COLORING

by Laura Lee Washburn

This drawing is part of an exhibition in Tucson, AZ of original watercolors and other artworks by kids whose families have fled to the U.S. seeking asylum. Casa Alitas operates a refugee shelter in a former Benedictine Monastery and offers art-making classes to traumatized kids released from detention.

“It’s not what you look at that matters,

  it’s what you see.”

—Henry David Thoreau

In the blue pool with jogging women
every morning this month I’ve seen
in distant tree yellow busted balloon.

I have ridden the packed dirt
on a brown three-speed bike
almost into long black snake.

I have been to the marsh
where green leaves reflect
from brown tannin waters.
I will go there again.

I have felt unease, eaten
too much sugar, sagged
at the loneliness of bad friendships.

I’ve helped light one hundred and forty candles
after dark, listened to testimony, heard
the names of six dead migrant children:

Darlyn, Jakelin, Felipe, Juanito, Wilmer, Carlos.
I’ve read the judicial arguments on soap
and sleep, toothpaste, blankets.

When the green leaves blow,
I watch through bamboo blinds,
live action but dim impressions of bright.

I have driven in blind white
sun on the turnpike’s upward curve
and made it south enough to see again.

I have driven twenty in storm
shocking white water rains
when the pea-sized summer hail
begins to tap.
I have not turned
around at the lake in the road.
 —I have judged and been judged—

Stupid people    this local woman
hosted a vigil because of “images” she saw.
How does she know [How does she know?]
the images are really detention centers?
    people who serve the DARK!
    scum invading      disease and violence
our president taking down the evil
Stop believing or search for the truth
everything is really a lie!

Laura Lee Washburn has taught how to tell creditable sources from biased sources, has never been held in a cell, and donates her time to a Southeast Kansas organization that helps women in poverty resolve crises.

I WOKE UP IN TECHNICOLOR

by Laura Lee Washburn




Couches, aquamarine, gold, avocado,
raspberry bubble gum, blue
stacked to the ceiling.

Behind my blonde, so blonde head
and coiffed, curled bob,
the air was marigold.

I had a standard poodle
with a rhinestone, no, diamond
collar.  My gay best friend

wore tight pants, and, I’m sure,
was in love with me
all day and night long.  We talked

with ivory phone cords circling
our wrists.  We were bound
to the colors of saturated pink sky

and the crushed red velvet lounge.
Come what may, let it.
Be what it is, be

until we rest in peace,
gingham polka dot plaid
and the green green grass under
our white patent leather feet.

Laura Lee Washburn is a University Professor at Pittstate.  She’s the author of This Good Warm Place and Watching the Contortionists and has a couple of manuscripts up for grabs.  The Co-President of the Southeast Kansas fund, Women Helping Women, she is often involved in raising money to combat poverty, but this month has turned her efforts to supporting a small press through the Tupelo 30/30 project.

BLOOD ON THE DOG'S MOUTH

by Laura Lee Washburn





After dinner we have cherry pie.
We are four people from three continents.

The pie: thick with red, butter
crusted: we are sure some old woman made it.

My friends say French and German words
with some ease.  Cherries burst under forks.

We drink tall glasses of iced tea
made with cool water from the kitchen tap.

We have come to live on the plains.
The town festival with a European name offers pie today.

George Washington, cherry pie, pure
dumb luck to be born in this country, and deliberate movements.

What must you be born to
to go out on the land against the oil machine?

You must love the water like life
to tie yourself to the digging machine that doesn’t stop

even with thin court orders.  You must
know the earth is not yours to give while others

train dogs to tear at strangers, loose dogs trained
to tear human skin.

The blood on the dogs’ mouths is human blood.

All over America while folks sit down to dinner,
the blood on the dogs’ mouths is the human blood of water protectors.

Breathe through your nose not your mouth.
[Cry liiiiiiii if you still have the bloody red heart to cry it.]
#nodapl

Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Apple Valley Review, Whale Road Review, Ninth Letter, The Sun, OccuPoetry, and Valparaiso Review.  Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri.  She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women.

THE RACE

by Laura Lee Washburn

11 - 17 March 2016 issue

I catch foul balls on my tongue:
words like “Get ‘im out of here” USA
“Go back to China” USA, “Make America—”
USA I wash my hair
in the shower with soap that smells like berries.
On the corner, a pan handler
asks for food, “Every Little Bit
Helps. Peace.”  As-salamu alaykum.
I drive by, the food bank six blocks north,
the county shelter closed, funds moved
west where Kansans vote Republican
harder than we do—GodBlessAmericaJakesFireworks.
I can no longer tolerate words USA USA
balloon launches, USA  the simple wish
peace be with you, and prayers (Jake’s Fireworks),
that choke fledglings, twist
in the guts of opossums.
     You can make a hen tell the truth
no one hears.  You can’t fake an egg.
They come honest from the hens,
a kind of fragile truth.  Eat spaghetti
by the ax full, carry water
in a berry basket, eat bullets, breathe
turbine—Make America great.

A screwdriver helps a Carpenter Joe twist
screws into holes.  If I could,
I’d go back to sleep, great again.
Don’t cut off your tail USA USA; drape it over your
arm, USA wear a top hat USA before it’s too late
make America catch the foulest balls
on their tongues and swallow.


Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.  Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri.  She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women.

IF GOD GOT US TO IT, HE'LL GET US THROUGH IT, SAID THE MUFFIN PAN TO THE BACON PRESS

 by Laura Lee Washburn

Image source: John Darkow/Columbia [MO] Daily Tribune

You like your muffin pan with butter.
You eat it whole so the cups don’t stick
in your throat.  The butter helps.
You like your waiters black in white face.

You like stock still dark black men with trays for a party.
You drink iced tea with mint.  You smile
and belch a champagne-coated muffin tin burp.
You’re like a cookbook with hand drawings

of the Skyline drive, Smithfield ham on buttered
biscuits.  The muffin tin constipates you
a little bit.  China will manage spiral-cut hams
with your face on their packages.  China
makes your muffin tins bigger every year.

You eat muffin tins for lunch.  You eat
muffin tins, buttered, for breakfast.
You keep the cast iron bacon press greased
with bacon fat.  Nothing sticks in your craw.

The cast iron bacon press tastes like Tennessee
in 1963.  Your little monkey cooks it best.
Everything’s so hard to pass these days,
goes down easy, but sticks and stinks, a black
hard stool in your soft pink bowels.


Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.  Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri.  She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky.