Vietnam

SHOOT

/ janpriddyoregon / 3 Comments

In 1972, I drove across the country with my grandfather’s third wife Genevieve to a sheep farm in Kansas. I had never been over the Rockies before that. Vietnam was at war, I learned to spin wool that summer, and when I got back Gary and I moved in together on the 4th of July. We would both be Juniors at the University of Washington that fall.

But in June, Gen and I crossed the plains. It felt foreign-strange to me to see no mountains on the horizon in any direction—no mountains at all in the last days headed to Kansas. All around, open sky. At one point, we pulled over to the side of the highway while a storm passed overhead.

I spend a lot of time looking at sky, have done for most of my life. When I was young, I didn’t want what my dad teased my mother about: Five secluded acres in the middle of town. I wanted to be far away in forest. But then we moved to the edge of the continent, and I began watching the sky.
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POETRY and WAR

/ janpriddyoregon / 3 Comments

I am reading poetry by Danusha Laméris. The first volume chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye, The Moons of August and her second Bonfire Opera. I ordered these chapbooks after reading one of Lameris’s poems, “Incha’Allah.”

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