Category: Poetry

Tapping the yellow notepad in time with Wichita Lineman,
I try to figure out the eulogy for my friend’s memorial.
So far, I’ve shoveled burnt toast
and the whole morning’s writing into the garbage.

I think back to how we’d nodded at one another
for weeks in Grant Park, then he stopped
to introduce himself.  Harvey, the retired Marine
with a gray ponytail and his miniature schnauzer.
Right off, he asked where I lived.

There, I pointed to the white Craftsman across the street.
After that, he dropped by with his Seahawks travel mug.
We’d sit in weathered brown wicker chairs
on my front porch.  My mother would have called this
a coffee klatch.  One day he pointed to a couple
of young people in the park,  My guess, they’re doing it,
she’s on the pill.  That’s paradise.
The way he’d laugh so hard he’d snort,
made me laugh, too.

Over the years, he’d bring up Vietnam or Nixon
or the Democratic National Convention back in ’68,
a year that we both agreed rattled us to our bones.
Harvey, you lean any farther left,
you’ll fall off my porch flat on your ass.
He grinned a grin that began in his eyes
and spread everywhere at once.

A few weeks ago, after one of the primary debates,
he ranted a volcanic stream
against Republican candidates’ tough talk
regarding banning Muslim immigrants
and bringing back waterboarding.
I offered no argument, just sat there
and listened to this loud old liberal, this man
who could change gravity in any space he occupied.

Since the writing isn’t going well, I’m also making a mix-tape
with Glen Campbell, and the simple sex
of Simon and Garfunkel—
the professionals, the ones
who can translate my heart’s handwriting.

About the Author: Pat West

Pat Phillips West lives in Olympia, Washington.  Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Haunted Waters Press, Persimmon Tree, San Pedro River Review, and Slipstream, and some have earned nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

I’m not sure which saint covers luck,
but I must have pissed her off big
at some point in my seventy years.
No amount of physical therapy, massage, yoga
or acupuncture helps my hip
and my doctor only offers pain meds.

My ex-hippie friend nags me until I agree to try her shaman.
I take two buses and the streetcar
to get to his office.  First thing after hello I blurt,
How’s this supposed to work?
His ebony eyes glisten, I’m able to see things in people—
physical and spiritual things—and fix them.
This gift comes from my father and his father.

I settle on the sofa, gaze at a bowl on the table
filled with polished rocks, rattles and feathers.
He sits cross-legged on a cushion, silvery voice blends
with the drumming that plays in the background.
Scent of sage rises as he smudges the room.

He places his hands on his knees palms up,
tilts his head back, instructs me to do the same.
Fear’s serpent slithers through my midsection
but quiets when I toss my head back
and surrender to the workings
of this small mocha-skinned man.
Your right hip, he says, two years ago
you fell and still the pain runs deep.
He begins to chant and throat sing,
slow and steady.

After several minutes, thousands of pinpricks
cover my skin, ice cold then blistering hot.
My body trembles and I swear there’s a chicken bone
stuck in my throat.  I can’t swallow or cough it up.
What the hell?  I manage to choke.

The shaman places a smooth flat stone in my open hand
and folds my fingers.  Hold this, he murmurs,
let it absorb the toxins from your body.  Close your eyes,
stay still.  My hand trembles, I bite my lip and tighten my fingers
around the cool rock.  The strange sensations fade.  A shiver shakes me
as I stand and take the first pain-free step.

About the Author: Pat West

Pat Phillips West lives in Olympia, Washington.  Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Haunted Waters Press, Persimmon Tree, San Pedro River Review, and Slipstream, and some have earned nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

No newspapers, radio, TV newscasts
to link me to the rest of the world. No phone
service for calls from the man I screamed at
on the courthouse lawn, so loud my ears rang.

The owner greets me with a basket
and leads me to the organic garden.
I take a pinch of dirt inhale the thick
and hearty odor of green pasture,
pick my dinner row by row. Basket overflowing,
I head to a cottage that faces a meadow.
A red-tailed hawk circles lazily in the sky, no city
sirens or car alarms blaring.

I unpack like I’m moving in. Do a little dance
when I see the Viking stove in the kitchen,
explore every cabinet and drawer, plenty of pots,
pans and more gadgets than what I own.
I need this get away to absorb the fact
that after a two year battle
the rat bastard got the house and the best kitchen
that ever was, one I designed and paid for.

Alone caramelizing onions, no one to debate
the exact moment when to stir. There’s a hundred ways
to get it wrong and no one way to do it right. Yet,
because I wouldn’t turn those damn Walla Walla Sweets
when he said, everything unraveled.
It wasn’t until we were twenty years in,
I realized I couldn’t explain
a life bundled with episodes like that.

If this marriage was a mistake, it’s one I had to make.
The radio aches a little tune. I lift the glass
of chilled Pinot Grigio, tears falling down my face
onto my plate of Ridiculously Easy Sautéd Yellow Squash
and Onions. The weight of metallic bitterness
sits on the back of my tongue.

About the Author: Pat West

Pat Phillips West lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Haunted Waters Press, Persimmon Tree, San Pedro River Review, and Slipstream, and some have earned nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.