Rena Priest: Dancing to the Ticking of the Doomsday Clock
“Snap your fingers, move your hips, step high, then low, then turn around. Keep the
rhythm. It all matters. We are all keeping time and so are the trees, the waters, the earth,
just a different kind of time than the Doomsday Clock. Rena Priest’s new collection of
poetry provides wisdom, humor, and the right words to accompany us in this spiral of
becoming through this age of hypercontradictions. Her compassion is contagious. You will
need this book to help make it through to the next dance.”
—Joy Harjo, 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States
Yesterday
Yesterday belongs to legend,
the ancestors, and the wind.
It is the sound of voices held aloft
on the hands of a clock—
every half hour, every half day
everything slides off, and away—
into history—becomes nostalgic,
myopic, hard to explain.
Memory conjures the gone world,
permits phantoms and contradictions.
Memory needn’t be, what exists—
what existed; it only has to be a seed—
something we can grow from,
or live with.
Rena Priest is a citizen of the Lhaq’temish [Lummi] Nation. In a historic appointment, Priest
was named Washington state’s sixth poet laureate (2021–2023),becoming the first Indigenous
person to hold the position. In this role, she championed poetry that celebrated the ecological
gifts of her ancestral homelands, the bioregion. She is an Academy of American Poets Fellow, an
Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow, a Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writer, and winner of a
Washington State Book Award for poetry. Her first collection of poem, Patriarchy Blues,
published by MoonPath Press, won the American Book Award. Her new essay collection,
Positively Uncivilized, was published (October 2025) as the inaugural winner of the Keepers of
the Fire Award from Raven Chronicles Press. She splits time between Bellingham, Washington,
and Vancouver, British Columbia.
Visit Rena’s page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Rena’s collection from your favorite retailer:
Brandon Lewis: The Mended Animal
At the core of The Mended Animal is a baffling loss that cannot be forgotten or
transcended. Rather, in poems that are as painful as they are precise, the radiating damage
of that loss is traced from the past into the present, from childhood into adulthood, from
one place to another, with each place made “sacred and troubled” by human brokenness.
Brandon Lewis is writing a poetry of great bleakness, yes, but The Mended Animal is also a
work of painstakingly beautiful story, wherein each story’s telling grasps at the unresolved
mystery of those we love, of the self, of the human heart and its burdens of grief and
vigilance.
—Rick Barot, author of Moving the Bones
Portrait of Denial
This was before two stints in rehab,
before the shakes and jaundice,
before I lied to my wife about loving her
more than drinking. I remember
thinking that night, unlocking my car
in the Haggen parking lot: What
are the odds? Running into her right
as the doors slid open, our son holding
her hand, yelling Hey it’s Daddy!
I was supposed to be a year sober.
Supposed to be at a meeting then over
to Birch Door Cafe with a group
of old-timers. I tried tucking the sixpack
behind my leg but she saw
and looked away, stepping past me
into the store. Chances are she already
knew, found a bottle under our bed
or buried in my dresser. The wife
who smells another woman on her man’s
clothes and says nothing. But that’s
not like her, I thought, driving home
in the rain. She’s simply moving
through the aisles filling a cart, checking
all the things she needs off her list.
Brandon Lewis was born in Seattle and raised throughout the states of Washington and
Montana. He received his BA in English from the University of Washington and his MFA from
the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. His first book of poems, The
Mended Animal, was a finalist for the 2025 Richard Snyder Memorial Book Prize, as well as the
2025 Sally Albiso Award. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including
Chestnut Review, Nashville Review, Naugatuck River Review, Portland Review,
and Superstition Review. He currently teaches high school English and lives with his wife and children in a small
town not far from Olympia, Washington.
Visit Brandon’s page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Brandon’s collection from your favorite retailer:
