic, almost endangered—show you around its natural habitat as though it had always been expecting you.”

—Eric Morago, author of Feasting on Sky

Bury Me in Cherry Blossoms is a coming of age collection exploring themes of coming out, mental health, Queer love, and self acceptance. These poems are grounded in the natural, crafted with care, rich with emotion, and effervescent with excerpts from a life embued with human emotion.

“It begins with the title, Bury Me in Cherry Blossoms, and you know you are about to embark on a delicious journey of wild juxtapositions. Eric Braman’s debut is a captivating compilation of magnificent imagery that stimulates each one of the reader’s senses with such vividness. From the hot sands beneath one’s feet in ‘Memories of Cool Waters’ to the gravity of falling dirt in ‘Show Me Your Sadness’ to the flavors in ‘Pomegranate Vodka,’ this book reserves a piece of courageous relatability for every reader. After all, the collection reminds us, ‘it took courage to arrive / it will take courage to depart.’ ”

—Dania Ayah Alkhouli, author of Oceans & Flames and Contortionist Tongue

About the Author

Eric Braman (they/them) is a poet, playwright, storyteller, and visual artist performing and showcasing work in the Pacific Northwest. Bury Me in Cherry Blossoms is Eric’s premier poetry collection. Their work has appeared in publications by High Shelf Press, Moon Tide Press, Cirque Press, Qu Literary Magazine, The Coachella Review, and more. Eric was an honorarium recipient for the 2022 Oregon Fringe Festival where they premiered their original autobiographical show To You / To . They have been seen performing on stages and their plays have been produced by theaters across the United States. Born and raised in Kawkawlin, Michigan, they currently live in Springfield, Oregon where they regularly escape into the woods to hike and write.

www.ericbraman.com

49 WRITERS

Creativity | Community | Craft

OUR VISION OUR MISSION

A vibrant community of diverse Alaskan writers of all levels and ages, coming together to find and share their voices.

Engaging, empowering, inspiring and expanding a statewide community of Alaskan writers.

PROGRAMS AND OFFERINGS WHY BECOME A MEMBER?

FREE PUBLIC READINGS WITH ACCLAIMED AUTHORS CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS TO HONE YOUR SKILLS GENERATIVE RETREATS IN BEAUTIFUL PLACES TO FOSTER YOUR WORK

A WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AND BLOG TO HELP YOU STAY CONNECTED NEED-BASED SCHOLARSHIPS FOR COURSES AND RETREATS A COMMUNITY OF SHARED SUPPORT

Consider joining our dedicated literary community. Benefits include: discounted class tuition, early class registration, and access to members-only events.

CONTACT US

Website: 49writers.org

Email: info@49writers.org

Dancing Away

poems by Robert M. Fagen

Now

We look to find our spot b efo re we go from the corne r. Mi ne is below the door frame on the side next to the mirrors . I n class and beyond, we b reach immensity th en repeat to the left. To ma s ter classical ballet technique find your spot, d o physics an d listen to the music.

Dancing Away

poems by Robert M. Fagen

Sandra Kleven Michael Burwell Editors & Publishers

In his collection , poet Robert Fagen o ers a constellation of re ections, from ballet barre to physics, from young dancers to old mountains, from music to the Lingít language, and from Alaska wildlife to weather, but dance is always at the core. He o ers us the personal and the poignant, the universal and the quirky, with a Zen-like brevity to many of his poems. Relevant notes and a glossary of ballet terms enhance this collection, delighting and informing the curious reader.

—Susi Gregg Fowler, author of ten children’s books including Who Lives Near a Glacier? Alaska Animals in , Arctic Aesop’s Fables: Twelve , and Circle of anks

PRESENTS

Wassilie’s

poems are a

wellspring of keen observations, written purely from the heart, with a sense of deep time and connection to place.

- Kathleen Tarr, author of We Are All Poets Here

AVAILABLE AT AMAZON OR BY EMAIL cirquejournal@gmail.com, $15 - CIRQUE PRESS

Sandra Kleven & Michael Burwell CIRQUE Publishers CIRQUEJOURNAL.COM

Like a prospector, Sandra Wassilie has tunneled, sifted and arranged the specks and nuggets of her Alaska childhood into a collection worthy of the art of poetry.

- Doug Capra, author of The Spaces Between: Stories from the Kenai Mountains to the Kenai Fjords

SANDRA WASSILIE’s poetry has appeared in several journals and anthologies, and in her chapbook, Smoke Lifts, published in 2014. She is the recipient of the Ann Fields Poetry Prize from San Francisco State University (2011) and the first Celestine Poetry Award from Holy Names University (2014). She holds two degrees in creative writing from San Francisco State University. Wassilie fervently believes storytelling in all in its traditions nourishes our humanity.

NEW from Cirque Press

an american nurse in the vietnam War

Kissing Kevin by sara berg

War is hell for men. We’ve always known that. As you read this book, you will discover that war is hell for women too. Sara bravely walked into that hell and made a difference. Then she bravely wrote her deeply personal memoir. I applaud her raw honesty, her courage to relive the mud and blood of the Vietnam experience exposing the emotional price paid by her and her sister veterans while documenting the immense contribution and sacrifice of women in military uniform during the Vietnam War.

—Diane Carlson Evans, Captain, Army Nurse Corps, Vietnam 1968–69. Author of Healing Wounds: A Vietnam War Combat Nurse’s 10-Year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C. and Founder, Vietnam Women’s Memorial

In this compellingly readable narrative, Sara Berg describes improvising tools in a wartime field hospital to ease the pain of badly wounded American soldiers and helpless Vietnamese orphans. Her searing account would be almost too much to bear if it weren’t for the emergence of an extraordinary counter-narrative: the constant struggle by Berg and some colleagues to hold onto compassion and love. She tears her heart out and shows it to you. These memories of war pulsate with the fierce glow of life itself.

—Tom Kizzia,

Available on $15

Last Call of the Dark POEMS MARY ELIZA CRANE

I opened the door and walked into this collection of poetry, immediately moved, and deeply connected to Crane’s pureness of observation through the stunning simplicity of her words. Her poems are in part a lullaby to the earth, both existential and paradoxical. Simultaneously, we are fragile and mighty, joyful and sorrowful, consumed with hope and hopelessness.

No matter how far she roams, Crane takes a deep dive into life and treats us to gorgeous places.

– Monica Devine, author of Water Mask

In Mary Crane’s new collection....twin themes of vulnerability to the human impulse to destroy plus her resulting alienation weave through the poems.

These are brave poems by a brave poet, celebrations at the edge of the abyss.

– Peter Ludwin, author of An Altar of Tides and Gone to Gold Mountain

Mary Eliza Crane is a western Washington poet who has resided in the hills above the Snoqualmie Valley for nearly four decades. A regular feature at poetry venues throughout Puget Sound, she has read her poetry from Woodstock to L.A., as well as with Siberian poets in Novosibirsk, Russia, and has been translated into Russian. Mary has two volumes of poetry published by Gazoobi Tales, What I Can Hold in My Hands (2009) and At First Light (2011). Her work has appeared in many literary journals as well as several regional and national anthologies. Mary is a cocurator and co-host of Duvall Poetry in her home community, a monthly reading series which has been running continuously for over twenty years.

Surrounded by Weasels

by Josie Gray and Tess Gallager

Surrounded by Weasels was compiled by Tess Gallager for Josie Gray, her companion for a quarter of a century, who told her these stories at Lake House, and before their hearth at Abbey Cottage in Ballindoon and in America at large. During the collection period, between 1994 and 2006, Josie often told stories while in motion, walking with Tess by the Morse Creek near her home in Port Angeles, Washington, riding ferryboats, and on treks to the Pacific Ocean. Shortly before his death, he recalled the many stories they had kept back from their initial book, , in 2007, and asked Tess to bring those together in Surrounded by Weasels

Sandra Kleven Michael Burwell Editors & Publishers

About the Authors

The late Josie Gray was born on the shores of Lough Arrow and has lived in counties Waterford, Wexford and Sligo. He worked as a fruit salesman, barman, farmer and rate collector, and in various family businesses, hauling turf, fruit, sand and gravel. He started painting in the mid-1990s and exhibited in Ireland and the US. In his retirement he fished, gardened, painted and told the odd story.

Tess Gallagher, poet, essayist, short-story and screen writer, was born in Washington State. She has published eleven distinguished collections of poetry, including Dear Ghosts in 2007. She was encouraged by her late husband, Raymond Carver, to write short stories, which were published in The Lover of Horses (1986), At the Owl Woman Saloon (1996), and another collection of selected stories called The Man from Kinvara (2009).

A WONDERFUL-TERRIBLE GOD

BY THE REV. JUDITH W. LETHIN

A Journey of Spiritual Awakening in Native Alaska

With deep reverence for Alaska Native wisdom, Judith Lethin shares a powerful story of faith, courage, and healing through her service in the Native villages of Kachemak Bay and the Lower Yukon.

Judith Lethin’s tremendous spirit, love for all beings, humor, and compassion fill her memoir like a cup of communion wine. Her stories—which flow from her ‘cowgirl’ beginnings to her community service as a healer to her long devotion as “church lady” along the lower Yukon River—are infused with wisdom learned from Alaska Native elders and cultural practices, A Wonderful-Terrible God is a book about faith that is, at its heart, an exploratory and rewarding journey into the many ways of knowing.

—NANCY LORD, AUTHOR OF FISHCAMP AND BELUGA DAYS, FORMER ALASKA WRITER LAUREATE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Reverend Judith Wegman Lethin is a writer, Episcopal priest, and retreat master. She holds a Masters of Arts in Teaching, Masters of Divinity, and Masters of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction. Lethin has published poems and stories in Chaplaincy Today, Alaska Dispatch News, Cirque, and Manifestations Journal. She lives with her husband, Kris, and two golden retrievers, Ruby and Winter, in Seldovia, Alaska.

Into the Khumbu

Into the Khumbu

poems

poems

by

by

Alan Weltzien

Alan Weltzien

P raise f or Into the Khumbu

“ In these spare, carefully obse rv ed p oems Weltzien in vi tes the reader on his h igh altitude trek through the Khumbu, n oting i ts slate roofs a nd pr ayer flags, its m oraines and i cef alls, a nd the milky ey es o f the village elders. A humble traveler, t he poet trea d s lightly, leaving no trace a nd bringing us the gift of thes e crystal-line words. E xhale , with Weltzien and, drop i nto t he mouth of the Khumbu. This is a j ou rney well wort h taking.”

—David Stevenson, two-time wi nner of the Banff Mount a in Book Award

Into the Khumbu

by Alan Weltzien

O. Alan Weltzien, a retired English professor in Montana, has published five chapbooks and eleven books. These include studies or anthologies of writers Rick Bass, John McPhee, and Norman Maclean. His memoir, A Father and an Island (LewisClark Press), appeared in 2008. Cirque Press published his third, full-length Poetry collection, On The Beach: Poems 2016 — 2021 . Weltzien’s new prose chapbook, The TaylorTriptych ,” is being published by The Sea Letter press (Galveston, TX.)

Weltzien remains obsessed with mountains of all shapes and sizes, and still skis in winter and hikes and backpacks in summer. He and his wife, Lynn, travel extensively.

Sandra Kleven Michael Burwell Editors & Publishers

“ Alan Weltzien’s Into the Khu m bu documents the challenges and rewar ds of this rugged and magnificent tr ek into the Himalayas of N e pal. No trail t raverses the s pa ce / between near and f ar , he observe s, in this sacred w orld w here prayer is carved in stone and carried on wind .”

—Tami Haaland, former Montana

Poet Laureate

Instagram.com/brendajaegerartstudio | Email: brendajaegerartstudio@startmail.com

Alaskan Poet Shauna Potocky Yosemite Dawning & Sea Smoke, Spindrift and Other Spells

Published by Cirque Press: Sea Smoke, Spindrift and Other Spells (2025) and Yosemite Dawning: Poems of the Sierra Nevada (2023). Shauna’s work also appears in Writing Through the Apocalypse (2023), Seward Unleashed Volume III Water and Wonder (2023), Alpinist magazine, Beyond Words International Journal, and Alaska Women Speak. During 2024, Shauna served as Artist in Residence for the Sitka Conservation Society.

Shauna is deeply grateful to live in the community of Seward, Alaska, which is located within the traditional homelands of the Sugpiaq people.

Yosemite Dawning is an epic love poem for Yosemite National Park. These are not sentimental lines but rather a caretaker’s loving astonishment of Nature with one eye towards environmental despair and the other towards hope. The poet finds a legacy among the park’s jagged peaks: “Every route, they say, is a signature line.”

—Tawhida Tanya Evanson, author of Book of Wings

Seasmoke, Spindrift and Other Spells includes artwork by Kassandra

In Seasmoke, Spindrift and Other Spells Shauna’s poetry blends, merges and mixes land and seascapes, history, wildlife, mountains and glaciers. The specific and personal conjure up the intangible and universal forming a unity that transcends Alaska…

— Doug Capra, author of The Spaces Between: Stories from the Kenai Mountains to the Kenai Fjords, and The Last Homesteaders

HOW TO SUBMIT TO CIRQUE

Cirque, published in Anchorage, Alaska, is a regional journal created to share the best writing in the region with the rest of the world. Cirque submissions are not restricted to a “regional” theme or setting.

Cirque invites emerging and established writers living in the North Pacific Rim—Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, Yukon Territory, Alberta, British Columbia and Chukotka—to submit short stories, poems, creative nonfiction, translations, plays, reviews of first books, interviews, photographs, and artwork for Cirque’s next issue.

Issue #30—Reading Period March 26, 2025 to September 22, 2025

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Eligibility: you were born in, or are currently residing in, or have previously lived for a period of not less than 5 years in the aforementioned North Pacific Rim region.

-- Poems: 5 poems MAX

-- Fiction, Nonfiction, Plays: 12 pages MAX (double spaced).

-- Artwork and Photography : 10 images MAX accepted in JPEG or TIFF format, sent as email attachments. Please send images in the highest resolution possible; images will likely be between 2 and 10mb each. If you do not submit full-size photo files at time of submission, we will respond with an email reminder. No undersize images or thumbnails will be eligible for publication.

-- Bio: 100 words MAX.

-- Contact Info: Make sure to keep your contact email current and be sure that it is one that you check regularly. If your contact information changes, make sure to inform us at Cirque. To ensure that replies from Cirque bypass your spam filter and go to your inbox, add Cirque to your address book.

-- Submit to https://cirque.submittable.com

-- Replies average two to three months after deadlines, and we don’t mind you checking with us about your submissions.

-- Cirque requires no payment or submission fees. However, Cirque is published by an independent press staffed by volunteers. Your donations keep Cirque Press going. You will find donation buttons on Submittable and you can also support us via PayPal to cirquejournal@gmail.com.

Thanks for your poetry, prose, images and financial support