No Sea Here

Word-twisping

That was fast. All fifty of the copies of No Sea Here that Moon in the Rye Press gave me are spoken for. I’m now digging into the copies I purchased at a discount, so I’ll be pivoting to a pay-what-you-can model. I hope that model will allow everyone to have a copy regardless of their ability to pay. I also love trades of all kinds, so that’s always on the table.

I’m mailing the first fifty copies out tomorrow, which means I get to visit the Toquerville Post Office, one of my favorite places in Utah. It sits beneath a steep hill festooned with chunks of basalt the size of economy vehicles. None of them have dislodged and killed anyone, at least not yet. Death by igneous rock is on my list of preferred ways to shed this mortal coil, which I always say in my head as cortal moil the way I used to call my friends who were dating Sherry and Jelly when their names were actually Jerry and Shelly.

This word-twisping is not something I try to do. It’s one of the ways my dyslexia makes itself known. Dyslexia is my mischievous little language friend who never fails to entertain me. It’s wearing a cute devil costume right now, kind of an inside joke. Dyslexia is such a comedian.

In other news, I’m happy to report that some poets are still people. I almost typed pets, which would also not be awful. Poets are sometimes people, sometimes pets, and sometimes a pestilence. I said what I said. Mostly, I was riffing on the sounds of the words. Mostly. Let me have some fun, OK? I’m going on day three of a migraine, which is in turn causing my centralized pain syndrome to flare. This is what I get for being in a body. My body doesn’t know how to have fun. Even my dyslexia can’t make it laugh.

‘No Sea Here’ Is Here

My chapbook No Sea Here is finally here, thanks to Moon in the Rye Press, Lisa Bickmore and Jem Ashton, and funding by the Utah Division of Arts and Museums.

I received fifty copies as part of this micropress project and plan to give those to folks who have already generously shared their work with me, who have helped with the collection, and who have, dare I say it, made me a better poet and person.

After the first fifty copies are gone, I’ll have additional copies available that I purchased at a discount. For those, I’ll use a pay-what-you-can model to help offset my costs, including postage, while also making sure anyone who wants a copy can have one. If there are any profits, I’ll donate them to a social or literary nonprofit.

Images: 1. No Sea Here in the afternoon light. 2. An interior page from the collection. 3. Fanned-out copies of No Sea Here. 4. The back cover of the collection with the Moon in the Rye Press logo.

Spring in Salt Lake City

Spring in Salt Lake City and my collection No Sea Here from Moon in the Rye Press in hand.

Images: 1. Lisa Bickmore giving me my copies of No Sea Here in Salt Lake City. 2. Along the Jordan River Trail near South Jordan, Utah. 3. Another view along the Jordan River Trail. 4. The life partner, Lexi, and me at Gardner Village in Midvale, Utah.

Selections from ‘No Sea Here,’ Moon in the Rye Press

And the Mountains Rising Nowhere

And there is a single boat on the water.

And the water is as still as the moment
………………………………………………before thought. And a bird

is about to fly, almost. And the wheat is gone,
harvested. And the fields are nothing more,
………………………………………………nothing less, without

wheat. And the sun hides behind a haze,
but it is there, it is there. And the mountains,

smooth as sculpting clay now hardened,
………………………………………………break into pieces around us.

And the trees hold up their branches, always.

—

Sermon

If a man is in a fruit, then when the fruit is taken and blessed, it is redeemed.
— Rabbi Amnon

If a woman is in a lake, then when the lake
is drained and filled in, it is rescued from water.

If a generation of boys is in trees, then when the trees
are felled and milled, the forest is delivered from shade.

If a party of lost girls darkens the air, then when the air
swells with toxins and haze, the sky is liberated from breath.

If a grandfather is in the soil, then when the soil
is dry and bare, the ground is saved from production.

If a grandmother is in the body, then when the body
is scathed and broken down, it is released from its own ruin.

If a man is in apple, then when the fruit is thieved
and cleaved, it is redeemed from the curse of being a man.

—

Inland Beach

Handful by handful, wind carries

sand over the tops of these lava flows.
My husband and I scale the barbed wire,

climb past sage and dry flowers.

Volcanic rock crumbles, shifts
under our feet, dark as a field

newly burned, dark as shame.

High above, the Twin Sisters
share the age-old story of marriage.

Coyote, their jealous husband,

turned them into pillars; turned
himself into a rock to watch over

them forever. Behind the pillars,

sand forms a waterless beach,
the river visible in the far

distance. We lie together in love

and regret, each of us a Coyote,
our fear turning us both to stone.

We rise and make our way to the twins

whose eroding bodies remind us
even love and its curses will pass.

—

Hanford Site, 1958

We find radioactive rabbit dung
up to two thousand acres from the site.
We find radioactive coyote dung.
We assume the coyotes found the rabbits
……………………………….in their burrows and ate them.

We have come to expect deaths out here
where no one will miss the dead—
more prey and predator where these came from.

We have come to expect—no, to anticipate—
……………………….the larger death for which we gather
while our wives give birth and keep house,
while we file in and out, in and out
…………………..………………………as we are told.

We burrow inside the site and inside our homes,
hoping no coyote will sniff us out
and put an end to this—
………………….our insurance, our bright future, our light.

—

No Sea Here

There are waves here, too. Each morning,
……………… … … ……..they pass from tree to tree.

These waves talk to the air the way a sea talks
……………………………………………to its shores.

Lower, the wheat makes its own waves,
………………………………which sound like streams.

The wheat’s movement reveals the shape
………………………………………of the land below

that, long ago, was carved, and carved again, by water.

—

“And the Mountains Rising Nowhere” first appeared in Barrow Street. The poem takes its title from Joseph Schwanter’s composition by the same name. I was listening to the piece and thinking about the stillness of the Eastern Washington landscape as I wrote this poem.

“Sermon” first appeared in I-70 Review.

“Inland Beach” first appeared in Menacing Hedge.

“Hanford Site, 1958” first appeared in The Smoking Poet. I used to drive by the Hanford Site on my way from Eastern Washington to western Washington and back again. The landscape in that area is already strange, and the story of the Hanford Site makes the area feel even stranger. Its silence and stillness felt eerie to me, as did the sense I had that the world was not prepared for what Hanford would become. The land was not prepared. The air and water were not prepared. The vegetation and wildlife were not prepared. And the people who lived in the area before the site was built were certainly not prepared.

Even those who moved to Richland, Washington, to work at the site were not prepared for what their hands and minds were shaping out in the desert. For this poem, I went back in time and tried to enter the hearts of Hanford’s nuclear pioneers. The poem is based on a secret report from 1958 that was unclassified in 1989.

“No Sea Here” first appeared in Canopic Jar.

No Sea Here is forthcoming from Moon in the Rye Press.