Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author of two volumes of poetry, Blue Hunger
(Methow Press, 2020) and Elegy with a Glass of Whisky (BOA Editions, 2004).
A cis-gender, Queer identified woman, she lives, writes, and teaches on the
east slope of the North Cascade Mountains, in Twisp, Washington.
— Read on www.humanaobscura.com/subhaga-crystal-bacon
Poems
Three Recent Poems on Plum Recruit
Read and listen here.
Blue Hunger Collection Available Now!
I’m delighted to announce the release of my new collection of poems, Blue Hunger from Methow Press. You can order a signed copy of the book from the Confluence Poets Store.
Here’s some advance praise for the book:
Initially, the poems in Subhaga Crystal Bacon’s fine book show her keen eye for delivering the natural world. It’s tempting to think of her as a naturalist, but as her book progresses it becomes clear that, more broadly, she’s a human nature poet; poems of love and loss and community occur with the same acute precision. For example, in “Awake at Night” . . . she begins this way, “I feel beautiful, young and dying/as the cricket song lifts and calls/and you are far away. No happiness/like this…” All in all, a wonderful collection.
–Stephen Dunn, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Pagan Virtues.
Grounded in the beloved Pacific Northwest, Blue Hunger is an account of a soul’s journey, “empty of longing./Luminous, lambent.” In this world where grief merges with love, so does the poet merge “with that great distance.” Each moment and season in a life is carefully observed, and Bacon’s world abounds with raspberries, garlic, choke-cherry, jays, owl, deer, lizards: a “tunnel of loss.” . . .” Blue Hunger is a book—a place—I will revisit again and again because “What I remember most was the flavor of those words, scented with lost possibilities.”
–Jennifer Martelli, author of The Uncanny Valley and My Tarantella
These poems show the love for one’s vision of nature as the shifter of shapes. All of the landscape’s Thingness–as Rilke saw it–ebbs and looms here, and Bacon follows their rhythmic changes. Bacon builds an album that honors the universe’s traffic, the gaze melting to honey. In these poems, the economies of silence, well: The lotus has its foot in the mud.
–Cynthia Arrieu-King, author of Futureless Languages
In these intimate, meticulous, compassionate poems, Bacon seamlessly marries the self with the world . . . of wild rivers and dark trees, of coyotes and hawks, of snow and summer grasses— or the human body, with its love, its aging, and its griefs . . . With a deep mixture of curiosity and vulnerability . . . Bacon sings of our human hungers— “diligent, defended, devout”— with wild consciousness.
-Kenneth Hart, author of Uh Oh Time
Pandemic Artifact
What are these people doing?
What slow dance, moving one
to another, pairs of arms clasped
around backs, necks entwined
like swans. And rocking as if the ground
beneath them beats with a rhythm,
fluid. Both exotic and nostalgic.
Not the clutch of passion, the simple
meeting of belly to belly. Like food
but sweeter, meatier.
I salivate tears. My whole body
hungering for touch.
Go Outside
Whatever time of day it is,
wherever you are, crowded
city, tenement with its narrow stoop,
or high rise with its pricey airspace,
the streets are empty.
Stand and face,
the sky. Be patient, are there clouds,
continents shifting against the blue,
or a slip of moon? Windows bright with life,
laundry hung to dry?
Or if your suburban
house has a yard, a lawn, maybe
a bush or some weeds, or maybe you’ve
tended the grass, mulched the beds
and flowers spring up from the thawing ground.
Are you in a country lane? A farm?
Cattle, sheep, horses—even wheat
or soybeans.
Here is the news you need:
this blue and green marble continues to spin
bringing the new day and rich black night—
beyond the lights that burn to keep your fear
away. The fences are plunged into soil,
the wrappers lifted by wind.
The songs of birds
calling each other is all you need to learn.
For Those Who Won’t Stay Home from Church
This morning I worshipped God
in the light on frozen grass
that shone like a thousand windows
of stained glass. I worshipped the crack
of wood, its sculptured grain
that contains the imprint of years
of rain. I prayed on my knees for the fire
in the stove, warmth and home.
I prayed before the altar of candle
and smoke to those who hear and hold
the suffering of the world. I prayed
to be of service. I prayed for you, pastor
and supplicant of the mega church
with its walls and roof, its bodies
tightly packed in stadium pews.
Be still, and know that I am here,
came the answer in the empty room.
Portents
Beetle, snake, apples. We walk single
file under willows, the dappled light
casting shadows. First the beetle, on its back,
and one side missing a few hairlike legs.
I flip it with the fine point of a pen revealing
its pale shell with elegant black stripes.
What to read in the moist spot it leaves
scuttling into the weeds? Immediately,
a slip of snake whips quickly into hedge,
slender tail a question mark, disappears.
Three small apples in a row far
from orchard. Four of us stepping
lightly on the concrete walk, stepping
lightly into the mystery of being
here together in this moment,
where everything is contained.
Limbs of Love
It is out of love for itself that Consciousness bodies itself forth as a universe.
Christopher Wallis, Tantra Illuminated
Last night, in town, a shed exploded and burnt a house to the ground.
Everything was lost except the cat and the owners and their faith
that things come around right as long as we’re alive and unharmed.
Today, I’m outside in the ninety-seven degree heat limbing the pines
that cluster on the south side of our land, the break between the ditch,
which burned last time, and the driveway, the last fuel-free space
before our barn. These trees bear scorch marks from the last fire
to climb our hill. They look like reptiles and smell like my deepest
memories of nature with their citrusy sap. Wielding my lopper
and pine saw—used at Christmas, and now, in fire season—
I slip among them murmuring words of love. They are good at surrender.
Bark, and green or dry wood yield easily and the limbs drop around me
like so many petals showered from the Mother’s hand above. In this way,
we become one. My hand on the smooth bark of their branches, and my hand
sawing away what will burn, harm, kill, their scent in my sweat like a lover.
Years
Nothing is last, nothing first.
Everything is a wheel. Here
and here and here with no room
for there. Even infinity is a loop
twisting back on itself. While dark,
also light. Up, also down. Try to mark
what ends from what starts, walk
on this spinning ball east to west
or north to south and the place you began
is also moving, like the horizon
out of reach. Stand still and ride
through the night sky that holds
the morning light. Morning,
the crescent moon hangs
like a comma in the sentence
of your life. Follow it.
What I Know of Melancholy
with a nod to Elizabeth Bishop
How water draws it, magnet and salve.
Still water. Moving. Held. How the tide
sweeps it away, leaves the ground wet
and vulnerable to life. How the well
reflects the tunnel-sight of loss. The heart
of the river that beats over rocks that hush
and break. How a woman I did not know,
even her name, went there one winter day
with coffee and pastry and the rifle
that took away the cloying sweetness
and killing pain. I know that river.
I have sat with its shades and reedy stones
to drown my bitterness in its sounds.
It calls forth words for all that I know
I do not know. How it flows, fresh and free
to the ocean it meets, like knowing,
flowing, and flown.
