LUNA MAGNIFICA

by Anne Gruner

 

Your radiant gaze
belies your violent birth—
a cataclysmic collision
delivering you from the bowels
of Mother Earth into
her synchronous embrace.
 
As asteroids pummeled your baby face,
lava cracked open your eyes—
Imbrium and Serenitatis—and forced
the smile of Nubium and Cognitum.
 
Your mother found you precious.
You shielded her from solar winds
and nurtured her atmosphere,
tugging her primordial soup
back and forth to salt life
upon her terra firma.
 
Now, as you age and find yourself
somewhat more distant,
you still stabilize her Goldilocks tilt,
regulate her ebbs and flows,
and calm her mood swings
as maturity and abuse take their toll
on her temperate temperament.
 
And at long last, you reveal
your greatest secret—
water ice at your poles,
holding out the promise
you will help her denizens,
the dwellers of graying Earth,
reach for the stars.

NASA’s Artemis II rocket lifts off for an historic moon mission. Cartoon by James Mellor.

Anne Gruner is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line publications including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Wayfarer Magazine, The New Verse News, Humans of the World, Spillwords, and Written Tales. A former career CIA analyst and lawyer, Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers.

O GREENLAND! MY GREENLAND!

by Anne Gruner

Global AI race makes Greenland's critical minerals a tempting target —NBC News, January 17, 2026

Frozen for millennia,

your ice melts faster and faster,

the shiny shield that protects you

from the sun, reflecting its rays,

like armor deflecting spears, arrows,

and swords but not outrageous fortune.

 

Invulnerable for ages, your permafrost

softens, disgorging its methane and carbon

to fuel the global bonfire of the vanities.

Ancient microbes, freed from glacial captivity

create black holes of “giant” viruses,

standing ready for missions of good or evil.

Fresh and cold, your newly born meltwater

floods the warm salty ocean,

and like a hormonal imbalance,

it slows the sea's circulation,

a fateful harbinger.

 

As your ice bids its long farewell,

you say hello to a new peril,

one from humanity, which may transmogrify

your beauty into toxic mountains of sludge, acid,

dust, and runoff from crushing, grinding,

and chemical bleaching for coveted minerals

and a cesspool of data centers, accelerating

your blackening, melting, warming,

and death. 

 

For the first time in human memory

you have shed tears on your highest peak,

weeping for the Earth.

Anne Gruner is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line publications including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Honeyguide Literary Magazine, The New Verse News, Humans of the World, Spillwords, and Written Tales. Her fiction and non-fiction can be found in Dogwood, Rhapsody of the Spheres, Persimmon Tree, Constellations, Hippocampus, and others. A former CIA analyst, Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers.

SELECTED SHORT SUBJECTS

#1 by Mark Hendrickson

W.A.S.P.s
nest throughout America
radioactive

#2 Home Grown by Eileen Ivey Sirota

ICE is ISIS

wearing black masks and righteousness—

star-spangled brutality.

#3 by Anne Gruner

weep as blue turns black
sky, sea, ubiquitous death
who hears nature's cry

#4 Introduction to Repairing the Infrastructure by Steven M. Smith

#5 It’s Not What You Know by Helen Buckingham

a NY time

a NY place

a NY where

a real estate

bankrupt could 

point his cocktail sausage 

at the highest office

ON THIN ICE

by Anne Gruner

"[Thwaites], a massive Antarctic glacier, which could raise global sea levels by up to two feet if it melts, is far more exposed to warm ocean water than previously believed, according to a [newly published]study...." —The Washington Post, May 20, 2024.

We knew you were sickly but hoped you'd recover,
not believing you were on your deathbed.
Then we x-rayed you from space, just to be sure,
and like many x-rays they brought bad news.
 
As your shining face peers at the sun,
a deadly disease eats away your soft underbelly—
an affliction we don't fully grasp—
understanding its cause, but not its progression.
 
Warm, salty water seeps into a gaping wound
with every breath of tide you take, 
rising and falling, an eroding necrosis,
accelerating without notice until it's too late.
 
We thought you would live thousands of years,
but now fear your death in decades—
with consequences so dire
we call you "Doomsday."

 
A Pushcart-nominated writer, Anne Gruner's poetry has appeared in over a dozen print and on-line publications, including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Written Tales, and Humans of the World. Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers.