Writing Program

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This afternoon I watch the wind slap the dunes.
Some of the reeds have gone to seed and feather.
The wheatwash of this hill picks up my hair
and drops me at organic intervals.
This is the evermore turbulence of noticing.
Where the sand calls in the forest
and the trees make slow work of shoving aside
their peers.
There can be only one is Ginger’s rule
for thinning out
plant starter trays. Select for the strongest sprouts
and toss the rest.
I’m delaying this cruelty.
I’m coming around to the rationale
for specialization.
Balance is an outright lie.
Even the sky is nothing like it has ever been before.
So much I hardly understand
fought it out in the unequal collisions of my very own
egg cartons:
some seedlings splooted their second set
of fluted leaves that tell me they are fit
for a career in the raised garden bed,
and the others, shriveled, faces to the dirt, get to be
lunch or bedding,
paraded off to the jurisdiction of worms.
Every two weeks
I turn the compost pile to speed up its royal decay,
to air out the place,
to let the squatters in.

Lauren Mallett’s (she/her/hers) poems appear in Poetry Northwest, The Seventh Wave, Salamander, Passages North, Fugue, and other journals. She lives on Clatsop land of Oregon’s north coast. www.laurenmallett.com

Personal Transport

Roused mornings wrapped in fog,
a steaming trip with fragrant tea

across a plain of memories,
walking beside the plumed dog.

Calling out the names of old
acquaintances, some deceased,

somehow puts my heart at ease
and draws me back toward fold.

The dog tugs freely at his leash,
reminding me gently of his need,

so I slow and pay him heed,
and wear the streetlamp halo I’m beneath.

The fog is silver, cold, and mute,
while I am drifting, mulling there

adrift inside the familiar where
I cannot recognize my own wet boots

through my vague cosseted personal history
that ebbs and flows in this swirling fog,

yet dances like a happy dog
against the leash of mystery.

Jim Stewart is a Gearhart beach kid and wrote these poems to pry the lid from the reader’s heart and, maybe, inspire one of those small tender grunts of recognition, but he’s perfectly okay if it’s just the lid of his own heart.

David J.S. Pickering, “You Can’t Take the Boy out of Rockaway Beach”

Shari Crane Fox, “Someday”

Daria Moyer-LaMasney, “Rabo Encendido”

Matt Wigdall, “A Single Lady’s Slipper”

Ciel Downing, “Tender Riches”

Karen Keltz, “Collapse”

Connie Soper, “Bury This”