Local Washington Poets (The Sealey Challenge)

The month of August is the Sealey Challenge. The challenge involves reading 31 books of poetry over the course of August. I managed to read six books so far. I want to talk about these books by local Washington poets.

Last Resort by Kathleen Byrd 

This book was published by a dear friend. I have enjoyed reading her poetry. She is the former poet laureate of Olympia, WA, and professor of English at South Puget Sound Community College. My favorite poem from this collection was Oh Mollusk.

Oh Mollusk 

Oh tender self

Consider: the Oyster’s work

 

and Mussel’s (being without narratives).

I am not forgetting my father

who died with mottled lungs.

He was more gentle

than I ever knew when

he was still breathing.

 

I saw it in his handwriting,

a list of his siblings and their

ages when they died.

 

The youngest, he was the last

to go. His mother, a mother of 5,

had one unseeing eye

 

like a floating Oyster in a socket.

He died after a season of smoke.

He liked Oyster stew.

 

Oyster from a jar heated in milk.

I found it repulsive.

Grey membrane of whole beings

 

floating in warm milk.

It took teeth to taste their zinc.

Still he was more gentle than

 

I ever estimated. It was in

his handwriting, in a note

to my older brother’s first

 

grade teacher, describing him as

eager, social, and curious, not hyper

excessive, or challenging

as we all knew him to be. It took my breath

away: The note. So tender. The unknowable:

essential as the membrane of grey Oyster

 

body, holding ourselves together;

holding others apart. The work?

a humble grinding of grit—

 

Dresses from the Old Country by Laura Read 

I found this book at the local library. Laura Read is a teacher and poet living in Spokane, WA. She is the Poet Laureate of Spokane and a professor of English at Eastern Washington University and Spokane Falls Community College. My favorite poem from this collection was Alaska.

Alaska 

After he gets back, my brother keeps

talking about the light, how little there was

of it, he was pouring it in a pitcher,

cupping it over a basin. The last time

I was there, it was summer and we had

too much of it, it was all over us.

I was fourteen, visiting my friend

who had moved away. We rode our bikes

out to the glacier and stood beneath

its waterfall, we camped in the Yukon

where you could see the minerals

in the rocks, we lay on the ferry’s deck

and watched the Northern Lights

tear open the sky. At the hot springs,

I went into the wrong bathroom,

but I didn’t leave even when I saw

the bodies were the bodies of men,

red from showers, their eyes staring

back at mine like the eyes of animals

caught between trees. My brother’s still

cold, he won’t take off his coat, he huddles

over the amber beer like it’s a glass of fire.