Victoria Wyttenberg: Too Heavy for Angels
“In her book Too Heavy for Angels, Victoria Wyttenberg does the impossible: Celebrates life
even when life includes unimaginable pain. With the steady hand of a painter, Wyttenberg ushers
us through the deaths of her parents, husband, sister, and two adult children, all the while
celebrating the beauty of the world even from the dark cave of loss. This book is a light for us to
hold, be healed, and be guided by.”
—Matthew Dickman, author of Husbandry
REVERSE
My son is alive again and wants
me to ride with him to pick up our dog
but our dog died nine years ago and my son
does not have his driver’s license
because he cannot pay
all the fines and does not have a car.
When he was using drugs
the devil with big teeth and red hair
kept telling him to do things
and he had to hit the walls
hard enough with his tight fist
to find the cameras spying on him.
Like a super hero, he wants to beat up
the bad guys but he gets confused
and thinks my nice neighbor
who is going out for a run is a spy
while his wife is pregnant
and weeping because she already has a son
who is twenty years old but not speaking to her.
My son thinks the person throwing a truck at him
is trying to kill him
so he had to throw it back, a red truck,
red like the wagon he had as a child.
We ride in my car but it only runs in reverse
and the brakes are frozen.
We leave his tattoos, the meth, needles
and the warrants in our tracks,
roll past our old house, the front porch,
lilacs, roses, a maple,
past his old school where he leapt like a dancer
on the basketball court,
until he was kicked off the team
for drinking, and he wept,
where he went to the prom with Jackie,
past the big-breasted woman who slurred around him
spilling her drink on his shirt
and gave birth to a son fathered by him,
past the rehab centers, their deceptive trees,
past his father with guns and cases of beer,
past the stone church
and keep looking for a boy and his dog.
Victoria Wyttenberg grew up in Southern Oregon, then moved to Portland, where she lives now.
She taught English at the high school level for over thirty years. After retirement from the
Beaverton School District, she began taking classes in drawing and painting while continuing to
write. She won the Richard Hugo Prize from Poetry Northwest and the Academy of American
Poets’ Harold Taylor Prize at University of Washington. Her poem “Blue Heron” was nominated
for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have been published in various journals, including Clackamas
Literary Review, Cloudbank, Hubbub, The Malahat Review, Poetry Northwest, Portland Review,
Seattle Review, Willow Springs, and others.
Visit Victoria's page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Victoria's collection from your favorite retailer:
Joseph Powell: Motion Against Our Moorings
“Joseph Powell begins in childhood; he closes, blessing those gone from us. In between, his
precise diction, rhyme, half-rhyme, and an ear for sound guide us through love, pain, and the
humdrum daily. Powell explores the heart’s readiness despite its being ‘snagged and torn.’ After
a lover’s fight, the offer of basil seed is forgiveness. ‘Words [. . .] miraculously made visible’
lead us through aging, guys at the bar, rodeo, music, hunting—his poems to his mother, losing
her memory, touching deeply.”
—Alice Derry, author of Asking
SOCK WARS
With a pile of rolled-up sock ammo behind bed bunkers,
my brother and I would shut off the lights.
It was a war, not of harm, but blind accuracy.
Most were close misses, but a sock hitting
a shoulder was a touch across the dark,
like a finger in the chest that said you’re mine.
This was our way of sizing up an unknown
that was often against us.
We learned to duck at the smallest sounds—
the swing of the lampshade’s string,
a bedsheet sliding across a bedsheet,
a slipper nudged along linoleum.
That decoys might work once.
We threw when a shadow we were used to
changed its shape. What we took, we tried to give back.
It was good training—to feel small changes in the dark,
cast soft stones, laugh the face-hit away.
And to feel someone that close
breathing and battling there, beside you.
Joseph Powell was born and raised in Ellensburg, WA. He taught composition, literature, and
creative writing at Central Washington University for thirty years. He was Central Washington
University’s Phi Beta Kappa Scholar of the Year (2004) and was awarded Distinguished
University Professor in Artistic Accomplishment (2009). He has published seven previous
collections of poetry and four chapbooks. Powell won a National Endowment for the Arts Award
(2009), an Artist Trust GAP Award (2005), the Tom Pier Award (2006); and twelve poems have
been nominated for Pushcart Prizes from a variety of literary magazines. He lives with artist Lori
Chandler on a small farm outside Ellensburg.
Visit Joseph's page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Joseph's collection from your favorite retailer:
