The new Hayden's Ferry Review is out and about, happy to be held in your hot hand. It's Fall/Winter 2006-07, "Works of Witness." I was especially moved by a concise punch of a poem, "One Explanation," by Chris Forhan, and by "Selections from 'Safe,'" by Charles Jensen, which takes on Matthew Shepard and manages somehow to rescue the subject from the realm of Overdone. I've got a piece in here, too, inspired by that funny little intersection in West Seattle down in the Junction, where it's "walk all ways with walk."
Walk All Ways With Walk
You sell everything you own. Force the five fingers of your only hand into your palm, fist the stone you skipped as a girl. You were a boy then. The secret of skipping was never wanting a ring. Water was home, if only inside you. The places it took you required departures, skirt after skirt, dirt under the wheels of your truck. Stuck in a ditch past Spokane you left that, too, shirt on your back sweet as the last girl’s head thrown back, bed of your truck, sky as water, blue above both of you, her legs always opening, light changing green to Walk All Ways With Walk. You wade past the logjam into the sea. Anna, Susanna, Matilda, Marie. What comes next? No one knows -- not the red-winged blackbird, not the preacher. You enter a solitude you will never escape. A million televisions blame someone else as your beautiful country erupts into Empire. You cover your ankles and your waist with water. Aretha, Sabrina, Tamika, Louise.
Walk All Ways With Walk
You sell everything you own. Force the five fingers of your only hand into your palm, fist the stone you skipped as a girl. You were a boy then. The secret of skipping was never wanting a ring. Water was home, if only inside you. The places it took you required departures, skirt after skirt, dirt under the wheels of your truck. Stuck in a ditch past Spokane you left that, too, shirt on your back sweet as the last girl’s head thrown back, bed of your truck, sky as water, blue above both of you, her legs always opening, light changing green to Walk All Ways With Walk. You wade past the logjam into the sea. Anna, Susanna, Matilda, Marie. What comes next? No one knows -- not the red-winged blackbird, not the preacher. You enter a solitude you will never escape. A million televisions blame someone else as your beautiful country erupts into Empire. You cover your ankles and your waist with water. Aretha, Sabrina, Tamika, Louise.
Comments
i think the cast of characters in bellingham rivals the cast of characters in bloomington. overheard today: "Why is Janis in jail again?"
"I think she drove there."
"In a car?"