h What You WriteThe easiest way to separate yourself from the unformed blobby mass of “aspiring” writers is to a) actually write and b) actually finish. That’s how easy it is to clamber up the ladder to the second echelon. Write. And finish what you write. That’s how you break away from the pack and leave the rest of the sickly herd for the hungry wolves of shame and self-doubt. And for all I know, actual wolves.
CHUCK WENDIG
Bow-Moo-Meow: Poems and Stories about Animals
Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 7:00 p.m.
Poetry, Prose: Jennifer Bullis, Rick Clark, J. Glenn Evans, David D. Horowitz, Bethany Reid, and Douglas Schuder
Room 202, The Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Avenue North, Seattle
Telephone: David, 206-633-2725
E-mail: David, rosealleypress@juno.com
URL: www.rosealleypress.com; www.historicseattle.org
StringTown Magazine & StringTown Press Reading | Sept. 14 Readings from area StringTown contributors including Bethany Reid, Judith Skillman, Larry Crist, Polly Buckingham, Caroline Allen, Anita Boyle, and James Bertolino, followed by a reception and signing. 7 p.m., Naked City Brewery and Taphouse, free.
Wow, my name on the Seattle Times Literary Arts Calendar! I’d love to see you there. Stringtown is a gorgeous publication, and I’ll be selling SPARROW, too, at a discounted price.
It’s the 87th anniversary of my dear father’s birth. So here’s a poem, written around 1990 and never published.
Deer
From the kitchen window I watch my father
fence in chickenwire two young trees, one apple,
one plum. Deer that visit each dusk
have cropped the tender growth of these,
Mom’s roses, too. The neighbor, visiting,
says he’ll shoot them. Mom says, I hope not.
What is it that holds them now, mother
and father, her husband, his wife?
He, retired after fifty years of taking trees
out of forests; she, whose sons
no longer hunt the deer she ground
for venison-burger, sliced into steaks.
Who will harvest apples and plums
from these trees when they have grown beyond
the reach of deer? Who will look up
from apple-butter making and love the sight
of deer as much as that of roses?
