June 2014

FEATURED POET: Jeff Tigchelaar poems appear in journals including Flyway, Fugue, Flint Hills Review, Tar River Poetry, Southeast Review, North American Review, and Pleiades, as well as in anthologies including Verse Daily, Best New Poets 2011, and A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford. His blog, Stay-at-Home Pop Culture, is published by XYZ Magazine and his first book is forthcoming from Woodley Press (Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour: The Kansas Papers). Check him out at Jeff Tigchelaar He is also a featured poet in Crab Creek Review!


Speaking of the Crab Creek Review!

Seattle-based literary journal Crab Creek Review is in its 31^styear of publishing the best writing from the Northwest, and beyond. New Editors-in-Chief Ronda Broatch and Jenifer Browne Lawrence have just sent off to press the spring issue, featuring a host of marvelous poets and writers including Judith Barrington, Wyn Cooper, Tom C. Hunley, Tina Kelley, Bill Neumire, and Diane Seuss. The results of the 2014 poetry contest, judged by Sarah Vap will be announced in July. Visit Crab Creek Review at  Crab Creek Review or find them on  FaceBook

ABANDON

Someone, this morning,

at the vacant gas station –

the long-deserted Phillips 66

with tall weeds

and for-sale signs

and broken concrete

and no prices on the marquee –

trying to fill up

*

Dropping Sam off

at pre-school I saw

a mom in a minivan

dabbing her eyes

*

Leaving the lot

I see a pink Cadillac SUV

and laugh and laugh

― Jeff Tigchelaar

S

STOP

I’m at a truck stop in central Kansas staring at a t-shirt display while my three-year-old marvels at a claw game I’m totally not letting him play. Tequila makes my clothes fall off, says one shirt. Rebel born, rebel bred, I’ll be a rebel until I’m dead, says another, with a skeleton face and Confederate flag. A black man walks past us toward the Huddle House diner. Shower customer seven, your shower’s now ready, the ceiling speakers say.

― Jeff Tigchelaar

― 

WRITE YOUR POEM

What is the balance between form, theme and message?

Thanks to Walt Whitman we have decided that form is mutable.  It hearkens back to when meter killed the message with strict rules.  Poetry was part of an entrance exam to graduate school in Ancient China.  Hermits like Han Shan did not care to attend.  So for us the poet is an individual voice choosing all elements.  

No matter what you do poetry must echo back to its musical roots.  Each thing must ring like the gong or bell of a Tibetan or Franciscan order.  It must call people to pause from their infinity of cyber space prose.  Write your poem.  Print off the page and toss it in the ocean.  Watch the ink dance.  Let the words ring.