ALL RESPONSES |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
New room
today.
Walls
that aren’t
white
adds so
much.
Linoleum
had all
of the
dusty
downsides
of wood
without the
beauty. I have
three windows
and high
ceilings.
Moved
every
thing
up—all
settled in.
Clean
and ordered.
All that’s
left is to
hang up art
and make more. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
So if you can
try and fit
your body, open
to the water
Press your shoes
into the mud earth
into the raging river,
now overground
and outside with
all your neighbors
The only spiders
you might see are
at the window
white and cold
waiting to jump from
this collapsing cave |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Ancient Norsemen believed in an outer world, towards which one might sail, in the northernmost reaches of the sea, past the Hebrides and Orkneys, beyond Nordkapp, Ísland, Grønland and ship-eating icebergs in the lanes of precious cod and herring. Beyond lay a world of eternal cold and ice, where life might end and begin again. For those not destined to fly with Valkyries to Valhalla, a new world lay to the west, with fields begging to be tilled. And for this they went looking.
One hundred years of drought, locusts and floods will not pull these people from the earth they had come to inhabit. Nothing, short of Ragnarök, Götterdämmerung, the end of all things, will cause them to succumb to natural forces of wind, light and water. Death may come in a blizzard, disease or on the road. Hardship is a certainty, as is the hot cup of coffee in the morning or the cold beer at dusk. Stubbornness is a given. Sometimes, you have to fight for your home. Sometimes, you have to love your brother. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Red River Flood
Exchange the house for a little boat,
the ordinary flow of days for war
stationed outside the window.
In the storm a little cake is forgotten.
The days run on without hours,
no one counts the light or darkness.
Winter is a frigid water-way.
The town keeps slugging it out;
won’t their arms drop off?
Aren’t their feet frozen in their boots?
Fire in the river becomes the miracle
they laugh at.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
This is yours, old grandpa.
You died early this morning.
Your lungs gave out, a rush,
a door shut down the hall.
Your wife lived a life
complete inside your own.
And it burns to die alone,
but your house lies empty.
The others were quick, the lovers,
who couldn’t stand to be apart.
Your tractors, at last, stop rolling.
All at once, all together, all gone.
Except my father, now nothing,
between me and death.
And when he’s gone, that long
walk, I’ll make to the end, alone. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
White, all white, but for the green garlands
and that used up red bow.
White, all white, but the grey waters and the blue of men's arms and legs
while they swing dead weight of a solid, flexing moat.
White, all white, the molds that shall grow,
web-like, and faint, like a distant Christmas -
when the river flooded, the way
Grandma used to tell it -
binding a book to rumpled, damp linens. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
You would not believe
all this house has cost me.
It has turned me upside down.
It hits me in the throat
with my own life.
The bumps and cuts in the walls
as telling as the poreholes
in strawberries and tomatoes.
I covered them with photographs
Edwardian grandparents, children
costumed for Halloween.
I was well earthed here
as a digital clock
its numbers flicking into place
like overgrown coins
in that time bank.
Once a train ploughed here
like an emperor through fields,
cutting the cambered flesh
of clover and wild carrot.
Now I stand on a porch
open to the world,
a world turned ice floe
afraid the house behind me
is sinking.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
It was a cold Wednesday morning. The sky was blue. I looked outside the window toward the river below my house.. There were two pretty ducks floating along.. as if they were walking on the water together.. It was special.. one of those peaceful moments that just sticks in your mind, you know.. I decided to call my friend Katie to tell her about it.. She appreciated moments like that as well..
Her reply, Oh that sounds so pretty.. but I can't come over to your house right now because my brain is bleeding.. I said, What?!? She replied, I can't come over because my brain is bleeding. I'm at the hospital.. but I'm going to be all right.. I'll be fine.. Don't worry.
All I could say was, Katie your brain is bleeding.. Finally I said, You know I love you more than anyone.. as much as I love my daughter.. She said, Yes, I know.. I know.. See you later..
The sky filled with clouds. Tears fell from my eyes.. I knew.. I knew she said good bye.
Thursday came.. News of a brain tumor.. I looked toward the river for peace.. The pretty ducks had flown away. The wind was blowing the rain in all directions.. making it impossible to see.. to think.. to feel.. to breathe.. to live anything but fear.. The river was rising.. higher and higher.. with no hope of subsiding. Katie was scheduled to have an operation in a week.. but I knew.. I knew the flood drew near.
Thursday passed into Friday.. the first day of spring.. I layed awake at night waiting frozen and helpess in my home as the water surrounded me.. I knew it was happening.. At 3am I started shaking.. drowning in despair. I shouted in a whisper, God please don't take her.. Please don't take her.. She's 29.. She's my BEST FRIEND.. God please don't take her..
Katie came to me and said, Krista I'm ok.. Krista I'm ok.. Krista I'm ok..
When the call came at 6:30 I knew what it was.. She was on life support.. If I was to say good bye it was to be before 9:30 in the morning..
She was my best friend.. I could not lose her.. and yet I was.. Just 3 days before we were laughing and LIVING.. and now she was leaving.. 29 and leaving..
I could not see the river anymore. The water rose above my head.. I could feel myself being pulled downward.. further into the depths of despair.. Something deep within me pleaded.. begged for faith.. begged for peace..
The flood washed over me.
I entered the hospital room without a boat or paddle to my name.. I felt her spirit .. watching us.. watch her... The flood made out of fear settled into the ground as a peaceful breeze from Heaven rushed into me.. Peace I have never before been given EVER.. There are no words.. none
There were no bandages or bruises.. only her beautiful red hair flowing down her face.. She looked like an angel asleep.. Her spirit moved through me with ease.. Tranquility filled my eyes as she touched my soul.
Her mother said she had an episode she could not pull out of.. at 3am... 3am.. I had been shaking.. and drowning and had weathered the storm with her.. together.. There was no more fear.. only love.. only peace.. That's it.. that's all...
I put my fingers through her hair. I said, I love you.. I love you.. I love you.. again and again and again..
I sang, Go to sleep my baby.. Go to sleep... angels watch over you from the windows of heaven.. Sleep my baby sleep...
Everyone else in the room was shaking.. Everyone else in the room was drowning.. Not I.. Peaceful Katie filled my soul.. I held her hand and we walked on water as our river met the sea... |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
You could just walk away,
divorce, let the water,
take it all in the settlement.
You could stay and fight,
create a sandbag fence
around your property,
barricading yourself in;
then move all that’s important
to the 2nd level to live out
your life on a higher plane.
You could just live on faith,
stay, but do nothing
to change the situation,
waiting to see if your house
will float its way to dry land;
then disembark, with what’s left
of your belongings, animals,
and the favored love of God.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
a drop
of water
drip
into the river
of water
the peeple
who lives
by
it
gets
wet |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
below sea level
in our living room
and gaze at the earthen wall
outside our window,
a fairy ring
holding back
an unfamiliar ocean.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
If it were not Mother Nature,
but God,
who caused Red Rivers to flood,
who would say
it's not fair
that the levee ended too soon? |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
Toni Morrison, The Site of Memory
Uninvited.
Did we cry a pendent
Groan when river riled through?
Come summer, we'll savor
Green-laden air along River’s edge.
Brimmed spores will waft sweetly underfoot,
Clinch our right to gather here. But now,
River swells, settles new banks
Inch by urgent inch
While we drag our lives
Backwards, inland
By hammer-claw and hitch
Carting away windows, hastily packed flatware.
Liens notwithstanding, impervious
River flows where rivers remember.
Douses smoldering fires.
Repossesses the bedrock and bricks
We dreamily arranged, then lost ourselves
In. Roiling currents enliven River’s
Whet memory for mossy
Boulders and hallowed instincts
Forever
If once touched.
Then, without sound, River rolls back.
Primal thirst sated. Land perfectly
Drenched in a more visceral
Past. Dumbstruck & pithy
We return to the flood
Plain hauling pungent 2 x 6s
Boxes of wood screws &
Power tools, and we begin
Again, better this time. A softer blue
This time. We crave this watery
History like a newborn roots
His Mother’s flooded breast. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
(written following Austin's flood of 2004)
What they do, these rivers, is not flooding, but remembering. Toni Morrison.
I.
Floodplain homes are swallowed by
a river that keeps its own plan,
not that of engineers. Doomed houses
are hauled away or torn down.
The river has its say.
She heads for home down Eighth Avenue.
The death on this street calls for new
names, names to loose its grief, or hers.
Call it Dead House Drive or Ashes Alley
or Lamentation Lane.
Shingles are a disease to be
stripped to tarpaper inner skin.
Snow-covered indrives lead nowhere.
Abandoned stairways step up
to nothing. An errant cable flaps
its uselessness against a home
where a family lived for 32 years.
The river has its way.
She admires the bravado
of lace hanging on condemned windows.
The unstripped sheen of one
low bungalow’s yellow siding
is defiant behind unshoveled
walks, snow-laden shrubs, unkempt trees—
live growth that will keep its pattern
despite the river’s stubbornness.
Movers have finally hauled out
a trim grey story-and-a-half--
it waited weeks--jacked up, disemboweled--
for some final sign.
Little house, do you lament roots
planted near a river’s rampage?
Are your spirits moving with you
or still in the basement, wavering,
while the river has its say?
Will there be visible years hence
a certain sunken symmetry,
indentations seen only from
the sky, hollowed by ghosts clinging?
Will the green house, the one which chose
to stay, to argue with the river,
the one with hearts in the windows,
trucks and cars parked insolently,
will it remain, valiant and
waterlogged? Talk to me, she implores the houses
as she drives up and over the bridge.
But only the river has its say.
II.
The silent gray mansion at river’s edge is gone today,
is nothing more than scattered bricks. A sign says “dead end.”
At the auto repair shop just before the bridge, Bob points
to head-high watermarks on the wall. He keeps coming back
to business after the floods, unwilling to give in.
Rotary’s new Centennial Park beckons families
with swings and slides, basketball courts, picnic tables, sand box.
Horseshoe pits and baseball bleachers rise again. Come and play,
they say. The river’s being good.
Come play, but watch your back.
She recalls Toni Morrison’s water wisdom—
What they do, these rivers, is not flooding but remembering,
forever trying to get to where they were. Like writers,
forever moving to recapture bank and boundary,
the old lights and smells and textures, a familiar route back
to the primary place. She looks down to Eighth Avenue
from the bridge.
A sunlit river, ice-browed, winks up at her
conspiratorially.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
the river ran
the river ran red
the red river ran
rampant but
not in a rage,
rather in that
calm way the
elderly have
of moving--
all their quickness
hidden within
all that energy
from years and years
of being
contained behind
tenuous skin
ready at last to
rip free of constantly
shifting moorings
we felt it shift
right after birth
we feared
transparency
but dared not
move, for what
it might mean |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I am blest to step under a shower, the gush of hot water, to flush a toilet sleep in a warm bed. I am blest to be able to buy groceries to buy even flowers buy even candles paper towels to have light to have a tv to play DVDs to have a pile of books teetering on the edge of a table. I am blest to have a pc, a politically correct bus ride green energy and brown skin and my hood I wasn’t born in and can leave anytime. I am blest to be handed a transfer I didn’t pay for given an apology a smile a seat to be asked if I am coming over soon to be wanted to be called. I am blest hundreds of times a day when my mind clicks on and when my body stands up and walks and does those exercises to get back in shape and the green growing in the yard and a view out the window and suddenly a robin. I am blest to be home alone and blest to be in a crowd of children and blest to be watching the world walking by with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine in my hand and a slice of pizza maybe salad with cranberries and walnuts maybe and fresh baked bread or warm tortillas maybe. I am blest to be doing the dance of peace and hey baby it’s me in the mirror liking the silver that frames my face and never mind the winter of my discontent or the summer of my first heart-break. I do not have water gushing over my floors and mass destruction and housedamaged, I already declared bankruptcy and walked the sliver of despair, I already fell in the desert of defeat and arose with my mouth full of dust. I spread the ashes of my lover and thought of how two can make a soul or break a promise and I tasted the ashes when my husband confided his HIV status was acute again and I sank up to my neck in ash when I watched my son’s mortal remains of ashes swirl away in the river. So blest blest blest am I to work in silence and not go screaming through the streets and what I can do to light a match to the small lantern one more time and what can I do but follow its luminescence that leads me on?
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
How handsome
licking the plates running by
dancing as a crazy wisk done over the door
wits for an opening
whispering
at the house
to be let in.
like spring rains can we run down to the Florida sun
everyday
to fill and tie
thawed and tender shrimps
who'd escape to the Great Balsamic Ocean near Modena?
and warm with the olives
down
around your legs
wrapping me up
with garlic moonlight and the address
of 69 911 we have homespun.
To know you know what it means
when it’s easier to write about water
or these little floods
rest little still
going without it
we are wading through it
and laughing that yes, you would
how beautiful and true
to give it to me
so freely
a clean boasting sky
shaven for Spring…
I do.
And will I, you ask
all night
not stopping
even for innocent parmesan
and to lay
with fresh basil
mince the truth of garlic
against olive oils in a bag of pine nuts
giggling at licking your plates
holding back the legs around us.
Give it to me;
in my boots true old fashioned way
in your home and over the lunch hour
with a catching threat
of being caught
uselessly running hot and not stopping
even to wash it away
in a shower
we share
leaving only the towel on your head
line the rest to laugh at the floor to the bed.
Not in vain, as my Dad passed away
grading the streets for the old county.
I remember the deepest snows in our driveway
and the graveled sound
his grader made
pulling up the sand and stone
mixing together a Sun kissed snow.
I’m being only 14, now and then,
with having to be 43
asking can we have fun
maybe we will cook together sometime.
Back in the day,
within Streamlined homes all-in-a-line
Happier days TO BE
with getting
our food processors to work
and our frustrations with what our food IS
worked out;
and the better machines
building themselves bigger and faster
taking away our sweet spring way
.....first our parents
the oldest and most enduring
girls and boys
saying goodbye to their fresh lives
.....away with saving to be women and men
in an unrequited love for war.
Antoinette etiquette
way more expensive
powdered me to love,
by mortar and pestle
before the devil
flowing inside me for all of Italy
as roses in a worn roads back pocket.
I swear who cares who is getting blow’d
the beautiful flowers and cards to
with kisses
flattering chefs who’ve fallen
over somewhere in a kitchen
with clothes lost
in some other room
a poem to basil
at the door smeared
leaving greeat thanks steely
upon a knee’s mean season.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
We are ruled by water.
But- as if gods ourselves-
We change her course,
Dam her, dredge her,
Hold her in tight embrace
Between paved banks
To quell her fickle moods.
When she finally overthrows
The brutal rules that we impose,
We work in fluid motion,
Building walls of prayer
To the chorus of her flow.
In time, though, she subsides
To the charming girl we love
-We forgive her by July-
And forget to question why
We would never have another. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
He’s useless
as a lover
what i want
is dry humor
what i have
is flood water
what i need
is normalcy
what i feel
is invasion
i may have left
him too soon
you see, i’m still
waiting
for the parting
of his water. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
Toni Morrison, The Site of Memory
Uninvited.
Did we cry a pendent
Groan when river riled through?
Come summer, we'll savor
Green-laden air along River’s edge.
Brimmed spores will waft sweetly underfoot,
Clinch our right to gather here. But now,
River swells, settles new banks
Inch by urgent inch
While we drag our lives
Backwards, inland
By hammer-claw and hitch
Carting away windows, hastily packed flatware.
Liens notwithstanding, impervious
River flows where rivers remember.
Douses smoldering fires.
Repossesses the bedrock and bricks
We dreamily arranged, then lost ourselves
In. Roiling currents whet River’s
Memory for mossy
Boulders and hallowed instincts
Forever
If once touched.
Then, without sound, River rolls back.
Primal thirst sated. Land perfectly
Drenched in a more visceral
Past. Dumbstruck and pithy
We return to the flood
Plain hauling pungent 2 x 6s,
Boxes of wood screws,
Power tools. And we begin
Again. Better this time. A softer blue
This time. We crave this watery
History like a newborn roots
His Mother’s flooded breast. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
she is still
so quiet, I stop each thought
stand, until my body
mirror hers
follow now, with my eyes
the path of a distant car
on the far shore
just a pair of golden lights. Hear
the blood as it travels my veins,
each small breath as it leaves
my body
she is mercurial
smooth silver. I search the sky
for stars that are not there
watch a shy cloud drift
eastward, hear, but do not see
the wings of a bird rythmic &
humming, telling me in a language
of air and bird and night and cloud
it is time, time
to follow each bend of the land,
each curving tree, follow this hollow
feeling in my bones, follow your voice
to wherever it leads me. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
verses salted by sound, shields
of Achilles, the clanging mouths
like swords taste the spice, blood and sea.
bar-halls built by poetry, shields
of Achilles, the dipping tongues
like oars taste the flood, a Bloody Mary.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The title of a poem can get your attention, like
Two Strange People Married to Each Other, or
Chocolate Bunny Channels Millard Fillmore, or
Two Cups Unbleached All-purpose Flour, or
In Celebration of the Chthonic Earth Goddess, or
The North Wind Brings Radioactive Fallout, or
Titanium Flowers Wrestle Naked in Doubt, or
A Pale Moon Casts Shadows on Black Beans, but
The title of a poem can get your attention.
Sauerkraut is a Potent Mistress
And two strange people, married to each other,
Like chocolate bunnies channeling Millard Fillmore,
Two cups of unbleached all-purpose flour,
In celebration of the chthonic earth goddess,
Bring radioactive fallout on the north wind,
And titanium flowers wrestle naked in doubt,
Like a pale moon casting shadows on black beans. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Yeah, not a poem
in the classic sense
but a way to let Britt
know how much we will
miss him, and this. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
When I look I see only those
people whose water rises
to the top of their steps,
advancing through doors
beneath thin sills, uninvited,
like some sort of ancient plague
predestined by an angry god.
the owner will enlist an army
of friends to stave off destruction
while the poet watches and writes
of moon and ice birds and breasts
bursting forth from the gray clay;
instruct his children to pray
for another one hundred years.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Dear talented and dedicated poets:
I am saddened to hear that Northography will end after such a long and successful ride. I have had the pleasure of being part of a group like no other, and I can not express to Britt and all of you enough how much this site has meant to me over the years.
My latest book was a collection of poems inspired by all the stimuli from Northography; however more importantly this site has been the impetus for so many of us writers that could have otherwise feel so alone in this climate at the northern end of the world where we might have otherwise kept silent and to ourselves.
Britt and all of you, I thank you for all you've given me. I will treasure all the incredible voices I've read and re-read for so many weeks, months and years. What a gift we've all been able to share through our community of support, dedication to the written word, and through our investments in insisting our voices are worthy of being heard.
Suzanne Nielsen |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Again it is humanity
vs. water.
We all stand shoulder to shoulder.
My daughter and son
will want to throw rocks into it
and watch the ripples grow
they will argue over
who threw their rock furthest
from the shore.
My son believes in aliens and fairies
and miracles
the parting of the seas, he believes
at the end of the day
we will safely cross over to freedom.
Today our fates are once again linked
as we pass bags of salt
down a long line,
building walls that must hold against nature
and for one moment
we think what humanity has built
cannot be broken down, we believe
our collective efforts will send ripples out
like little messengers begging for mercy.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
.jpg)
