Storyteller of the Week

Luanne Castle 

 

 

Luanne Castle and Marshal Costa Rica

Luanne Castle grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but now lives in Arizona, next to a wash that wildlife use as a thoroughfare.

She has published two full-length poetry collections, Rooted and Winged (Finishing Line 2022), a Book Excellence Award Winner, and Doll God (Kelsay 2015), which won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Poetry. Her chapbooks are Our Wolves (Alien Buddha 2023) which just won first runner up in the Eric Hoffer Award and Kin Types (Finishing Line 2017), a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award.

Luanne’s Pushcart and Best of the Net-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, American Journal of Poetry, Pleiades, River Teeth, TAB, Verse Daily, The Ekphrastic Review, Saranac Review, and other journals. Luanne has completed (she hopes) a memoir-in-flash called Scrap: Salvaging a Family and is looking for a publisher for the manuscript.

She is a cat whisperer and currently lives with five exceptional felines. Her hobbies are art journaling, mixed media, and genealogy.

 

By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

The first thing I noticed when I read the poetry of Luanne Castle is that she is a master storyteller. Like me she also uses alliteration and metaphors to draw the reader in so we keep reading until the last line. Read for yourself.

 

Fish Story

After a day in the lake spent
tipping over the Sunfish
and dunking each other,
our feet catching in seaweed
at the sandbar
minnows tickling our ankles
our ears and noses plugged
with lake water and snot
then eating our chins greasy
with BBQ chicken and buttery
corn on the cob, our bathing
suits dried to our bodies
under our long T-shirts,
our bare feet dirty, faces
and shoulders a painful pink,
and as the sun sank toward
the glittery wavy lake skin
that’s when Dad yelled
Snipe Hunt and threw us
each a beach pail or bucket.
My mother sprayed us
stinking with Off and we
followed Dad across
the sandy road into the woods
watching the forest floor
and the branches overhead
for signs of a snipe.
Somewhat gopherish, I imagined.
A cousin of sorts argued
even as he walked with us
that snipe weren’t in the woods
but wading in the swamp
between our dock and the lake
proper, but no one responded.
That’s when I wondered if
Dad’s snipe were mythical.
But with him you could never
tell for sure and when I discovered
that boy was correct, that snipe,
with their long skinny legs
wade in the swamp and hunt
with their long skinny beaks,
I wondered if my father knew
there were real snipe beyond
the games he learned at camp
for poor fatherless boys.
He didn’t always know where
the truth and non-truth met up—
or rather that’s the space where
he found comfort. As a small boy,
he lived with a grandfather who kept
an outdoor pond of golden carp.
My father asked what happened
to the fish in the winter, was told
they freeze where they are and
in spring they will thaw out
and swim again. He wanted
to believe this but he was raised
in subsequent years with enough
lies to erase the maybe of it.
Not long after my father died,
I read that koi hibernate through
the winter, awakening with
the spring thaw, as if by magic.


Poet’s note: This is a new poem that I wrote about spending summers at our rustic lake cottage—my father’s dream.

 
Someone Else’s Story

All the ways of self-pity were open to her.
With a bitter putty she sealed each off. A wife
and mother alone with strangers, skimming
milk and scraping her knuckles on the washboard
for these middle-aged farmers and their son
almost her own age. She knelt on the floor
and scrubbed and scrubbed because she felt
too tired to stand. She avoided their eyes.
Twice when they thought she was out at the barn
she’d heard them talking about her as if she
were a cow hobbled for the sake of her calf.
That’s when her story sounded to her like that
of someone else, a poor orphan in a book
she’d read in another life. Yet she was no orphan,
her mother living in the city, caring for
her grandson who still wore white dresses and ringlets.
Her story sounded harsh and chronological,
even cold. A young couple with their first baby
and no reason to think there wouldn’t be more.
The husband’s wagon is hit by a streetcar.
Because he’s lost his wits, he’s sent to the asylum
in Kalamazoo, too far to visit more than twice
a year. The young wife can only support herself
as a live-in and sends her wages to her mother.
Better not to think of these things and to study
late at night her correspondence course.
Work study work study. She was no cow.


Caroline Meier Waldeck
1872-1946
Gaines Township, Kent County, Michigan


Poet’s note: This poem is found in my family history chapbook Kin Types. After Caroline finished her correspondence course, she was able to return to her son and her mother and start her career as a nurse.

 
Spotlight

Months go by, and I don’t recognize the gloaming. Then it’s late November again. At this time of day, Grandma used to stand under the bulb over the sink that haloed her and pearlized the onions she chopped. Potatoes and carrots from the root cellar fanned her like a sunburst. Outside, murk enveloped tree branches, porch chair, surrounded the sturdy walls of the little house. Grandma switched on the kitchen light, creating an intimate stage amidst the darkening world. She held my hands in hers to peel a potato. The rhythm of the parer became known to me. The backdoor swung open, and Grandpa, in his greasy Sunoco blues, waved on his way down to the shower head installed above the basement floor drain. Chuck roast seared in the Dutch oven, and the spatters almost drowned out the shower’s cascade, but not quite. On his way to the television with bunny ears in the next room, Grandpa picked me up and, mid-air, rubbed noses. I called him a bath baby with whiskers. Then the voices of the TV show, the sizzling of the meat, and Grandma singing you'll be swell, you'll be great, I can tell, just you wait made me forget there was darkness elsewhere and ahead. When the day closes up early, best to be in the dark looking up for starlight.

Poet’s note: This prose poem is from my full-length collection Rooted and Winged. My maternal grandparents, Adrian and Edna Zuidweg, were a profound influence on me—and an inspiration for my poetry.

 
Marriage Doll

I spotted it wedged on a dusty shelf
behind a rose-pattern, porcelain trinket-tray.
A souvenir of occupied Japan,
the Hakata doll's bisque colors had grayed,
the facial expression still intent on a fish
spread below its upraised hand,
the grip empty of the cleaver it once held.

At home, each clay doll carries its value
in what it holds dear: a lantern,
spear, or story stick.

The next day, I washed dishes under
the garden window, watching my husband
watering my vincas, my potato vines.

It's how I described him in a story once.
He tips the handle--a virtuoso with the spout--
following up with what I've planted.

If I sculpted him out of clay, I'd plant
a fixed watering can in his broad hand.
I’d call the piece Marriage Doll: 1 of 2.


Poet’s Note: This poem is from my first collection, Doll God. My husband and I were high school sweethearts and married when we were 19 years old. We celebrated our 48th anniversary this year. Although I am the one with a doll collection, my husband collects Hakata dolls.

 
Dreamworld, Chicago

The grease-stained bag of butter cookies
Grandma sent with us rested between
my parents, and I tried to sneak it into
the backseat as Daddy backed the car
out of the alley behind Grandma’s apartment
until the tall street lights and big black trees.
Mommy punted my hand away, so I sat back
on my pillow and remembered I was sleepy.
I propped it against the door, and lay down,
the windows black and empty except
for the regular shudder of light overhead.
Once we got on the toll road, headlights
were bright as daylight when many cars
drove as one mass, so I sat back up again
to watch us drive out of the city under tall
industrial towers and scaffolding, now empty.
The massiveness of everything spun me.
Eventually the lights faded into every so often,
the land flat and empty except for outlines
of farms settling into the ground, fence sections
disconnected at both ends, and sagging cars.
I closed my eyes and tucked my ears into
the pillow as the streetlights, back again,
flashed as regular as a neon diner sign.
Daddy announced we entered Michigan,
the Wolverine State, so I roused myself enough
to ask, as I did every month on the way back,
what is a wolverine? I knew that wolverines
lived in the forest with goblins and dragons.
Wolverines meant that soon Daddy would carry
me into my room and tuck me into my own bed.
In the morning I would be back in Kalamazoo,
thoughts of Chicago asleep until next time.


Poet’s Note: When I was ten, my paternal grandmother moved from Chicago to live near us in Kalamazoo. But until then we made regular visits to Chicago to visit her. Those cookies would be from the original gourmet food store, Stop & Shop, which was located near where my grandmother worked at the Marshall Field flagship store as head fitter of the 28 Shop.

This is a new poem.