Betty LaDuke Exhibit in Philomath, OR
Friday, April 19: 5-7pm The Benton County Historical Society is hosting an opening reception for artist Betty LaDuke’s newest exhibit, Bringing the World Together at the Philomath Museum (1101 Main
Friday, April 19: 5-7pm The Benton County Historical Society is hosting an opening reception for artist Betty LaDuke’s newest exhibit, Bringing the World Together at the Philomath Museum (1101 Main
Katey Schultz speaks at the Corvallis Museum March 9th, 2024, on the topic of research’s role in the creative process.
“The time I’d planned to hike the rim to rim to rim of the Grand Canyon with three athletic friends—all non-menstruating fellows—only to wake at four AM and find myself bleeding and no protection (it was way too early, but you know it kind of shows up when it wants anyway), and one of their girlfriends, who wasn’t hiking with us, when I whispered to her, only had a slender regular. A. Slender. Regular. Right. Which I took, of course.”
“Try to remember the actual
moon is never less than full.
The evening cashier has a secret
sorrow and plans for the weekend.”
“In these years of unrelenting
loss, I have practiced restoration
with you.”
“Dear eyes
like breaking stars,
some days I hear your voice
in the trees, some nights
I send you half my dreams.”
“Sometimes death
takes you by the throat, like burning leaves choke
and ochre light hangs thick as draperies across your living
room window where a slice of sky slips through
to remind you get outside, take a walk, breathe.”
“I thought it was just opening, he says. I thought
the petals were just unfurling.”
“Dress you
as you prefer, in men’s clothes—no rush
or pressure, pleasure in the long look,
the urge for color, then touch—”
“Tonight, I am going to push
the Susquehanna away with my body,
ignore the waning moon’s fractioning
of light.”
“That afternoon, I pretended
to be a cat—tabby, kinked tail.
And the finches behaved
accordingly.”
“Still awake believing our silence might leave us,
desperately needing to make ourselves heard,
every girl told a story before parents came for us.”
“Frida’s Boots beats too with life and determination. In many of Robbins’ poems there is an appreciation for the moment at hand, the pleasure in the everyday experiences, and the heightened awareness that it is all temporary.”
“I imagined us drinking tea
sugared with honesty,
laughing till we turned soft
as fallen apples.”
“Always, I begin
with nothing and too much
to say.”
“Some days
almost everything’s about sex, and maybe
this as well: groan of old boards, joists
and beams remembering, music
of breaking glass.”
The third entry in the Writing Queer Joy Workshop, an online series presented by CALYX Press.
“Then, when the black nightingale returns to the forest,
when the audacious sun is high,
I wonder, beneath the waves,
where a few more wing beats would have taken me”
“I remember your scarf wrapped twice
around my neck on the Central Line I held my swollen stomach
felt first kicks & fresh strawberries we bought already softening”
“Trash-can colored and rusty, it was a car all throat,
all fits and stutters, a guttural language
choked at every breakneck shift of gears,
a devil’s-in-hell kind of loud, so buzz-saw loud
you could feel the fuel catch fire inside it, its inner life burning
with something I was too small to name.”
“This is an elegy
for what can’t be undone—
a sky that sags heavy,
hand over our mouths
that forces us to breathe
with eyes
fingertips
every part we have left.”
“It wasn’t until my fourth or fifth sip of tea this morning that I noticed Miss Nancy Carson was missing her eyebrows. I promptly set the cup down and stared at her across the breakfast table. I wanted to make certain she had not simply hidden her brows under too much white pomade. The girl is at an age where she has begun to prepare her toilette, and painting takes practice to master. But her brows were not covered up. They were gone.”
“I find them in the hollow place—
the friend whose heart collapsed
as the train pulled out,
the one whose daughter
didn’t call to tell me,
the one whose cancer
they said was slow growing
a month ago.”
“I knew who Tim Davis was in high school, but I didn’t introduce myself to him until my mom ran him over with her car. And this is not some kind of “meet-cute” story, where her tires caught his foot as she slowly backed out at the grocery store or something. Rushing home on a drizzly November evening, from a place she should not have been, my mother mowed Tim down as he rode his bicycle to work, paralyzing him below the waist.”
“The bluebirds that should leave each winter
now stay put, even as species after species
goes extinct. But who’d think of things like that
while those bright-backed, grump-faced balls
of brilliance flicker through our yards?”
“Today another patient
chokes: Don’t
let me die—
When her heart stops, there is so much
noise in the room—so many people
swarming, and then things
inserted—
Her legs jerk with every compression.”
“An itch for HE-ness
SHE-ness cannot scratch.
Men are here who are reborn as women,
they swallow pills & take hormone-shots.
He-paint peeled off
so She comes toward void.”
“Dad and Mom got divorced two years ago. Mom says they split up because Dad is selfish and wants to sow his wild oats, two decades too late, and doesn’t want to be burdened by the demands of a family. Dad says they split up because of Sarah. Dad says that the death of a child strips the skin off a marriage, and if the bones underneath aren’t strong, everything falls apart.”
“the women turn pages slowly, so slowly
unsure if that is the vest Katya knitted for uncle
before he went for milk, never came back
each numbered photograph a too-bright gasp of light
the book, a first step with each mass grave
do you recognize this apron? this belt? these boots?”
“Paper gowns are not as soft as cloth gowns are not as soft
as silk as milk which is only soft until it sours”
“But still it was done,
the last thing, really, they made
together. When the morphine
wasn’t enough, I said to her,
Think of those lilies,
all the colors they’ll bring.”
“In her old life, Grammy shelved books via the Dewey Decimal,
never imagined she would need a YouTube video on how to probe a vent.
So much science reduced to the withstanding of unease,
an ISA Brown hen upside down under her arm.”
“I looked myself over, the version of me across the table. I was a year younger then, but I was in rough shape. January was obviously only shaving once every few days. His face was covered in that awful black stubble. His hair was a mess. His eyes were tired and vacant behind the glasses. He slouched in the chair, thinking me over. He tapped his fingers on the table, the gears turning, trying to figure out what to say.
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘It’s not possible that we’re trans. It shouldn’t be possible.’
I nodded sympathetically. ‘I get what you’re saying. I understand. Yet here we are.'”
CALYX Celebrates Fire, Fury, and Resilience with Oregon Artist Betty LaDuke Please join us in ekphrastic appreciation of the artist Betty LaDuke, whose most recent exhibition, Fire, Fury, and Resilience:
“Two women in hijabs and abayas approach us. One of the women asks, ‘How long will this be going on?’ ‘It’s the community that’s doing this,’ Zenzele answers. ‘So, I guess, as long as the community keeps coming. This is all different people. There’s no one group organizing it.’ The draped women speak to one another in a language that sounds like the wind over the surface of water before they smile at us, nod, and walk on.”
“You nudged me with a whisper,
to rise an hour before azan,
from under the thick
of dove feathers warm with your love
for God, and me, the musty grandchild”
“Hideous beauty, I shake you loose
from a cushion of the wicker chair
where, it seems, you’ve gone to die.”
“There are many versions of the American Dream, I want to tell my parents. The one involving a large house with a picket fence and two-car garage is just one of them. Just as there are many versions of your daughter. There’s a version that prays four times a day and recites the Quran. There is a version that enjoys hanging out with friends, including men, on Saturday nights with cans of beer and board games. There is a version that fasts during the month of Ramadan. There is a version that gets pepperoni on her pizza during the rest of the year.”
“Announce me, let them know I am coming. Carry me into the arena on a King Carrier. I come from a lineage of linebackers. My knuckles are a mountain range. Your booing only makes me more powerful.”
“’Two weeks,’ Tamara echoes, like she’s mulling it over. Her legs are dangling over the arm of the chair. ‘Why don’t you just break up with him the normal way?’
‘Because that would require confrontation,’ I explain.
‘And knitting an entire sweater is easier than confrontation.’
‘Yes.’
Tamara turns to Lark for support, but he’s nodding solemnly. ‘Yeah, that holds up,’ he says.”
“Something reminded me today that a parent of mine had died
and the barometric pressure fell, and rain began to touch the river.”
“Today I celebrate my only bangle
my one-hand applause
the gold leaf on my family tree
my hand-hammered heritage
my blood.”
“‘How come they don’t ask about costumes?’ Carly Beth asked.
‘Costumes?’
‘This one guy I was dating a while ago only wanted to do it if I wore a pantsuit and he wore a Donald Trump mask.’
Karen kept her head down and said in a voice she hoped was neutral, ‘You can always type in your own comments. Just press F4.'”
“a white moth arrives rising and falling
on the warm breeze, lingers on the headstone
then on my bare arm, clinging as if
searching for moist skin or the scent of me.”
“I imagine Evelin, her flour-sack print dress, brandishing stick dolls with her younger cousin, whose rash and persistent fever earlier that month no one mentioned. I imagine Evelin waking near dawn, whimpering, coughing, hot to the touch. Grandma takes her into their bed, Grandpa having left to cart fuel to farmers. The child sleeps fitfully, radiating heat.”
“I stare out the window
over the sink, the citrus soap promising
something pure as we shelter in place.
A rolling fog smokes the green
grass. The vixen glides her grizzled gray
between orchard and rock wall border.”
“Milk passes through me like liquid moons,
wet stars on her tongue. She sucks
till I’m emptied of all the white
cells in my celestial body.”
“Because this is endearment not indictment
I’ll say that I admire the commitment you’ve recently made
to eating your berries with the knife used to clean them
rather than using a spoon.”
“Bored, my children open me up, like a fridge,
to find out what’s inside. I glow and show them
leftovers, mostly, some of them over a week old.”
“The expression that rubbed Luz raw was the one her mother used more often than all of her Ave Marías and all of her Ay Benditos—and she said those a lot. The one proverb that always made Luz feel ill at ease—and she was not too sure why—was: Con la boca cerradita te ves más bonita: you look prettier with your mouth shut.”
“Your voice slips like smoke
between prison bars,
a jailer lights a cigarette,
considers the burning stub.”
“one was peering at a recipe
for risotto, the other
at the microscopic script
in an obsolete telephone book.”
“Each with a man
that stuck, waxy & scarlet as their lips on my
cheek, anointing me with gentle warnings &
measurements for the perfect chicken soup.”
“You salt the egg anticipating
the salt. Count on the hill
for the view, and, when you get to the top,
there’s the view.”
“This is a place, I thought,
where words cannot bring us
safely back home.”
“We approach
middle age as undiscovered country when
really it’s the same old alley, the bowling pin
that wobbles like a drunk but won’t go down.”
“Polyglot wind: her too many voices,
her tangled tongues,
all of them sharp.”
“In quietude I feel I am everywhere at once—my own body rehearsing its wintering act, too. I look up from the table to the far side of the lake to see a buck limping, his hind legs sixteenth-notes in the dry leaves. From far off, a shot sounds like an encyclopedia falling to a wooden floor and like the echo of its striking.”
“One of my first shifts in the ER, I looked down the throat
of a young boy and saw a nail. The boy smiled. He coughed.
The nail quivered.”
“It’s too good to last, this early sunshine in April,
this smell-of-cut-grass morning
and this body, with its mirage of infinite breaths,
its lie of immortality.”
“My own heartbeat
neither wants or doesn’t want to live.
It just does.”
“It’s official: dementia and medication. Not unexpected. But getting the ICD code is like being pinned. Mom does not protest.
The transitions before me are not unique, I know. Yet the fact that they’re universal and part of life matters as much to me as cocktail party chitchat.
What I treasure are tiny pearls that appear in mundane surroundings, a particular moment between particular people.”
“past weatherworn bluffs and farther than any bird known, the swift sleeps on the wing, leaving grief behind“ Enjoy this audio recording of “toward the south, past st ives” by
“He half-licks at the food, turns away, or shifts, licks at himself and tears out patches of gray fur. This food was living light, green where it drank from the
“They tried to scratch off the paint. A portrait. They tried to scratch. A woman. The paint. A woman with a long face.” This audio recording of “La Femme” by
“We didn’t hear what she couldn’t say because the prairie stitches women’s mouths shut.” Enjoy this audio recording of “Soapstone” by Courtney Huse-Wika from Vol. 31:3 of CALYX Journal! Buy the
“consider the (curious)(strained) way she admires the hummingbirds (hovering)(swirling) above her head, and the air now saturated with (teargas)(sun)(clementines)“ Enjoy this audio recording of “Decisions” by Livia Meneghin from Vol.
“When I imagine a life after this one, I imagine a field. And in this field, there are people running toward each other, delighted to be able to.“ Enjoy this
“You are tired of pretending to be the authority on democracy when you believe all governments stink, some just smell more rank than others. As you sing the praises of
“revolve this landscape encased by pulverized petals the stories round the wood in areola waves” This audio recording of “Rings of Pink, Enheduanna” by Nicole Miyashiro from Vol. 32:1 of
“Unasked, she doesn’t think to pray. Half a bun is gone before she makes time, not for a holy act, but an attentive one, attuned to the soft chew of
“The dentist reassures me that my tongue looks fine, that the sensation I feel of its edge fraying against my teeth is “just nerves.” He assures me that it won’t
Enjoy this audio recording of “The Why Nots and The Whys” by Marcie Roman from Vol. 31:3 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Marcie Roman lives in Evanston, IL. Her stories
Enjoy this audio recording of “Facedown” by Sherri Levine from Vol. 31:3 of CALYX Journal! “Facedown” was the winner of the 2019 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize. Read the full
Enjoy this audio recording of “Sausage” by Ilene Rudman from Vol. 31:3 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Ilene Rudman is a psychotherapist and career counselor living in Maynard, MA.
Enjoy this audio recording of “The Rape of the Sabine Women” by Judith Sanders from Vol. 31:3 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Judith Sanders’ work has been published in
Enjoy this audio recording of a review of Mia Ayumi Malhotra’s book, Isako Isako, by Katharine Coldiron from Vol. 31:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Buy a
Enjoy this audio recording of “The Multiverse” by Emma Bolden from Vol. 31:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Emma Bolden is the author of House Is an Enigma (Southeast
Enjoy this audio recording of “Language Acquisition” by Jung Hae Chae from issue 27:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Jung’s poetry and prose have appeared in the CALYX
Enjoy this audio recording of “Her Voice” by Iris Dunkle from issue 27:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Iris Jamahl Dunkle was the 2017-2018 Poet Laureate of
Enjoy this audio recording of “Reasons for & Against Dating Tyrannosaurus Rex” by Emari DiGiorgio from issue 27:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Emari DiGiorgio is the
Enjoy this audio recording of “Family Fest” by Lynn Casteel Harper from issue 27:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Lynn Casteel Harper is a writer, minister, and
Enjoy this audio recording of “Halfway In” by Judy Halebsky from issue 27:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Judy Halebsky is the author of the poetry collections Sky=Empty, Tree
Enjoy this audio recording of “Saturday” by Emily Tuszynska, the runner-up in the 2018 Lois Cranston Poetry Prize contest. Read the poem here. Emily Tuszynska’s poetry can be found in many
Enjoy this audio recording of “What Hummingbirds Do” by Louise Cary Barden from issue 31:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. “What Hummingbirds Do” was the winner of
Enjoy this audio recording of “Aubade for Dreamland” by July Westhale from Vol. 31:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. July Westhale is the award-winning author of Via Negativa, Trailer Trash, The Cavalcade,
Enjoy this audio recording of “Burlesque” by Hannah Fries from Vol. 26:3 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Hannah Fries is a poet, writer, and editor. She is
Enjoy this audio recording of “Women of a Certain Age” by Penelope La Montagne from Vol. 27:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Penelope La Montagne was poet
Enjoy this audio recording of “Thoughts on Gay Marriage While Visiting My Lover’s Parents” by Judy Ireland from Vol. 27:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Born and
Enjoy this audio recording of “The Script” by Rosa del Duca from Vol. 27:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Rosa del Duca is a writer, journalist, teacher
Enjoy this audio recording of “The Death of Chang and Eng 1811-1874” by Jennifer Fandel from Vol. 27:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. In graduate school, Jennifer
Enjoy this audio recording of “The Air” by Sandra Kohler from Vol. 27:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music, (Word Press)
Enjoy this audio recording of “My Brother Who Doesn’t Speak to Our Mother Comes to Visit” by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor from Vol. 27:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here.
Enjoy this audio recording of “Layl-tul-Qadr (The Night of Power)” by Aisha Sharif from Vol. 27:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Aisha is a Cave Canem fellow
Enjoy this audio recording of “Impossible Questions” by Eugenia Leigh from Vol. 27:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Eugenia Leigh is the author of Blood, Sparrows and