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.

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.