Immigrant Waves by Lowell Murphree (LANDMARKS Series)

Immigrant Waves
by Lowell Murphree

They aren’t much, I know
so very little

coming and going like that
foreign and undependable

a little movement
at the tip of a long Cheatgrass stem

the string of them along
my canal go mostly unnoticed

but this stand alongside the neighbor’s
pasture fence

is the Pacific
subducting at the Coast and

rising in the body of a
Mongolian immigrant stem-waver two hundred fifty miles inland

just as did these hills twelve million years
before we tried to close the borders.

PHOTO: Pictured are Central Washington’s Kittitas Valley, the town of Ellensburg, the Yakama River, and the Manastash Ridge. Photo by Funnerus, used by permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Central Washington’s Kittitas Valley is known for its frequent strong winds that sweep down the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains to the flat land across the Columbia River. Watching the Cheatgrass move in waves along a canal bordering my home was the inspiration for exploring how external forces shaped and continue to form and shape my homeland. Manastash Ridge is a long ridge extending eastward from the Cascade Mountains in Central Washington State. These ridges rose from the earth’s volcanic activity 12 million years ago as a result of the subduction of the Juan de Fuca Plate under the North American Plate which also pushed up the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges.  They are a spectacular part of the drive eastward from Seattle toward the Columbia River. Manastash Ridge forms the southern border of the Kittitas Valley where I live, a desert valley made verdant by irrigation canals constructed largely by immigrants who settled the valley with the coming of the railroad. Cheatgrass was introduced to the Western states from Eurasia, used initially as packing material and is considered an invasive species.

PHOTO: The author at home in Central Washington’s Kittitas Valley with Cheatgrass and the Manastash Ridge behind him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lowell Murphree lives and writes in the Kittitas Valley near Ellensburg, Washington.  He works with local and regional early learning nonprofit organizations as a grant writer, board member, and volunteer.

Outsider by Risa Denenberg (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

OUTSIDER
by Risa Denenberg

I live in a small town of recovered alcoholics
who go to weeknight meetings to drink coffee
and gossip: who versus who, where, how often,
when. These good people also go to church
on Sundays to hear sermons drawn from within
the town’s close-cropped borders and offer prayers
to heal sins they will later talk about over pork
ciabatta at the Longhouse.

I’m the oddball: vegetarian lesbian poet
who celebrates Pesach to their Easter, rents instead
of owns, has never married, chooses to live alone.

Last week I bought a push mower and huffed
around my yard cutting the tall grass and elfin
pink and violet florets down to nubbins. I did
this to ward off chatter among my friendly neighbors
over my overgrown habits, although I know they think
it’s strange to not eat meat and refuse to waste
gasoline on this endeavor. If I wait too long, someone
will come along and mow down my whole house
out of kindness.

As for me, I’m polite to neighbors, but more
I love the tall grasses, the bees sniffing
a sprinkling of petals. I welcome deer to come
graze in my yard, lush with dandelions.

IMAGE: “Deer, Olympic Peninsula, Washington” by Sankar Raman. Prins available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Risa Denenberg lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, a place of stunning beauty with plenty of rain and small-town gossip. She earns her keep as a nurse practitioner. She is a moderator at The Gazebo — an online poetry board — reviews poetry for the American Journal of Nursing, and is an editor at Headmistress Press, dedicated to publishing lesbian poetry. Her most recent publications are In My Exam Room (The Lives You Touch Publications, 2014) and blinded by clouds (Hyacinth Girls Press, 2014).

Morning Poem by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser

Morning Poem 
by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser

I want to describe my life in hushed tones
like a TV nature program. Dawn in the north.
His nose stalks the air for newborn coffee.

###

Find more poems by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser in BRAIDED CREEK: A Conversation in Poetry, available at Amazon.com.

Illustration: Label by Ray Troll for “Wicked Wolf: Raven’s Brew Gourmet Coffee” available at ravensbrew.com.

Morning Poem by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser

Morning Poem
by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser

I want to describe my life in hushed tones
like a TV nature program. Dawn in the north.
His nose stalks the air for newborn coffee.

###

Find more poems by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser in BRAIDED CREEK: A Conversation in Poetry, available at Amazon.com.

Illustration: Label by Ray Troll for “Wicked Wolf: Raven’s Brew Gourmet Coffee” available at ravensbrew.com.

The Meek Shall Inherit…Poem by Richard Brautigan

THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH’S BEER BOTTLES

Poem by Richard Brautigan

When we were children after the war
we lived for a year in a house next
to a large highway. There were many
sawmills and log ponds on the other side
of the highway. The sound of the saws could
be heard most of the time and when there
was darkness trash burners glowed red
against the sky. We did not have a father
and our mother had to work very hard.
My sister and I got our spending money
by gathering beer bottles that had been
thrown along the highway or left around
the sawmills. At first we carried the
bottles in gunny sacks and cardboard boxes
but later we found an old baby buggy
and we used that to carry our bottles in.
We took the bottles to a grocery store
and were paid a penny for small beer bottles
and two cents for large ones. On almost
any day we could be seen pushing our baby
buggy along the highway looking
for beer bottles.