%1 http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/ en Pamela Uschuk http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pamela-uschuk <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Pamela Uschuk</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2019-01-27T15:34:06-07:00" title="Sunday, January 27, 2019 - 15:34" class="datetime">Sun, 01/27/2019 - 15:34</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pamela-uschuk" data-a2a-title="Pamela Uschuk"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fpamela-uschuk&amp;title=Pamela%20Uschuk"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p class="rtecenter"><img alt="Poet: Pamela Uschuk" src="/sites/default/files/Pamela_Uschuk.jpg" style="height:252px; width:240px" /></p> <p>Political activist and wilderness advocate Pam Uschuk has howled out six books of poems, including <em>Crazy Love</em> (2010 American Book Award) and her most recent collection, <em>Blood Flower</em> (2015). Translated into more than a dozen languages, her work appears in over 300 journals and anthologies worldwide, including <em>Poetry, Ploughshares, Agni Review, Colorado Review, Parnassus Review, etc</em>. Uschuk was awarded the 2011 War Poetry Prize from <em>Winning Writers</em><em>,</em> 2010 <em>New Millennium</em> Poetry Prize, 2010 Best of the Web, the Struga International Poetry Prize (for a theme poem), the Dorothy Daniels Writing Award from the National League of American PEN Women and prizes from <em>Ascent, Iris</em>, and Amnesty International. Editor-In-Chief of <em>Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts</em>, Uschuk lives in <strong>Bayfield</strong>, Colorado and in Tucson, Arizona.</p> <h2>Poems</h2> <h3>Eating Salmon</h3> <p>With the first bite, you dive<br /> deep the sea blue veins<br /> of Prudhoe Bay, chart the black rock hem<br /> and thick scale ice along the coast until<br /> you intuit the delta, where you begin<br /> to fight your way upstream,<br /> past gravel bars spiller at river’s mouth,<br /> past silvertip grizzlies<br /> and the flat suomo slam of their paws<br /> as they swat riffles, past<br /> ospreys whose yellow eyes aim<br /> razor talons to spike the homeward heart.<br /> Past the cold shoulders of boulders<br /> that fracture the current.<br /> Past the foamy, wagging tongues<br /> of waterfalls that fling you<br /> against granite edges,<br /> scarring your silver skin as you leap<br /> and leap again to reach the silk<br /> rock lip and pool behind.<br /> Bite after buttery bite.<br /> Sometimes grace can be this delicious.<br /> The pink flesh is firm as faith<br /> and marbled with grease, bathed<br /> in lemon and white Chardonnay.<br /> In the pan, salmon’s hooked beak sizzles<br /> as you strip the remaining meat<br /> from immaculate vertebrae.<br /> Heavier now, you belch<br /> and push the last mile<br /> to the sand bar where shallows<br /> flow clean as molten glass.<br /> Fanning a nest with your tail,<br /> your squeeze out orange eggs<br /> embraced by sperm shot<br /> like white ink vanishing into current.<br /> Exhausted, you lie<br /> gasping in the indifferent stream.<br /> Your eye is a caul<br /> masking dreams, and your skin<br /> burns red as a maple leaf.<br /> Meal done, you flop on the couch<br /> in the living room.&nbsp; Your mouth cracks<br /> open and you fall through the world, dazed<br /> and tilting from side to side<br /> until you flip,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; your pale belly finally breaking<br /> the miraged border<br /> between water and sky.</p> <p>First published in <em>Swamproot</em>, then in <em>The River Anthology</em>, (Slappering Hol Press)<em>, </em>and published in the award-winning chapbook<em>, Without Birds, Without Flowers, Without Trees </em>(Flume Press, 1996), and in<em> Scattered Risks </em>(San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2005)<em>. </em></p> <h3>Loving the Outlaw</h3> <p>Outside, a silent arc of wings,<br /> an osprey so quiet<br /> doves nesting in cottonwoods might think<br /> his passing breast a cloud.<br /> His masked face lifts my heart<br /> from its small dark center.<br /> Like a trout, I imagine being stolen<br /> by his embrace, caught inside<br /> curling talons, bright<br /> and precise as tearing moons.<br /> He flies, and I hold my breath,<br /> so the neighbor who would shoot him<br /> won’t hear my arrested gasp,<br /> the awesome clattering up in my chest.<br /> I’ve always loved outlaws best,<br /> the inky hats and habits,<br /> their saavy laughter screened in movie houses.<br /> This one soars<br /> from the neighbor’s trout pond<br /> where he’s taken another rainbow<br /> back to the lawless sky.</p> <p>First appeared in <em>One Earth</em> (Scotland), then in the Mesilla Press Pamphlet Series and in the award-winning chapbook, <em>Without Birds, Without Flowers, Without Trees</em> (Flume Press, 1996), and in <em>Scattered Risks</em> (San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2005).</p> <h3>Rocky Mountain Goats</h3> <p>At extreme altitude, risk is never subtle.<br /> Rock collapses<br /> under surest hoof.&nbsp;&nbsp; Sky splits like wings<br /> shaking out thunder,<br /> the chatter of ice wind through pines<br /> an erratic history of knobby hail.<br /> Stones clatters<br /> like broken tiles down treeless cliffs,<br /> but you cling to crags where lichen thrives,<br /> surviving where our fear shivers.<br /> Looking up, we mistake<br /> your shaggy muscles for boulders<br /> or the spirits of Confucian judges,<br /> often miss your perpetual ballet<br /> on a shifting tide of talus.<br /> We feel you hover with sky, envy<br /> the way you defy gravity<br /> we’re bound to.<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With your anthracite eyes<br /> calm in the white pan of your face, you<br /> survey the kingdom of edges,<br /> measuring distances<br /> between dangerous leaps<br /> only the heart can make.</p> <p>First appeared in<em> Riverrun</em>, then in <em>Scattered Risks</em> (San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2005).</p> <h3>Snow Goose Migration at Tule Lake</h3> <p>Iris-eyed dawn and the slow blind buffalo of fog shoulders along flat turned fields.&nbsp;We hear the bassoon a cappella before air stutters&nbsp;&nbsp;to the quake that wheels.</p> <p>Then the thermonuclear flash of snow geese,&nbsp;huge white confetti,&nbsp;storm and tor of black-tipped wings&nbsp;across Shasta’s silk peak,&nbsp;the bulging half moon.</p> <p>There are thousands.&nbsp; Now&nbsp;no stutter but ululations&nbsp;striking as the riot of white water.</p> <p>Wave on wave breaks over us.&nbsp; V&nbsp;after V interlock, weave&nbsp;like tango dancers to dip and rise&nbsp;as their voices hammer silver jewelry in our hearts.&nbsp;These multitudes&nbsp;drown every sound&nbsp;every twenty-first century complaint.</p> <p>Snow geese unform us. Fluid our hands, our arms, legs,&nbsp;our hearts.&nbsp; What more do we ever need?</p> <p>Than these songs&nbsp;cold and pure as Arctic-bladed warriors&nbsp;circling the lake’s mercuric eye.</p> <p>Snake graceful in the sky, snow geese wail&nbsp;through sunrise like tribal women&nbsp;into funeral flames.</p> <p>Sun rouges their feathers&nbsp;as they rise hosannahward, dragging us stunned by the alchemy of their clamor.</p> <p>And we think how it must have been&nbsp; each season for eight hundred years while Modoc harvested wild rice&nbsp; blessed by the plenty of wings&nbsp;on the plenty of water before slaughter moved in with the settlers.</p> <p><br /> The few Modoc survivors were exiled to Oklahoma to make way for potato farms&nbsp;that even now poison the soil and drain Tule Lake.</p> <p>In this month of wild plum blossoms, we would pretend it is the early world.</p> <p>Snow geese migrate through sky wide as memory.&nbsp; Their wild choirs lift usbeyond the dischords of smoking fields and tractors to light struck white, to our own forgotten wings and ungovernable shine.</p> <p>First published in <em>Swamproot</em>, and published in the award-winnning chapbook, <em>Without Birds, Without Flowers, Without Trees </em>(Flume Press, 1996), and in <em>Scattered Risks</em> (San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2005). Reprinted in <em>Ecopoetry Anthology</em>, eds. Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laua Gray Street (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2013).</p> <h3>Good Friday and the Snowstorm Keep Land Developers from Clearing The Woods</h3> <p>Good Friday and ice storms, then snow<br /> whirls its wet lace skirts,<br /> buries the canoe, snow crocus,<br /> leaftips of tulips, and the machines—<br /> a yellow-knuckled front end loader,<br /> dumptrucks and the jacked-up backhoe<br /> that all week<br /> have assaulted our woods.<br /> Snow and its white lungs<br /> wheeze like angry asthmatics<br /> or Jesus come down from the clouds<br /> to drive out the moneychangers, real<br /> estate agents and landscapers from the forest.<br /> Or so we’d think<br /> on the Good Friday with its miracle of snow.<br /> While the landlady curses weather, upstairs<br /> the Abuela cooks Lenten lunch—<br /> <em>caldo de camarones,</em><br /> <em>caldo de queso,</em><br /> <em>sopas, salmon,</em><br /> fresh corn tortillas.<br /> <em>Muchas comidas y nieve, gracias a Dios.</em><br /> All week the woods have groaned, trunks<br /> of saplings cracked, branches split<br /> under the half-tracks<br /> of iron caterpillrs, the floor<br /> of the climax forest&nbsp; trashed,<br /> birdsong gashed from spring.<br /> Now, peace at last.<br /> Snow and the workers go home.<br /> Snow and the silent white curve of the woods<br /> waits for death postponed,<br /> for resurrection’s promise,<br /> the rolling away of the stone.</p> <p>First published in <em>Swamproot</em>, then in the <em>Poetry Prize Anthology</em> for the Chester H. Jones Foundation, made into a broadside by Elliot Bay Press Broadside Series, in&nbsp;<em>Grufvan</em> (Sweden) and published in <em>Scatttered Risks</em> (San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2005).</p> <h3>A Siberian Cold Front Takes Over the Last Week<br /> of April</h3> <p>Siberia, I do not need your sleet today,<br /> impaling me like a fork in a cheek.&nbsp;<br /> Not that you don’t feel free to crowd my life with ancestors,<br /> memories of bear paws and shrill white distances<br /> cracking the civilized seams of my brain.<br /> Today, Siberia, my head aches with your steel humidity,<br /> cold as a slug’s mucous skirts,<br /> slick as the stone pipe of a shamanka.<br /> I’d like to refuse your telegram.<br /> I am not the she-bear taken as wife by a man.|<br /> I will not give birth to the bear boy hero<br /> who’ll save the tribe.<br /> Take back your message<br /> to the grandmothers who poke at the ashes<br /> of my beginning-of-the-century thoughts.<br /> Tell them to pack their travois of Arctic wind<br /> and haul away the dull gray blades of these clouds.<br /> Hurry on.&nbsp; Skip my generation of stars.<br /> At the lip of spring<br /> chapped by your kisses,<br /> the numb thud of your heart stunning wisteria, tulips,<br /> the bulging red buds of peonies,<br /> time is short.<br /> I fall daily in love with impossibilities- -<br /> the screech owl flying in front of the new moon,<br /> the rufous hummingbird who puffs his throat<br /> like a lung of electric carnelian&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> through the window,<br /> the man shaped like a grizzly bear<br /> but I know that<br /> just as I feel my womb contract<br /> troops are massing on the other side of the globe<br /> for another war<br /> too quick for even their long talons to stop.</p> <p>First appeared in <em>Parnassus Review</em>, reprinted in <em>Arabesques</em> (Algeria), and published in the online chapbook, <em>Blood Flower</em> (drunkenboat.com) and in <em>Blood Flower</em> (San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2015).</p> <h3>Talk About Your Bad Girls&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</h3> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <em>for Val</em><em> Uschuk</em></p> <p>White water’s our ritual, rafting<br /> the <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/animas-river">Animas</a></strong>, river of lost souls,<br /> run-off swollen, frothy as cappucino.|<br /> How do trout survive this torrent,<br /> bashing metal sheets of water<br /> that displace even boulders?<br /> And us ridiculous in a rubber raft<br /> that buckles and folds like a caterpillar<br /> tossed from its safe limb by storm.</p> <p>Talk about your bad girls.&nbsp; Fear<br /> Charges us.&nbsp; Not just<br /> aluminum bullets of adrenaline stippling our tongues<br /> nor the amphetamine rush of hormones,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; but the cold still idea of drowning.<br /> Over-powered by the current’s thrust<br /> our muscles forget age and abuse, thrilled<br /> tight as a dancer’s belly.<br /> When the raft pitches over rapids<br /> we fly above its gunnels, cracking<br /> our foreheads like rams, then<br /> laugh at our survival<br /> to sever long months of separation.</p> <p>Summers of rivers tie us—<br /> from the <strong>Uncompahgre</strong> and the <strong>Blue</strong>,<br /> to the industry-stunned Grand, to<br /> the flat maligned Red Cedar<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; all the way back to the Lookingglass&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> with its pure amniotic flow through our girlhoods.</p> <p>Remember the June we rafted the <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/south-platte-river">Platte</a></strong><br /> so lucid we could see<br /> the lazy fanning of squaw fish over pebbles,<br /> the drift of shadows ripple sand.<br /> Looking up we caught the Goshawk<br /> shocked up from the bloated steer, fly-blown<br /> stink half-sunk in the trampled shore.</p> <p>Weeks after, salmonella fevered your blood<br /> And you couldn’t sweat enough<br /> death from your dreams.<br /> We never imagined clarity could be so final,<br /> but that didn’t keep you from next season’s stream.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> I wonder at those who risk it all—&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> the rock climbers, parachutists, deep<br /> sea divers, tightrope walkers|<br /> and snake charmers of the world—what</p> <p>offerings they make to the manic gods of fear.</p> <p>All year you sculpt what you believe<br /> while I image words.<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Today we are tossed<br /> like dolls in a vulnerable raft<br /> on icy water that would forget us as soon as we fell in.<br /> Our hands and feet are numb from it.</p> <p>We’ll survive this time.&nbsp; Summer<br /> will shrink runoff from the trunks of pines.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> The river’s fatal rush binds us, beats<br /> back awkward conversation<br /> as we give over to this wilder sister<br /> constantly churning on the edge of her song.</p> <h3>Ode to Federico Garcia Lorca</h3> <p>Federico, sometimes you come to me as a little rain&nbsp;<br /> straining up from the south, smeared<br /> with the scent of orange rind and blood.&nbsp;<br /> Smeared with rabbit blood frenzy, coyotes<br /> ring the house howling the hour<br /> the moon ticks like a gypsy watch<br /> above the pool where the heron sleeps.<br /> Where the heron dreams, a smear<br /> the size of the moon is actually a guitar<br /> moaning the syllables of your lost name.<br /> Federico, when you come to me, the unbearable<br /> longing of trees roots deeper in the sky, flies<br /> among stars like a comet in search<br /> of its dead twin.&nbsp; Federico the wind tonight is arctic<br /> silver, not green, not forever green,<br /> and I think how easy it is to die, skin basted<br /> with orange blossoms and loneliness<br /> as if loneliness was a horse a poet could break<br /> or deny.&nbsp; Tonight, you are the slivered silver moon<br /> ticking above cedar and sage that remember<br /> their roots in the olive groves of Andalusia.&nbsp;<br /> Green rind of death, how dare you spit<br /> out the syllables of such desire?&nbsp; Federico,<br /> some nights you fly through the window,<br /> the eye of a hawk on fire,<br /> black gaze gone to blood, gone<br /> to the ropey bones of moonlight,<br /> to guitars laughing in blue pines,<br /> to the wet bulls of passion,<br /> to the weft of love abandoned<br /> to oiled rifles in an olive grove<br /> on a sunny day before I was born.&nbsp; Did<br /> they so fear the delicacy of your hands?</p> <p>Published in <em>Wild In The Plaza Of Memory</em> (San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2012).</p> <h3>Whole Notes&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3> <p>God is the tongue of the female timber wolf slathering<br /> my face, rough as a snowshovel​<br /> scraping back the pages of Red Riding Hood,<br /> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;revising my ears. Listen,<br /> says this wolf tongue speaking its severed<br /> language of love and sorrow, its history<br /> of stick games, its guileless pups,<br /> history of rifleshot from airplanes,<br /> forelegs snapped in steel-toothed traps, trailing<br /> blood through snow.<br /> Listen.</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Have you ever heard eighty wild throats howling their ghosts at noon,<br /> eighty fanged angels buzzed by yellow jackets and the belch<br /> of oil tankers downshifting just<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; over the ridge?&nbsp; Have you heard their long-boned<br /> whole notes of goodbye?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <em>Wolfwood Wolf Refuge</em><em>, Ignacio, Colorado</em></p> <p>Published in <em>Blood Flower</em> (San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2012).</p> <p>All Poems Copyright 2018 by Pamela Uschuk</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/biology" hreflang="en">Biology</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/writing" hreflang="en">Writing</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/environmental-science" hreflang="en">Environmental Science</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/geology" hreflang="en">geology</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/us-history" hreflang="en">U.S. History</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/music" hreflang="en">Music</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/sociology" hreflang="en">Sociology</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/world-history" hreflang="en">World History</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/geography" hreflang="en">Geography</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/visual-art" hreflang="en">Visual Art</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/sculpture" hreflang="en">Sculpture</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/foreign-languages" hreflang="en">Foreign Languages</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/drama" hreflang="en">Drama</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/wolves" hreflang="en">wolves</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/wolf" hreflang="en">wolf</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> Sun, 27 Jan 2019 22:34:06 +0000 yongli 3033 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org