SIERRA GOLDEN received her MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University. Winner of the 2015 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Prize, Golden's work appears in literary journals such as Prairie Schooner, Permafrost, and Ploughshares. She has also been awarded residencies by Hedgebrook, the Island Institute, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Although she calls Washington State home, Golden has spent many summers in Alaska, working as a commercial fisherman. She now works in communications and is a 2015-2016 Made at Hugo House Fellow.
WRITINGS
Rose’s
is empty these days, old
oak bar smoke stained and carved
all over with varnished names
and spidering cracks like scars.
Fading fake roses wilt
on the untuned piano
where I learned to play “Chopsticks”
and Chopin, sang soprano
for fishermen and cannery
workers after my bedtime.
Mother, holding a lime, would
scold me, head shaking, then mime
“just one more” over the crowd.
Men, rowdy, yelling for beer
would grin, call me dear, and leave
a coin or two heaped up here
on the piano bench. I’d hide
them in my small pink heart-
purse, sneaking one at a time,
making the big pile look sparse.
I’d dream of a real stage, save
all the sticky change, count it
each night, wondering how much
was enough for red velvet
curtains, but I found fast boys,
big joints, let the money run
through my fingers. Dust motes
drifted between piano
strings. When the snow fell, I wrote
my first love note, sipping hot
toddies by the pot-belly stove.
I overflowed my heart. I sought
love in a snowman’s cold kiss.
Skunk cabbage unfurled, brown bears
nipping them off near the mist
drenched ground. Then, the first bad year:
the cannery closed. Yet, boats
would float in anyway. Night
after night, skippers sat moored
on tall red stools till daylight.
I learned to slosh out whiskey
and gin, fry crisp fish and chips,
but each summer I order
less liquor, feed fewer lips.
The last folks—famous Rose too
(my tough-bucktoothed-bartending-
mom)—are far away, have since
slipped away. I wince and bend,
pull a small string. The hot pink
tubes and links of neon light
flicker, fight shadows, and then,
are wrenched into the sinking night.
- originally published in The Fourth River
________________
Hatchery
The last fry thrashes in the empty tank.
Brothers and sisters already released,
he is stuck, wedged behind the green hose,
tiny tail flapping, slapping a small smack
against the banked walls.
He mauls himself, thumping
his pencil thin body against
blue plastic hard as concrete.
Bent over the wall at my waist,
I fish him out of the last half-inch of water.
The size of a small pocketknife
in my palm, but lighter,
like a cigarette—so much hidden
in the weight of almost nothing.
I think, if salmon were cigarettes, I’d smoke,
as if I could inhale their slow stupid strength,
their knowing exactly where home is--
the scent of rotting leaves and creek water,
drifting constantly in their noses,
the same as it sifts over a gravel streambed.
As if I would lean back in my lawn chair,
drag on the silver carcass like an old fashioned rollie,
feel the buzz pouring through my veins,
the calling, and know just where to go.
- originally published in The Fourth River
is empty these days, old
oak bar smoke stained and carved
all over with varnished names
and spidering cracks like scars.
Fading fake roses wilt
on the untuned piano
where I learned to play “Chopsticks”
and Chopin, sang soprano
for fishermen and cannery
workers after my bedtime.
Mother, holding a lime, would
scold me, head shaking, then mime
“just one more” over the crowd.
Men, rowdy, yelling for beer
would grin, call me dear, and leave
a coin or two heaped up here
on the piano bench. I’d hide
them in my small pink heart-
purse, sneaking one at a time,
making the big pile look sparse.
I’d dream of a real stage, save
all the sticky change, count it
each night, wondering how much
was enough for red velvet
curtains, but I found fast boys,
big joints, let the money run
through my fingers. Dust motes
drifted between piano
strings. When the snow fell, I wrote
my first love note, sipping hot
toddies by the pot-belly stove.
I overflowed my heart. I sought
love in a snowman’s cold kiss.
Skunk cabbage unfurled, brown bears
nipping them off near the mist
drenched ground. Then, the first bad year:
the cannery closed. Yet, boats
would float in anyway. Night
after night, skippers sat moored
on tall red stools till daylight.
I learned to slosh out whiskey
and gin, fry crisp fish and chips,
but each summer I order
less liquor, feed fewer lips.
The last folks—famous Rose too
(my tough-bucktoothed-bartending-
mom)—are far away, have since
slipped away. I wince and bend,
pull a small string. The hot pink
tubes and links of neon light
flicker, fight shadows, and then,
are wrenched into the sinking night.
- originally published in The Fourth River
________________
Hatchery
The last fry thrashes in the empty tank.
Brothers and sisters already released,
he is stuck, wedged behind the green hose,
tiny tail flapping, slapping a small smack
against the banked walls.
He mauls himself, thumping
his pencil thin body against
blue plastic hard as concrete.
Bent over the wall at my waist,
I fish him out of the last half-inch of water.
The size of a small pocketknife
in my palm, but lighter,
like a cigarette—so much hidden
in the weight of almost nothing.
I think, if salmon were cigarettes, I’d smoke,
as if I could inhale their slow stupid strength,
their knowing exactly where home is--
the scent of rotting leaves and creek water,
drifting constantly in their noses,
the same as it sifts over a gravel streambed.
As if I would lean back in my lawn chair,
drag on the silver carcass like an old fashioned rollie,
feel the buzz pouring through my veins,
the calling, and know just where to go.
- originally published in The Fourth River