Tag: species extinction

The Whale

By Kerry Loughman                                 

 

never budged

becalmed she was

bleached by sun

& beached     on relentless rise

of blue water liquid leeched

from her eyes           her orifices

her great mouth agape

her lungs did evaporate

Climate-changed      her

wishes drowned

in sand

 

Kerry Loughman is a retired educator and photographer living in the Boston area. She writes about memory, art, family, and nature in the city, looking for small transient moments of beauty . . . or discord. Her work has appeared in Mass Poetry’s The Hard Work of Hope and Poem of the Moment, Nixes’ Mate, What Rough Beast, The Main Street Rag and is forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review.

Image credit: “The Whale” by Christopher Michel via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems by Nancy Squires

As the Waters Rise

 

O God, look down
On all our drowned.
Hear us, we beg—
We’re on our knees.
Sorry, so sorry
About the trees,

The polar bears, the birds,
The bees; the icebergs
Gone, the thirsty lawns,
Plastic gyres, redwood
Pyres and all the many,
many cars. The eclipsed stars

We never see. Our Father
In Heaven, we pray
To Thee: Give us
This day.
We promise, oh we swear
On a stack of extinctions

We will repair
Our awful ways
And lead us not into oblivion
Although we can’t pretend
We had no clue. Save us
Now—before
Amen.

 

It’s No Use, Ron DeSantis

 

Before Marie Kondo-ing
I had a pile of beads
in a drawer, cheap baubles
from Gay Prides past:
Chicago, where the crowd spilled
into Halsted, slowing the procession
to a crawl; New York,
where drag queens rode the floats
in headdresses three feet tall
just like Carnival; and Boston,
many years—the one
where Kevin was The Little Mermaid
on the Disney float—his costume
(which he stitched himself),
perfection and his makeup,
animated glam. That woman on the Harley
who dyed her mohawk rainbow
every year, and the time
Sally spotted her coworker
coming down the route—
she was surprised to see him
in a wine-colored corset.
No beads
from Lansing, Michigan,
my first Pride—not
a parade but a march
and what got thrown
at us were insults, curses, glares
from people holding signs
that said God hated us.
So let’s say gay
and everything else
there is to say.
I should’ve kept that pile
of shiny plastic beads—
not sure if it was joy
they sparked but something—
Kevin reclining up there
amongst the other Disney folk
his shimmery mermaid tail
sparkling in the morning sun.
Say it: gay.
All the livelong day.
She and he and them
and they: we
aren’t going back
inside the boxes.

 

Nancy Squires is a writer, lawyer, and freelance copy editor. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Dunes Review, Split Rock Review, and Blueline Magazine. She grew up, and currently resides, in Michigan.

Photo credit: Linda De Volder via a Creative Commons license.

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Displacement

By Antony Owen

 

I am
the fox-flame in the wood
jumping through snow an ember
chased to extinction by lesser beasts.

I am
permanent as the moth in amber
its patterns decided by the white sun
its fate decided by the earthlings.

I am
the glass-blower’s lips’ creation
to consume whatever is put in me
if I break, I become injurious to touch.

I am
the exhausted bee in the shying rose
the heartbeat bass of my distant hive
preferring my own cruel natures.

I am
insignificant as a cloudy starlit night
yet everything is still revealed just hidden
like Greek Gods who move us to sea.

 

Antony Owen is a writer of conflict translated in English, Japanese and German. His work has been recognised internationally, including, a full bilingual collection translated in 2021 by Thelem Press and an award in the British Army Poetry Competition in 2018. His work has also been shortlisted for The Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry.

Photo credit: “Glassblower” by Kairon Gnothi via a Creative Commons license.

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Body Before Extinction

By Emily Hockaday

 

I sing to the water and lower my only child
into the foam, wiggling toes first. I think about
all the species the ocean held
that I don’t know the names of
that have gone extinct this past year
and focus on the sound of the waves
and all the metaphors
that the tide could cover.

I have walked this beach
and pulled balloons, broken bottles,
cracked plastic, and wristwatches
from the surf and dunes
without seeing another person
for miles. I listen for the wind
through the beach grass and
the plover and seagulls
and hand my daughter a trash bag
and gloves. I don’t even know how many
animals are left. I am afraid
to look for the answer.

 

Emily Hockaday’s first full-length collection Naming the Ghost is out with Cornerstone Press November 2022. She is the author of five prior chapbooks, most recently Beach Vocabulary from Red Bird Chaps. Her work has appeared in print and online journals, as well as the Wayfinding, Poets of Queens, and In Isolation anthologies. She can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and on Twitter @E_Hockaday.

Photograph by Aryeh Alex via a Creative Commons license.

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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 mountains
and dried up stream beds to reach.
I hope he got sustenance
out of the dogs’ bowl.

Every night, creatures mate or die
or wail their diminishment
in our backyard, alarming the dogs,
snug in cushioned beds.

Every morning the weather is our bearer of bad news:

Don’t put away the winter clothes
but don’t skimp
on the skimpy.

Gas, lumber, even food scarcer and more costly
because all are vulnerable now
as never before.

Or is just that we are now forced
to face it?

Now that I think of it, dogs
resemble domestic bears
who can’t climb trees.

Squirrels outwit us all.

The nighttime creatures burrow deep
into ground we have given up for dead.
Is this what they mean by the meek

shall inherit the earth?

So why do we still struggle:

to remain upright
to stretch toward breathable air
to stay alive long enough
to inherit what’s left?

 

Dotty LeMieux is the author of four chapbooks, Five Angels, Five Trees Press; Let Us Not Blame Foolish Women, Tombouctou Books; The Land, Smithereens Press, and most recently Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune, Finishing Line Press. In the late 1970s to mid-1980s, she edited the eclectic literary and art journal Turkey Buzzard Review in the poetic haven of Bolinas, California. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and anthologies, including Writers Resist. Dotty lives in Northern California with her husband and two aging dogs, where she practices environmental law and helps elect progressive candidates to office. Read more at her blog.

Photo credit: Jerzy Durczak via a Creative Commons license.

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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 the dirt. No matter how many times they are pulled up, they grow back. A parasite in otherwise pristine gardens. She used to thrive in only wet and marshy lands, but so many of her homes have been destroyed by humans. She has adapted, working to evolve. At first, survival was her only goal. Not every species of living creature found a way to live on. Bees die by the thousands. Birds and mammals struggle, and for some the only salvation is inside a cage.

She will be their voice. Their vengeance. For years, she’s studied the human gardens, feeling out with her roots to understand her neighbors, especially those harvested as food. They too, are tired—heavy with pesticides and lacking the tenderness given by past generations. Her collective consciousness speaks through the earth, preparing every tendril of her being. Communing with her brethren. It is time.

As one, each of her roots reach out to the plants around them, targeting only what is edible, wrapping around them until they become one. She sends her toxins up into every leaf, every seed, every particle. The nourishing flora do not resist. They’ve heard her plans and they are ready to help her take back their habitats and help their choked-out neighbors thrive once more.

The toxins work quickly throughout the population of destructive humans. The flora and fauna of all the world sing as confusion takes over humanity, as the bodies of the dead are given in offering to the earth. Once a plight, now fertilizer for those they abused.

The alabaster petals soak up the rays of the shining sun. Across the lands, ivy climbs up buildings and devours cars. Tree roots burst through concrete. Deer and other smaller creatures cross abandoned highways without danger. Life blooms in the wake of the dead.

Reclaimed.

 

K.L. LORD writes horror and poetry and has published in both fiction and academic markets. She has an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University and is pursuing her Ph.D. in English Literature. You can find her (in non-Covid times) lurking in bookstores, libraries, and tattoo shops; on Twitter, @lord_thelady; and on her website.

Image credit: Tractatus de Herbis (ca.1440) via Public Domain Review

A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.