In the Strawberry Mountains

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Sam Olson

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Grandmother, I know you don’t read the news
any longer, but in case you heard, it’s true–
they want to send 30,000 people
to a camp called Gitmo. Camping
is what we did come June. I was a camper,
once, then a counselor. Find a hole
on a creek? Camp till the beer cooler comes.
After the invasion, remember where
they sent you? I do. You told us again,
that Thanksgiving before the forgetting
set in. You camped on cots in a vacant
granary with all the other hundreds.
A teen whispered nearby, something about
Siberia. You’d just turned ten, perfect
age to find crannies and gaps, to keep secrets,

to motion, I found a way. Now, come summer,
we might drive the Oregon Trail backwards,
pitch up in the Strawberry Mountains,
catch some brook trout, maybe swing by that guy
in La Grande who sells the giant zucchinis.
It’s odd, being out of service, not knowing.
Who lost their job today? Who couldn’t find
their papers? Who just got out of the river?
Who just woke from a bad dream? Remember,
you got so sick on the ship, they interned you
with the other girls– did it feel like camp,
all you feverish whisperers? Did you ask,
Gdzie jesteśmy? Gdzie jest moja matka?
Did somebody answer? Was it the nurse?
The one who brought you the cup of sherbert?

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Sam Monroe Olson is a candidate for the MFA in Poetry at Oregon State University. Raised in Portland, Oregon with family roots across Montana, he calls both states home. Prior to undertaking the MFA, he taught environmental science, managed wilderness trail crews, and facilitated creative writing workshops in Montana’s public schools and juvenile detention centers. His poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Radar, Cutbank, and River Heron Review, among others.

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