In personal news: one of my poems appears in the spring issue (April 2008) of Steam Ticket, A Third Coast Review (a national literary review from the University of Wisconsin La Crosse):

The edible Marie Antoinette
Kathleen M. Heideman

This note is just to say check the top shelf, dear,
I baked you a bundt cake, a cake in the shape
of a woman in skirts wide as an over-turned bowl.
The lavender frosting was impulsive, yes,
and by now you will have noticed the detail work:
the white-ribboned swaggers, the vining lace,
the grand panier that parts like stage curtains,
the petticoat that was trickier than it looks.
It should all seem familiar, since I had in mind
that moist dress I helped you out of last night.
The doll sunk to her waist in the rich center is you, of course,
but the silk bodice — purple frosting spread sweetly
over her plunging neckline — can be taken several ways,
sweat-soaked silk, a garment made of lipstick kisses, etc.
Her powder-sugared wig went as planned;
the plume was a plum-colored afterthought.
Do you disapprove?
Should I have saved the flour for a hungrier day?
Forgive me, Marie.
You moved so sweet, loving, and the hour grew so late.
I woke up this morning humming “let her eat cake…”

Photo credit: Marie Antoinette at Madame Tussauds, by Flickr user mharrsch

Greg Blust, of the National Park Service, informed me that I’d also receive a free pass for a visitor to come to Isle Royale (on the boat from Houghton, MI), so I’ve asked my mother to join me. Not sure yet exactly *when* her visit will be, but we’ve started brainstorming about the details of her visit, and my planning. Our first big idea was that we should be prepared to enjoy the Dassler cabin kitchen, including some home baking. She has a recipe for oatmeal scones, which we’ve now modified and tested —- PERFECT!
Scoville Point Scones

Mix together dry ingredients:

• 1 + 1/2 cup wheat flour
• 1 + 1/4 cup oat meal
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 T. baking powder
• 1 t. cream of tartar
• 1 t. spices (suggestions: anise seed, ground fennel, cinnamon-clove-ginger, etc.)
• sprinkle of flax seeds
• dash of salt

Mix these together, and store tightly wrapped in a ziplock bag. Haul to remote location and wait for the perfect morning.

• Cut in 1/2 c. butter
• 1 egg (lightly beaten with 1/3 c. + 2 T. milk)
• Add dried fruit or fresh chopped fruit (suggestions: apple, pear, or raisens).

Stir everything together lightly, pat out the dough on a flat surface to form a pie-shape.

Cut into 8 wedges, transfer to baking sheet, and bake at 375 until lightly golden.

* * *

Just add fog and wave crash, and enjoy with a cup of coffee on Scoville Point!

Now that it’s official that I’ve been selected for a 2008 Artist Residency on Isle Royale National Park, I’m excited about planning for the trip! In preparation, I reviewed the website of two musicians who were in residence last season, flutist Carmen Maret and guitarist Andrew Bergeron (“Folias”), and especially enjoyed their photographs. Here’s a link to their Isle Royale photo album:

My poem “Work from the Permanent Collection” has been published in Tertulia Magazine (April 2008).

Work from the Permanent Collection
Kathleen M. Heideman

Exhibit A: “Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing,” a first edition,
with a three-inch hole I’ve drilled through its emptiness.
Later, a funeral photo of my great-grandmother: the child
she died with, in labor, two boxes of lace and dark foreheads.

Further: a room of wounds. Bones of boars from grandfather’s swamp,
a rosewood pipe his lips knew well, two dozen can-openers
his second wife stole from grocery stores (her ten identical hats,
and the boxes of Rit dye she hoarded against a life of white sheets).

She was a lot like me, except I’m no thief. I save things:
a shelf of rusting mis-cut keys, shark’s teeth, sea-licked glass,
seven pounds of shell shirt buttons, a hundred stained maps,
enough white stones for Hansel to find his way home again.

I’ve pulled horse hair from antique sofas, I’ve kept my teeth.
I have cow horns, steer horns, the horn buds of heifer calves.
I have hair —my own, and more, a ponytail I found in the street,
half-burned candle nubs, mason jars of winter wood-ash.

Not all rooms are dark. The Third Floor features mandrake roots,
fruit pits, bundled stems of passion-fruit, sweet buds of tigerlilies.
I have the seeds of a common catnip, bristle-pod of moonflower,
small eyes of the wild vine that blossoms white on fire-escapes,

and there’s lungstone and soapstone and bloodstone and shale;
fossilized backbones, calcified stems; St. Christopher charms
and St. Anthony pins; hundreds of needles in a leather purse;
my own toenail clippings and cork floats. More in deep storage,

and more in mind. I’m the Curator, finder-keeper-loser-weeper,
a guide floating lonely among fish skins, a tackle box of barbed hooks,
bobbers and sinkers. Conflicting desires, I mean. Coming inside, friend?
I’ve got a box of wishbones I’m saving for you….

Let’s send the guards home early. Let’s touch everything.

Photo:  Kathleen M. Heideman, 1990.

Photographs documenting recent remodeling of the Dassler cabin, used for the Artist Residency program on Isle Royale National Park. I can’t wait to get out there — it looks so wonderful!

Dassler Cabin Isle Royale

Quote from a terrific essay I just read in the new issue of Poetry magazine:

“Society now” — to use the term loosely and inaccurately — ” is insistent that poetry is of little use. By a strange irony this seems to have led to the demand that actual poets, as against their work, be more visibly useful than ever before.”

- Eavan Boland (from Islands Apart: A Notebook)

My poem “How Top-Secret Warheads Were Moved” has been published online in The Tonopah Review:

How Top-Secret Warheads Were Moved
Kathleen M. Heideman

Word of an approaching circus would have spread quickly.
No circus posters went up, but kids in every town along the route
whispered about convoys, spotted by a hired man
or the neighbors, passing: brightly painted trucks
like heat-mirages in the distance,
diesels rippling through dry hills and deserts on newly-tarred
two-lanes, preceded by clown-cars, blinking lights and WIDE
LOAD signs, loaded down with canvas tents and tilt-a-whirls,
dissembled fairways and Ferris wheels, calliope music
disturbing dark flocks of crows. Kids said there were
trucks with man-eating tigers painted on the sides, air-cooled,
with iron bars to keep the beasts from escaping.
Behind all this, grim carnies were sweating in the hot wake,
hands clenched as they drove, eyes bloodshot.
They never smiled when the trucks paused for fuel;
wouldn’t say where their mysterious circus was headed
or when the big show might finally begin.

(Circus poster from the Library of Congress photostream on Flickr)

Curious sidebar: I wrote this poem after a trip through the Dakotas, but Tonopah (Nevada) happens to be the site of a nuclear weapon test site (Sandia National Laboratory). The Tonopah test site is part of the greater Nevada Test Site, where nuclear devices were detonated in the desert, starting in the 1950s. Nuclear missile tests notwithstanding, Tonopah NV is considered one of the darkest spots in America, and a great spot for telescope enthusiasts.