as a man’s”), does not recall the woman

I remember for her farm in Bothell

before it became a Seattle suburb, helping me gather

raspberries from the long canes

she planted by her porch. We spent an afternoon

together sweating in the matching

long-sleeved checkered shirts she’d made us,

according to the photo

I no longer have, and cannot remember

whether is the source or confirmation

of this memory. Only the papery, gray-green

streaks of road dust on the canes, a bowl

of chipped porcelain inside of which

were raspberries. Very red, very sweet, furred

like my friend’s upper lip I remember

between my teeth as we stood

on the docks. The smell

of iron and winter mist, her mouth

like nothing I have tasted since.

When It Is Over, It Will Be Over

WHEN IT IS OVER, IT WILL BE OVER

pen and ink reproduction by Troy Passey of a line by

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Hurricane of what must be

only feeling, the painting’s

sentence circling to black

on blank, ever-

tightening spiral

of words collapsing

to their true gesture: meaning

what we read

when not reading,

as the canvas buckles

in the damp: freckled

like the someone

I once left sleeping

in a hotel room to swim

the coast’s cold shoals, fine veils

of sand kicked up by waves where

I found myself enclosed

in light: sudden: bright

tunnel of minnows

like scatterings of

diamond, seed pearl whorled

in the same

thoughtless thought

around me: one column of scale

turning at a moment’s decision,

a gesture I

was inside or out

of, not touching but

moving in

accord with them: they

would not wait for me, thickening

then breaking apart as I slid

inside, reading me

for threat or flight by the lift

of my arm, as all

they needed to know

of me was in the movement:

as all this sentence

breaks down to O’s and I’s,

the remnants of someone’s

desires or mine so that

no matter whether I return

to that cold coast, they will

never be there: the minnows

in their bright spiraling

first through sight, then

through memory,

the barest

shudderings of sense:

O and I

parting the mouth with a cry

that contains—

but doesn’t need—

any meaning.

Letter from the Pribilofs

LETTER FROM THE PRIBILOFS

Elizabeth Beaman to her sister,

Pribilof Islands, July 13, 1880

Blunt, bullying, this season’s bachelors climb

the rocks near Nah Speel, sleek backs blackening

the waters inside their seacatchy. The old

bulls line up in rows as at a burlesque

house, while their matkas roll in surf, thrash

upon the parade ground’s volcanic sands

turned glassy from the constant passing of seals.

One by one the bulls slip the line to claim

their females, each dragging his choice to a private

catch, as the bull gathers what he can,

the matka cuffed and bitten on the throat

if she struggles, the bull shaking her, banging