洞月亮 Cave Moon Press March 2016

FEATURED POET: Betty Scott is a poet and essayist. In the 1980’s she wrote a bimonthly column about family life for The Wenatchee World and this began her writing career.  

She was born in Santa Barbara, CA, and earned a BA in English Literature from UCLA, a teaching certificate from Central Washington University and a MA in English with a writing emphasis from Western Washington University.

As a longtime board member for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Whatcom County, she provided education and support for people encountering the complexities of our costly mental health system and for those who have lost loved ones to suicide. 
A former instructor at Whatcom Community College and Bellingham Technical College, Scott devotes her retirement years to writing and editing. She has several manuscripts waiting for publication. 

In her collaboration with singer, songwriter JP Falcon Grady, Scott searches for social systems that lead to nurturing and protecting children, adults and the earth. Together they perform poems that support bio diversity, as the earth’s blue print for its land, air, and water.  Beneath human constructs of science, politics, sports, philosophy, business, and religion is an abiding energy, a living spirit, often described as love, faith, forgiveness and generosity. In her poems, Scott imagines how a diversity of human responses can lead to a healthier planet. When they perform together, JP Falcon Grady sings the italicized parts of her poems. 

An Earth Year Blessing was previously published in Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington, edited by Luther Allen & J.J. Kleinberg. 
The Playground was presented to participants at the 2013 Chuckanut Writers Festival in Bellingham. 

AN EARTH YEAR BLESSING

No man a salt shaker

No woman a sugar bowl

To pour, use up

And put out to pantry

No more darting of eyes

Or senator sneers

When Mama’s Boys pilgrim

To Great Mama’s pastures

To dance, step by step

With maternal wisdoms

To tango and waltz

Arms and heads in precision

Each footfall a grace

Restoring Earth’s faith

Mama’s troupes swaying

Singing and praying: 

Single Mama, Widowed Mama,

Earthly image of Great Mama

Hallowed be your name

Holy Sustainer of Life

Your people tend on you

Beloved Great Mama

On earth as we hope in heaven.

―Betty Scott

THE PLAYGROUND

In writing, it’s a well-known fact: 

letters are lizards with legs and tails

syllables bite like alligator teeth

and words blossom like magnolia trees.

No lie: in swamps and fields, the wind strokes

and ripples the tiniest wild flower

that under the light of a microscope

lives as complex as an orchid or rose.

It’s a fact: the cells of grasses and leaves

resemble living streams and arteries.

In marshes, hollow reeds are fiddle strings

that shadow the shallows and hallowed-winged.   

It’s the truth: people swarm, sip, and worship

our playgrounds during festival seasons 

as the heirs to brass notes float, fall, and rise

beneath the gumbo of moon and moonshine.

While the infinite and minuscule breed

while lizards, swamps and birds battle to breathe

the heated U.S. is rooted and twined

to nature’s rhythms and rhymes. Who rests?

―Betty Scott

WRITE YOUR POEM

It’s the truth: people swarm, sip, and worship

our playgrounds during festival seasons 

As Daylight savings pops up and people swarm malls like ants on a doughnut where do you find yourself with the poem?  People who love words find time and watch the people in the mall.  What do you do?  Is there just that one gesture?  That one phrase?  

We have cell phones to take pictures.  We need poets to write the words.  Write your poem!

February 2016

FEATURED POET: Nathaly Rosas Martinez was born in Minnesota, in the U.S., though she grew up in Mexico where she lived in Veracruz for thirteen years. In 2014, at age fifteen, she moved back to the U.S. only with her mother. She speaks two languages, English and Spanish. In her country she saw all kinds of food because her family likes to cook things like tacos, salsas, sopes, chileatoles y picaditas and they also like to cook new things. She hopes to go back to her Mexico in 2016. She is proud of her culture because she thinks that in her culture there are many special traditions. She would like to share her experience of being Mexican with the world. Two of the most important goals in her life are to go to college in Veracruz where she grew up and to support her little brother to achieve his dreams. Nathaly believes that food is our identity, our force, and that our cultural food is our principal source. She believes that each bite of our food has memories of our nation and that food is an important piece of our traditions. Nathaly also believes that food is the blood and soul of our ancestors and that every culture should be proud of their food. And she believes that making food is an art and a way of expressing our memories.

Nathaly Rosas Martinez is part of the book Stories of Arrival: Refugee and Immigrant Youth Voices Poetry Project.    

Check both of our poets from the last two months out Here


MY FATHER'S HANDS

I remember my father’s hands

Putting a red apple every morning

In my hands,

Wishing me a good day at school

Gently wiping the apple for me,

Sometimes I thought his hands had the scent

Of the perfume of my mother

She hugged me every time

Before going to work.

Sometimes my father’s hands felt like the soft hands

Of my brother holding my hand

On my way home from school.

How many memories can save a simple apple?

Sometimes the world revolves

Around this small apple

and we don’t know it.

This apple sometimes cries with me

When I remember all the things

That makes me smile

like the tiny arms of my brother.

Remembering the people in my life

my father, my friends, my family

they are waiting to be alive again.

—Nathaly Rosas

WHERE FOOD IS AN ART

I am from a place where

The food is an art and every bite

Is a spicy piece of our culture

Where the smells call you to enjoy

And the flavors take you to your memories

I am from where the trees grew up everywhere

Guayabo, naranjo, alamos,manzano and palmera*

And the children take the special gift from them

Naranjas y limas, limas and limones **

Where the grocery stores have fresh items

Epazote, elotes, manzanas,melones y granada ***

And bring us an exquisite dinner

Kneading and rolling, combination of flavors

Flavors that our indigenous ancestor gave us

Combination of oils and onions always mixed

Picante y salado **** gather and dance together

Our food is not only food

It’s a way to communicate our feelings

It’s a way to talk with our family

It’s our history, our identity

But now everything is not the same

The tortillas smell different, the salsa is not spicy

Our special gifts are mixed with chemicals

Our food enclosed in a plastic prison

Gradually, we will lose the essence even in our countries

The hands of our grandparents and our people were killed

The food of my family was thrown into garbage

The cookbook of my grandmother was burned

There is still hope

The gentle hands of my mother

Every day serving food

Our kitchen table will be in another country

And the people who ate with us

Are no longer here

But we will return to gather

In the morning lights

And the darkness nights

At the strong sound of the rain

My aunties give this wisdom to my cousins

My parents give it to my brother and me

to conserve our specials secrets.

* Fruit trees

**A pun in Mexico

***Epazote, corn,apples, melon and pomegranate

—Nathaly Rosas

WRITE YOUR POEM

Our food is not only food

It’s a way to communicate our feelings

It’s a way to talk with our family

It’s our history, our identity

Nathaly teaches us that to create in any "genre" whether it be cooking, writing poems or sewing a quilt that we use it to communicate.  Any of these shared art forms are a special code within themselves as much as the heroic couplet or the iambic pentameter.

Use Nathaly's lesson to us here to practice your poem.  "Our commute is not only a commute..."

Write your poem in a rain puddle.  Write your poem on the wind. Share it with someone today.

January 2016

FEATURED POET:

These next two months we are privileged to feature student poets from the Stories of Arrival: Refugee and Immigrant Youth Voices Poetry Project.  

Check them out Here

 Dal Lam Kang (Kang Pu) was born in a small village called Tuimang, part of the Zogam region. He is sixteen years old and he has three brothers and one sister. They are still in Burma. He grew up knowing all about farming because that was his dad’s work. Kang Pu speaks five languages including Zomi, Mizo, Burma, Malaysian and English. He lived in Tuimang for thirteen years and then moved to Malaysia in 2011. Kang Pu could not get a good quality education in his country, because his family didn’t have enough money to pay for school. When he was ten years old his mom passed away. After that, he wanted to start to find money; that’s why he went to Malaysia. In Malaysia, Kang Pu got a job at Pat Kin Pat Sun Cafe Chinese Restaurant. During that time he was only thirteen years old. It was truly hard for him to depart from his family, because he is the only one who went to Malaysia by himself. Kang Pu came to the United States in 2014, with his uncle. His memories of foods from Burma are corn, vegetables and potatoes. Foods that he always remembers remind him of his country and his mom. Kang Pu often thinks of his mom when he feels hungry, but he knows he cannot let those memories make him too sad. In the future he wants to become a businessman to help his family, and to help his country to become a peaceful country. Kang Pu is thankful for the government in the U.S., because he can get a free education. He really wants to achieve his goals. He believes that his father’s vege porridge was amazing; it brought all of his family together at meal times. Kang Pu can’t forget his country’s food and traditions because his cultural foods are already in his blood. Also, food can save people and food reminds him to honor and keep his culture. Kang Pu believes everyone can do one thing in their life that they dream of, because everybody matters and everybody has different skills.

My Mother’s Kitchen

Kang Pu

When my mom cooked it smelled of sweet wintertime cherries,

of a solitary forest with rain falling

and it smelled like the murmur of a lonely bird, singing.

I picture the spherical smoke rising from her kitchen

it was like the sound of sleep at night,

it was like arriving home safe and sound

the sounds of her kitchen were peaceful

I still long for the laughter of those family meals

we all waited for that table, my mom’s table

how she prepared every family meal

this is what I still long for

so often I remember my mother

nothing can take her memory away from me

it is truly difficult that I have departed

from my motherland

and from my mother’s kitchen. 

Three Countries Home

Kang Pu

In my life

I have called

three countries home

Burma, where meat is fresh

from the forest

where the hunter focuses on his target

not for sport, but for survival .

Fruit, we only ate after

we pulled it gently from the tree,

the spots covering its flesh,

holding it together,

vegetables were from the garden

with the redness of the soil,

like before the sunset,

when mom came back

from the garden

before she arrived

I knew she was on her way

as the winds called

the smells of basil (Leemmui)

and the strong smell of earth’s spices

around my home.

I felt mom’s love,

I put my worries

into her pocket

to rest my love

in her heart.

In my new city in Malaysia 

meat was not fresh

just pushed into refrigerators,

cooked, it was covered with sauce

but the blood still showed,

thick like syrup

so I recoiled

I didn’t know

how I could eat it,

it reminded me of war victims .

WRITE YOUR POEM

We live in a modern era where Billy Collins or others can gain national attention and get national awards.  We have university programs dedicated to different styles.  Those pressures 

But we live in the tradition of Emily Dickinson.  We live in the tradition of Han Shan (Cold Mountain)  Poetry for them was about clarifying their interior worlds with a few words on the page or on a cave wall.

They were arriving at a new place and documenting that important fact.  In the end we are all students arriving.  Write about food.  Write about arriving.  Write your poem

November, 2015

FEATURED POET: CRYSTA CASEY Crysta Casey (1952-2008) was born in Pasadena, California. She graduated from The State University of New York, Stony Brook, in 1976, where she was one of the founding members of The Women Writers Workshop. After college, she became the first woman hired by the City of Irvine, California, in Parks and Maintenance. In 1978, she enlisted in the all-new voluntary military, serving in the U.S. Marine Corps as a journalist, then as a self-declared “Resident Poet” until her honorable discharge under medical conditions in 1980. She moved to Seattle, Washington in the early 1980s, where she studied with the poet Nelson Bentley and collaborated with Esther Altshul Helfgott on the It’s About Time Writers Reading Series. Her first collection of poetry, Heart Clinic, was published in 1993 (Bellowing Ark Press). In 2004 she received a Hugo House Award from Richard Hugo House, and, in 2006, she was a finalist for Seattle Poet Populist. In 2010, Floating Bridge Press brought out a chapbook of her work, Green Cammie. Rules for Walking Out (Cave Moon Press, 2016) was the last manuscript Crysta completed and approved before her death at the Seattle VA in the spring of 2008. Crysta’s papers are housed in the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections. 


POEM FOR AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER

The flag at the park hangs
half mast. I asked a young mother
pushing a child on a swing,
“who died?”
“Orville Redenbacher did,
but I don’t think they’d fly a flag
for a popcorn man.”
I spoke with another mother
in the parking lot,
“Maybe it was
for the elections yesterday?”
she said, “That could depress
some people, but I don’t think
they’d lower the flag.
Somebody famous or local?”
I listened to the radio, waiting

for the news.

JIM

Jim is a Vietnam Vet. He watches television
and sleeps all day. He eats sporadically.
He doesn’t get out much, but one day decided to go
downtown to the V.A. Regional Office
and make sure he was going to get an American flag
on his coffin. The clerk took down his name
and service #. He came back and said,
“I’m sorry sir, but according to our records

you’re already dead.”


WRITE YOUR POEM

One's-Self I Sing

Walt Whitman

One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,

Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far,

The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,

The Modern Man I sing.

??? What changed about poetry after Whitman?  The Modern Man is here and in Whitman's footsteps we confess to the world our personal interiors.  Crysta's interiors were clear as a mountain lake.  They just happened to be of battlefields forgotten

Is that the interior of a Buddhist landscape painting?  Does that interior reflect an urban cacophony?  A battlefield?  

Write your poem.  Take this time around solstice to light a candle and put words to the page.

October, 2015

FEATURED POET: JUAN FELIPE HERRERA- 2015 U.S. Poet Laureate
The son of migrant farm workers, Herrera was educated at UCLA and Stanford University, and he earned his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His numerous poetry collections include187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007,Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems(2008), and Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream (1999). In addition to publishing more than a dozen collections of poetry, Herrera has written short stories, young adult novels, and children’s literature. In 2015 he was named U.S. poet laureate.
 
In 2012, Herrera was named California's poet laureate, and the U.S. poet laureate in 2015. He has won the Hungry Mind Award of Distinction, the Focal Award, two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards, and a PEN West Poetry Award. His honors include the UC Berkeley Regent’s Fellowship as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Stanford Chicano Fellows. He has also received several grants from the California Arts Council.

He has taught at California State University-Fresno and at the University of California-Riverside. He lives in California. 

(Bio adapted from Poetry Foundation.  Poem used by permission from A Arreguín: Correspondencías)

JUAN FELIPE HERRERA- VIDEO

TASMANO

Tasmano

         tasmano

                 let me

                           hold you

                                     & let me

                           bury myself

                 into your seasonalsalmon skin

        ice disappearance

blackness lips

caballera máscaras cholula culebra gold spattered spiral breasts la

humbre michoacana

de las cumbres brujas ripping spirit flesh blue madness locuras dentro

greener yellowness tehuana tehuanasalt storms arms i bow to

your tejido king kodiak spirit in your sacred belly egg

man woman flayed scales fins gone lives

gone face destroyed turquoise

azar albedrío

love will

love unto infinity

WRITE YOUR POEMA

(VIDEO BELOW)

CORAZON- CARLOS SANTANA Y ESPOSA

This prompt will be short and sweet.  PBS and everybody loves to hear how nuestro maestro de poesia has been influenced by Ginsberg y Jackson Pollock.

Screw that.  Viva la Raza.  Escucha Carlos Santana.  Escucha nuestro maestro Juan Felipe Herrera.

Escribe su poema.  Baile.  Canta.  Viva la Raza. Si se puede.  Write your poem.  Dance. Sing.

September, 2015

FEATURED POET: Judith Skillman’s new book is House of Burnt Offerings, available from Pleasure Boat Studio. She is the recipient of The Eric Mathieu King Fund award from the Academy of American Poets for her book Storm (Blue Begonia Press), among other grants. Two of her books were finalists for the Washington State Book Award (Red Town and Prisoner of the Swifts.)

In addition to writing poetry, Judith does oil painting and plays the violin as a rusty amateur. Her poems have appeared in J Journal, Poetry, FIELD, The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Seneca Review, and other journals and anthologies. She has been a Writer in Residence at the Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, Washington, and The Hedgebrook Foundation. At the Center for French Translation in Seneffe, Belgium, she translated Belgian-French poet Anne-Marie Derése.

A Jack Straw Writer in 2008 and 2013, Skillman’s work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the UK Kit Award, Best of the Web, and is included in Best Indie Verse of New England. For more, visit www.judithskillman.com

Ms. Skillman is available for manuscript consultations through her website.

DESIRE

Long after a woman

accepts the rack of age—

intolerant overseer

with his bloodied instruments—

a vestige of passion clings.

Like the appetite of boiled milk

for its skin, or a winter day

for the sun. Like the single

marigold blooming

on a veranda—

that stubborn, red-headed child.

Long into the lateness of life,

after the shadow puppets

of parents have been pulled

from the theatre,

their heads twisted off—

deep inside the body

an extravagant wish surfaces,

requests to play the part

of descant.

THIS POTASH DAWN

Come, but come early too much, arrive

with your toxins that turn the sky yellow

as our sun rises above the tree

that fell last summer on a windless night

from drought. Come already, I know

your face more than sound—the birds

dying to catch up on news, puffed up,

full of sleep, feathers catching a quick beak.

C’mon into this-–how else to say—

chronic pain, this age, the crown

of grand motherhood tarnished. Lust

synthesized: old lovers, new husband,

new husband, old lovers. Wheeze me

out of the house mid afternoon, blowsy

as laundry strung on a line, for the shower,

the chores, the stretch of muscles tight

with spasms and that curve where discs

non-surgical—bulge against nerve,

bent anew as with the wrench

my father wielded, when he had a door

to fix, and later the vise on his workbench,

teeth clenched, uttering curses for lack

of oil, as I watched my child-self

grow up to the lip of the wood.

WRITE YOUR POEM:

Back to basics.  How to you juxtapose your metaphors to maximize irony?

Poetry distills words like moonshine distills corn mash.  Are you treating the words like kernels of corn to be treated under pressure?

Look at what Judith does:

"after the shadow puppets

of parents have been pulled

from the theatre,"  

Look at the power of shadow puppets juxtaposed against the power of parents.  Just three words carefully chosen.

Another:

"arrive

with your toxins that turn the sky yellow"

Consider the power of toxins and sky set up with the modifier of yellow.  You get the hints of acids and the sunset all wrapped into a couplet.

Distill your words.  Make them punch.  Cut things out until the words hit your core.

August 2015

FEATURED POET: Lawrence Matsuda was born in the Minidoka, Idaho Concentration Camp during World War II.  He and his family were among the approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese held without due process for approximately three years or more.   Matsuda has a Ph.D. in education from the University of Washington and was:  a secondary teacher, university counselor, state level administrator, school principal, assistant superintendent, educational consultant, and visiting professor at Seattle University (SU).

In 2005, he and two SU colleagues co-edited the book, Community and difference: teaching, pluralism and social justice, Peter Lang Publishing, New York.  It won the 2006 National Association of Multicultural Education Phillip Chinn Book Award.  In July of 2010, his book of poetry entitled, A Cold Wind from Idaho was published by Black Lawrence Press in New York.  His poems appear in Ambush Review, Raven Chronicles, New Orleans Review, Floating Bridge Review, Black Lawrence Press website, Poets Against the War website, Cerise Press, Nostalgia Magazine, Plumepoetry, Malpais Review, Zero Ducats,Surviving Minidoka (book), Meet Me at Higos (book), Minidoka-An American Concentration Camp (book and photographs), Tidepools Magazine, and the Seattle Journal for Social Justice.

In addition, eight of his poems were interpreted in a 60 minute dance presentation entitled, Minidoka performed by Whitman College students in Walla Walla, Washington (2011). 

Lawrence Matsuda by Alfredo Arreguin

NISEI FALL

Fall down seven times, rise up again.

In Rainier’s shadow, sacred torii* beckons like Mt. Fuji,

welcome sight after our release from WWII desert prisons.

Cherry blossoms flutter like snow.

*________

Japanese archway gate

WEDDING POEM

                                               

                                                          for Matthew and Jesika

Who stands on this precipice of life?

Lavender, sage, and thyme--plump bumblebees hover at play.

Rose-entwined fences welcome this husband and wife.

Bachelor spiders spin gossamer threads—rife

with sticky strands fluttering to Elliott Bay.

Who stands before me on this precipice of new life?

Laughing children in the park, a dozen Monarch butterflies.

Sacred vows bind forever and a day.

Rose-entwined fences welcome this husband and wife.

Rings sparkle and shine, illuminate the golden afterlife.

Near pineapple sage, hummingbirds fly away.

Who stands before me on this precipice of new life?

Dark skies and rain--cobblestones on the road of life.

Bells toll and inspire determination to stay.

Who stands before me on this precipice of new life?

Fate unveils surprises, wonderments, cheer, and strife.

Tears of happiness and joy--a blessing, I pray.

Who stands before me on this precipice of life?

Rose-entwined fences welcome this new husband and wife. 

WRITE YOUR POEM!
So why do you write your poem?  Is it political?  Is it personal?  Is it both?

Ancient court poets of Japan gave rise to certain forms to let the readers and listeners know what was their intent.  A renga was a collaborative poem.  The tanka ended up being a romantic form for court poetry.  Sometimes the West gives us some formal forms but when that started to break down before 20th century experimentation forms tell us less about the poet and more about the experiment.

What is your experiment?  Does your reader know?  Does it matter?  Write your poem.  Give it to a random stranger on the bus (try not to get arrested.  Already enough poets that have that problem....)