Harbor Review

Domestic

My mother taught me

to sew my clothes, stitch my hems,

make my own wild life.

Vivian Wagner

Haiku Sonnet for San Francisco Climate

All we talk about 

is weather, how the fog horn

signifies summer,

And was there enough 

rain or snow last winter to

plump the lakes and creeks?

And isn’t it hot

inland, a heat wave across

the nation’s middle.

Now we have a new

season: fire with ashfall

and dark yellow skies.

What terrible blossoms will

we harvest come spring?

Amanda Moore

The Water Station

Someday, there may come a time

when we find ourselves standing in line

at the ward water resource site. If that day comes,

those of us old enough to remember will mourn

all the glasses of water left undrunk

on restaurant tables, sad wedges of lemon

parked on the rim. We will regret the tumblers

poured at bedtime that went stale overnight—

at best, dumped out into a potted plant

after our alarm went off. We will lament

the plastic bottles left simmering in car cupholders

under the August sun, contents rendered

undrinkable. We will grieve

for the condensation that formed

around the bottoms of refrigerators

when it came time to defrost, the sopping towels,

the gallons lost down sinks. We will

compose dirges to the ice scraped from windshields

on January mornings, for the winter pipes

that let us scoop water directly from the tap,

deliciously cold, and slaked our throats dried

from furnace blasts. We will rend our garments

for those summer days when someone came

with a wrench and turned on the fire hydrant

for neighborhood children to splash in.

We will recollect the hubris of lawns,

of swimming pools, of water parks,

of golf courses, every moment an exercise

in this embarrassment of riches, dishwashers run

decadently empty, the toilets we flushed

just to rid ourselves of tissues

without a second thought, the iris beds,

the green frogs. The act of swallowing spit

will feel like an impossible luxury.

Someday, the clear rain puddles will

stop reflecting blue skies

at our shuffling feet.

Lauren Scharhag

On Viewing a Spider Installation

at the crux, the cross, the spider-crotch, thread-legs emerge: leg-

roots set in stone

inside spider’s stone-egg body: life blood/stone blood

we make science in our image, spider says, but art is all

distortion

my rootless fear eats my soul like a camera: I turn my back

to the lens

I am body, spider says, I am fear: I fear I can no longer

see your face

we are a freak museum, I say: my spider heart, your twisted threads.

Jude Marr

Ancestors are Here

After Natalie J. Graham

I lean sideways in front of the cypress mirror and brush

my hair 100 times as my mother taught me.

Soak this dress with three figs across the bodice

on powder-blue cotton, in the oasis, squeezing water

into my mouth. Beyond my reach, the dress floats

through the layers of stacked beings encased in clouds

while light brown rabbits, sensitive and kind, scamper

like gusty winds in four directions. Heavenly and earthly

realms join. Blue-gray wolf and deer my origin. Date palms

reach, attempting to grab the dress which dodges

like a balloon. I set the brush down, smooth my dress,

and watch rabbits leap in salt grasses. Tell me the truth.

Be my witness.

The dress. The dress. The dress.

Cindy Rinne

Webbed

Birches spooned

in each other’s watery reflections

catch autumn overcast, muted

silver-grey. Bridges 

on the river’s throat. 

Told my webbed wrists to be like silver birches 

Paper skin I quiver inside, my pale arms 

twine in swans’ neck hearts, sway

and sing. The lacing that links them— 

wind on my bark, insistent strokes

that unspool in semaphore, in hula, 

cat’s cradle played without fingers.

White patch of face in streetlamp light.

Staring at two sticks expecting fire. 

Frances Boyle

Note: This poem contains a quotation from Seamus Heaney’s “The Tollerund Man in Springtime.”

Blank Space

and you say “We don’t use that word anymore.” What, then, have I become here, in this time of any, this long distance marathon of more? A chorus of car wreckage. A dandelion plucked from the garden, seeds scattered and replanted where they will. What I mean is, my broken is always an upfront thing, that I am only as strong as my weakest part. See my flower gut burst open as I fall from his grasp. See my cracked windshield facade grow, fingers grasp and stretch, shatter. I break loud and messy; leave no room for excuses or a second half of the story. What I mean is, I will reappear myself in your yard, bright yellow and heavy with life, with my stems full of new memories ready to kiss your lips year after year. I am a perfect specimen of reinvention, I am the tide that returns to your wanting ear in every seashell. I’ve stopped apologizing for loving this loudly anymore than the dandelion between the cracks in the pavement. My love is unyielding, unapologetic and raw as the trauma I wear like glitter; I break and take everything with me. Loud, shatter and terrifying in its honesty. If we don’t use that word anymore, what are we doing?

SaraEve Fermin

Someone Lives Here

The spoons get dirtied

twice before washing.

There’s toothpaste drying

in the sink. Leaves collect

in the window sill. You see,

I don’t mind the smell

of an orange rind shrinking

on the cutting board. The overcoat

thrown across the chair,

a springtime reminder

of a winter’s snow that night

in your kitchen. Looking

at the floor through a wine glass,

wanting it to fall from my hand

and gripping tighter. You see,

someone lives here—

either my breath or the radiator’s

on the window. The spoon still

wet with coffee. The coupons

half cut and the scissors still

in my hand. And smoke from a candle

blackens the bathroom tile behind it—

who knew such small fires left a mark.

Caroline Parkman Barr 

Nothing Ends

Even the air recycled.

Sometimes when I breathe,

and an old friend comes to mind,

I wonder about that.

Michelle Hendrixson-Miller

Three Moons

This is an alien landscape. The familiar

skews left and reminds me of the meaning

for the word sinister. There are still

windows and doors, but if I open one,

where does it go and what air would I breathe?

You call me friend but I have to remember

that men grow up with words less slippery, words

that don’t slide from my hands into the water

and splash my face. I look up through the window

and see a half moon, not the full moon lovers expect,

and I gaze past it to bare trees

and pinpoints of kitchen windows on higher ground,

blocks away where there may be banquets

prepared by refrigerator light or stolen cookies

or stolen kisses on the counter. Those dots of light

join the half moon to make a triangle, three moons

in a now unfamiliar sky, punctuation for the words

that form via text—the edited body, true or not.

Tonight the half moon is all I have, that and stars

winking like someone else’s kitchen when the blinds

go down, erasing the light of things to come.

Lanette Cadle