Monday, May 25, 2015

May, 2015

FEATURED POET: Caleb Barber holds a BA in English from Western Washington University, as well as an MFA in poetry from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. He has lived in Arizona, Montana, and Alaska, but he currently resides in his hometown of Bellingham, Washington, where he works at an aerospace machine shop. He is an avid bike commuter and runner, and is a pretty good banjo player to boot. He has been widely published in literary journals, notably in Fulcrum, New Orleans Review, Los Angeles Review, and he was given a feature in Poet Lore. His first book, Beasts and Violins, is available from Red Hen Press. The title poem appeared in Best American Poetry 2009.
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IN A TWILIGHT TOWN

At these hours a girl shows me the scar
she earned after her father’s chainsaw
bucked against her calf while he evened
the backyard stumps.  “It cut clear to my meat,”
she says.  “They had to fly me to the city.”
The rough, shiny lump is not grotesque. 
Her leg has grown around the wound
same as how trees will hatchet swings.

She stills wears skirts, for now, because
her body won’t be a woman’s for a few
more years, and free magazine offers
don’t come this far out in the country.
The bald slice through one eyebrow is either
from barbed wire or dog.  Could have
been her brother, before they sent him
to that school for boys just like him.

I’d like to hear about all those goldfish
that never survived through winter
on her parents’ porch.  I’d like to know how
the couch felt when it froze through.
But the plane for the mail route is spinning on
and this place will always be her stop. 
The night makes us all older, and just walking
toward it, she covers her thighs with the dark.



IN THE BASEMENT APARTMENT

My landlords who live upstairs begin
construction projects around 10pm
and finish arguing by six
the next morning. Their voices
are loudest in my back bedroom
near a duct, so that is where
I sometimes stand, one ear toward
the ceiling, trying to decode their grudge.

What begins with snaking
the bathroom sink, becomes war over
their daughter’s drinking.
Drywall repair actually concerns
a lie the wife told seven years ago.

Once, they decided one of them
would “just have to go,”
but they uncovered how to open
the kitchen windows instead. 
Someday, we’re all going
to find out what really happened
on that trip to New Jersey.

WRITE YOUR POEM
Caleb's poems remind you of a William Carlos Williams or Raymond Carver poem by offering you pictures.  We are inundated with images but his poems force you to slow down and wonder. They offer you humans.  Small moments of humanity.

What do your poems offer in the way of small moments of humanity?  Boil it down. Drink some tea.  Write your poem and blot the paper with the tea bag.  Send a copy to your mother.

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