Judith Skillman

Judith Skillman

Judith Skillman [1] is an award-winning contemporary Northwest American poet and the author of ten books of verse. She is the winner of many poetry awards, including the Eric Mathieu King Fund from the Academy of American Poets, and has received grants from the Centrum Foundation, King County Arts Commission, and the Washington State Arts Commission. Skillman is also a translator from the French, most notably of the poet Anne-Marie Derese[2].

Here are a couple of poems from Judith Skillman's new manuscript, Devils Club.

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Everyone Forgets

How we hunger for each other
and for a hot drink,
not knowing which would be better.

We walk uphill for miles
over crooked roots
that resemble elbows

and knees,
laden heavily as pack animals.
To our right and left, a pasture of stalks spreads

wide as an invitation, green as a ravine.
We get sideways over this and that,
we stake out the argument.

A stand of Spruce faces west, lightning-stripped.
The devil is the god of lust.
He makes us wary of one another

even as he sets a fire in our bellies.
Dry needles fall on his namesake.
Because the devil’s a whole creature

with wants and needs,
he yanks us one from the other,
plants his clubs in heavy camouflage.

Everyone forgets how easily we lose
our innocence. That we could turn on one another
with fangs and claws

while poisonous red berries
decorate devil’s club—
the devil’s writ, wit, and folderol.

---

The Not Me

I travel light.
My hips are wide and easy.
Not once have I woken at dawn,
driven to paper
like a raccoon rummaging
with its blind hands in the trash bin.

I’m not afraid of peanut butter,
water, heights, or spiders.
I’ve made my closets
into elevators full of strangers
whose silence rubs off on me
like newsprint.

Each morning I rise with the sun,
round and mellow. I revel
in its coffee-stained light.
After a breakfast of blackberry scones
and tea
I practice my trills with the songbirds.

I never feel guilt or its cousin, shame.
I volunteer at the hospital
twice a week, knit hats for the needy.
Sleep comes quickly. I never dream.
My conscience sits inside my spleen
like an egg that hasn’t been broken.

My father carried the egg.
When he set it down
my mother looked over,
saw that it was poached
to perfection
and took conception into the vast reaches

of her mind.
Before she could put her hand out
to touch it, the egg became
an alabaster trellis
in which was hidden
the telltale lines of good blood.

Poems copyright Judith Skillman 2006

Books

Heat Lightning; Selected Poems (Silverfish Review Press, 2006).

Coppelia; Certain Digressions (David Robert, 2006).

Opalescence (David Robert, 2005).

Latticework (David Robert, 2004).

Circe's Island (Silverfish Review Press, 2003).

Sweetbrier (Blue Begonia, 2001).

Red Town (Silverfish Review Press, 2001).

Storm (Blue Begonia, 1998).

Beethoven and the Birds (Blue Begonia, 1996).

Worship of the Visible Spectrum (Breitenbush Books, 1986).