The following poem is technically a gift from my daughter — I wouldn’t have written it had it not been for her. Maybe that sounds a little too sentimental, but it’s true.

When our daughter feeds she cups her mother’s breast like a football.
Like a football because that’s all I know to say when I see her hand
around the breast’s swollen end. I’d like to burn my language away
from male things, would like to say later when I’m holding her, see
this ball, forget this ball. You don’t need to throw a thing,
don’t need to learn the perfect spiral grip, how the index finger should rest
far back, how to throw overhand in a 12-to-6 clock face angle, snap down
with so much action in the elbow the wind in your ear cracks. But I’m made
of meat and leather. I’ve been beaten by my brothers into the grass,
have looked downfield at the blitz of red leaves only to be sandwiched
between brutes. A few face plants, dog shit on your chin and the stuff
of ball fields sticks. Now I’m doing the Heisman pose in the mirror,
baby girl tucked under my arm, my right leg suspended like blue
Shiva Nata-raja, the god who kills and makes the world. I have less
than a season to hold this dance still before my arm grows too short to hold
my daughter, before her legs twitch out of this mirror, before she dances
her own sweet destruction.

[First appeared in Rattle, issue 37, summer 2012]

Hello friends and neighbors,

At the end of February I was the featured reader/interviewee at the monthly Show and Tell Gallery’s monthly Working Artists Assembly. You can download and listen to the interview and reading here.

Thanks for reading and listening.

Dave

Greetings friends and neighborhs,

I’m delighted to be the featured presenter at the next Young Willamette Writers meeting, set for Jan 3, 2012 at the Old Church in downtown Portland. You can find out more about the Young Willamette Writers here.

We’ll be doing an hour of poetry, starting at 7 p.m. The Old Church is located at SW 11th and Clay, and the event is FREE. It’s a great way for young writers to start the new year off with some new words.

I’m delighted to post the following three poems (with a very thankful nod toward William Carlos Williams) written by three of my very favorite local (Portland) writers, each of whom I’m happy to know. Their poems came from a prompt in which they chose four words from Williams’ The Red Wheelbarrow, then ran with their own poem from there. Have a read.

RED DEPENDS UPON WATER

so much waits upon
rain

ten thousand pewter
trunks

dry gray barrows of
bark

cinnabar leaves fractured red
wheels

ready and willing to
decay

— B. Campbell Ford

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
rolling

through a white sky
agitating

molecules until atoms breathe out
blue

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
mounding

scattered clouds
glazing

gray undersides
coral-red

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
tearing

through static
wool

freeing whorls of white
rain

loosening skeins of black
thunder

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
spinning

purple-black opaque silk
shielding

our eyes from the
plasma-

maddened Midas
touch

of the white-wheeled
sun

— Pattie Palmer-Baker

WHITE RAIN DEPENDS, WHEEL

the world depends
upon

the wheel turning
steadily

moving the earth
surely

keeping the seas
contained

maintaining mountains’ upright
positions

sending flowing rivers
seaward

always the wheel
turning

earth and sky
singing

all systems dancing
gaily

world radiant in
white

from hot sun
shining

and cool rain
shimmering

wheel keeps turning
turning

— Mary K. Moen

–

I’m pleased to be sharing the bill tomorrow night with Peter Sears at the Press Club (2621 SE Clinton St., Portland). It’s part of the Mountain Writers reading series. The reading starts at 8 p.m. Stop in for a cocktail and enjoy some poetry in the process.

For more info, check out the Mountain Writers site.

Thanks –

Day 18 brings us Nancy Flynn, a fellow product of Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley. Nancy was kind enough to share her poem, “Them Apples,” which first appeared in the collection, The Hours of Us (© 2007, Finishing Line Press).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

In very tight and thoughtful language, Nancy brings us back around to some of the emotions Alison Apotheker shared on Day 7 — a mother’s love, worry, musings and memories. Nancy lulls us through a peaceful remembrance until the end of the fourth stanza, then jackknifes us into an intense moment of flesh and blood.

Them Apples

Before the rain, yellow and green leaves
teetered on the branch like nightingales and crows
balancing opposite ends of a clothesline.
All those years, you hated field trips;
I lied, promising you a ride in a car.

There were dozens of bushels and ladders,
obstacles in the Cornell Orchard where you,
an undeniably growing boy-child,
careened between other race-around kids.

Maybe I need to re-christen those days
Sunset rather than Gala, the defining cultivar
for my years of mothering alone.

It seems like no time
since the child-rearing manuals failed
even when I revisit that slow
shuffle-dance through triage, after the car hit you,
drunk on your bike, in the moment

you somersaulted over the windshield,
the down from your jacket liberated,
your back a drag strip road rash, and me,
in my white linen dress
bloodied where I gathered you up.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day 16 brings us two poems from Paulann Petersen, “Traveler,” and “Basin,” both from her collection Kindle (© 2008, Mountains and Rivers Press).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEMS

Paulann’s work can absolutely envelop a reader, and set them floating in whatever jet stream a particular poem provides. In both “Traveler” and “Basin,” we find ourselves in a place of new beginnings, not yet certain of our footing, and still coming to terms with the terrain. Yet we go forward with a sense of safety and familiarity, as if remembering a previous pass through.

Traveler


Cast ashore
like some fleck of wood
brought here from afar
by the sea,

you reel — stunned
to breathe this reek of
strange urine, strange perfume
thick in saffron heat.

Here you are, foreign one,
familiar with only
the moon and stars,
a cloud-scraped sky,

the lidless eye of sun.
Take heart: only what floats
could be carried
as far as you’ve come.

**

Basin

On a walk, your face catches
some of the rain — a bit
of river, mill pond, lake
coming around, slanted down.
Caught on your tongue,
raindrops taste sweet,
an ocean in its mild disguise.

What you gather into yourself
comes from as far away
as the whole world’s girth,
from as close as what you
can reach. Your upturned hands
could cup to hold part of it—
carried with you: this earth’s
steady recompense.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day nine brings us two poems from David Biespiel, “The Ex Lovers Close Down the Hawthorne Boulevard Bars on the 1000th Night of the War,” and “Mississippi God Damn,” both from his latest collection, The Book of Men and Women (© 2009, University of Washington Press). “Mississippi God Damn” previously appeared in Poetry.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEMS

The Book of Men and Women hinges on the power, frailties, musings and failings of relationships, whether man’s relationship with himself, the comings and goings of a couple, or how we relate with the infinite. The fight-or-flight mentality of a given situation — the tug and push between people and energies — is on display in “The Ex-Lovers,” and the poem’s cadence and music balances against the actors’ wanderings. Meanwhile, “Mississippi God Damn” reads like the quick whip of heartbreak and lost chance as told by a drifter who takes off through a series of back pages.

The Ex Lovers Close Down the Hawthorne Boulevard Bars on the 1000th Night of the War

In this city of puddles they smirk and roam, boast and weep. Their

    gobbledy-gook is as good as code,

Their names retrofitted with fear, their condition all headache.

There are parables for this behavior, a proper blab, and none more

      rapacious, none more true

Than the teary king, his picture hanging from the billboards and

      bridges. The teary king,

Divine, jacked-off, peevish, unharmed, like a hideous garden heavy

      with lavender.

Most nights they’re livid. They’re lifters. They pilfer and dance with

      stern faces, cagey

With their suckled scat, unshaken by the drill, until the cask goes

      bottoms-up.

That’s when they go starkly through the streets and play their dark

      bodies like cards

And frighten themselves — he with his mopey joy, she with her long

      braids,

Their lappets dragging in the gutters, as they dart in the alleys like

      botched and dreamy punks.

–


Mississippi God Damn

Here in this strumming light which the generations can’t downshift

      out of,

And with the land gushing its courtesies of iron, and the shallow

      mercies

Caustic or strangely gussied up like dogs with dark collars, I lose

      my rest.

And what druthers I had are just trouble now, unconditional, all

      in the air.

What’s got me upset are the dead. They go too slow. They’re

Just plain rotten — even a beating heart hardly tingles.

The crimes, the land, the lost second sight, the prayers—

None of these are picking the cotton out of the lies.

And no banter between the roots and the tombs.

And no thoughts boycotting the feelings. The old rooms,

The shadow towns, the rebel yelling, the Confederate daughters,

And the themes of homesteads get hushed in the months-long heat.

I’ve gotten too damn lazy to pluck a duplicate heart,

Unearth a body, a song, an I-just-don’t-know-what kind of fly.

That’s just the trouble — the genie’s not gentle, the stomach

Can’t stomach the risk of being right, good, unknown, me.

And if I race to the dry river where the bodies are pushing through,

The bones peering like children from behind a curtain of dirt, then

      who

Shall judge the living? And if that’s a test what frown is needed,

What game face does everybody know to put on? What hoof? What

      blood?

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

Because she’ll ask. She’ll want to know
if the team won. Not that she knows
the difference, but she knows
you want her to ask, and even if
you don’t want her to ask,
you expect she’ll ask because you expect
she expects you to expect her to ask.

So she asks. Did they win. Maybe she knows
by the look in your eyes, but if you’re home alone
listening, not watching, but listening
the way no one listens anymore, and if
you’ve been crying because baseball
sometimes makes you cry – if you’ve been crying
then she might have no idea
whether they’ve won or lost, because crying
goes both ways with baseball – if she sees
you’ve been crying she’ll certainly ask,
after she asks “What’s wrong?”, because
her first thought will be something’s wrong,
he’s on the couch crying, the radio is off,
the dog is snoring and he’s crying in the corner
of the couch, his drink is empty, just the bottom
of bourbon-yellow ice, and his eyes are red.

So she asks, “What’s wrong,” and you say,
“The game, that’s all.” You shake your head
and she shakes hers. “I’m sorry.” But you say,
“Oh no, it’s OK, they won.” “They did?” “Yes.”

“How?” She’ll ask how and you’ll tell her
as she buzzes through the living room
into her closet to strip from her pants and top,
a quick dance into house clothes, the pre-sleep wardrobe
of fleece on top of fleece for the Northwest’s fall.

“Well,” you say – you chink the ice around
in your glass and suck what’s left.

“They were down, you see, down by two,
then by one. They hung around. And in the ninth,
the big closer out for a save, he walks a guy,
hits another, the next guy pops out – there are
two outs now, see, and the leadoff guy…well,
that’s not important. A little guy – later, after the hit
it’ll be all set up for David and Goliath stuff.
But for the time, the little guy, before he turned
into David, took an oh-one pitch to the gap
in right. Both runners dashed home. That’s what
I imagine, at least, a dash – there are no dashes
on radio. Just swings and pops and the announcer
going crazy. All the dirt and dust gets swallowed
in the soft static. And you’re left with the win,
which is enough to make you cry, not because
you missed a thing, but because you sat and listened,
you never saw it coming and you knew all along.”


–

I’m happy to announce the release of “Backwards on the Train”, (c) 2009 Imperfect Press. The limited first edition of 111 hand-bound, hardcover volumes contains 11 poems, a few of which have appeared in previous drafts on the site.

The chapbook is $8.00, plus $2.00 shipping for any mail orders. Please email at info (at) davejarecki (dot)com if you’d like to order a copy, or visit ImperfectPress.net – their shopping cart will be up shortly.

Thanks to everyone who’s ever offered feedback and insight. I appreciate it, and the book wouldn’t have happened without honest readers.

Dave

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