Off Alki

"Off Alki" is a short poem that emerged from the longer poem "But How Could We Forget?" and was written as a submission to the Seattle Poetry on the Buses contest. It was chosen and on April 24th, I read it at the launch party and saw it posted on a bus. The poem will travel all over Seattle for a year. I hope it makes people think and smile at some point in their day. You can see the poems at PoetryonBuses.

Thanksgiving 2015

            “Best wishes from our family to yours.”

                                                -Hallmark

Brutal: derived from a king slayer, warlord, philanderer,

who turned coat, turned his back, turned on

the trusting hearts hung near his own.

My sister’s brute sharpened heart, a weapon to drive

deep between the ribs of the man she once loved.

Not behind closed doors, a quiet killing.

No, a spectacle worthy of the Romans.

As our family gathered to give thanks for another year

of living, of loving, of one another.

Birth gave us front row seats in the Coliseum,

to watch a man bloodied by the ravages

of thirty years of unspoken stories.

I am the Hiritus of this moment, chronicling

what remains as Caesar shops for a new home

and the garden goes untended.

~Heidi Seaborn

Thanks to Gold Man Review for printing this poem in their Fall 2016 issue. 

What We Hold On To

Dungeness Spit, Washington

The road gathers the fields, harvesting them with each turn.

A barn with silver silos crests the green horizon.

The houses, whose gardens snap sunflowers, rhubarb,

lettuce and stunted corn are the dream

we each harbor in the folded wing of our palm.

We stem from forest trail to the beach,

skid the sand between our toes,

feel the smooth circles of stone beneath our feet.

This spit is the crooked finger calling the ocean home,

the arm holding our family together.

We sleep on the driftwood,

eat cheese and sausage on Russian rye,

search for agates like four-leaf clovers.

The wind is not enough to unbalance the cranes from their post,

not enough to push us further down the spit to the lighthouse.

~Heidi Seaborn

This poem was written eons ago. I held onto for decades and then it felt right to send it to the Washington State Poet Laureate's call for poems. It memorializes a special moment before our family scattered one by one off to adulthood.

WA129 is available on Amazon and bookstores throughout the state and supports the arts.

Nightview, New York 1932

    Inspired by the Berenice Abbot photograph

Here it is: a cozy of gems stitched down your sleeve.

Blood pulsing

hot against your temple.

You hold the lights like children in your gaze.

The tempo of traffic.

Inhale the shoe polish deep in the subway.

Shoulder the cold as if it’s a woman you can’t leave.

Heidi Seaborn

Impressions on W. H. Auden

I wrote this poem eons ago, when I was a teenager. I reworked only slightly and it was published by Ekphrastic Review.  Having read a great deal of Auden again recently, I feel like this impression of him remains with me. 

Separation and In Memoriam

Fredericksburg Literary and Arts Review published two more of my poems in the Fall 2016 issue.  "In Memoriam" was written during that productive stay in Winthrop after a walk along the Chewuch River Valley. I wrote "Separation" for one of my sisters as a response to her becoming separated and the how disorienting that experience can be. 

The Square House--94 Shaker Road, Harvard, Massachusetts

One of my favorite house I lived is immortalized in this poem. Built before the Revolution by Ireland Shadrach, it went on to serve as the birthplace for the Shaker movement in Harvard, Mass when Mother Ann Lee lived in it. It was an unusual and magical house--invaded by nature and haunted by a ghost, its history, it the home where my son Jack took his first steps and my daughter Hallie was born.  The Poetry Center of San Jose chose it for its anthology Caesura, published in in the spring of 2017.

The Square House—94 Shaker Road, Harvard, Massachusetts

Built by Ireland Shadrach in 1769, the Square House

 became the center for the Shaker community.

A square house rooted in a clearing of massive

broadleaf maples that burst into flames each fall.

A house built by a man who skipped the Revolution,

paid the King’s taxes, worshipped god.

Neighbors said it was his ghost that lived with us,

the squirrel family in the attic,

hornets nesting in the nursery,

carpenter ants shedding wings, dying,

brittle carcasses scattered like a game of pick up sticks

and the mosquitos I’d kill at night creating a monotype

of smashed remains on the bedroom ceiling.

A house with a front door to nowhere,

a swing hung from a lilac bush the color of cough syrup

and a cat-tail rimmed pond buttered with lily pads

where I’d take my son to cup tadpoles and skitter bugs.

A house that held strong my daughter born

during the wail of a late May storm,

rocked her heavy, sleek body mid-night

to the click and whistle of crickets.

Heidi Seaborn

But How Could We Forget?

First poem I wrote in my 2.0 poetry career (1.0 being in my teens), "But How Could We Forget?" was literarily written in an evening from what came out of seven prompts given that afternoon by Jane Wong in a workshop. The prompts led to this poem that deals with my father's death that was published by Windfall in the fall of 2016. I later robbed it to create the much shorter "Off Alki" that was selected to run on a Seattle bus in the Poetry on Buses contest. 

But How Could We Forget?

The sea arrives steeping in a white porcelain bowl.

Mussels, clams, cod.  A Dungeness crab claw

emerges from the tomato stew as if to say “I’m here.”

But how could we forget? Summer evenings

the sun still high in the periwinkle sky as you rowed out.

I’d lean over expectant as Christmas,

haul the crab pot up hand over hand

seaweed circling my wrists.

Your gloved hand would dig into the skittering evergreen mass

knowing their weight and sex by touch.

This summer, we dropped your pot into the Sound on the highest tide.

Watched the buoy marked by your hand sink into the black.

I returned every day by kayak, stirring the sun off the water

to peer for your name lost amongst the kelp, your ashes.

We walk the pebbled shore; crackle clamshells as the fog hovers

obscuring Blake Island and the Olympics beyond.

The dog you will never know pockets crab claws in his jaw

buries them amongst the garden riot of zinnias, dahlias, and nasturtiums.

Heidi Seaborn

Submission Guidelines

"Submission Guidelines" was written during the Tupelo 30/30 challenge in November 2016. It was inspired by the submission guidelines of the online poetry journal, Birds Piled Loosely, that discourages bird poems. I had fun with it. Gravel Magazine published in February 2017. 

November 2016

Speaking of BirdsPiledLoosely, one of my election poems survived its submission guidelines and was accepted into its anthology of election-related writing, called Who Want the World Like It Is? My poem "November 2016" was also written during the Tupelo 30/30 challenge. At the time, the nasturtiums in our front yard were in massive bloom, maybe massive rebellion. This poem is an attempt to quiet the noise of the election just a bit. 

How to Hold a Heart

I wrote "How to Hold a Heart" in the winter of 2016 after reading a small piece in the NYT's Sunday Magazine by the same title. I was struck by the idea of what happens when the heart transplant patient is between hearts. In this poem, I worked to balance the clinic with the emotional. It ran in the spring issue of Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review and was my first published poem!

The Walk: Zevenbergschen-Hoek, Netherlands

I wrote the "The Walk: Zevenbergschen-Hoek, Netherlands" forty years ago based on an experience I had as student on a homestay in Netherlands. I spent a week with a family in a small village, shared a room with their daughters who were teenagers as well. I revisited this poem in 2016, edited it a bit, but used my maiden name on it to acknowledge that it was written by my earlier self. The Voices Project published it in May of 2016. 

Break This Sentence Down: She is Caught in a Loveless Marriage

I decided to take a tough past life situation and turn it into a grammar exercise with this poem. I am happy it found a home with The Voices Project, a publication that is geared toward raising women's voices through poetry. The Voices Project published it in October 2016.

Small Deaths

The littlest creatures died quickly.

Goldfish lasted days, their glowing orange cadavers

bobbing on the fishbowl’s murky surface.

The gecko survived a week. It’s carcass

discovered one afternoon

dried up like a bug specimen.

The hamster stayed on earth long enough

to master the spinning wheel to nowhere,

to survive show and tell and the squeeze of chubby fists,

before strangulating on the cage bars in a botched escape.

The bunny arrived one Easter then died

days before the next, causing a resurrection watch.

When Hoppy failed to rise from the dead,

his corpse landed in the yard waste.

We never found the cat’s body. Banished

to a life outdoors after bloodying the baby’s face.

Perhaps it disappeared into the jaw of a ranging coyote.

We were not a family to bury our dead pets

with great ceremony in the back garden

under a handmade cross, whispering prayers

to serve warning to God’s small creatures:

Beware. Enter at your own risk.

Heidi Seaborn

"Small Deaths" is meant to be a humorous take on what happens to family pets. I was able to pull on our sordid family history with pets for it. Into the Void is a hot new literary press in Ireland. They do a wonderful job of not just editing a great magazine full of wonderful work, but promote their authors and are gaining terrific recognition in the literary world. 

Travel Advisory for Turkey

My husband and I both are keen to travel to Turkey. This poem "Travel Advisory for Turkey" was prompted by that desire and the devastating violence that has been a constant in Turkey of recent. I let my imagination capture the sights, sounds, smells and history of Turkey. I was delighted that the Winston-Salem Writers chose "Travel Advisory for Turkey" for their 2016 anthology Flying South.

Travel Advisory for Turkey

--A suicide bomber killed five including two Americans, and injured 36 others in a busy tourist area in Istanbul.  March 19, 2016

I will not meander the Spice Bazaar maze in Istanbul,

past the sacks of psychedelic colored baharat and herbs.

I won’t inhale cumin, sumac, saffron and mint.

I will not bring home tuzlu nuts and Turkish Delight

or know the bolt of Arabica coffee sipped from a demitasse

with a bite of beyaz peynir cheese.

I will not heed the imam call to prayers,

look to the minarets to guide me to the Sultanamhet mosque,

wrap my Pashmina over my head, shoulders, slip off my shoes

find my place among the women,

stand, kneel, touch my head to carpet, stand.

The prayers a requiem for the dead, the dying.

I will not haggle with the rug dealer as he and his cousins

roll open another hand-knotted Anatolian carpet, blood

red, starred with indigo and gold blossoms.

“This one. Ma’am, this one best for you.”

It will not arrive on my doorstep months later

wrapped in burlap, unfurling a scent of shisha smoke.

I will not see girls, braids bouncing as they skip

to the jump rope’s beat, the sing-song song.

Boys dribbling, rising to layup, block an imaginary basket.

The ball tapping from outstretched hand to hand,

skittering off down the dirt alley, mothers pulling

aside curtain doorways to scold.

I will not eat charred sheep kebaps

or drink rati and pick lüfer off the bone by the Bosphorus

imagining Ottoman trading ships navigating its length.

I will not journey to the Hattusas

as the sun illuminates history, stories, what remains

from thieves, Pergamon’s curators, ancient battles

like this war: the remnant of an Imperial tapestry,

a lost province, gaming foreign powers, the Euphrates

knotted near the border, its mouth burned dry.

Heidi Seaborn

When We Fight

My husband and I rarely disagree, but when we do it follows a pattern that I captured in this poem that invites the wildness of our garden in. Vine Leaves Literary Journal published in their beautiful artful pages. 

When We Fight

I see the sinewy, sienna shoots emerge

from the flesh of his heels, sprout

out of his toes, worm their way through the carpet,

ferret weakness in the floorboards,

crawl under the door to join the insidious

morning glory spreading its violent tentacles

over our lush tended garden.

Meanwhile, I spit out words that flutter

furiously like Gypsy moths,

clutter the air around my face.

Their dusty wings powder my hair

before drawing to the light.

Burning bright, singeing wings.

Eventually, I gather up the broken moths,

scatter them like ashes out the window

onto the garden below. He dims the light,

pulls me under the bedding. Limbs

entwined like wisteria vines, our dreams

their fragrant bruised flower.

Heidi Seaborn

Body Politic

I, like many poets, found the US election in 2016 a topic that needed to be examined through poetry. As it occurred in the midst of my month-long Tupelo 30/30 challenge, I was writing daily about it for a time. I discovered that Mount Analogue Press was publishing political pamphlets--slender chapbooks of a writer's work resembling the political pamphlets from the Revolution.  Body Politic was handed out at the Women's March the day after the inauguration and is available online and through the press.