Four Captivating Poems

The trio of poems by Sybil Smith in our November issue are full of surprising elements. They take place against the backdrop of an Alaskan salmon run, when the fish famously swim upstream to spawn. One poem includes a fertility spell, and one ends with a lullaby that reads like a prayer for the future. Sybil’s writing mixes the hard facts of biology with lyricism and a sense that, maybe, our pleas in the dark don’t go unheard. John Hodgen’s “The Lonesomest Sound in the World” casts its own spell as it artfully tells the story of a grim act of childhood cruelty. With his precise, unsettlingly beautiful writing, the author has captured a truth you can’t look away from, in a poem you won’t forget anytime soon. I highly recommend listening to the poems as read by the authors—just click the Play buttons below.

 

The Spell
By Sybil Smith

Only at two, three, four
in the morning
is it finally quiet,
the hour of the bear.
There is still a little
light on the river
though I look through many opacities:
of mist, of dust on the panes,
of mucus
my eyes collected in sleep.

I have come here
by the window,
shuddering slightly
and holding my breasts,
to cast a spell
I promised myself
in a fanciful moment.

I know now,
having woken
and climbed away from you
in the chill
that I can do it.
Cast a spell
on my body.

Swim, sperm, swim
my vagina is a dark river,
my womb a quiet lake,
my oviducts branching streams
to bring you home.

Wrapped in shadow,
I am joined
by all the poster goddesses
in these barracks rooms,
their pubic mounds
covered with G-strings
patterned like nets;
huge, motherly breasts
offered in their hands like fruit
or straining against wet shirts
as they rise out of the surf.
I imagine their bellies
growing overnight,
such that by morning
the swell is marked
by silvery scales,
and they hold not their breasts
but that taut skin,
rubbing it absently
as pregnant women will.

Old Mekoryuk hunter, primal raven,
husband, whoever is listening:

May our children
be as determined
as the salmon and
as clever as the evolution
that shaped them,
and may they have moments still
to be only beautiful.

The Woman Who Counted Salmon
By Sybil Smith

When I went to the dock yesterday,
the sun was shining with an intensity
I knew was partly my mood.
I was glad for everything,
even the eye of a salmon
popped out somehow,
just lying there on the boards.

And the woman with blond hair
who came up to talk to me—
yes, her especially.

I’ve forgotten how we got on
the subject of counting salmon
though I recall the details
of her cancer,
how it had marbled
her femaleness like blue cheese
and the whole mess
had to be pitched out
like a bad apple.

She’d worked for Alaska Fish and Game,
sitting in a tower above the river,
where a carpet of white plastic
had been rolled
across the bottom
so the salmon would stand out better.
She had a hand clicker,
and that was the only sound
sometimes at night—
click, click, click—
the beam of a spotlight
focused on the water
like a cord
pulsing between them.
I found myself
going down to the bank
on my hands and knees
to watch them,
swimming and dying at the same time,
pieces of skin falling away,
and I’d . . .

She couldn’t hide
the sudden, luminous
shine in her eyes.
I didn’t turn away.

Don’t Be Afraid
By Sybil Smith

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game
has closed the river today.
The subsistence nets remain
staked along the beach,
but the cloudy, broad, cold
body of the bay
is quiet,
and the Vigilant patrols the
boats at anchor.

There was a time when salmon spawned
in every river in the north,
feeding Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon,
and pilgrim in turn;
when they were so plentiful
the churls fed them to swine;
when they caused the river
to spill its banks and overturned
small boats.

It took the death of the runs
on the Charles, Merrimack,
Columbia, Connecticut, and more—
and their near destruction here—
to teach us temperance.

Now the Japanese agree
to quotas on the high sea,
and we let a certain number
through to spawn. Still,
ARCO wants to drill for oil
off the Aleutian chain,
Canada wants to build more dams,
and some talk now
of salmon farmers here, too,
saying runs are inefficient.
Look at the waste!

A man wearing a cap
that says Quality Control
assures me this harvest
is good for the genus.
If too many fish pass upstream,
they run out of room
and dig up each other’s redds.

What can I possibly say?
Some die so that others can live,
only the strong survive,
we are damned or redeemed collectively,
we learn from our mistakes,
don’t we?

Sometimes in the night I dream
of a silver raven
lifting into the sky
from the air base at King Salmon,
destroying his creation
as he did the first stone man.
I see an evil mist,
a terrible coldness,
the darkness borne in his beak,
and I wake and want to live.

And if I can’t sleep at night,
I whisper a lilting, lying lullaby
that has no end and no beginning,
that is supple and can hold anything,
that is better than sleeplessness and pain:

Don’t be afraid,
the fishermen are gone,
the boats are in dry dock,
the roe lies undisturbed.
Don’t be afraid,
the fish house is empty and locked,
the villagers’ salmon is smoked,
the nets are rolled up in the sheds.
Don’t be afraid,
my baby is starting to kick,
the pinups are clothed in the dark,
the Yupik are back in Kipnuk.
Don’t be afraid,
the bloaters, the ghostfish,
are nothing but bones in the sea wrack,
the river is freezing,
the bears are fat.
Don’t be afraid,
the F-15s are in their hangars,
the officers are dancing at the club,
the Russians are having tea and jam.
Don’t be afraid,
the salmon are learning to sing
out in the ocean now,
they’re humming like the rims
of crystal wineglasses,
and when they swim back again
they’ll sing themselves out of the nets,
they’ll sing the fishermen to weeping,
sing the pilots into trances,
sing God awake,
sing me asleep.
Don’t be afraid.

The Lonesomest Sound in the World
By John Hodgen

Start by rounding up the usual suspects. There’s Hank Williams’s lonesome whippoorwill,
making everybody who’s ever heard it cry. There’s his wife, Audrey, kicking Hank out every
time he says he’s stopped drinking, and him asking to come home, but then drinking again,
lonesome as he is. There’s the night she kicks him out for the very last time, Hank telling her he
won’t last another year, and sure enough he doesn’t. While you’re at it, round up every mourning
dove there ever was, even the ones still learning to master the whisper, the pause, that slow
rolling sigh. And round up every lover’s name cried out under heat lightning skies, Maisie or
Jasmine or Kerry or Kitty or Sweet Baby Blue. And don’t forget that shot heard round the world,
and every bloody shot that came after that. Or the kid on the beach at Normandy with his guts
hanging out, trying to push them back inside himself, crying, Momma, Momma, because he
understands now, for sure, that he’s going to die. Or the single-engine Cessna flying along
the coastline, looking for someone, maybe looking for you, the sound going in and out as it flies.
Or every wish you’ve ever made to find your heart’s true home, all of them leaving this place
and then falling back like little silver knives.

Or the Jolly house on Old Poorhouse Lane, where the whole family lived, all five of them, while
Mr. Jolly tried to finish it before winter closed in. But the snow came early, and they had to
hunker down in the cellar with half of a roof, and tar paper rolls hanging down. When the kids
came to school, we tortured them because they smelled and wore the same clothes every day,
until they just shut down, not even looking at us after a while, never raising their hands, never
saying a word. And in the spring when Mr. Jolly started framing the first floor, he never got far
with that either. One day I guess he simply gave up, joined the lost army of failed fathers, until
finally the Jollys moved away. We broke all the windows then, my brothers and me, throwing
stones like David at Goliath. I remember the glass shattering, how we laughed, our joy never
quelled. I wanted the family to know, no matter where they ended up, no one would like them,
that none of them would ever be held. I wanted them to see the stones raining down while they
hugged the ground, their hands covering their faces. That kind of lonesome. The lonesomest kind.