The new year offers an opportunity for reflection, a chance to look back on the previous 12 months and look ahead at the year to come.  It is in the spirit of contemplation that The Spokesman-Review asked a handful of Spokane poets – Mark Anderson, Thom Caraway, Chris Cook, Tod Marshall, Kathryn Smith and Ellen Welcker – to use their talents to celebrate the coming change in the calendar. The poems are as diverse in style as the poets who wrote them. There are academics and slam poets, musicians and editors included in their ranks.  All of them are quite talented, and we are happy to share their words with our readers.

 Enjoy, and Happy New Year.

Carolyn Lamberson, features editor

So You Want Me to Fall in Love With You

By Mark Anderson

That’s the problem with stuffed animals.

No matter how hard you squeeze one

you don’t feel a heart-beat. It works though.

Squeeze a stuffed platypus and get rid of your dread.

My first nightmare felt so real I was

terrified for years. It’s funny now.

I never met a ten foot tall hairy demon

with ox horns anywhere else.

I can still see it though, 

decades later. In the dream I plunged 

my head under the blankets. Don’t eat

me please oh monster. So you want me

to fall in love with you and you’re wondering

if I’m still a child or maybe you’re the childish one

and I’m the stuffed animal, but one of us is definitely

afraid of the dark. That’s the problem 

with stuffed animals. Everyone gets bigger

around them and they still feel so small.

I wanted my mom to link arms with me

so that when the monster came and I died

my soul wouldn’t float away.

She didn’t know what was wrong with this 

child who had never seen death but felt it 

all around him. There’s no monsters honey

let me tell you a story, hug this stuffed

platypus your sister bought you with her 

own money. You’re not going to die. One

day you’ll be all grown up and you’ll

leave me but that’s okay. And I said I might

leave but I’ll come back. And I’ll always

have a room in my house for you. She smiled

and I’m sure cried with a complex grown-up

emotion once I had finally fallen to sleep.

One day little one you’ll have children of your own

and they’ll be all grown up and they’ll leave you too.

I was 11 years old and Joe was dying, and I 

barely even knew him, but two days before

he passed I held his hand and said all the

right things that nobody else could say.

My mom and my aunt were speechless

when I told him he’d done enough,

and it wasn’t any use being sorry or afraid

for anything anymore, and that there is love

after death. I still thought kissing

and/or church bells were where babies came from.

He’d been waiting all his life to be told those things,

and I wake at night thinking about death.

That’s the problem with stuffed animals.

They are good at comforting everyone else

but cannot feel their own hearts beat.

I take a hatchet to my walls.

I light a signal-fire and hope it gets to someone.

I hope one of you can tell me what this means.

Mark Anderson is co-founder of Broken Mic, a weekly performance poetry open mic at Neato Burrito.  He was awarded the Ken Warfel Fellowship in 2012, and has been featured as a part of Spokane 50.  In his imagination, he is a gritty noir detective, tracking down clues and solving The Mystery of How We Got Where We Are.  In real life, he is a super-hero providing an example and a safe space for both the established and the disenfranchised to find their voices and tell their stories.

• • •

The Shepherd Anticipates the Solstice

By Thom Caraway

In the season of fan belts, late in the season

of moss. In the season of whiskey, we light

the fires. We signal to our neighbors across

the long shadows. Our dog-walks, we keep brisk.

Our ice-scrapers have wool mittens built-in.

We cover our leaking windows in plastic, the world

becomes a blue blur. The car is on blocks,

the tires removed. Every morning, we check

its progress, inching down the street. Sometimes

it appears to be in the same position

as the night before. But we understand—the pull

of Jupiter is as subtle as the fertive buds of March.

Wrapped around the taproot of every over-wintered

weed, is an earthworm, waiting once more for warmth.

Thom Caraway is Spokane’s first poet laureate. He teaches at Whitworth University, where he is editor of the literary journal Rock & Sling. He also served as editor for “Railtown Almanac, a Spokane Poetry Anthology,” released by Sage Hill Press earlier this fall. He lives in the West Central neighborhood.

• • •

Three poems

by Ellen Welcker

My DNA

sweep little clouds of matter around

 

  skinshed & strand by strand

 

whisk of broombreath

  shoo, shoo:

 

  I am just

    everywhere

Lives

today’s death

will be difficult

 

like the butter

“all gone”

 

or not

like the butter

at all

Lovin’

this night is long

 & hurts  & hurt

 

this grief &  this one:

 has grown hairs

    is mammalian

   like me

 

this fear &  this one:

  has my daughter’s

    eyes

 

grasp another creature’s paw—

  turn  your hairy face

  to that

    of another beast

    like you

 

& merge some—

 to fend off

 

   the bedwetting

 to come.

Ellen Welcker has poems collected in the chapbooks “Mouth That Tastes of Gasoline” (alice blue, 2014) and “The Urban Lightwing Professionals” (H_NGM_N, 2011), and a book called “The Botanical Garden” (astrophil press, 2010). She works for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry and in EWU’s Writers’ Center. She has curated SpoPo, a living room poetry series, since 2013.

The Trumpet Shall Sound

By Chris Cook

The human voice came first,

then percussion instruments—

stone striking stone,

stick hitting hollow log.

The amplification of pulse, the rhythm of life.

Wind instruments were next—

breath blown into the hollow tube

of animal horn or conch shell.

The amplification of voice.

These were the ancestors of my trumpet,

which I’m playing for three different celebrations on New Year’s Eve.

My night starts at the cathedral,

where I’m reminded of the power and glory that the trumpet represents;

that it was the instrument of choice for Gabriel and Gideon;

that it brought down Jericho’s walls;

that we shall all be changed in an instant,

in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet;

that the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised.

Hey—no pressure.

Having changed from suit to formal tails,

I cross Sprague to The Fox Theatre to perform Beethoven’s “Symphony #9”

with the Spokane Symphony and Chorale.

The final movement’s famous “Ode to Joy” represents universal brotherhood.

Its text is from a poem by Schiller:

“Joy, beautiful spark of divinity…

Be embraced, you millions!

This kiss is for the whole world!”

Schiller’s poetry and Beethoven’s music remain among art’s crowning achievements.

After ditching my tails for a T-shirt, jeans, and a ball cap,

I cross Monroe and Lincoln to get to Neato.

I’ll finish the year playing two Rolling Stones covers with The Camaros,

a band that plays music for all the right reasons.

As we near midnight, Mark out-Micks Mick as he sings,

“My heart is bumpin’ louder than a big bass drum, alright!…

I said hey, yeah I feel all right now!”

As if on cue, Rob is bumpin’ his big bass drum,

I’m sounding the trumpet with my friends,

and life could not be better.

We count down the remaining seconds with the rest of the world.

At midnight, we hear human voices shouting in celebration;

we hear the primitive percussion of pots being hit with wooden spoons;

breath is being blown into the hollow tubes of party favor horns.

It’s all an ode to joy,

this gift of another year.

Chris Cook’s poetry collection, “The View from the Broken Mic,” was published in 2012. His poems and short stories are also contained in “Railtown Almanac” and “Spokane Shorties,” and his children’s poetry has been published by Meadowbrook and Scholastic. Cook has represented Spokane at the National Poetry Slam and the Individual World Poetry Slam. He’s also the host and organizer of the monthly 3 Minute Mic at Auntie’s Bookstore’s monthly poetry open mic. Look for a new collection of his poetry from Korrektiv Press, due out in 2015.

Resolution

By Tod Marshall

To say thank you to the wind each day

and to remember the strangeness of geese

by the carrousel near the river that aggressively waddle for popcorn

my three-year-old niece tosses in handfuls until she spooks

at one big goose and hides behind my knees

while I block the birds from pecking her tiny hand. 

You may say “some days don’t rate a thank you”

(fill your list—mine includes Torture, War, Poverty, Disease,

Achy Joints, Thinning Hair, Neglected Teeth,

Lingering Issues From Childhood, and Student Loans

held by the-gleeful-sounding-yet-sinister Sallie Mae).

You know what I’m talking about.

Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you walk the Buddha’s Path,

climb Jacob’s Ladder to change God’s blown bulbs,

live the golden rule like a blurred halo around your head,

pinning glow of a carnival ride where kids never get sick,

parents never get bored. I doubt it. I’ve tried enlightenment.

I once saw seraphim strings connecting everything into a tender palm of light.

That was mystical and intense or a nervous breakdown.

Behind my legs, Jane says, “They’re mean,”

and when we’re far enough away from the birds,

I squat down and look her in the eyes and say,

“Some of them might be mean, but mostly

they’re hungry.”

Over by the water, a huge grey goose hisses and flaps its wings.

Jane looks up at me, nervous,

hesitant to trust even her favorite uncle,

who always sneaks her Skittles and Tootsie Rolls

and never says no when she wants to play hide and seek,

and then she smiles (thank you), and I extend my hand (thank you),

and she takes three fingers, and we walk away from geese,

away from the dark river, from tigers and horses

that chase each other forever in a circle of jangly light.

Tod Marshall’s third book of poems, “Bugle,” was just published in December.  He teaches at Gonzaga University and lives in Peaceful Valley.  He has several poems that feature geese. 

Horoscope for a City that Wants to be Something Else

By Kathryn Smith

Your ducks are overfed. They can’t resist how much you

love them, your ponds and riverbanks flush with parents

grasping bags of day-old bread. To this father’s left, a sign

reads Please Don’t Feed the Waterfowl. To his right,

his young daughter shrieks: Daddy, it bit me! So much

for hunger. So much for the sign-maker’s belief

that information changes people. We ride your bus

together, the route zig-zagging around mounds of basalt

that no one could figure how to blast away.

Half-hour after half-hour, we loop the same

predestined loop, like a zodiac, each person who boards

a symbol of something. You’re Capricorn,

for your garbage-eating goat. That means the sun’s

in your sign now, a long-awaited hand finally raising

a perfectly soggy crust to your vacuum-powered lips.

You’ll let this morsel sate your steel belly,

awash in candy wrappers and feathers

and every “What this town needs is ___________,”

then you’ll break your bolts, head for the river,

and bend toward your reflection to drink.

You’ll find Kathryn Smith’s poems in the recent local collections “Spokane Shorties,” “Lilac City Fairy Tales” and “Railtown Almanac,” as well as print and online journals. When she isn’t writing poetry, she knits, gardens, and tends a motley trio of backyard chickens. She has an MFA in creative writing from EWU and works as a copy editor at The Spokesman-Review.