Fissured Tongue Series

Notes on Poetry
for Thuja plicata, western red cedar,
          called “the tree of life” by the Kakawaka’wakw
by Justin Goodman
​Fissured Tongue Series Vol VI  |  May 2026

"As in occupied” from Fieldwork Scroll--last of ten by Owen Brown. Media, ? x ? inches, 2017

Notes on Poetry

1st the poem is a -scape. Sound, Land,
E. It’s its entirety. Not altogether pleasant
because organs slant rhyme the body and
are not always collaboratively aesthetic.
The poem is self-care because it is bodily.
And what makes beauty is managing noise
pollution and knotweed following the guide-
lines of the -scape. If the poem falls apart,
It falls apart. Do you mourn supercontinents
Or the irascible clack of pterosaurs? Falling
and breaking is part of their descendants’
flight pattern. Stop and admire the roadkill
or the internet equal, a comment section:
transverse death’s petrichor the symbiote.
The poet is a True Leveller. As such, 2nd
rhymes with 1st. Act builds into the theory.
The poem is the poet growing on nar-rows

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About the Author 
Seattle poet and teaching artist Laura Gamache has published in journals and anthologies, including Nixes Mate, Passager Journal 2022, Rattle, Altered Syntax Postcard Project, So, Dear Writer, and WA129, and in her chapbooks, Never Enough and Nothing to Hold Onto. She has worked in classrooms, from the Puget Sound area to southeastern Oregon since 1993. She received her MFA from the University of Washington in 1993. 

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About the Work
This poem began during a month-long daily poem draft production project. While walking in the Washington Park Arboretum, a cedar tree really did fall. Since Western red cedars are vital and venerated by the Coast Salish people who have lived here for thousands of years (canoes, rain repelling hats, long houses, the shelter of Mother Cedar), this crash felt important, maybe like a portent, to me. 

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About the Author’s Process
I try to write a poem draft daily, though I may never go back to it. This poem I did go back to, over months, since I felt it pointed to important realities. It is a poem of witness.

About the Artist
Robb Kunz hails from Teton Valley, Idaho. He received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Idaho. He currently teaches writing at Utah State University and is the Art and Design Faculty Advisor of Sink Hollow: An Undergraduate Literary Journal. His art has been published in Peatsmoke Journal, Red Ogre Review, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, and New Delta Review. His art is upcoming in Ponder Review, Glassworks Magazine, and Anodyne Magazine.

"My paintings explore the abstract simplicity of ordinary life and the deductive impulse to see ourselves reflected back in art. My medium of choice is oil and pencil. Using embroidery and fabric manipulation is a recent expansion of my artistic expression. Combining differing elements creates a dissonance that inspires and propels me forward in my work."

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