Scott Dalgarno: Third Class Relics
“There go the swallows / taking it out on the morning,” writes Dalgarno, whose collection
is a stirring portrayal of a life pulled in to focus. The poems in Third-Class Relics ask us to
reckon with the lyric tension of our lives in the metaphoric borderland of so many kinds
of rapture. It arrives with a fresh and clear voice that invites its reader to remember they
are always already a viewer, a visitor, and a voyeur, too.
—Meg Day, author of Last Psalm at Sea Level
Puberty in the ’60s
The onset of acne; blonde girls obsessed
with Palominos; boys, often bottom-feeders.
One of them sits behind you in math, like a cat
napping on a birdcage.
The little courage you have you bought
with Green Stamps. Your mouth sports
an “appliance” that costs more than a refrigerator
and isn’t much smaller. Mornings, you say,
are for other people. You like several girls
desperately. Everything you do
around them is like performing a lobotomy
on yourself.
You and your black-eyed cousin play pretend
lovers, holding hands, ramping up passion
to an almost-kiss, aborted repeatedly by giggles.
She asks if cousins can marry. You want to live
in such a world, but she longs for something
she’s seen in black-n-white
between Brando and Eva Marie Saint.
Sex is a dirty word. Your parents are rattled
by the subject, but ask what you know.
This gives you power you’d gladly trade
for knowledge. Your mother worries
you are doing something she did at your age.
Your father worries that you are not. Wrestling
on the wet lawn, you and your cousin are struck
by summer lightning. Neither of you
is killed, but the sole of one of your Keds melts
into the shape of lips.
Scott Dalgarno finds abundant inspiration from the mystic,
Julian of Norwich, the poet, Elizabeth Bishop, the artistry of Jon
Batiste, and several coastal redwoods in the Bolling Grove.
While he writes a lot of prose, he finds that writing poetry can
be an out-of-body experience, occasionally transporting him to
a zone where time does not exist and is not age-bound.
He lives among firs and dogwoods in Lake Oswego, Oregon,
where he works for issues of justice. Third-Class Relics was a
finalist for the 2024 Sally Albiso Prize. It is his first collection
of poems.
Visit Scott's page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Scott's collection from your favorite retailer:
Patrick Dixon: Mending Holes
Patrick Dixon, with decades of commercial salmon fishing behind him, has convincingly captured the
reality of his time and place—the smells of fish, the light at the end of a day, wooden boats
moldering on the beach, nets full of fish and empty nets holding the next year’s hopes, the
greenhorn he was, the old man of memories. He asks, late in this alternately heart-stopping and
heart-warming collection, “How did I get to be so lucky?” We are all lucky that
Patrick has given us such an intimate, honest, literate look into his examined life.
—Nancy Lord, author of Fishcamp and Beluga Days
Other Fishing Jobs
for Dylan, 2015
Tell your daughter you love her
so often she’ll remember.
Tell your mother, too.
Watch the sun rise over the ocean.
Notice how slow it goes,
how much is packed into
the hour before dawn.
Do it until you understand
what daybreak means.
Call home. Often. Even when
you’re so tired you can’t think
of anything to say.
On the boat, hold on. Keep a firm
conscious grip on the rail—
never trust the sea.
Remember each day with your heart,
then camera, pen, head. You will only feel
like this once. Write letters to your daughter
so she’ll know what this meant to you—
why you left. Mail them when you reach port.
Make sure whoever gets them knows to save them
for when she’s old enough.
Patrick Dixon is a writer/photographer retired from careers
as an educator and commercial fisherman. A member of the
board of directors of the Olympia Poetry Network, he has
been published in several literary journals, including
Cirque, Claudius Speaks, Linden Avenue, Mom Egg Review, Oberon,
Panoplyzine, The Raven Chronicles, Soul-Lit, The Tishman
Review,
and World Enough Writers among others. His work
appeared in the anthologies
Examined Life, The Madrona
Project #7, FISH 2015,
and WA 129. He was included in the
Washington State Book Award–winning anthologies
Take a Stand:
Art Against Hate
(Raven Chronicles, 2020)
and I Sing the Salmon Home (Empty Bowl, 2024).
Mr. Dixon is a past poetry editor of National Fisherman
magazine’s quarterly, North Pacific Focus and is a member
of the FisherPoets Gathering organizing committee.
Mr. Dixon spent his childhood in Logansport, Indiana, but
grew up when he moved to Kenai, Alaska in 1975, where
he lived for 23 years. Mending Holes is his first full-length
collection of poetry.
Visit Patrick's page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Patrick's collection from your favorite retailer:
