THE WATERS OF LAKE MEAD

by Alfred Fournier

Water levels at Lake Mead have fallen dramatically amid a record drought. Compare the satellite images of the lake in 2000 and in 2022, and you can see the stark decline. NASA Earth Observatory via Vox, August 17, 2022

shrunken by drought, 

reveal body by body our sins: 

missing children and sunken mob hits,

bricks heaved into once-deep water. 

Inch by inch, layers of strata denuded 

become sheets of ancient music 

played on instruments of doom. 

One last chorus for the climate scientists, 

our voices rising in thin atmosphere,

where far above the moon peers down. 

Is that a frown on the old man’s face, 

or does our willful dance with fate amuse him? 

Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, International Times, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. 

REAPED

by Alfred Fournier

a harvest of unwanted
children
rustle in corn leaves
dry with Alabama dust

songless & ravaged
forced
into being     weakly lean
in blackbird wind

somewhere a bloated fish
of a man grins               his
unwelcomed
white seed swims

Alfred Fournier resides in Phoenix, Arizona. He is an entomologist and a graduate of Purdue and George Washington Universities. His work is forthcoming in Cathexis Northwest Press.