洞月亮 Cave Moon Press March 2017

FEATURED POET: 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 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. 

Check out Rules for Walking Out



The V.A.
Saw Tom Lent in the Recreation Room.
He said, “When you paint me again
it’ll be easier. They just took off
my other leg.”

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!
Distillation may make you think of whiskey or vodka.  In any case it speaks of stripping away everything but the essence.  Distillation, however, does more than strip away.  It changes the corn or potato.  Heat is involved.  One the other side, there has been a transformation.

Strong poems go that way.  You have applied heat.  Made a decision.  Gone through a process.  Yes, you have the essence when you are done, but more than that, you have transformed the reader with words on a page.  Crysta transferred this heat from life to the page.  Write your poem. Dance your dance.