After the Storm, New Review of Field Guide and a poem in the Fall 2016 of North American Review

There were three days of storms from a typhoon in the Pacific that came through over the weekend. They caused water spouts/tornadoes in coastal Oregon, some downed trees and power outages, but we were not hit as hard as they had predicted. So Thursday night, we watched the weather and bought water and found our flashlights; there was a mild storm, no big deal. Friday was windier and wetter, we waited anxiously for updates on the historic Saturday storm – when it would start, where it would hit the hardest. Saturday was the day we were supposed to get the “historic” storm, so dangerous we were told not to go out of our houses. There was a bit of heavy rain at 6:30 PM, but not much else. (I was supposed to have an artist date with a friend, a poetry group, and have my reading/reception at Open Books on Saturday – none of which happened. We rescheduled the Open Books reading/reception til October 29th due to this weather event.  Oh well – hope to see some of you at 4 PM on October 29th – it’ll be more spooky as it’ll be Halloween weekend!)  So we took a trip to downtown Seattle during a rainless, wind-less lull on Saturday and took this picture of the ferry boat and ferris wheel, checked out the work at SAM’s newly relocated gallery of local artist’s work (right behind the gift shop – so cool!), checked out Pike Place market (still plenty of tourists there)  and we visited Open Books and bought some books! And here are my books on their shelf! Always cheering!

So that is how I spent my weekend. I felt so tired and frustrated and stressed out from the over-reaction to possible – but not actual – disaster that the weather people made me feel. (Just like the first poem in Field Guide to the End of the World, “Introduction to Disaster Preparedness” – ironic!) It reminded me of how I’ve been buffeted by medical news this year; in February, a random hospital stay resulted in the news that I had metastasized cancer in my liver. Many tests and doctors later, a group of liver specialists told me that the tumors were benign adenomas. A month later, I was told I definitely had a rare terminal cancer called carcinoid. Now my endocrinologists think that might wrong and are arguing with the liver oncologist about it. The stress and anxiety have been worse than any symptoms I’ve had. I’m tired of the ups and downs of both weather and medical reports. (Plus, I’m having nightmares about Trump every night.) I just want to sleep all the time as a result. Or maybe that’s just a beginning of fall thing?

On the plus side, I’m thankful for a few pieces of good news. Here’s a new review of Field Guide to the End of the World from Everything Distills into Reading (thank you!!🙂

http://readbookswritepoetry.blogspot.com/2016/10/poetic-book-tours-field-guide-to-end-of.html

And I have a poem in the new issue of North American Review called “Repeton in Winter.” I was very excited because I love North American Review!

Here’s the first poem from Field Guide to the End of the World. So apropos!

Introduction to Disaster Preparedness

While you told me about the bee colony collapse
caused by cell phones or maybe Monsanto and their magic poisons

I was thinking about a friend who said they found a lump
and another friend finishing chemo and waiting for a scan

and a third who said my hair is a disaster and she meant the layers
would take forever to grow out. My house is a disaster, she says, my yard, my outfit.

When you told me my son is autistic I thought of his bright eyes
and beautiful tears. It’s not the life you planned. How our minds

and bodies spin apart, like hives of bees confused about whom to follow,
flying further and further out to discover – what? That they’d flown

too far and now are frozen, flightless. How many hives abandoned.
We cannot sleep too far from disaster zones. I saw a tornado once

in my own front yard, and slept through hurricanes, knelt during earthquakes.
Did I pray, did I ask for something then? I only held my breath.

When later asked, Are you okay? I said, Everything is temporary.