Issue 135: 17 March 2022

Home/ Issue 135: 17 March 2022

Seeking solace?

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Two Poems by Victoria Barnes

A Cosmic Dirty Story —from the New York Times, 9 August 1945   From an open door in the sky, the threshold of a new industrial art. To the earth, an explosion of red: the new and terrifying weapon. In the morning newspaper, images arrive: an imagination-sweeping experiment. As we read the story, we learn— […]

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America Cares . . . Thoughts & Prayers

By Phyllis Wax   Fly the flag at half-mast all the time because every day, someone kills himself or someone else or a bunch of someones with a gun. Fly the flag at half-mast because America loves guns more than she loves people.   Social issues are a major focus of Milwaukee poet Phyllis Wax. […]

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Choice

By Erica Goss   I’m sixteen. School thinks I have the flu. I tell the doctor to knock me out. In the alley behind the clinic, men wait in cars. They leave their engines rumbling. Backseat speakers vibrate. My mother drives me home. I’m thirty-seven. Work thinks I had a miscarriage. I tell the doctor […]

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Two Poems by Amelia Díaz Ettinger

Brown-Headed Cowbird Molothrus ater   I know what it’s said about me that I am a bad mother a brood parasite —no I know I relinquish my eggs to the care of others but notice; I take my time watching in torture-wait until I find her, the perfect host a serious, smaller, caring female in […]

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Only the Meek

By Dotty LeMieux   Where are the birds of spring? I see bees—are there enough? Black carpenter ants—we never had them before— emerge from some dusky damp place beneath the foundation. We live in a house of cards. Even a bear takes exception to exceptional times and climbs a backyard tree he must have crossed […]

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Changing Names

Mendocino, California   By Frederick Livingston after how many years does “drought” erode into expected weather? and then what name when the rains do come startling the hard earth the exhausted aquifers? we’ll sing to the deep wells the quieted fire and clean sky “winter” brittle in our mouths holding vigil for rivers elders insects […]

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Elegy at the End of a Beach Walk

By Ellen Girardeau Kempler   Heat buffets us seaward. Sunburn sends us home. We trail wakes of bags & butts clamshell packages & coffee cups. Styrofoam seeds sprout like alien plants neoprene petals band aid leaves. Straws take root in tangled kelp. Saltwater & sun degrade. Waves & currents take away. Great Garbage Patch. Undersea […]

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Cicuta

By K. L. Lord   The delicate blooms, alabaster petaled and fragrant, sprout from gardens across the land, mingling with the peas and green beans. They are lovely, but they’ve never grown here before. The first person to find them thought they were carrots, but when pulled from the ground, tendrils of roots ripple through […]

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