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Vol. XXVIII, Issue 5
The Portland Alliance |
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June 2008 |
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poetry
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My name is Mary Otte. As the new
Poetry Editor for the Portland Alliance I would like to share
my vision with you, the reader, and encourage you to send me
feedback on how you like what you are seeing. When putting together
a Poetry Page for Portland’s oldest progressive newspaper
the ‘progressive’ part drives me. Exploring the many
facets of the poetic art form is one of my favorite past times
and to be able to share that love with a likeminded readership
is a challenge that I am very happy to take on. As you will
see, I have divided the page into three sections: the Slam Series,
Progressive Poetry by local poets, and Poets for the Community.
In Poets for the Community each month will feature a poet who
is also doing their part as an activist. This poet will have
a more extensive bio with ways to keep up with what they are
doing. The section for progressivepoetry
by local poets is exactly as described. In the section Slam
Series I would like to feature a poem a month from the winning
team from National Poetry Slam for the first six months after
Nationals and then in the six months leading up to Nationals
feature a Portland poet competing for the team here. I am hoping
that the melding of these three focuses will support interconnectivity
and, of course, progressive poetry. If you would like to submit
for any of the three sections or to let me know what you think
of the page you can email me at: maryotte@riseup.net
or paper mail to: The Portland Alliance / 2807 S.E. Stark /
Portland, OR 97214.
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“Autobiographi”
Post-war 1947
born on the white
side of the tracks
Texas segregation
civil rights preacher’s child
fled Texas with honor’s diploma
for UC Berkeley and free speech
though I did not know then
that’s why I left
Vietnam war 1965
what war
are you fighting for
make love not war
college books tossed into a trunk in some room
I’ve never seen since
fires of internationalism called me
a girl
to enlist
in the anti-war
war against Amerikka
my own women’s liberation on the line
war in Amerikka
war against the warmakers
white-skinned haters
capitalist consumers of human lives
following the tradition
Nat Turner John Brown
Wobblies subversives
resistance in the belly of the beast
clandestine war 1973
captured by the killers
spirit killers nationkillers
a political prisoner
enemy of the state
terrorist and traitor
white woman dangerous
to white Amerika
condemned to years
and years of absence
a lifetime
warmakers
wait for its prisoners to die
or go crazy
or simply wither away into insignificance
I rest, a grain of sand
significant on the beach head that meets the sea
to face the storm
I wage resistance
to stay alive
I learn to search out freedom in the breath
my cells send out dendrites
to absorb the world and its offerings
I offer back
poems
and occasional grains of sand
mixed into clay and fired
into sturdiness
—Marilyn Buck, Autumn 1999
This poem appeared in Becky Thompson, A Promise and a Way of Life, University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Political prisoner Marilyn Buck is a self-described life-long anti-racist and anti-imperialist activist. She was convicted for participating in the 1979 prison break of black activist Assata Shakur, and conspiracy to commit armed robbery in the Brinks robbery of 1981, in which members of the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army used a car owned by her and apartments rented in her name; and for her role in the 1983 U.S.Senate bombing, “conspiracy to protest and alter government policies through use of violence.” She received an 80-year sentence for the Capitol bombing and is currently incarcerated at FCI Dublin in California.
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“The Curtain of Irony”
The Iron Curtain is long since gone.
It’s been replaced by systemic drapes.
It’s harder to see when the drapes are closed.
And democracy swallows bitter grapes.
The Iron Curtain has transformed
Into these draping curtains of irony.
The US government has been shutting down
The openness of our very society.
The terrorist hate what we stand for…
They can’t stand the fact that we are free.
Until Bush shreds our very freedoms
In the name Homeland Security.
It looks like the terrorists have already won
The drapes are closing on our Bill of Rights,
Did our rights close from an outside source?
Or within when Bush turned out the lights.
The drapes continue to encroach
The moral fabric of our society,
Bush says we can’t let the terrorists win;
Here comes the Curtain of Irony.
—Mark Lysgaard, © 2007
Mark Lysgaard wrote this poem one year ago to the month, and clearly not much has changed. This poem and others can be found in Lysgaard’s book of satirical takes on the Bush administration and its crimes, “Dark Side of Buffoon & the Spectrum of Scandals,” of which Jon Elliot of Air America Radio commented: “His poems, either poignant or humorous, serve as a time-line reminder of the many injustices [the Bush/Cheney cabal] have visited on America, it’s people and the world.” Find out more at myspace.com/OfRhymeAndReason.
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ALEMBIC
When you metabolize sun from Persian apricots,
expect their distillate to release
an aura about you suggesting
one who reads poetry on vellum
in an aerie among tamaracks
and coquetting blue jays.
Neglected by tedium, you
future-pace the clouds,
unlatching rose crystal from each thunderhead,
as you await Cassiopeia to catalyze
another day.
—Joan Maiers
This poem previously was published in The Napa Review.
WHEN SALMON TAKE TO AIR
In Honor of Roger Long, Artisan
Their place in the universe
is not a matter
of water alone;
rather, their union is signalled by sun glint
harbored in river sand
with heartwood from ancient growth.
Willamette, Columbia, Sandy,
McKenzie, Metolius, Klamath,
Deschutes, Umpqua, John Day, Rogue —
names of these ten rivers
mark the passage of these sojourners.
They invite onlookers from the bank
to pause, to take inventory
before the trail dwindles
in a plume of rainbow.
—Joan Maiers
This poem previously was published in Blooming in the Shade.
Joan Maiers’ poems have appeared in Calyx, Oregon English Journal, Windfall, Raising Our Voices and dozens of other publications. Her book – ready and willing for a publisher! – is titled Specific Gravity. You can read more of her work online with Switched-On Gutenberg, Windfall archives [Autumn 2003], or back issues of the Portland Alliance. A not-to-miss event that Maiers will be participating in with other activist poets is as follows:
Moonstruck Poetry Series
Celebrate the summer solstice with poetry activists Jane Glazer, Colman Joyce, Joan Maiers, Daniel Skach-Mills, and live music at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday June 29. Free and open to the public. Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe, 45 South State St., Lake Oswego. 503-697-7097.
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“Mother, where are you?”
“I could fit two stomachs into these pants!”
My mother, now shrunk to the size of an anorectic gnome.
“I don´t need to eat anymore. They feed me pills instead.”
My mother, now dependent on mother’s little helpers.
“My blouse was snow-white and had mother-of-pearl buttons. This one looks like the colour of my hair.”
My mother, now decked out in someone else’s cast-offs.
“My feet seem to have gotten lost. I can’t feel them anymore.”
My mother, now chained immobile in a mobile chair.
“Jesus is coming for me soon. Will you come too?”
My mother, now obliviously alive in a limbo called nursing home.
She, who raised cacti, corn, cows and kids
Is gone but for the shell we still embrace,
Telling ourselves we have done our best.
Will the circle be unbroken, by and by, Lord, by and by?
—Cecelia Salmonson
Cecelia Salmonson was born on a small farm in northern Minnesota in 1947. After getting a degree in English literature and German Studies, she went on a trip to Germany to improve said language, met a German scientist, married, raised a daughter and a son (who is currently attending junior college in Vancouver, WA) and has lived in Germany since. Cecelia has written poetry since she was a young girl and now writes in both German and English. She discovered The Portland Alliance on a visit to her son, while in one of Portland’s many fine art galleries.
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