This content was published: April 21, 2021. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
Two Deep Breaths: The Pointed Circle, 2
Posted by Justin Rigamonti
Continuing our series of poems selected by student editors of PCC’s literary magazines, here’s another post from the 2021 editorial crew of The Pointed Circle, creating the newest issue of Cascade Campus’ magazine:
After a thankfully warm and sunny weekend, we at The Pointed Circle are happy to bring you another piece that will be published in this year’s issue, #37. We hope you will check it out this June, to see some of you at our outdoor end-of-term release party and open-mic, and that you’ll follow us on instagram @thepointedcircle for updates on the magazine and more to come.
The beautiful poem below came to us from Niko Boskovic, a former contributing editor to The Pointed Circle, and we think it’s a lovely illustration of the human connection we need most in these trying times. Try to keep this in mind as we go into the warmer months and vaccinations roll out, hopefully giving us all a chance to reconnect with loved ones we may have had to distance ourselves from over the past year due to the pandemic, and cherish the time we can spend together as families and friends.
— The Pointed Circle 2021 Editorial Team
A Longer Route Would Take Less Time
(But Never Stop Checking the Atlas for Other Highways)
by N. Boskovic
Much can be said about my mother:
that she is impatient
the way a bird might be trying to hatch a chick —
that she is maddening
in a rough example of how Norsemen conquered the English —
that she is loving
the way native people describe how the Sun chases the Moon
always lagging slightly behind.
I prefer her mine
when it’s only us in a cheap motel by the ocean
bellies full of fried cod and Dr. Pepper
a drizzly afternoon where phones are forgotten
and she gets me predictable souvenirs from the corner store —
always a treat not to have to share her with anyone else.
Eating Moon Pies on a bench by the ocean
becomes a treasured thought.
Reality waits for us
in a two-story house
that she’ll steer her little car through the Tillamook Forest to
announcing the names of little towns listed on little signs
which we’ll never see
passing through valleys interlaced with rivers and creeks
over which she sighs about their beauty
never knowing how these waters remind me of her
a force that will leave marks on me as quietly
as a glacier shifts the mountain range.
Happily I will trace every vein
that snakes across her middle-aged hands
if that means we can come back here again.
Tomorrow we’ll drive back home
but make that trip linger in her mind
for the rest of the week.
Let’s remember the way the tide tried to pull us in
and the taste of salt on our skin.