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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 2001)
NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , JAN&FEB 2001 PAGE 11 I AM FAT 1 THERE ARE MORE ORPHANS ALiVE NOW IN THE WORLD THAN A T ANY PREVIOUS TIME Yes I am fat Not pleasingly plump Not overweight Not chubby You are sad because they abandon you and you have not fallen. How many eyeless statues can be fit into one spine? What the words say does not last. Only the words last and what they are is always the same, what they say never the same or could get even bleaker. Always it is easier for one hand to clap than it is for one to weep. Only you know. They don't know. Either it satisfies or it doesn't, but who is to be satisfied first? Pilgrim, either you find out or you don't. I can say the word Fat! That does to That does to The size of my body does not make me a better, greater or weaker, worse, person. Fat is not beautiful. Fat is more often than not protection It is painful protection Fat is feeling your colors are too bright. Fat is a mud wash On a Monet painting. —J ohn B uckley (d. 1999) Fat is the friend you wish you had your lover on a galeblown night the risk you are afraid to embrace POETRY 2. My fat is me It is mine to deal with. It is my joys, my fears, my untold secret. It is my protection. It is mine to painfully probe. You are doing me a favor by listening, loving me. DAM IT ALL The busy, busy beaver Works with trees all day Damming up the riverbed, Unearthing tons of clay. Beavers have really big teeth To chomp away the wood I think, at night, they use chain saws, At least, they'd use them if they could They dam it, dam it, Dam it all. Dam up all the streams With a wooden wall. A fish ran into a pile of wood in a river. What did it say? "Dam " -J essi D unkin ARTISTS (For Lawrence David Maple, 1939-1986) What is it with artists Giving their lives and sanity to their Art Obsessed with private visions askewed, frenzied and clear Wrecking their health with drugs & coffee & insomnia Exhausted and dead their Art disappears seldom seen heard or thought of again Being fat is a long journey through steep valleys filled with crystal, sharp, rocky crags. My fat is mine to fight mine to struggle with mine to explore mine to bleed for. JOHN OVERMYER WHAT CAN HAPPEN WHEN YOU'RE STRANDED Not yours. The same storm that strands us at the station colors the forest blue with electncity Underneath the eaves of the platform my colleagues and I are milling about, hopelessly behind schedule, when of all things a student of mine walks out of the forest. It's Kelly Morris. She walks toward us, and I try hard not to hate her She's a stoner She's a kid who makes fun of birth defects. Laughed when George had to shoot Lennie. Tracks dogshit on the classroom carpet When Kelly falls asleep in class, no one wakes her And now that she's stranded in the middle of nowhere with the wind slashing her face and the rain soaking through her Charles Manson T-shirt, I can only smirk. "Kelly!" I yell across the tracks. "Is what you’re doing getting you what you want?" I expect her to say something asinine, but she only smiles and says. "Look what's happening to me!" Now she holds up her hands, but in this dream they aren't hands — they are the hooves of a deer. I ask her how she will hold her cigarettes, how she will cut the lines of cocaine on the mirror, but instead of answering she finishes turning into a doe. The transformation widens her eyes. Her muscles ripple. She has never been this alert Finally I say something a teacher should say: "Show all of us what you can do. Kelly!" With a quick toss of her head she bounds away. Now she disappears into the wind-swept woods. Now the whistle of our train sounds in the distance. Cultivate cannabis ■Far and wide Out in the private Countryside Not near roads Or in the ditches Make them spend that money Those sons of bitches! The war on drugs Will be waged with peace They spend our billions We plant our seeds. When the world returns To happier times We'll charge them all With their heinous crimes. ~D BOUGHAN ASTORVISIONS Walking through the seagulls and the fishguts-in-hot-dumpster smell, looking at the river. Cannery workers sit on the pier, smoking, drinking coffee, their knee-high rubber boots flecked with fishguts and shrimp casings. Tired fishermen tie their boats to the pier, their eyes sore from looking at bright reflections on the water, their faces twisted with worry And I in my slacks and tie. carrying my briefcase, feeling stupid, embarrassed, inferior, my penny-loafers slipping on fish slime -RICHARD SCHULTZ (d.1993) -M ike R amm A GRAY SPRING Plan that herb, Spread that seed Compassion and sense Is what we need. -K ristel M c C ubbin THE POET CANDIDATE -M ichael M c C usker JOHNNY POTSEED not give you the right abuse me not give you the right let your children abuse me In the dark gray blurred winter of Oregon, and on those melancholy sorry days when everything is fuzzy around the edges you can always think of the gentle warm blooming spring, and the glorious summer that follows.. and suddenly the gray seems a shade lighter -M argit L ia B owler Why are we here? We're here because we want time! And what kind of time do we want? TV time! And v/iat kind of TV time do we want? Free TV time! And whom do we want free TV time for? Me! And why do I need free TV time — from NBC, which is giving it to all presidential candidates? So I can denounce TV! I have proof that television is the most fear-inducing, community-exploding, mind boiling device in history But how can I communicate this message to the Amencan people so that they will listen carefully, and how can I reach them in their own homes, where they are most vulnerable? I must go on television Which is v4iy I am demanding equal time, completely equal time, with the other candidates Beside, all the other candidates are speaking prose —vast, uninterrupted, listless prose Only I am speaking a flowing, lyric, olive-colored poetry This is a contradiction I am the only poet candidate, yet I am shut out of the dialogue — or tnalogue Where are our checks and balances? When prose predominates, the earth becomes too flat When poetry is overweening, the world becomes too round And vtfiich would you rather have, my sister and fellow tourists — a world too flat or a world too round”? -S parrow (aka M ichael daniel gorelick ) 2- time candidate for P resident of the usa
