Where is Yakutat?

Where is Yakutat?

Tucked into the forelands, nestled between Sitka Spruce,

Raven and Eagle share with Glacier Bear and Black-tailed Deer.

Without fog, eighteen thousand vertical feet of relief is revealed

On the eve of sunrise, cast in pink, purple, and fiery red-orange

Begets the Coho in the last days of life upon the pebbles

Of the Sitak and the Ahrnklin Rivers, fighting currents.

I ask him What is there to do for fun in Yakutat? Drink, he

Casually admits, and I remember, that’s the same thing we do

For fun in every other hamlet called home, as we’re all left

Alone strumming the chords of our own panoramic hinterland.

Dendrometric Transect

Dendrometric Transect

9 point 2. 3 point 7. 6 point 9.

The graduated metallic tape

Calibrated to 3 point 1 4 is

Held with thumb and index finger,

Using both hands, slipped behind

The girth of her trunk measuring

Diameter at breast height—

As if you’re taking her bra off.

From her rings you know

She’s only 19, but through

The fog, with no fire, you leave

Her and reach for another.

Photo by Amanda Byrd, UAF ACEP, as seen on FaceBook.

Your Resources

Your Resources

Hemlock and Sitka Spruce stand

dozens of board feet upward,

pointing to the heavens,

pointing to raven and eagle,

where the clouds forget your name,

darkening Disenchantment Bay.

Fear

Fun with borrowed forms, false documents.  I'm so glad Rob taught a class on a what he calls False Documents.  Valerie Laken gave a very similar craft talk at the residency, calling it On Borrowed Forms.  A simple definition would be presenting prose, or poetry, through some guise or rhetorical faux mode.  I feel the visual presentation is as much a part of the ruse as the content, so there is an image version below.  Note: this poem is still in a some stage of revision.  

New American Dictionary

(Definition of Fear)

fear |ff`ear  |

noun

1. a sense of emotion arising from the nape of one you attempt to intimidate. 2. an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous. 3. likely to cause pain. 3. a bitter smell usually tasted at the back of the throat in the form of dryness. 4. George Bush Junior’s missile defense network. 5. the absence of something you possessed the night before. 6. usually evoked instantaneously by an outside agent. 7. Dick Chaney on a quail hunting excursion. 7. the nightly news. 8. waking up older than the day before. 9. the IRS. 10.  when the lights go out

Fredericksburg Haibun

This poem was inspired by a poem by Robert Hass, On Visiting The DMZ at Panmunjom: Haibun.  His poem reminded me what its like to visit, and grow up on and around battlefields.  The quantity of lives lost is a rich reminder at the start of his prose.  I  like how the haiku is a shift from man's destruction to the harmony of nature.  

Fredericksburg Haibun

Union Yank encampments were north of the Rappahannock, a brown murky river flowing west to east.  The town sits on the fall line: the tidewater to the right, the piedmont to the left. A dot upon the map General’s Lee and Burnside poured upon hourly, yet separated from one another not only by the river but the color of their uniform.  Confederate Reb cannon’s and trench’s were dug into Marye’s Heights, granting over-watch of the once beautiful city, now occupied by snipers hiding within dilapidated churches firing from steeples on an enemy, once countrymen, struggling to construct pontoon bridges in the cold month of December.  Upon finally gaining a foothold in the city, brief urban combat ensued in the streets but the majority of gray dressed forces settled in behind a stonewall and from positions on the heights south west of the city.  Fourteen times men dressed in blue charged the stonewall and fourteen times they were repelled.  Thirteen of those times men charged over the bodies of their comrades at the stone wall, most falling themselves, building what must have looked like a wall of corpses.

Bones and bullets buried

beneath shopping malls, soil no

longer stained with blood.

Our First Honey Bucket

shit, I never heard her say before-

until the mustard colored liquid

splashed out of the gray painters

pail staining her jeans moist

an alcove, a closet, the perfect

throne room for the five gallon

urinal adorned with a black

polymer horseshoe shaped seat

forty below Fahrenheit and

you adroitly hover over an

unflushable portable rather

than voyage to a far

distant frozen outhouse

today my tinkle tinkles

into the porcelain lav

and I can hear her cry

out as the snow melts

the ground beneath her

feet sinking into an overflow

of amber dandelion hue discharge

Fridge Fungus

born in the back

under cover

squeezed between

and behind

more important dishes

green cloud bursts

fuzzy concave craters

hairy yellow spider webs

more microwave

and it’s edible

scrape the surface

boil the rest

who says science

can’t be tasty!

I Miss The Late 90's

Vintage was what mom bought on

sale from wal-mart, and the way

we wore it was grunge.

We knew what teenage spirit

smelled like and didn’t give

a shit about what you thought

about how it smelled.

There were no consequences

to smoking pot in an aluminum

foil pipe because you could

crush it when you were high enough.

Garage bands meant instant

stardom no matter how far

away Seattle was- crank the

distortion and rattle the foundation.

Innocence was biking to the grocery

store for more mountain dew then

pressuring friends into shoplifting

condoms, which would quickly be

tossed in the parking lot garbage can.

Summer bombs in the backyard

meant boyhood not terrorism.

Weekends up late for Bevis & BH

then Pinfield’s head-bangers ball.

Foreplay in the White House was

fun, if you didn’t get caught; but

without internet, who really cares.

Some rich kids computers looked like

microwaves and stealing their TI-eighty

something calculators were

worth one good app.

Melancholically the ought’s brought
post-punk, artificial intelligence, and
prevailing winds of an eternal post-life. 

My Endless Winter

(the year with no spring)

they swore at the late april dusting which fell last night but me this morning i’m in the garage melting more yellow s3 hydrocarbon hot wax into the pores of my skis so that this afternoon i can sketch choppy v-shaped tracks into the isothermic corn through the rolling shoulder shaped birch hills hoping for it to never end as i glide into may

my hop dog

He used to sit outside my classroom window,

Wishing his day away beneath the Brooks Range,

Wondering when I would return from the

Red double doors and let him free.

Still he would follow me, if I let him,

All the way to my new school.

Let’s make him our class mascot

The eighth graders would cheer.

Instead my yellow dog waits, guarding

His own one-acre domain.  I arrive home

And feel his lick on my cheek, his furry

Neck resting in my lap, my hop dog.