Poets of the Western States: Vibrant, Full-throated, and Celebratory
Welcome to the Summer 2026 Persimmon Tree Poetry Section
Vibrant, robust, celebratory, full-throated; moving, surprising, haunting, harrowing; sassy, wise, playful, even zany—these are some of the descriptors that came to mind as we selected poems for this issue. Add to that parade of adjectives, above all, original. Whether based in observation, memory, dream, retooled archetype, ekphrasis, revelation and reckoning, reflection, portraiture, social commentary or proclamation, these are poems that we could not stop thinking about—often due to their unusual approaches. From bold distillation to narrative density, whether through lineation or prose poetry; catalogue or pithy wit; ode, blazon or elegy; anthem, monorhyme or a back-and-forth mental, internal call and response, they also gain their power through compelling image, striking metaphor, and mature, assured craft. These are poems where consciousness emerges via unexpected angles—as Dickinson says: tell all the truth / but tell it slant. That could be the overarching command from which these works spring.
Many of them bear markers of geographic region—flora, fauna, climate, scene—which they also travel beyond, just as many explore the recognizable experiences given to us in older age. Yet none do this predictably or exclusively, nor are they confined by trope. Instead, they thrill. They dazzle and delve. They re-arrange perception. They revel and trust in unique sensibility, exquisite sensitivity. They are risky, restless. Imaginations roam. Even when in mourning, they rescue, they renew.
Our only regret—and it’s a real one—is that we could not include more. But within the constraints of available space, we think you’ll be inspired and illuminated by this sampler bouquet from an abundant field of wildflowers, just as it excited us to come upon these beauties.
And to these poems, in keeping with Persimmon Tree’s guest-editing traditions, we add our own.
Warmly,
Sarah Maclay & Holaday Mason,
Guest Editors
Many of them bear markers of geographic region—flora, fauna, climate, scene—which they also travel beyond, just as many explore the recognizable experiences given to us in older age. Yet none do this predictably or exclusively, nor are they confined by trope. Instead, they thrill. They dazzle and delve. They re-arrange perception. They revel and trust in unique sensibility, exquisite sensitivity. They are risky, restless. Imaginations roam. Even when in mourning, they rescue, they renew.
Our only regret—and it’s a real one—is that we could not include more. But within the constraints of available space, we think you’ll be inspired and illuminated by this sampler bouquet from an abundant field of wildflowers, just as it excited us to come upon these beauties.
And to these poems, in keeping with Persimmon Tree’s guest-editing traditions, we add our own.
Warmly,
Sarah Maclay & Holaday Mason,
Guest Editors
Layers of Natural Abstraction, photo by Merry Song
In Candlelight
my face goes from sun-roughed to airbrushed
and my collarbones beneath the crepe gleam
like polished blades. Such transformations
are predictable as sundown itself—kind,
cosmetic, cost-effective—why haven’t
the influencers pounced upon this? I’ve just
sat through another endless spiel in the blue
glare of my screen which would plow
a face half my age into furrows deep enough
for planting; again, a promise of instant
collagen trapped me in place until my skin
felt like the tired moon caught in a telescope,
the trapped bird of my mind beat for release
and my sitz bones ached—what, after all, does
my body know of the attenuated adolescent
that lives inside it? Why must it rue the leather
that covers it? Bring on the sunset. Bring on
the Mateus and golden oldies. In candlelight the lines
at my mouth sprout wings and poof, there goes
gravity. Around the corner, the future hovers.
and my collarbones beneath the crepe gleam
like polished blades. Such transformations
are predictable as sundown itself—kind,
cosmetic, cost-effective—why haven’t
the influencers pounced upon this? I’ve just
sat through another endless spiel in the blue
glare of my screen which would plow
a face half my age into furrows deep enough
for planting; again, a promise of instant
collagen trapped me in place until my skin
felt like the tired moon caught in a telescope,
the trapped bird of my mind beat for release
and my sitz bones ached—what, after all, does
my body know of the attenuated adolescent
that lives inside it? Why must it rue the leather
that covers it? Bring on the sunset. Bring on
the Mateus and golden oldies. In candlelight the lines
at my mouth sprout wings and poof, there goes
gravity. Around the corner, the future hovers.
Ode to Your Teeth
Thirty white horses on a red hill, raised free of bars and wires. Lined up like those two ees a narrow sound shaped like your ready smile. Though not identical nor pearly white. Though blessed with sufficient calcium ingested by you in a childhood of few possessions. In a country of cheap food for workers, at the milk bars, dumplings stuffed with soft cheese. Teeth that sank into the roller-skates-race prize when you were seven: a bar of Hershey’s chocolate. Teeth that still prefer to sink into sweet. Teeth smuggled west with a bribe of sardines and vodka. Teeth chattering on a train to new. That can cushion the sibilant sounds of your cousins or calculate the hard consonants of America. That in the absence of a knife would tear a fig to penny-sized pieces to share with me. To hold on. That chew all manner of digestible so you may taste and your body use what it chooses. You: cat with dead mouse equivalent. Teeth: bring it. Even now reducing oval oats and apple oblongs into mash. Teeth, always ready to clamp bite sever crunch. Roasted leeks, hazelnut cream. At 4:00 PM daily bathed in tea a beautiful clear amber. When your teeth are seeds planted what free children will grow from the ground? Unarmed, sporting green jerseys, dribbling soccer balls across a field of golden grasses next to a wide river shaded by deciduous trees. Seeking apples and chocolate. Cheap borscht is a blessing to the toothless, says the shade of my mother, but you can still manage the pricey borscht. Later with a little brush you pacify each one. To hold on.
Courbet’s Parrot
emerges from the artist’s inner argument.
This bird perched atop the back of
his model’s raised hand
opens its color-spread wing feathers, just
above her lit pause of laid-out askew beauty.
The parrot has short-flown from its cage
for this woman
in her avalanche shade and disarranged white sheets.
Aviary sling between accident and intention. A bird, one woman,
with her wing-strewn hair, this space. They remain unnamed
there, as if to announce her skin
has already translated the sexual exchange
of minutes with the painter. Inside the inside moment,
I take this to you, to stand back as an onlooker.
From her uncompromising pleasure, I can see how
affirmation plays no part
in Courbet’s outcome of resuscitating the painting’s
darkened room with bird flight
because I’ve moved my feelings away from his mirror
so that I might find her door.
This bird perched atop the back of
his model’s raised hand
opens its color-spread wing feathers, just
above her lit pause of laid-out askew beauty.
The parrot has short-flown from its cage
for this woman
in her avalanche shade and disarranged white sheets.
Aviary sling between accident and intention. A bird, one woman,
with her wing-strewn hair, this space. They remain unnamed
there, as if to announce her skin
has already translated the sexual exchange
of minutes with the painter. Inside the inside moment,
I take this to you, to stand back as an onlooker.
From her uncompromising pleasure, I can see how
affirmation plays no part
in Courbet’s outcome of resuscitating the painting’s
darkened room with bird flight
because I’ve moved my feelings away from his mirror
so that I might find her door.
Bed and Breakfast, South Texas
Chachalaca Inn,
café con leche, black snake
strikes, eats, rattlesnake.
café con leche, black snake
strikes, eats, rattlesnake.
Blazon for Carine
My friend who hangs a picture in a room and makes it home.
Who cooks with both her hands, who bakes the sweetness
into things. Who pours for me a glass of wine, tells me, Sleep
as long as you want to sleep. Whose mornings start on time.
My friend who keeps her trinkets in their places, little shrines.
Whose lovely ankles fit her lovely shoes, whose crazy socks.
Whose vintage wedding gown her mother stitched to fit her waist,
who stands behind her in the mirror, hair like flame, even in death.
Whose father haunts the music that she plays, forgiven now.
Whose prayers are ancient prayers she doesn’t pray aloud.
My friend who sinks her fingers into my hair, says, Beautiful.
Who’s promised not to die until I die, or even then. My friend
who doesn’t want the world to end. Who wants me in it, too.
Who makes a wish — plumeria — the only flower she can’t grow.
Who cooks with both her hands, who bakes the sweetness
into things. Who pours for me a glass of wine, tells me, Sleep
as long as you want to sleep. Whose mornings start on time.
My friend who keeps her trinkets in their places, little shrines.
Whose lovely ankles fit her lovely shoes, whose crazy socks.
Whose vintage wedding gown her mother stitched to fit her waist,
who stands behind her in the mirror, hair like flame, even in death.
Whose father haunts the music that she plays, forgiven now.
Whose prayers are ancient prayers she doesn’t pray aloud.
My friend who sinks her fingers into my hair, says, Beautiful.
Who’s promised not to die until I die, or even then. My friend
who doesn’t want the world to end. Who wants me in it, too.
Who makes a wish — plumeria — the only flower she can’t grow.
Essential Alignment, photo by Merry Song
Clothes and Accessories I Still Own
The Disneyland sweatshirt, pale blue
and riddled with holes, that my dad
bought for me when I was eight
The turquoise felt skating skirt
with a black poodle on front
that I made myself at age twelve
The fringe-hemmed, tight plaid skirt
I wore the day I threw away
my school uniform in seventh grade
The tight-fitting, knee-length blue
brocade Chinese dress I wore
when I married in Reno at fourteen
The red shirt, with forty rhinestones
forming a star on the front, I wore
when I was pregnant at fifteen
The lavender polished-cotton
baby kimono with the lace butterfly
I made while I waited to give birth
The snakehead earrings and faux
antique brooch with bright stones
I wore at seventeen, after the divorce
The red-and-white beaded Lakota
medallion necklace I bought
the year I graduated from college
The purple-and-turquoise, tie-dyed
lab coat I wore as a graduate student
studying brain enzymes in mice
The XL men’s shirt, a lion embroidered
on the pocket, that I tie-dyed
pastel yellow and gold for my dad
The green Japanese kimono,
a gift from my lover of five years
who wouldn’t make a commitment
The coral necklace from Japan
my second husband gave me
after we started planning the divorce
The necklace and matching bracelet
of delicate gold and turquoise beads
my younger daughter made for me
The red purse my mother asked
me to bring to the hospital
because it matched her red shoes
The foil bracelet and ring my third
husband slipped on my hand
at a movie before our engagement
The ribbed-cotton Eddie Bauer shirt
with long sleeves I wore to visit
my dad the last time I saw him
The blue jeans my elder daughter
gave me the year she had cancer,
when we all thought she would live
The black-and-silver blouse
from Las Vegas in which I dance,
recalling that trip and how I laughed
and riddled with holes, that my dad
bought for me when I was eight
The turquoise felt skating skirt
with a black poodle on front
that I made myself at age twelve
The fringe-hemmed, tight plaid skirt
I wore the day I threw away
my school uniform in seventh grade
The tight-fitting, knee-length blue
brocade Chinese dress I wore
when I married in Reno at fourteen
The red shirt, with forty rhinestones
forming a star on the front, I wore
when I was pregnant at fifteen
The lavender polished-cotton
baby kimono with the lace butterfly
I made while I waited to give birth
The snakehead earrings and faux
antique brooch with bright stones
I wore at seventeen, after the divorce
The red-and-white beaded Lakota
medallion necklace I bought
the year I graduated from college
The purple-and-turquoise, tie-dyed
lab coat I wore as a graduate student
studying brain enzymes in mice
The XL men’s shirt, a lion embroidered
on the pocket, that I tie-dyed
pastel yellow and gold for my dad
The green Japanese kimono,
a gift from my lover of five years
who wouldn’t make a commitment
The coral necklace from Japan
my second husband gave me
after we started planning the divorce
The necklace and matching bracelet
of delicate gold and turquoise beads
my younger daughter made for me
The red purse my mother asked
me to bring to the hospital
because it matched her red shoes
The foil bracelet and ring my third
husband slipped on my hand
at a movie before our engagement
The ribbed-cotton Eddie Bauer shirt
with long sleeves I wore to visit
my dad the last time I saw him
The blue jeans my elder daughter
gave me the year she had cancer,
when we all thought she would live
The black-and-silver blouse
from Las Vegas in which I dance,
recalling that trip and how I laughed
Fashion Work
This year I’ll dress well,
temporarily putting moral
considerations aside.
My personal brand
will be a machine
specifically designed to
detect and exploit
victims of love.
Drops will cling to the buds
of bare branches this year,
as on runway models
in the rain.
I’ll spend my workdays
in the mud, being yelled at,
my thoughts
hovering slightly above
and behind my head
like a weather girl
late for a prediction.
temporarily putting moral
considerations aside.
My personal brand
will be a machine
specifically designed to
detect and exploit
victims of love.
Drops will cling to the buds
of bare branches this year,
as on runway models
in the rain.
I’ll spend my workdays
in the mud, being yelled at,
my thoughts
hovering slightly above
and behind my head
like a weather girl
late for a prediction.
Treasured Trousers
I traded a pound of freshly dried prunes for some pretty pantaloons —
pantaloons that would make you swoon:
legs flared out like big balloons caught up in a strong typhoon.
One day in old Rangoon
two drunk tycoons who were just buffoons
spilled out from a local saloon
and used harpoons to spear my precious pantaloons –
pantaloons the color of dunes that fan out as if in a monsoon.
Those goons resembled wild baboons attacking my poor pantaloons —
pantaloons festooned with runes
in dazzling golds and crimson maroons.
I pushed those looney tunes from a pontoon into an icy deep lagoon
where they were pummeled by many crab-eating raccoons.
Wow! Such a busy afternoon!
But I saved my dear prized pantaloons –
pantaloons that would make you swoon,
lovelier than a silvery moon in June.
pantaloons that would make you swoon:
legs flared out like big balloons caught up in a strong typhoon.
One day in old Rangoon
two drunk tycoons who were just buffoons
spilled out from a local saloon
and used harpoons to spear my precious pantaloons –
pantaloons the color of dunes that fan out as if in a monsoon.
Those goons resembled wild baboons attacking my poor pantaloons —
pantaloons festooned with runes
in dazzling golds and crimson maroons.
I pushed those looney tunes from a pontoon into an icy deep lagoon
where they were pummeled by many crab-eating raccoons.
Wow! Such a busy afternoon!
But I saved my dear prized pantaloons –
pantaloons that would make you swoon,
lovelier than a silvery moon in June.
I wish I was a little more Jasmine Crockett,
a little less deadlocked jury . . .
a little more Baptist
a little less baby teeth
a little more Delta soror
a little more drag queen
(even more than two immigrants’ daughter
who’ve made me more or less delirium tremens)
a little more progressive caucus
a lot more probable cause
I wish I’d told you (you know who you are)—
you’re a bad-built, butch-body weasel
and told you twice on the floor of Trader Joe’s
with a bullhorn megaphone
I wish you good nights and good trouble—
and I wish to thank you, Miss Crockett…
a little less baby teeth
a little more Delta soror
a little more drag queen
(even more than two immigrants’ daughter
who’ve made me more or less delirium tremens)
a little more progressive caucus
a lot more probable cause
I wish I’d told you (you know who you are)—
you’re a bad-built, butch-body weasel
and told you twice on the floor of Trader Joe’s
with a bullhorn megaphone
I wish you good nights and good trouble—
and I wish to thank you, Miss Crockett…
First Female Being on the Moon Asks a Few Questions of the Universe
Hadn’t we thought to stack shine
upon shine, an architecture
to reflect the unfathomable,
the uncellardoorable? So too
had elephant birds walked
with their heads up. Nothing is left
undone, unattained, but it be
written—a Rosetta Stone
yet to be found, waiting to unshade,
a flange to maintain position.
Must a journey have a crux, a keystone?
Doesn’t the dark beyond the horizon
assail like a whisper? Could we not just
breathe? The wind that is not there
carries the sound of a dog
running in circles, barking.
upon shine, an architecture
to reflect the unfathomable,
the uncellardoorable? So too
had elephant birds walked
with their heads up. Nothing is left
undone, unattained, but it be
written—a Rosetta Stone
yet to be found, waiting to unshade,
a flange to maintain position.
Must a journey have a crux, a keystone?
Doesn’t the dark beyond the horizon
assail like a whisper? Could we not just
breathe? The wind that is not there
carries the sound of a dog
running in circles, barking.
Living Potential, by Merry Song
Flute Practice
Six thirty a.m., a school day,
Mozart broken off—
in the office
of my father’s photo studio.
A simple, silvery music stand
between me and them—
my father—and my sister
behind him, almost hiding.
They cross to the darkroom.
Can I come in, too? I ask.
No. He closes the door.
I start where I left off—
but the flute
will not sing.
Shallow, breathy,
blurred, wind
against metal,
no resolve.
In the kitchen, Mom
at the stove. What are they doing
in there?
I don’t answer. I can’t.
She’ll be late for school.
Go tell them to hurry up.
I knock on the darkroom door.
(Sometimes they come out.
Sometimes they wait until I leave.)
I pull the flute apart,
swab it with the shammy cloth,
put it back in its case.
Mozart broken off—
in the office
of my father’s photo studio.
A simple, silvery music stand
between me and them—
my father—and my sister
behind him, almost hiding.
They cross to the darkroom.
Can I come in, too? I ask.
No. He closes the door.
I start where I left off—
but the flute
will not sing.
Shallow, breathy,
blurred, wind
against metal,
no resolve.
In the kitchen, Mom
at the stove. What are they doing
in there?
I don’t answer. I can’t.
She’ll be late for school.
Go tell them to hurry up.
I knock on the darkroom door.
(Sometimes they come out.
Sometimes they wait until I leave.)
I pull the flute apart,
swab it with the shammy cloth,
put it back in its case.
On the Anniversary of My Mother’s Death (and My Impending Birth)
My mother was ashamed to carry me in her belly—
she told me so. She already had her set:
a boy first for my father, then a girl—at 18 and 19.
But here she was at the unseemly age of 27,
walking around town like a hussy bearing
this embarrassing evidence of sex again.
She told me she’d had many abortions in between,
taking bitter potions concocted by herbal women
down the dusty road to the cemetery
and experiencing violent consequences.
My father was insatiable and demanded sex
as proof of his power over her.
But even that was not enough—he was repeatedly
unfaithful in flagrantly obvious ways:
with salesgirls in the lingerie shop
he refused to allow my mother to enter,
with servant girls doing laundry next door,
with peasant girls he encountered
on his daily trips into the countryside
to trade in cattle or buy a pig.
It was all the same.
His frequent lapses and absences
made my mother suggest a butcher shop
in town, right on the corner, visible from the porch.
Not that he was formally trained in slaughter,
but growing up on a farm he’d done plenty.
Opening the butcher shop anchored
him in town, she thought, kept busy
and ostensibly away from temptation.
And she remembered he’d been a doting father
when her other kids were born,
so why not hook him close with another?
Even before being born,
I was already pressed into service.
But this meant she had to suffer
the indignity and guilt, her watermelon belly
flashing like neon.
Before I arrived, she’d had a dream—
a nightmare where she gave birth to a deformed
child, a girl with an enlarged head.
Encephalitis or worse, abnormal—a monstrosity.
Hot and forgetting about the omen, she had bathed
in the light of a full moon with a little lamb embroidered
onto a handkerchief wedged into her sweaty cleavage.
That’s why, she said, I was born with a red splotch
between my eyes in the shape of a lamb—
imprinted by the moon’s photographic flash.
It faded with time, but I could make it
reappear by standing on my head.
Her shame-infused dream was partly right—
I was born big, ten chubby pounds
and with the entire world nascent
inside my Medusa head of dark curls.
My head was large enough to comprehend
why she sent me away to a foreign country at nine.
My head large enough to encompass her fears
and shame when she learned I was lesbian,
and later when she refused transfusion of my blood.
Head so big it could contain all her life
without shame—a destitute unschooled peasant
girl taking the only path available,
laboring under the weight of a man fifteen years older
who was perpetually unfaithful and abusive,
something she endured for 56 years.
My head—or was it my heart?—
big enough to mother her as she died,
her small hairless head in my hands.
she told me so. She already had her set:
a boy first for my father, then a girl—at 18 and 19.
But here she was at the unseemly age of 27,
walking around town like a hussy bearing
this embarrassing evidence of sex again.
She told me she’d had many abortions in between,
taking bitter potions concocted by herbal women
down the dusty road to the cemetery
and experiencing violent consequences.
My father was insatiable and demanded sex
as proof of his power over her.
But even that was not enough—he was repeatedly
unfaithful in flagrantly obvious ways:
with salesgirls in the lingerie shop
he refused to allow my mother to enter,
with servant girls doing laundry next door,
with peasant girls he encountered
on his daily trips into the countryside
to trade in cattle or buy a pig.
It was all the same.
His frequent lapses and absences
made my mother suggest a butcher shop
in town, right on the corner, visible from the porch.
Not that he was formally trained in slaughter,
but growing up on a farm he’d done plenty.
Opening the butcher shop anchored
him in town, she thought, kept busy
and ostensibly away from temptation.
And she remembered he’d been a doting father
when her other kids were born,
so why not hook him close with another?
Even before being born,
I was already pressed into service.
But this meant she had to suffer
the indignity and guilt, her watermelon belly
flashing like neon.
Before I arrived, she’d had a dream—
a nightmare where she gave birth to a deformed
child, a girl with an enlarged head.
Encephalitis or worse, abnormal—a monstrosity.
Hot and forgetting about the omen, she had bathed
in the light of a full moon with a little lamb embroidered
onto a handkerchief wedged into her sweaty cleavage.
That’s why, she said, I was born with a red splotch
between my eyes in the shape of a lamb—
imprinted by the moon’s photographic flash.
It faded with time, but I could make it
reappear by standing on my head.
Her shame-infused dream was partly right—
I was born big, ten chubby pounds
and with the entire world nascent
inside my Medusa head of dark curls.
My head was large enough to comprehend
why she sent me away to a foreign country at nine.
My head large enough to encompass her fears
and shame when she learned I was lesbian,
and later when she refused transfusion of my blood.
Head so big it could contain all her life
without shame—a destitute unschooled peasant
girl taking the only path available,
laboring under the weight of a man fifteen years older
who was perpetually unfaithful and abusive,
something she endured for 56 years.
My head—or was it my heart?—
big enough to mother her as she died,
her small hairless head in my hands.
The First Time
If it’s possible to go back to that first night
and tease out that first moment when a future
seemed likely, Esther Phillips was covering
Home Is Where the Hatred Is at the Bowl,
with her exquisite diction, and up in the cheap seats
grown women all around me who knew that song
wasn’t about heroin addiction so much as
the men sitting next to them, leapt to their feet
because they had the words by heart, and so
did I, and we all felt compelled to rise for our
anthem and sing those words out loud – the men
beside us had no idea; that was the instant I knew
it could be done – it would take time and a plan,
but I was standing up, and I wasn’t singing alone.
and tease out that first moment when a future
seemed likely, Esther Phillips was covering
Home Is Where the Hatred Is at the Bowl,
with her exquisite diction, and up in the cheap seats
grown women all around me who knew that song
wasn’t about heroin addiction so much as
the men sitting next to them, leapt to their feet
because they had the words by heart, and so
did I, and we all felt compelled to rise for our
anthem and sing those words out loud – the men
beside us had no idea; that was the instant I knew
it could be done – it would take time and a plan,
but I was standing up, and I wasn’t singing alone.
White Snake
She is making no sense at all, her tail like a tongue, her mouth, a zipper of slick breath,
doubling back over and under her own body. She is bribing the wind with purple
leaves, raking the iridescent soot over an armature of twigs. She is a train of light,
a white burn around the lake, through birches, cool, warm air—the voices,
they are hers. There is the presence of moon near water, under a blue-black sky.
Her shadow flat in a stand of trees. An image at the beginning, I would say, of time,
where the saplings are thinly pale. Their trunks, unreal, shivering.
doubling back over and under her own body. She is bribing the wind with purple
leaves, raking the iridescent soot over an armature of twigs. She is a train of light,
a white burn around the lake, through birches, cool, warm air—the voices,
they are hers. There is the presence of moon near water, under a blue-black sky.
Her shadow flat in a stand of trees. An image at the beginning, I would say, of time,
where the saplings are thinly pale. Their trunks, unreal, shivering.
The Appearance of Light
Fog loops
Over blacktop
At last the sun
A chameleon
Flicks her tail
Darts to dark startled
By my step
Somewhere she hid a perfect
Egg waiting to break from its shell
With its own tooth
We could have looked inside
The shell-walls candled the egg
Lit from the other side
We could have illuminated
A beginning
A mourning dove flies in gray flecked
Tentative shifts leg
To trembling leg
She has flown back
Unannounced
Easy now under the lawn chairs
Scent of crushed grass
Easy on the crooked gravel path
Behind the boulder’s bright side best
For hiding and her egg
Translucent too
Shell hidden somewhere
The yard hers again
She disguised as wings and feathers
In the beginning there was her mouth
And nothing since
Jane Siegel
1955 – 1972
Over blacktop
At last the sun
A chameleon
Flicks her tail
Darts to dark startled
By my step
Somewhere she hid a perfect
Egg waiting to break from its shell
With its own tooth
We could have looked inside
The shell-walls candled the egg
Lit from the other side
We could have illuminated
A beginning
A mourning dove flies in gray flecked
Tentative shifts leg
To trembling leg
She has flown back
Unannounced
Easy now under the lawn chairs
Scent of crushed grass
Easy on the crooked gravel path
Behind the boulder’s bright side best
For hiding and her egg
Translucent too
Shell hidden somewhere
The yard hers again
She disguised as wings and feathers
In the beginning there was her mouth
And nothing since
Jane Siegel
1955 – 1972
Touching the Divine, photo by Merry Song
the hidden are invisible too
the hidden are invisible too. I crouched in my mother’s closet, under the hems of her dresses where her legs would be. I was five and a half. it was after I was back home following a year in exile. no one spoke of why I’d been taken to stay with relatives. or if they did, I have no recollection of what was said.
it is common to know very little about why things happen when you are so young. it is common to believe you make the world move. I will tell you something quietly: one night lying in bed, I wished my mother gone. the next morning, she was.
I have a memory of seeing her inside a vast machine. or rather, I remember seeing her head emerging from a hole in the gray metal. people fall ill when they are in the middle of doing the laundry. they go to sleep and wake up the next morning unable to lift their head from the pillow. the ambulance arrives with its sirens. it happens often during outbreaks of crippling disease.
in the closet I did not sing because the game required silence. I counted on being found before I disappeared permanently. in any case, the new fragility in my mother’s voice when she called my name, the faint quaver, was enough to make me leave my place of concealment. if pain is a fixation on how a voice is changed. if you are reading this.
it is common to know very little about why things happen when you are so young. it is common to believe you make the world move. I will tell you something quietly: one night lying in bed, I wished my mother gone. the next morning, she was.
I have a memory of seeing her inside a vast machine. or rather, I remember seeing her head emerging from a hole in the gray metal. people fall ill when they are in the middle of doing the laundry. they go to sleep and wake up the next morning unable to lift their head from the pillow. the ambulance arrives with its sirens. it happens often during outbreaks of crippling disease.
in the closet I did not sing because the game required silence. I counted on being found before I disappeared permanently. in any case, the new fragility in my mother’s voice when she called my name, the faint quaver, was enough to make me leave my place of concealment. if pain is a fixation on how a voice is changed. if you are reading this.
In the Music of Petals and Rush
— after Breezy Dawn, 2023, Drie Chapek
Stone archways bask in damp sunlight, ask you
to wander where doors look solid and walls might dissolve.
After a wedding, moon-white clouds of dahlias
bloom abandoned on an emerald chair
where a flood surges down the stairs, slides aside
wide-spined reference texts or Russian novels
as heavy as sturgeon. In the current, swift hauntings
carry echoes—dreams, old crushes, and swans.
The party, flown, has left no bride, no groom, no rings, no kiss—
just a floating, like the lovers on Chagall’s canvas.
When my first husband’s ghost hovered over a poem,
I looked up synonyms for ethereal.
Weeks later, my thesaurus stayed on that page.
When I married again, the caterer claimed he knew
my first, recognized the strange last name—a cruel trick
or a mistake? That shadow stained the day.
Near this painting’s east, below an argument of reeds,
the water flows to a blue fermata—
no tragedy in this submersion,
only the mind’s deep quiet on the shore of sleep,
memory of a shipwreck that was never there.
Stone archways bask in damp sunlight, ask you
to wander where doors look solid and walls might dissolve.
After a wedding, moon-white clouds of dahlias
bloom abandoned on an emerald chair
where a flood surges down the stairs, slides aside
wide-spined reference texts or Russian novels
as heavy as sturgeon. In the current, swift hauntings
carry echoes—dreams, old crushes, and swans.
The party, flown, has left no bride, no groom, no rings, no kiss—
just a floating, like the lovers on Chagall’s canvas.
When my first husband’s ghost hovered over a poem,
I looked up synonyms for ethereal.
Weeks later, my thesaurus stayed on that page.
When I married again, the caterer claimed he knew
my first, recognized the strange last name—a cruel trick
or a mistake? That shadow stained the day.
Near this painting’s east, below an argument of reeds,
the water flows to a blue fermata—
no tragedy in this submersion,
only the mind’s deep quiet on the shore of sleep,
memory of a shipwreck that was never there.
My Father Talks to a Parrot
Bolivia, 1939
Black-and-white photo, hand-tinted as they sometimes were
back then—wedding portraits, christenings, and here, caught
in a silver frame on our upright piano, a workday afternoon—
survey trip to map the longest highway in the world: Arctic
Circle to Tierra del Fuego.
Deep jungle frames the worksite, broken rocks, pickaxe, spade.
Trees lean close to eavesdrop as a lime-and-lemon bird, head
cocked, perches on a white man’s arm. My father, in deep
discussion, man to bird to man.
The bird spoke not a word of English. Mi español …
¡basura! (That story made me laugh.) I invented
an interpreter! he’d say.
My father was an engineer, though not the kind to drive
a train. Instead he studied fault planes, subduction zones,
hard-earth magic. Lithology, dip and strike. I grew up chanting
basalt, granite, obsidian—my version of a bedtime prayer.
Earth’s knuckles and knobs! He’d wink and
snap his fingers: Andecite! Hands too small
to snap, I’d clap: That’s right!
Parrot on his arm, my father knelt, decade after decade
inside that frame, eyes locked man to bird to man. Beyond
the frame: felled trees and scattered boulders, bulldozed
beginnings of that long road, that rough surgery.
Será un rio de… conexión? Doubtful flutter
of green wings: No dañen los árboles!
That photo’s on my desk now. Broken rocks, listening
trees, axe and spade, hand-colored. The young man
smiling, bandaid on his thumb, bird on his arm, too few
years remaining of his jokes and stories, his love of all
the knobs and knuckles of the earth.
Anticline and syncline, his voice in my ear.
Molybdenite.
Snap of my fingers: All right!
Someone Else Has Said It
That the wild, white irises revealing their violet
eyes in my garden make all of us beautiful—well,
that has been said. That the woman who stole my cat—
and my cat—both watch me from behind white curtains
across the empty lot between us? Said. (By someone,
surely.) I hate that woman. Some days I think that Rose
Parade floats are real and are oppressive beyond any
relief the imagination can offer. That’s been said for sure.
Some days I pine for the fjords (said), or for the gaudy
frivolity of new anything—original anything—perfectly
elusive. Some days I see, on the wire-draped horizon,
the neon sign of a strip joint. Sleaze will outlive us. I
lament the insipid hopefulness with which my body is wired.
I sing the body tired. I’m dead-certain that’s been said already.
eyes in my garden make all of us beautiful—well,
that has been said. That the woman who stole my cat—
and my cat—both watch me from behind white curtains
across the empty lot between us? Said. (By someone,
surely.) I hate that woman. Some days I think that Rose
Parade floats are real and are oppressive beyond any
relief the imagination can offer. That’s been said for sure.
Some days I pine for the fjords (said), or for the gaudy
frivolity of new anything—original anything—perfectly
elusive. Some days I see, on the wire-draped horizon,
the neon sign of a strip joint. Sleaze will outlive us. I
lament the insipid hopefulness with which my body is wired.
I sing the body tired. I’m dead-certain that’s been said already.
Affable Conversations
Once when I was young,
my fellow parishioners decided to visit the old,
a kindness, I was told, so I went along,
but when I saw their wheelchairs, the white hair
and some with toothless smiles, I lost my words.
I said hello, and no more,
and they said nothing, too.
But now I know
if it was me sitting in that chair
facing someone faltering, wanting to say more
than what’s expected
I’d take the lead. Speak to me, I’d say to them,
as if I am still as young as you.
my fellow parishioners decided to visit the old,
a kindness, I was told, so I went along,
but when I saw their wheelchairs, the white hair
and some with toothless smiles, I lost my words.
I said hello, and no more,
and they said nothing, too.
But now I know
if it was me sitting in that chair
facing someone faltering, wanting to say more
than what’s expected
I’d take the lead. Speak to me, I’d say to them,
as if I am still as young as you.
Look Closely, photo by Merry Song
It Grows Like a Sweet, Cream Flame
Snow, you imagine as my first word,
or bramble. As though these were my parents—
and maybe they were, even in gestation
long before that release into solstice, leaves, the height
of spring becoming summer, moody rains
about to give way to heat. The long, pale-twilight
days. Though my mother once reminded me
of another favorite—quiet—said without the u, like
kyat, in special moments of hush I loved.
She told me that my father, in the rush to get things done
on the mountain, weeks before my birth,
had injured himself with an axe. He never mentioned it.
Did he have to dress his wound with a handkerchief
(always in his plaid shirt pocket), on the side
of the steep dirt road? Could he walk back
to the truck? Had she packed his sandwich
in the gray metal lunch box, thermos of coffee
tucked in the top half? Oh, beautiful, dangerous
garden of trees. No snags fell on him, at least.
On the last night he was able to speak,
nearly whispering, he said, if someone wondered
about a memorial, it should be something about trees.
For sixty years, the top shelf of the bookcase
in the living room: his botany hardback textbooks.
They still seem permanent, like a shrine, a reminder
of him, the way his care for plants grew greater than
his fated task of raising cattle; the way he collected
staves of walnut; woodworked with a lathe.
Snow had nestled in Paris, too, as they moved
into an off-base hand-me-down apartment
in early ’53, the Army stint to be cut short
by the summer armistice, my heart then
more a scent than sound, not yet beating
or imagined, even, tiny in the mind
as the many ivory, honey-sweet florets
in a stem of beargrass—my mother’s favorite
wildflower. My father brought bouquets
of them to her. My great-aunt painted them.
If you were here in summer, I would take you
up the mountain. We could find some, cut a stem
or two, run our fingers through the pedicels
from oldest growth to youngest.
You could take it home.
or bramble. As though these were my parents—
and maybe they were, even in gestation
long before that release into solstice, leaves, the height
of spring becoming summer, moody rains
about to give way to heat. The long, pale-twilight
days. Though my mother once reminded me
of another favorite—quiet—said without the u, like
kyat, in special moments of hush I loved.
She told me that my father, in the rush to get things done
on the mountain, weeks before my birth,
had injured himself with an axe. He never mentioned it.
Did he have to dress his wound with a handkerchief
(always in his plaid shirt pocket), on the side
of the steep dirt road? Could he walk back
to the truck? Had she packed his sandwich
in the gray metal lunch box, thermos of coffee
tucked in the top half? Oh, beautiful, dangerous
garden of trees. No snags fell on him, at least.
On the last night he was able to speak,
nearly whispering, he said, if someone wondered
about a memorial, it should be something about trees.
For sixty years, the top shelf of the bookcase
in the living room: his botany hardback textbooks.
They still seem permanent, like a shrine, a reminder
of him, the way his care for plants grew greater than
his fated task of raising cattle; the way he collected
staves of walnut; woodworked with a lathe.
Snow had nestled in Paris, too, as they moved
into an off-base hand-me-down apartment
in early ’53, the Army stint to be cut short
by the summer armistice, my heart then
more a scent than sound, not yet beating
or imagined, even, tiny in the mind
as the many ivory, honey-sweet florets
in a stem of beargrass—my mother’s favorite
wildflower. My father brought bouquets
of them to her. My great-aunt painted them.
If you were here in summer, I would take you
up the mountain. We could find some, cut a stem
or two, run our fingers through the pedicels
from oldest growth to youngest.
You could take it home.
The Way the Stones Grew
The way I’ve given
nearly everything away now. But not the shawl woven of wool from island
sheep—my mother bought it from a friend at Sunday farmer’s market—
spun on a wheel, dyed brackish, the loamy green of dried crushed lichen.
~
The way sleep is. The way wandering half-awake is. Half-awake as sleep clings
& one stumbles around.
The way the foothills & scrub oaks protect from erosion
by holding each other in place like past & present.
~
The way, oblivious to pain, I walked barefoot over Big Tabletop plateaus
swathed in primordial succulents, a surprise of crushed seashells
from so many millions of years back in time.
The sea had become the mountaintop.
The San Joaquin silver serpentine through the valley.
In April, snow melt crashed down the Sierra, carved arches through tumbled
boulders, calmly widened in amber pools as if to rest on its journey.
~
The way I didn’t know I was beautiful. The way speckled & nude I swam glassy
through the keyhole,
lost both sterling Spanish earrings, held my breath long enough not to drown freezing
in filigrees of ice shards.
~
The way the mountains broke my feet, then took my legs.
~
How things
~
altered between the seasons. Mainly in those seams. New breasts strange on my chest.
Fern spores from high country carried downstream,
grabbed muddy embankments, spawned lushly where Mono women once milled
grain into flour, wielding stone on stone.
~
The way I sat on stones, wondered at the way those women understood muscles,
pestle, effort, kernel, hunger, their grinding holes pocking huge flat rocks
along the creek thousands of years
after they’d gone.
~
The way the stones grew too hot to touch in summer yet made a perfect bed in spring.
The way my own blood came & went. How I hid inside spring wildflowers to
watch a man bury
his face between the thighs
of a large wet woman, her breasts flattened over her ribcage, hair tangled weeds,
oblivious, her backside ground into
granite, scratched scarlet.
~
As if I were the mountain. The stone. Or ice. The way I leapt at any dare.
As though I were the god of gravity, had no
needs.
~
The way I lost
~
the bet, was no god, my left
knee broken, bonfire scalded, tiny golden hairs inside my thighs singed—
~
the way I keep the handspun woolen shawl but never wear it.
The way far beyond
high summer, scars remain, elegant as moss waving through snow melt—
otherworldly as emeralds.
nearly everything away now. But not the shawl woven of wool from island
sheep—my mother bought it from a friend at Sunday farmer’s market—
spun on a wheel, dyed brackish, the loamy green of dried crushed lichen.
~
The way sleep is. The way wandering half-awake is. Half-awake as sleep clings
& one stumbles around.
The way the foothills & scrub oaks protect from erosion
by holding each other in place like past & present.
~
The way, oblivious to pain, I walked barefoot over Big Tabletop plateaus
swathed in primordial succulents, a surprise of crushed seashells
from so many millions of years back in time.
The sea had become the mountaintop.
The San Joaquin silver serpentine through the valley.
In April, snow melt crashed down the Sierra, carved arches through tumbled
boulders, calmly widened in amber pools as if to rest on its journey.
~
The way I didn’t know I was beautiful. The way speckled & nude I swam glassy
through the keyhole,
lost both sterling Spanish earrings, held my breath long enough not to drown freezing
in filigrees of ice shards.
~
The way the mountains broke my feet, then took my legs.
~
How things
~
altered between the seasons. Mainly in those seams. New breasts strange on my chest.
Fern spores from high country carried downstream,
grabbed muddy embankments, spawned lushly where Mono women once milled
grain into flour, wielding stone on stone.
~
The way I sat on stones, wondered at the way those women understood muscles,
pestle, effort, kernel, hunger, their grinding holes pocking huge flat rocks
along the creek thousands of years
after they’d gone.
~
The way the stones grew too hot to touch in summer yet made a perfect bed in spring.
The way my own blood came & went. How I hid inside spring wildflowers to
watch a man bury
his face between the thighs
of a large wet woman, her breasts flattened over her ribcage, hair tangled weeds,
oblivious, her backside ground into
granite, scratched scarlet.
~
As if I were the mountain. The stone. Or ice. The way I leapt at any dare.
As though I were the god of gravity, had no
needs.
~
The way I lost
~
the bet, was no god, my left
knee broken, bonfire scalded, tiny golden hairs inside my thighs singed—
~
the way I keep the handspun woolen shawl but never wear it.
The way far beyond
high summer, scars remain, elegant as moss waving through snow melt—
otherworldly as emeralds.
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The “She” Series:
A Venice Correspondence
by Holaday Mason & Sarah Maclay
“Holaday Mason and Sarah Maclay's spirited, aptly-titled collaboration, The ‘She’ Series: A Venice Correspondence, reads like a dream image that totally alters your day, and that, even days later, has everything to do with you. In these ghostly pages, She is, and is again—mesmerizing, gorgeously-wrought, and alone. She is desire—lushly so, wholly-present, and unrequited. And She is in touch with everything in this life, as in a dream—the way talking out loud, to somebody else, keeps it real.”
— Ralph Angel, author of Neither World and Your Moon
“Could it be that a shifting balance between two voices is the best way to enter a murmur of wings? Come, let yourself be unstrung by dream-logos, the surf in the distance kneeling and falling. The night is full of wonderwork: open the door of dark water and cross over the threshold.” — Marsha de la O, author of Antidote for Night
Available from Bookshop, Amazon, or order it from your local independent bookstore.
Montana native Sarah Maclay’s newest releases are The H.D. Sequence—A Concordance (Walton Well Press, 2024); Nightfall Marginalia (What Books Press), a 2023 Foreword INDIES Finalist for Poetry, her fifth full-length, and The “She” Series—A Venice Correspondence, with Holaday Mason. She follows a lengthy LMU poetry faculty stint, a Yaddo residency, a COLA fellowship, and book review editing for Poetry International as producer/host of Poetry.LA’s “The Poetry of Night.” Website: 
Holaday Mason is the author of six full-length collections and two chapbooks. Currently the poetry editor of the online fine art zine Furious Pure, and a Pushcart nominee, her publications include Hotel Amerika, Poetry International, Solo, and The River Styx. Holaday is also a fine art photographer. She lives in Venice, CA, with her composer husband, an old hound, and The Queen of Everything—Ms. Twirly Tail, the tortoise shell.
Cynthia Hogue is the Poetry Editor of Persimmon Tree. Her tenth book of collected poetry, instead, it is dark, was published by Red Hen Press in June of 2023. Her other collections include Revenance, listed as one of the 2014 “Standout” books by the Academy of American Poets, and In June the Labyrinth (2017). Her third book-length translation (with Sylvain Gallais) is Nicole Brossard’s Distantly (Omnidawn, 2022). Her Covid chapbook is entitled Contain (Tram Editions, 2022). Among her honors are a Fulbright Fellowship to Iceland, two NEA Fellowships, and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets (2013). She served as Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day for September (2022), sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Hogue was the inaugural Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. She lives in Tucson.
Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and five chapbooks, including her most recent chapbook, Were-Jag. Her writing has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Offcourse, The Antioch Review, WAVES, Ethel, and Fugue, and won or been a finalist in several contests. She lives in Laredo, Texas.
Barbara Blatt’s poems and essays have appeared in Spillway, Pearl, Askew, Third Wednesday, Gyroscope, Right Hand Pointing and The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (Taschen). Educated at the University of Iowa and University of Chicago, she currently lives in Santa Monica, CA.
Former final judge for the Kate & Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards, Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America, and current Programming Consultant for the LA Times Festival of Books, Elena Karina Byrne is an editor, lecturer, screenwriter, essayist, and author of five poetry collections, including If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn Publishing).
Lucille Lang Day’s The Cosmos and Me: New and Selected Poems will be published by Trio House in 2026. Previous books include seven poetry collections, four chapbooks, two children’s books, and a memoir. Awards include the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Awards, and other honors.
Marsha de la O holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College and has published extensively in journals, including The New Yorker and a poem selected by Tracy K. Smith for The Slowdown. She’s the author of four books, Creature and Every Ravening Thing from Pitt Poetry Series, as well as Antidote for Night and Black Hope. Honors include the Isabella Gardner Award and the New Issues Press Poetry Prize.
Edith Friedman lives in northern California. She admires the ways of people and plants, and tries not to second guess. Her collection Reconstruction won the 2024 Lefty Blondie Press First Chapbook Award. Recent writing appears or is forthcoming in Calyx, Panorama, Solstice, and Rogue Agent. 
Celeste Goyer is a poet and artist living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in numerous journals as well as anthologies, including Poetry Goes to the Movies from Beyond Baroque Books. Giant Claw, an imprint of What Books Press, released her first book, The Shoes of Our Guests, in 2023.
Elizabeth Iannaci is a widely-published SoCal poet whose work appeared recently in Women in A Golden State, Midwestern Miscellany, and Kaleidoscope. Her latest chapbook is The Virgin Turtle Light Show: Spring, 1968 (Latitude 34 Press). Elizabeth is partially sighted, which may account for her preference for paisley over polka dots.
Jude Kieda, a retired simultaneous interpreter of Mandarin Chinese now living in the Pacific Northwest, has lived on three continents. She has always enjoyed playing with language, particularly humor.
Sara McAulay is the author of three novels and numerous works of short fiction, receiving NEA and NJ State Arts Council Fellowships for prose. Recently, she has turned to poetry and flash, with work nominated for Best of the Net. Her chapbook, Ask River, was published by Finishing Line Press.
Judith Pacht’s book Summer Hunger won the PEN Southwest Book Award for Poetry. Her third book, Precarious, New & Selected Poems (Giant Claw Press), was published in the fall of 2025. A three-time Pushcart nominee, Pacht was first place winner in the Georgia Poetry Society’s Edgar Bowers competition. Her poetry appears in journals that include Ploughshares, Runes, Nimrod and Phoebe, and has been translated into Russian where it was published in Foreign Literature (Moscow). Her work is in numerous anthologies.
Laura Ann Reed is the author of the chapbook Homage to Kafka (Poetry Box, 2025). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in eleven anthologies, including Poetry of Presence (Grayson Books, 2023) and The Wonder of Small Things (Storey Publishing, 2023) 
Aleida Rodríguez, NEA fellowship recipient, was born on a kitchen table in a rural Cuban town. At nine, she was airlifted to the U.S. via Operation Pedro Pan. Garden of Exile won the Sarabande poetry prize and later the PEN USA Literary Award. Her new collection, bower + azotea, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
Joannie Stangeland is the author of several collections, including The Scene You See (Ravenna Press). Her poems have also appeared in Cherry Tree, Painted Bride Quarterly, Purr and Yowl: An Anthology of Poetry about Cats, and other journals and anthologies. Joannie holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop.
Lynne Thompson served as Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, 2021-2022. She is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Blue on a Blue Palette (BOA Editions, 2024). New work can be found or is forthcoming in The Common, Tifferet, the Georgia Review, and the anthology Winter in America (Still). Thompson sits on the boards of the Poetry Foundation and Los Angeles Review of Books, and is President of Cave Canem.
Leslie Ullman has published seven book-length poetry collections, a chapbook, and a book of craft essays, Library of Small Happiness. A former university professor, she lives in Taos, New Mexico. Her website is www.leslieullman.com.
Florence Weinberger is the author of six poetry collections, most recently These Days of Simple Mooring, winner of the 2022 Blue Light Book Award. Six times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poetry has appeared in literary magazines including The Comstock Review, Nimrod, Poetry East, Rattle, Baltimore Review, Calyx, Mantis, The River Styx, North American Review, and numerous anthologies.
Hilda Weiss is the co-founder/curator of 
Cecilia Woloch is the author of eight collections of poems and a novel. She’s the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, among other honors. She’s currently a Fulbright Fellow at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. When she’s not traveling, she lives in Los Angeles.
Gail Wronsky, winner of the Prufer Prize in Poetry from Pleiades, and recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the California Arts Council, has published eight books of poetry as well as three coauthored books of experimental poetry, and two books of translations of the poetry of Argentinean poet Alicia Partnoy.
Merry Song of Eugene, OR, is discovering that the older she gets, the more fascinated she is with Mother Nature in all her forms. Looking closely at what is right in front of her comes easily to her now. At the same time, she carries on with her joy of leading spiritual writing workshops for those willing to come out of hiding.