Linda Sillitoe

Letters to the Editor

Trip Toward Prayer

                        You can’t pray with a clenched brain 
                        Or fall asleep with fisted hands; 
                        But force one finger open at a time 
                        Until thoughts clatter loose and fall 
                        Like budded balls of crumpled paper. 

The Reaping

                Reading is one thing—and metaphors 
                imitate life in literature only. 
Yet when birds flapped a curtain of chatter over a sky-scrap

These are the Severely Retarded

Leaves of a different cut, 
perceiving other winds, 
the children blow in spring 
and laugh aloud like children. 

The Buffalo and the Dentist

                        Frontier Village, restored and furnished 
                        with relics of ancestral time 
                        includes live anachronisms. 
                        So we saunter to see the buffalo, laughing, 
                         swinging up between corral boards 
                        and nearly boot it in the rump as we demand, 
                        “Where’s the buffalo?—oh!” 

Still-Life Study of an Ancestor

Warren Walling (seed of fishers of the sea 
who warred to birth a nation of vast vision) 
studied thrift, hard labor, common sense, 
belief in God and good; grasped the Word 

Waiting for Lightning

Again I am the child hunched into a tense ball
            in bed on Christmas morning, 
            breathless with frogs trampolining 
            my stomach, for the house to wake, 
            the curtained French doors to break 
open on a storybook scene—and the Doll 

The Photograph

The magazine picture xeroxed a duplicate print 
            in my brain. Its caption Mother 
            cradles child dying of starvation 
turned my thumb toward the page corner 

Some Nights

Some nights in a small cove 
sea and shore talk endlessly 
(of dapples shallows hollows) 
seeking sun despite the polar 
breath from dark’s yawning throat 

Song of Creation

Who made the world, my child? 
            Father made the rain 
            silver and forever. 
                        Mother’s hand 
drew riverbeds and hollowed seas, 
drew riverbeds and hollowed seas 
            to bring the rain home. 

New Voices, New Songs: Contemporary Poems by Mormon Women

The sensibility described by Amy Lowell—that there is something odd about women who write serious poetry—is still given substance today by the endangered state of the species. Even I will not waste time counting the few woman poets anthologized before Lowell’s time; contemporary statistics suffice.

The Last Day of Spring

Laurie had wanted for a long time to visit Jen. When Mama took David, the baby, to visit their favorite aunt she and Carol complained. “I know you want to see her,” Mama explained, “but…

Home from the North

only from the nesting hollow 
            of our bed 
will I say how cold it’s been 
            so cold 

Missing Persons

I know where the bodies are buried 
in my house and can whistle past 
indefinitely before I must dig and sift. 

Charm for a Sick Child

we will dream now of a cave 
with a figure at the entrance, 
see the magic seeds she holds 

Another Birth

They dream of going hack. 
            The bars on their beds 
            are fingers before a face. 
Their knees rise up toward chins 

Mornings

I  Friday morning. June sky like denim through the bus windows. The last day before the weekend, Marc repeated to himself, like a gypsy muttering a chant.  He swung off the bus four blocks before his…

Sonnet for Spring

there’s honeysuckle in the exhaust, a fine green 
beard between walks, spring softens us 
again, now we confess the earth is a drum 
encased in living skin, not concrete, 

from the laurel

we come playing flute 
and violin the notes 
lift limber as the green 
aspen see how we sway 

The Successful Marketing of the Holy Grail

Not long ago at a convention in Salt Lake City for police chiefs, a visiting law enforcer dubbed Utah a “white-collar crime capital.” He was alluding to pyramid schemes and speculative investments initiated by unscrupulous…

During Recess

Spring sneaked into town while court convened. 
One noon, I walk from my office to my 
old neighborhood and find it well-kept. 
The ditch I’d hurtle galloping home 
from school has been curbed and guttered. 

sonnet on life’s dangers

cop and father, he cautioned us of more 
than boogeymen and fire, in case of snakes, 
freeze where you are, same for skunks and por-
cupines, brave enough to tromp on cracks, 

Walking the Dark Side: Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell by Jack Olsen

Passion Poems | Emma Lou Thayne, How Much for the Earth?

One might suspect that a book of poems published by Utahns United Against the Nuclear Arms Race might possess as interesting a history as the poems that comprise it. How Much for the Earth? by…

Rescue from Home: Some Ins and Outs

As a journalist, I have learned secondhand about domestic violence, child abuse, mental health, and homicide. I have interviewed experts and victims; I have read and listened. I know that the names printed in the…

Who We Are, Where We Come From

Telling the truth about history is most essentially, I think, knowing who we are and where we come from.  When Mormon historians began to shed additional light on the beginnings of Joseph Smith and the…

hospital healing

of course a two-inch badger 
carved from liver-colored stone 
with arrows bound to his back, 
could not make the difference. 

Slant Sonnet for Melissa

This visit you talk of Merlin in both poem and prose,
and how he transformed Arthur to insect or mole,
teaching him how to become. 

Oasis

At dusk, the pool waits in silence, 
found by your feet after you rip up 
the map. Suddenly in the tangled grasses
and twilight the birds stop calling, 
and the trees finger your face. 

Long Distance

So now you sit with a black eye 
by a glass wall on the sixteenth floor. 
Already I see our talk in paragraphs 
I can’t read, topics in the margin, 
one clear sentence about clutter. 

Fact of my life

My job was once threatened if I published a poem.
I lived in another place 
but in America and knew my rights. 
I let the poem wait. Oh, I read it aloud once

Metaphysics over lunch

English professor and rebel: 
Off campus, our sentences race 
the tabletop, garbed in wit and color. 
By the time food comes, our ideas dance 

In Riverdale

We returned to our beginnings 
            in August, with its crayola green 
            trees and grass, blue sky, 
and yellow light so certainly imposed 

Sensing Spirits

We had to fly to her brother’s wedding. 
But she lay prone on a heating pad, 
the room spinning above, and her 
weight and blood pressure each 

Encounter

Absently, I opened the medicine cabinet 
in my folks’ house (searching for a comb), 
then stood stunned as you wafted out 
like a genie, so generous with cologne