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Entering Beaver

Andrew Rahal
  
there’s a place where they
watch television on television
sets where they trim fell and
mill our backyards we don’t
recycle they burn paper keep
dirty jobs blown knees we
burn our trash they work in
suspenders and they drink in
suspenders Jon at the radio
station crackles off the
fire watch at Paradise Creek
the poor salmon runs coming
this summer the November
washouts coming
-
The stick-built homes run this
moldy season up into the
rafters. The trailers on cinder
blocks lose power when it
snows or high wind lays
down the power lines. Most
Novembers the wind takes
their blue tarps. The tarps
take their brown ropes. The
ropes take their glinting metal
stakes till there is little but
tin-colored potholes full of
water on the driveway maybe
one kitchenette maybe an
empty stroller maybe uncooked
meth fresh from the
grocery store for the managers
to maintain. There’s a
feeling among us that some
thing is always against this
place.
-
Off on one of the wet gravel
roads the highway still
spittles with the fully loaded
music of logging truck
routes, the night-shift millwork
electrician is sleeping
through gunshot still singing
from the 10 point elk horn
bent up with a jagged grin
made into a chandelier with
candles on each tip and hung
in the living room. It’s getting
dark. Local television makes
the light in the room a nervous
beautiful blue. His dog adjusts 
one leg that dangles off the couch, 
kicking away, dreaming her way
out of a bad hunt
Picture
Andrew Rahal teaches for the Quileute Nation and Peninsula College. He received an MA in Creative Writing from Vanderbilt University and co-founded the Nashville Review. He serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor at Narrative Magazine and his poetry has appeared in Cobalt Review, Danse Macabre, Hawaii Review, and Silk Road Review, among other venues. He lives in Forks, Washington.


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