Still Raining, Still Dreaming

It's still raining in Seattle, now for the 25th day in a row. Really windy last night, too. Eeeesh. When will it end?

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Received a copy of Justin Evans chapbook, Four Way Stop, in the mail today. Justin is behind the blog Untalented Writer, and hails from Springville, Utah, where Dean's family is from. We discovered through a bit of genealogy research that he and Dean (whose mother's maiden name was Evans) are actually related: Dean's great-grand-father and Justin's great-great-grandfather where brothers. So I guess they are cousins about 10-12 times removed?

Justin is not an untalented writer, though. I am enjoying the chapbook. Here's an excerpt from section three of "Hunting Chinese Pheasants," a long poem that details a fair amount of family history:

. . .
"My grandfather's father died
when he accidentally shot himself
taking his rifle out of the closet.

One month after my great-great-grandmother
died on my grandmother's side,
her second husband, deep inside a bottle of gin,
walked onto their front lawn and shot himself with his Colt .32.

My great-uncle's first wife ironed out a summer dress,
called him at the office:
"be sure to take care of the boys,"
went to the basement to kill herself--
pulling the rifle's trigger with her toe.

I remember shoving pheasant tail feathers
into 25.06 shell casings,
crimping them tight, throwing them
at the Evening Star, trying once more
to give them flight."


Dean's side of the family also had a lot of suicides, alcoholism, and shooting, so it must have been in the genes. Dean also remembers attaching pheasant feathers to shell casings as a kid, and throwing them in the air so he could watch them fly. Fascinating coincidences.

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In other news: some recent poems accepted for In Posse (on line) and Bloom (yay!). I'm especially happy about the poem for Bloom, which is a somewhat long narrative love poem. I believe the In Posse issue is going to be an all-Seattle (or all-Northwest?) issue, guest-edited by the lovely and talented Susan Rich.