All of them are dead now. My father and mother, bedded together

under their matching stones. Their married friends, close by.

The crystal and good plates all washed and put away in other homes,

no party food left over. My job was to whip the cream for dessert

and ride behind on their fishing weekends like a seventh wheel,

along with our Airedale who wore striped socks over his muddy paws

in the house. Spirits accelerated toward cocktail hour in the red

ranch kitchen where they made big to-do’s over their drinks—

then feigned concern they might corrupt me. The men stirred

the air, clustered at the bar, moved among the women conferring

over the bubbling stew. My mother, flushed and pretty

as a cornucopia of summer fruit. That September before college

I joined the happy group on a fly-fishing river in Montana

and slept on the cottage’s foldout couch. Late one evening, lights doused,

I was alone with Mother and one of the men, not quite uncle

not quite friend though I newly recognized that he was handsome.

I’ve erased whatever he said that convinced me he’d forgotten

I was there. But there I was, afraid to breathe, confused to learn

how delicately balanced these practitioners of marriage must be.

Then they retired to their separate rooms, though a presence hung in the air

like perfume

Married Love by Kathleen Flenniken

A poem by Kathleen Flenniken

Married Love

All of them are dead now.  My father and mother, bedded together

under their matching stones. Their married friends, close by.

The crystal and good plates all washed and put away in other homes,

no party food left over.  My job was to whip the cream for dessert

and ride behind on their fishing weekends like a seventh wheel,

along with our Airedale who wore striped socks over his muddy paws

in the house. Spirits accelerated toward cocktail hour in the red

ranch kitchen where they made big to-do’s over their drinks—

then feigned concern they might corrupt me. The men stirred

the air, clustered at the bar, moved among the women conferring

over the bubbling stew. My mother, flushed and pretty

as a cornucopia of summer fruit.  That September before college

I joined the happy group on a fly-fishing river in Montana

and slept on the cottage’s foldout couch. Late one evening, lights doused,

I was alone with Mother and one of the men, not quite uncle

not quite friend though I newly recognized that he was handsome.

I’ve erased whatever he said that convinced me he’d forgotten

I was there. But there I was, afraid to breathe, confused to learn

how delicately balanced these practitioners of marriage must be. 

Then they retired to their separate rooms, though a presence hung in the air

like the perfume of a living thing.

Kathleen Flenniken

More poems by Kathleen Flenniken are available through her website.

Upcoming Readings: January 2024

* Thurs January 18th (in person), 7:00-8:30pm

Kevin Craft & Friends (Book Launch for Traverse) at Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum (93 Pike St #307, Seattle, WA). Free & all ages.

Featured Readers: Katharine Ogle, Rebecca Hoogs, Jason Whitmarsh, Sierra Nelson, & Kevin Craft; Chris Haugen (Guitar).

* Tues January 23rd (in person), 7:00 pm 

Cascadia Field Guide Reading at 3rd Place Books Seward Park (5041 Wilson Ave S., Seattle, WA). Free & all ages.

Featured Readers: Betsy Aoki, Christianne Balk, Kevin Craft, Laura Da', Kathleen Flenniken, Rebecca Hoogs, Robert Lashley, Claudia Castro Luna, Shankar Narayan, Sierra Nelson, Christianne Balk, & Martha Silano. 

Natural History, by Kathleen Flenniken.

you've outrun / your own lived years

Kathleen Flenniken, “Instead of Sheep,” Post Romantic

Bookish Poetry

Books by Billy Collins

Books by Erica Jong

Books Are So Much Like Life by Jack Beeching

There is No Frigate Like a Book by Emily Dickinson

reading by Joanne Burns

Reading Milosz by Adam Zagajewski (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of their Titles by Billy Collins

Reading by Window Light, Late October by David Wyatt

Woman Reading by Kathleen Flenniken

ON READING by Wendy Jenkins

On Reading Romeo and Juliet by Chen Kwei

The Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space by Jeffrey Skinner

The Bookshop by Amy Lowell

Bookstore by Hugh Seidman

from A Pillow Book:  "A Great Book can be read again and again..." by Suzanne Buffam

Prompt 11: Read Kathleen Flenniken's "What I Saw" and James Wright's "A Blessing"; then write about an unexpected sighting you had of a person or an animal. Make both the setting and the character you witnessed vivid-even if your glimpse was actually fleeting. Reflect on why this sight has lingered in your mind.

Seven-thirty AM. It's the weekend but unlike everyone else, I don't get to sleep in. I follow my usual weekend routine. Except for this time, the mobile app for Starbucks doesn't work. Too tired not to get coffee but not willing to risk the line, I decide to get Caribou instead. I don't usually go there but I decided that it might be nice to change it up. I get the usual, shocked at the price difference. When I pull up to the window, I see her. Her hair is a lovely auburn shade and the morning sun reflects off of it in a way that makes her look ethereal. It is too early for this crisis and I stumble over my words as I had her my rainbow debit card. Her hands are delicate, speckled with freckles in an adorable manner. She looks cheerful, despite the early hour. She compliments my glasses, eyes lighting up and mouth upturned. I blush and assume that will be the end of that, most people move on after giving me the compliment. But, she continues on. She asks me if they are real and where I got them, a reassuring smile gracing her lips and reflected in her kind eyes. As I answer her, I see her excitement rise, she continues to engage in this conversation as she hands me my drink, explaining where she got her glasses and comparing the two sites, hands a fluttering. Her cheeks flush a bit as she realizes she has been rambling, though I don't really mind listening. Her voice is a calming sound to my ears and I could listen to it all day, had I not needed to get to work. After bidding me a good day, I drive away in higher spirits than I have in days. I think about her off and on the rest of the day, her simple conversation heightens my mood for the rest of the day, and nothing that happens can diminish that. Maybe it was her kind smile or her cheerful attitude at such an early time. Maybe it was the way she continued past the basic compliment and seemed to want a genuine conversation. Whatever it was, she stuck in my mind. Maybe I'll go to Caribou more often.

The sea of regret that surges and retreats and sucks at our feet, a tide that takes us nowhere.

Kathleen Flenniken, from “Seven Seas”

A little detail, printing Kathleen Flenniken’s poem on Mary Ashton’s paper for @handpapermaking broadside. #washingtonwomenartists #handmadepaper #poetrybroadside #letterpress #catchword #deckledaredevil https://www.instagram.com/p/B2xWtRphEqf/?igshid=313pot93s6o6

Viral Dailies, Penultimate

I skipped a day yesterday. A little lie to continue calling these Viral Dailies under those circumstances. But, alas, here we go all the same for National Poetry Month’s penultimate offering. Today’s comes from 2012 Washington State Poet Laureate, Kathleen Flennikan.

Kathleen Flenniken is the author of three poetry collections.  Plume (University of Washington Press, 2012) Her first book, Famous …

View On WordPress

A poem by Kathleen Flenniken

Sarah Chang plays violin

and stamps her foot like a flamenco dancer. White flames lick the hem of her Madame X dress and the orchestra leans in, warming their hands to her fire. The heat of her furious bow. Her smoke. She's rubbed Tchaikovsky free of his genie bottle. He is ready to grant any wish. A man seated two rows down begins to tick and twitch, his finely shaved neck in a spasm of abandoned control. His wife turns to him, concerned, wraps her arm loosely about his shoulders. And you and I? A man in rapt profile and his wife, a spigot of weeping, streaming gratitude to this girl whose playing reveals who I am––lover, mother and daughter, afraid, alight, awake, alone. Nothing, again, we'll ever talk about. I grab your enormous hand and let her violin sing what I can't say myself. As we drive home two cars cut and weave through the steady traffic. Their tail lights careen. We gasp but they cross untouched and bleed into the future. You can't hear her anymore? I almost ask as you touch and touch the brake. And you switch on the radio.

Kathleen Flenniken

More poems by Kathleen Flenniken are available through her website.

Readings

MURMURATIONS Nov. 29th, 2023 (in person & online), 7pm, Murmurations: WITS Teaching Artists Reading, at Common Area Maintenance (CAM), 2125 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA.  Free & all ages. More info & to watch: https://lectures.org/event/murmurations-11-29-23/ & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slh3Re46yS8

CASCADIA FIELD GUIDE READING (Seattle) Jan. 23rd, 2024 (in person), 7pm, Cascadia Field Guide Reading, at 3rd Place Books - Seward Park, 5041 Wilson Ave S., Seattle, WA. Free & all ages. Featured Readers: Betsy Aoki, Kevin Craft, Laura Da', Kathleen Flenniken, Rebecca Hoogs, Robert Lashley, Claudia Castro Luna, Shankar Narayan, Sierra Nelson, Christianne Balk, and Martha Silano. 

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Related to Loon by Jackie McManus

TO ORDER GO TO: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/related-to-loon-a-first-year-teacher-in-tulyagmyut-by-jackie-mcmanus/

RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY

Jackie McManus is the author of the 2018 poetry book, The Earthmover’s Daughter. She has been published in Sky Island Journal, Cathexis Northwest, Front Porch Review, Thimble Literary Journal, among many others. She holds an M.A. in English and in Teaching. Whether it’s the Kuskokwim,, the Gallatin, the Yellow or the Columbia, she always writes near a river, usually with mountains in sight.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Related to Loon: a first year teacher in Tuluksak by Jackie McManus

“Church on the Kuskokwim River” is a brilliant poem; intensely personal, yet supremely accessible, the ebb and flow of restraint and revelation…rewards us in ways that linger… [The] poem’s imagery is vivid; its voice and structure spoke to us immediately. [McManus’] ability to extend a metaphor tenderly and unflinchingly is a true gift. [It] will touch the hearts and minds of thousands at a critical time in the history of our species; we look forward to sharing it with the world.

–Sky Island Journal

In Related to Loon, a first-year teacher turns student of life in a remote Alaskan Village. From the very first poem, we recognize Jackie McManus as a skilled storyteller—playful, serious, subtle, respectful, attuned to language and the delicate art of just enough. In the short time it takes to read her finely wrought collection (interwoven with first graders’ marvelous haiku), you’ll arrive and live in a village on the tundra and wonder and won’t want to leave. This little book is an absolute delight.

–Kathleen Flenniken, 2012 Poet Laureate of Washington

In this series of narrative poems, interspersed with children’s haiku, McManus takes readers on an Alaskan adventure, a journey where the narrator recounts stories of teaching native children and her immersion in a culture that is both strange and wonderful. “These are not my words,” … “the words are old, 
because the words are sacred, their words the words of ancestors.” These are words that will charm you. These are stories that are warm and full of light.

–Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate, 2017-2018, author of A Theory of Lipstick, and Grief Bone

As poignant as they are powerful, Jackie McManus‘s poems explore humility, humanity, and the ever-shrinking distance between the two. Her work is as rooted as an oak tree, as propulsive as a salmon stream, and as breathtaking as the Alaskan landscape of which she writes. Don’t just read her poems, allow them to become a part of you.

–B.J. Hollars, Associate Professor and author of several nonfiction books, most recently Midwestern Strange

Drawing from her experience teaching Yup’ik children on the Alaska tundra, McManus has composed a bittersweet ode about an ancient, isolated village on a collision course with the modern world. At turns, tragic and hopeful, always poignant, her voice is authentic. Related to Loon is a compelling read.

–Dale Brandenburger, author of Grizzly Trade

#flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry

Cloud Pharmacy

Cloud Pharmacy by Susan Rich

"Cloud Pharmacy is a book of lyric fire. In our epoch of quick and shallow literary conversation it is rare to come across such level of attentiveness as one finds in this book."—Ilya Kaminsky "In a central sequence, Rich explores nineteenth-century photographer Hannah Maynard's proto-surrealistic images, looking in grief-heavy places for revelation. The result is wonderfully strange and unsettling; this is Rich's most haunting collection yet."—Kathleen Flenniken "Rich's gorgeous poems affix moments, both magnificent and minute. And in exquisite and playful poems, a pageant of a life in process develops before our eyes."—Oliver de la Paz Susan Rich is the author of three previous collections of poetry. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Download : Cloud Pharmacy More Book at: Zaqist Book

Mary's Dust by Melinda Mueller w Music by Lori Goldston (Entre Ríos Books) "speaks through a stunning array of formal constraints" - Kathleen Flenniken #SPDhandpicked

20% off all month w/ code HANDPICKED