Category: poetry by Sue Fagalde Lick

Mother Nature Joins Us on Our Walk

The picture that inspired the poem that follows: seven female elk in a field with trees and a tan-colored house behind them. 
Boxing Day Visitors

Almost home, we turn the corner
and skid to a sudden startled stop.
Elk. Seven cows staring at us
from the field beside our house.

Neighbors reported sightings,
we saw black-marble droppings,
but here in the coastal forest,
we thought we were in charge.

The dog frozen, it’s up to me.
Advance or retreat, act tough
or cajole them like puppies?
God, they keep staring at us.

Seven hundred pounds times seven–
Oh Lord, more leap out of the bushes.
I raise my phone to take pictures
to share if we get home alive.

One of them crosses the road
to where the women with cats live.
Run Millie, run Frosty! Hey Kathy!
A glance. The scout rejoins the herd.

It’s December. My bum knee aches.
“Come on, Pup.” Timid steps,
nervous chatter. They look alike,
small heads, thick brown bodies.

As we pass the mailboxes, the elk
turn as one and whoosh through
an opening in the trees and vines.
Could they have been afraid of us?


--Sue Fagalde Lick, Dec. 26, 2022

Happy New Year, everyone! Thank you for reading Unleashed in Oregon. These elk were quite docile, but if elk feel threatened, they might charge. I used the zoom function on my camera to photograph them. Always give wild animals the right-of-way. https://www.travel-experience-live.com/elk-safety-how-safely-observe-wild-elk/

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Housecleaning Find Marks the Beginnings of a Poet

Little Boy Blue
By Mother Goose

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn;
The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.
Where’s the boy that looks after the sheep?
He’s under the haystack, fast asleep.”
Will you wake him? “No, Not I!
For if I do, he’s sure to cry.”

How did I become a poet? What made me scribble singsong verse as early as third grade? Cleaning out some drawers I rarely open, I found at least part of the answer. Buried among the hair ornaments I no longer have enough hair to use, I found a stack of books from way back in my childhood. Most are pretty beat up from frequent fondling by children. Among them were:

I also found a collection of nature books for kids and Writer’s Digest magazines from the 1960s when Grandma Rachel was grooming me to be a writer. A poet herself, she kept feeding me poetry books, among them the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Browning, Marianne Moore and The Viking Book of Poetry of the English-Speaking World. Being the odd teenager that I was, I read them all and wrote poems of my own. Sixty years later, I’m still at it. 

Tucked inside One Hundred Best Poems for Boys and Girls, I found a poem of my own. Written in pencil, the words are barely visible. Great art? Lord no, although I might have had a successful career writing greeting cards. 

Don’t Forget to Think of Me

Summer is coming very fast.
Soon it will be here at last.

It’s a time to your hobbies pursue,
A time to find the real you.

A time to let your thoughts go free,
A time, I hope, to think of me.

Summer is a time of fun.
I wish no sadness to anyone,

A time to go to brand new places,
A time to see old and new faces.

I’m wishing now, a lot of fun
And joy and peace to everyone.

When summer days are gay and free,
Don’t forget to think of me.

It’s doggerel, yes, but this is what some of us were reading in the 1950s and early 1960s. We shared Ogden Nash’s humorous verses, Rod McKuen’s sentimental offerings, and the plain-spoken poems of Robert Frost. Poetry progressed from rhyme and rhythm into free verse, rap, and slam poetry. We might roll our eyes as the singsong verse of my childhood, but it got me started.

From One Hundred Best Poems:

Barefoot Days
By Rachel Field

In the morning, very early,
  That’s the time I love to go
Barefoot where the fern grows curly
  And grass is cool between each toe,
     On a summer morning-O!
     On a summer morning!

That is when the birds go by
  Up the sunny slopes of air,
And each rose has a butterfly
  Or a golden bee to wear;
And I am glad in every toe–
       Such a summer morning-O!
       Such a summer morning!

The stuff I grew up on, that my mother read to my brother and me every night, and Grandma Rachel bestowed for every Christmas and birthday, exposed me to the joys of playing with words and sharing them out loud. It was a valuable gift that resonates today as I sit down to write a new poem on my laptop in Google docs. We no longer use fountain pens or fat pencils, but the goal is still the same: to capture what we see and experience in a compact collection of words using imagery, rhythm, word play, and yes, sometimes rhyme. 

When I meet people who don’t read, it saddens me. My brother and I were lucky that our mother read to us, and she took us to the library every two weeks to pick up another stack of books. If parents don’t read to their kids and set an example of reading for pleasure, how will their children pick up the habit? Will they ever be exposed to poems and stories that don’t appear on a screen? 

When they hear “hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock” or “Jack and Jill went up the hill,” will they know the lines that come next or shrug and go back to their phones? 

We have an obligation to pass our poems and stories to the next generation. That’s how writers and readers are born. This Christmas, buy a child a book. They’re easy to wrap, easy to mail, and might stay with them all their lives.  

PS: You can find my adult poems in my chapbooks Gravel Road Ahead and The Widow at the Piano: Poems by a Distracted Catholic. 

PPS: Oregon Poetry Association is hosting a “Holiday/Anti-Holiday” poetry open mic on Zoom on Dec. 13 at 7 p.m. PST. You don’t have to live in Oregon to join in. Click here to register. (Click to December on the calendar, click on the event, and you’ll see the registration screen).

A MEMORIAL DAY MEMORY

My father, Ed Fagalde, and his grandmother, Louise Fagalde. Dad served in the Pacific in the U.S. Army Air Corps during WWII. I wrote this poem after he told me the story of their arrival home at the end of the war. 
MUSTERING OUT

When the war ended, we were ready to go home.
We heard about troop ships delayed, being prepared,
but anything that could float was fine with us.
We slept on the decks, didn’t have much food, but 
that was nothing new. I lost almost sixty pounds
in those years in Australia, Manila, New Guinea.
Not much chow. Dengue fever. I almost died.
No, we’d have jumped in and swam if we could.

I’ll never forget our first sight of the Golden Gate.
Everybody was out on deck, crying and cheering,
hundreds of people waving back at us.
Mustering out in San Francisco took forever.
Paperwork, medical exams, giving up our uniforms
for fear they carried diseases. They probably did.
They invited us to stay for a talk about the Army reserves.
Hell no, our CO told the guy. He turned to us:
“Do you want to get out of this man’s army?”
“Sir, yes sir!” we shouted back. 

I got a ride from a Mexican guy down to San Jose.
His family had come to pick him up.
We got to the ranch near midnight. I rang the bell,
got everybody out of bed, surprised my mom and dad.
We were all crying, couldn’t believe I’d made it home.
My brother was six feet tall with this big deep voice.
Yeah, it was something. I kept looking around.
It was all the same, but different, you know?
No, I’ll never forget that day. None of us will. 


--Sue Fagalde Lick
Previously published in Rattle Poetry Journal

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Distracted Catholic confesses via poems

Cover-Front-WidowPiano(web) 2Happy new Year! That greeting falls a little flat this week in view of events in the Middle East and the wildfires in Australia. The parties are over, and the weather is wet, windy and dark. Bleh, right? What’s left to look forward to?

I have something: a new book! The Widow at the Piano is another poetry chapbook, following fast on the heels of Gravel Road Ahead, which came out in October. The two are quite different. Gravel Road Ahead follows my Alzheimer’s journey with my late husband. Readers say they have found it comforting and inspiring.

The Widow at the Piano, subtitled Confessions of a Distracted Catholic, is bound to get me in trouble, although early readers have pronounced it smart, sassy, touching and funny. You see, it’s about being Catholic and playing the piano at church. Any time you get into politics, money or religion, folks are bound to get their dander up, and I’m expecting there will be those who don’t love this book.

That scares me, but I don’t think I have ever published anything that is so “me.” In my years in journalism, we could hide behind our allegedly impartial reporting. In my novels, I could say, “That’s not me.” This book is absolutely me, and I’m bound to take criticism personally.  Oh well, that’s what happens when you’re a writer.

I know I’m not a perfect Catholic. This book lays it out there for the world to see, how sometimes when I pray, I wonder if anyone is listening; how sometimes when I look like I’m praying, I’m analyzing the flower arrangements or wondering what the priest is wearing under his vestments; how sometimes I’m thinking about what I’m going to have for lunch when I’m supposed to be thinking about the body and blood of Christ. Distracted! That woman at the piano is the same woman who goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea, finds three other things to do and returns to her desk fifteen minutes later without having started the tea.

And yet, it’s a love story, too. God knows, I love doing music at church. As a widow coming to Mass alone, it gives me a place among all those couples and families. The liturgy is magic, and so is the music. I don’t work anymore at the church I wrote about. I’m at another church playing and singing for free and loving it. I’m considerably less distracted. But one of the virtues of the Catholic Church is that the Mass is the same all over the world, so in a way it doesn’t matter which specific parish I’m writing about.

The Widow at the Piano is available for discounted pre-orders now and is scheduled for publication on March 15. If I were you, I’d order a copy just for the gorgeous cover publisher Shawn Aveningo-Sanders of The Poetry Box has selected. It’s piano porn for those of us who love images of musical instruments.

I will be looking for opportunities to do readings and talks as much as possible in the coming months for both the Widow book and Gravel Road Ahead. Contact me at sufalick@gmail.com if you’re interested. I will be at the Author’s Fair being held next Saturday, Jan. 11 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Newport Public Library.

I started writing poetry as a little girl. I remember carrying around a little spiral notebook that fit in my pocket, writing sing-songy rhymes with a fat pencil with a big eraser. My skills have matured a little since then. Although I have published poetry in various journals and won some prizes, it has taken 60 years for my poems to appear in book form. Suddenly I have two poetry books within six months. So exciting.

I was sitting by my father’s hospital bed when I got the email that Finishing Line Press wanted to publish Gravel Road Ahead. “Dad, they want to publish my book,” I said, my head spinning a little with shock and surprise. Very ill and not a literary guy, he probably said something like “Good” and changed the subject, but it was a big deal for me. Dad is gone now, but I am grateful that in a year of tremendous loss, God sent me these two gifts.

And now I offer them to you. Here’s a teaser from The Widow at the Piano:

IF JESUS CAME TO MY DOOR

I’d say, “Excuse the mess”
He would. He might even
share the couch with the pit bull
and rub her balding belly
as she lies on her back, submissive,
which I probably ought to do, too,
but no, I’d be fixing my hair,
putting my laundry away,
offering Him coffee or tea,
and wondering if He was really He
or if I just let a bad guy in,
someone who would rape, rob, kill
or whip out a Kirby vacuum to sell.
But no, the guard dog’s upside down,
wide open to His blessed hands,
and she knows. She knows.

As we pray for peace and safety, I hope my words can offer some comfort or at least a few minutes of distraction. Just don’t forget the tea kettle.

 

 

Gravel Road Ahead pre-pub sales begin

Lick_Sue_Fagalde_COV_EMIn last week’s post, I talked about how I became a poet, and I told you about my first poetry chapbook, coming out later this year. This week, “pre-sales” for Gravel Road Ahead begin. Some of you will be receiving postcards in the mail very soon.

I have just gotten my first look at a mockup of the cover photo which will appear on the postcards. It may change a little in the final version, but it’s one more step forward. Thank God I don’t hate it. That’s my photo of one of the places Annie and I go walking. Before Annie, I walked it with Fred and Sadie. The gravel road is hard on shoes and the feet inside them, but worth it for where it takes you.

You’d think once you write the book and get it accepted, you could celebrate with a glass of champagne and relax. Nope. Now it’s time to promote and sell the book. Pre-publication sales are critical. In order to guarantee a full press run, I need to sell 55 copies in advance. I’m hoping my friends will help with this. The price, $14.99, seems a little steep, but if you think about it as paying 50 cents a poem, it’s not bad.

Sorry, it’s not available as an ebook. And it will not be available at Amazon.com until the book is published Oct. 11.

After Gravel Road Ahead is published in October, I will be looking for places to do readings, and I will have copies to sell then, but I would love it if you would pre-order a copy.

Order your copy by sending $14.99 plus $2.99 shipping (check or money order made out to “Finishing Line Press”) to Finishing Line Press, P.O. Box 1626, Georgetown, KY 40324. You can also order online at www.finishinglinepress.com. Here is the direct link to the book. Credit card orders will be processed through PayPal. Preordered copies ship Oct. 11, 2019.

How about this? If you preorder a copy, I will buy you lunch for an equivalent price if you can arrange to be here on the central Oregon coast. Ocean view and everything. I’m serious. Aside from writing poetry, going out to lunch is my favorite thing. And when I can do both at the same time, oh boy, life is good.

And if you don’t want to mess with the publisher, just tell me at sufalick@gmail.com how many copies you want and we’ll worry about payment and deliver later.

Here’s the title poem to whet your appetite:

GRAVEL ROAD AHEAD

Where my husband lives now, I don’t.
Each day he forgets more
details from the house we bought
with his VA loan. I don’t. I tend them,
sort his papers, pay his bills,
dust his antique rolltop desk.

I linger in his swivel chair,
wearing his red plaid shirt, staring
at my small hands peeking out
from frayed cuffs with missing buttons,
toying with his ballpoint pen.

I straighten his paper clips, delaying
my drive up the steep winding road
to where my husband lives now
in a numbered room with an ocean view,
where the pavement ends, and I don’t.

***

Family update: I have just returned from another trip to San Jose. My father moved from a skilled nursing facility to Somerset Senior Living, where he stayed for a few months after he broke his leg in 2017. It’s a very nice and very expensive place, located in a former convent. He’s settling in, still hoping to get back on his feet and resume his independent life. His biggest problem right now, besides not being able to stand up without help, is boredom, so if anyone can call or visit, that would be great. Email or Facebook message me for his address and phone number.

Annie spent a lovely week with the Cramer family while I was gone. She went to work with Sandy and played with David and the kids at home. She was still healing from her surgery for a growth on her leg that turned out to be benign, praise God. She’ll have a gnarly scar, but we’re done with the protective collar and she’s running around like nothing happened.

Have a great week. Help an author. Buy a book.

Weird Poetry-Writing Kid Gets Published

Sue 6719HLet’s talk about poetry. Wait! Don’t click away. And for God’s sake, don’t start reciting “Roses are red, violets are blue . . .” That’s the response I get from my brother. When I gave my father a homemade collection of my poems for Christmas a few years ago, he smiled at the dog picture on the cover and set it aside. I suspect the other copies met the same fate. (I have a few more, if you want one).

I do not come from poetry-reading people. Except one. My Grandma Rachel Fagalde, technically my step-grandmother, set me on the poetry path. She wrote poetry herself and fed me books of poetry, inscribed to “my dear little Susie” from “Gramma” Rachel. I read Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, Shakespeare, and obscure poets whose chapbooks she found at rummage sales. Someday my chapbooks may meet the same fate. I hope somebody else’s grandmother will buy a copy.

I was thrilled to receive those poetry books. I sat around reading them out loud, and I started writing my own poetry. The other kids thought I was weird.

I wrote my first poem, a ditty about Thanksgiving, at 7, got published in various school publications, and got paid for a poem that appeared in something called Valley Views when I was in high school. Poetry was my thing, but you can’t make a living writing poetry, so I majored in journalism at San Jose State and went into the newspaper biz, keeping my poetry on the side. When I finally made it through grad school at age 51, I earned a degree in creative nonfiction, not poetry. Now I write both.

Although my early efforts resembled the nursery rhymes I grew up with, all sing-songy and rhyming, today’s poems are much more conversational. I avoid twisted sentences and words like “ere,” “thou” and “o’er.” I rarely rhyme. So what makes it a poem instead of a short essay cut into lines? First, poems are compact. You can tell a whole story in a three-line haiku.

First autumn morning
the mirror I stare into
shows my father’s face.

– Murakami Kijo

Second, they use imagery. Read “My Mother’s Colander” by Dorianne Laux. See what I mean? I have a colander just like that, by the way. But it’s not just about the colander, is it?

I was a poetry-writing kid who became a poetry-writing grownup who is now a poetry-writing senior citizen. In recent years, I have published quite a few poems in literary magazines [see www.suelick.com for samples]. I love to read my poems to live audiences.

I am excited to report that my first poetry book will be coming out later this year from Finishing Line Press. Called Gravel Road Ahead, it is a chapbook, meaning a little book about 30 pages long, that follows the journey my late husband and I took through Alzheimer’s disease. I have published quite a few books of prose, but this is different. I am very excited. And nervous.

(Pre-orders are being taken through Aug. 16. Click here or email me at sufalick@gmail.com to tell me how many copies you want. )

To my amazement, since I drafted this post, another publisher accepted another chapbook. Currently titled The Widow at the Piano: Confessions of a Distracted Catholic, that one will be coming out next year.

Right now I’m focusing on Gravel Road Ahead because the pre-publication sales begin next Monday. I hope to show you the cover then and provide info on how to pre-order a copy.

In addition to the book, my poem, “Mustering out,” channeling my father’s voice, was published at www.rattle.com last month. They even paid me. Another poem, “They’ll Have to Order the Parts,” appeared in the Atticus Review on May 29.

Grandma Rachel used to send me copies of her own poems with her illegible letters. I collected some of them after she died. I suspect the people cleaning out the house threw some poems away, not realizing the precious gifts they were. She didn’t publish much. Instead she trained me to start my career with my first copies of Writer’s Digest and all those poetry books. Well, it took a few years, but I’ve done it.

Will I make money at this? No. Real poets have day jobs.

It’s sad when only poets read poetry. Believe me, it’s not all like the stuff your teachers might have made you read in high school. Give it a try.

A little poem for Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas! Here’s a little Christmas poem for you. Not every bit of it is true. I can’t stop rhyming! 
Love you, 
Sue
I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
I’ll be home for Christmas,
relaxing with my dog.
Because I’m lactose intolerant,
I won’t drink any nog,
but I will post on my blog.
I’ll be home for Christmas,
alone beside the tree,
unwrapping all the presents
I purchased just for me;
they’ll all fit perfectly.
I’ll be home for Christmas
after midnight Mass at ten
when we’re celebrating Jesus’ birth
and peace on earth to men,
singing “Jesu Bambino” again.
I’ll be home for Christmas.
It will look like I’m alone,
but I’ve got my dog beside me
and my family on the phone,
also fresh blueberry scones.
I’ll be home for Christmas
as the guy says in the song,
but home has many meanings
and not one of them is wrong.
When you sing, I sing along.
I’ll be home for Christmas,
no turkey, ham or roast.
I’m eating enchiladas
with a tall tequila toast
to my most enchanting host.
I’ll be home for Christmas.
You might hear me caroling
in my favorite red pajamas
with feet and everything—
and a little bit of bling.
I’ll be home for Christmas.
Don’t feel sorry for me.
In this house full of lights and food and song
with my twinkling artificial tree.
It’s exactly where I want to be.
I’ll be home for Christmas,
maybe playing my kazoo.
But if you ring my doorbell,
then my Christmas won’t be blue
‘cause you’ll be home for Christmas, too.
Copyright 2012 Sue Fagalde Lick
Post this without attribution and Santa will blow up your house. 
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