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Under Taos Mountain

by Penelope Scambly Schott

In Under Taos Mountain, Penelope Scambly Schott navigates the endless horizons between Magpie and Tía, the sacred and primitive terrain of the American Southwest where “each of (Tía’s) loose feathers/ sprouts a dark spruce.” Sparely written with the land’s rich vocabulary and even richer, though haunting spaces Schott convinces the reader that “(she) found these words under sage brush/ out where the houses end.

—Rob Cook, author of Songs for the Extinction of Winter and Blackout Country

Her language stark yet voluptuous, each word a scavenged jewel, Penelope Scambly Schott has written a masterful, scintillating allegory. Set in New Mexico whose mythology she deepens and distills, the reader hears dialogue between what is human “Magpie, tell my soul/ which I thought was so black/ is not” and what is winged and wild. “Auntie, it sparkles: you beautiful slut.” Not since Ted Hughes’ Crow has a mediating bird/human consciousness been used to such powerful effect.

—Stephanie Dickinson, author of Half Girl and Road of Five Churches

Penelope Scambly Schott is the author of four previous chapbooks plus a novel and seven full-length poetry books including three historical verse narratives, Penelope: The Story of the Half-Scalped Woman, The Pest Maiden: A Story of Lobotomy, and A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth (Oregon Book Award for Poetry, 2008), as well as four lyric collections, The Perfect Mother (Violet Reed Hass Prize, 1994), Baiting the Void (Orphic Prize, 2005), May the Generations Die in the Right Order, and Six Lips. At home in Portland, Oregon (where she is never harassed by magpies), Penelope works, hikes, paints, and spoils her family, especially Lily Schott Sweetdog.

by Penelope Scambly Schott

Magpie at Night

This night has too many pieces.

I lie awake on my white lace pillow
in a black-laced room, wondering,
where in the world does Magpie sleep?

Tía, I sleep in the cup of the dipper;
I dip my beak in the Milky Way.

I watch the sleepers
spinning toward morning.

        Magpie, why can’t I sleep?

You write too much, Auntie.
Let your dreams lie in peace.

        But I need to hold on to something:
        the hem of the sheet or the heat

        of his skin. Or a pen or this pencil
        I trimmed to a point with my knife.

Poor old Auntie. You used to be smarter.
you used to suck your thumb.

        Magpie, I almost remember:
        such a warm, wet dark.

Drop your pencil.

I will rock you back to sleep in a basket
woven from the tails

of shooting stars.


Magpie Confesses Me

Tell me your sins, Tía.
(I, of course, have none.)

        Magpie, I have sinned:
        I married a man I didn’t love.

Did you fledge the nestlings?

        I did.

And are you truly sorry?

        I did what I did.

Okay, tell me another.

        I hit a parked car and skedaddled.

I do that every day.

        But I didn’t leave any note.

Auntie, you have sinned;
I always leave my white calling card.

Let this be your act of contrition:
Splat your words on the world
and be sure they are Honest.

Here Magpie taps my shoulder
with her holy tail.

        Magpie, Magpie, but what
        if I cannot promise that?

Then you are damned.

Then I am damned.