Forks, WA

* The seventh in a series of travelogue poems


Fourteen blood-suckers watch with amusement

As pale, middle-American tourists wander the streets

Searching for holy artifacts of the mighty story:

The T-shirts, the personalized key chains, the baseball caps;

The predators wait patiently until dark,

Searching for the appropriate moment

To remind the travellers they are pursuing more than fiction

By: Jake Adams

Port Angeles, WA

* The seventh in a series of travelogue poems


The splendor of Mount Olympus—

She dropped her pince-nez

In the icy, indifferent harbor



By: Jake Adams

Mt. St. Helens, WA

* The sixth in a series of travelogue poems



Snow in May

Darkness in mid-morning;

Mary cried and told the world about Jesus--

     The fierce power of God’s systematic wrath,


     Or the cold inevitability of random catastrophic eruption?—


James calmly calculated the risks

While wiping down the Portland streets with a hand towel;

     The worshippers laid alms on the edge of the mountain


     Hoping to win the gods’ favor and grace


A geological timeline of our feeble attempt to steer the ship:

As the blackbird creates the weather systems,

The freeway determines the traffic volume,

Or the pinot noir orders itself from the menu,

We are in complete control

By: Jake Adams

Tacoma, WA

* The fifth in a series of travelogue poems


An unassuming songstress—Seattle’s awkward little sister across Puget Sound,

The City of Destiny, the Oakland of the Pacific Northwest—

Sends her humble melodies into the arms of an arid suburbia.

Strands of hair tumble over her left eye,

Keeping the life within concealed from plain sight.

However, listen closely, and you will hear every drop of her rough, gritty vitality

Reverberating through each thin guitar string and unpretentious falsetto note.

By: Jake Adams

Deer Lodge, MT

The fourth in a series of travelogue poems.

The wind that first carried you away,
parasailing to some undiscovered country
Is the same one howling outside my makeshift window
in this dilapidated cabin.
If only I could reach out and grab one shard of recognition--
The sand, the waves, your beaming face,
Any sensation, no matter how trite.
Instead, I lie here, blank, quietly cursing the darkness,
Longing for a sadistic blizzard
Instead of this relentless, indifferent gale.

By Jake Adams

Bismarck, ND

* The third in a series of travelogue poems



If only nothing can come from nothing,

Then where did this something come from?

This inflamed desire that started

As only calm, quiet yearning

For something other than here--

A barely discernible blip on the radar

Morphing into a red, menacing tempest,

Terrorizing the northern Great Plains

--By Jake Adams

Tomah, WI

* The second in a series of travelogue poems



A world in which cows eat Wisconsin’s finest cheddar for a healthy snack--

Quasi-cannibalism--

Clogging the tender arteries of the bovine herd;

How do the cattle know if the curds are from their own acidified milk?

Silage practically calls them by name,

But they low blissfully while chomping on the cuds of their inevitable demise

--By Jake Adams