LAST SWIM DURING FALL EQUINOX

by Laura Rodley

MORNING SWIM IN THE AUTUMN COLORS OF THE SEA (2022)

Painting by Sergei Gontarovskii (Ukraine)

Swim out so easy, frosty 

cold water hard to break through

but you do, on top there's a green sweater

of warmth you glide through

to the dock where the new owners 

play otter, diving in, out.

On the return the tide of lake

pulls you backwards, each 

stroke only takes you half 

of what it did on the way out.

Still, you keep on reaching out

upon the water, and pulling in,

saving yourself, saving everyone. 

Pushcart Prize winner Laura Rodley's latest book Ribbons and Moths: Poems for Children won Children's Nonfiction at the 2024 International Book Awards. 

WALKING THE PATH

by Laura Rodley

Retired, nurse Jean nurses the homeless along
Chico’s bicycle path near the intersection
of Rio Lindo without washing their backs
or dispensing medicines: she gathers their trash,
clothes, and wet-wipes with a three-foot-grabber
bequeathed by a friend. Fellow walkers along
the path say thank you while she fills plastic
bags, wears cheap plastic gloves, monitoring
her own heart with her pace-maker. Only walls
away divide her from being homeless herself,
though she worked full time since her teens.
She gives back to her country walking
amongst her brethren fallen on hard times,
some still homeless after the Paradise Camp fire.
It’s her home, her country;
in the handkerchief-sized plot outside
her apartment her tomatoes reach
the size of baseballs. You know people
kill rattlesnakes, she says, all you have
to do is walk around them. They live
here too. The Hopi consider them
to be sacred, as is the ground she walks on,
lifting another clump of trash into her bag,
just the way my father gathered litter
as he walked from the train station
on his way home, a veteran longtime gone,
planting tomatoes when he could no longer
see, counting them as round shadows
that hung in the air, sixty-seven last count.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

MISSING

by Laura Rodley

Native and Himalayan Views souvenir shop along the Mohawk Trail in Charlemont removed the 20-foot-tall Native American statue in front of the Route 2 store. Photo Credit: Native and Himalayan Views Facebook via Daily Voice.

First I passed the feathers
of the headdress
over the lip of Greenfield Mountain,
a headdress on a flatbed,
then the rest of the body
of the twenty-foot
Native American statue
that stood in Charlemont
in front of the gift shop
since before I was born,
the shop changing hands
many times, 
and now it’s being trucked
to Vinita Oklahoma, so distinctive
it’s recognizable from the tip
of headdress lying flat,
his face carved with deep grooves,
resembling oak bark, no smile.
I miss it already,
though I haven’t seen
it in years.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

LUCK OF THE IRISH

by Laura Rodley

on Saint Patrick’s Day

“Luck of the Irish” (2019) by Maggie O’Neill

Some people are consistently lucky:
the shamrock rests within their fingertips,
the pot of gold answers their dreams;
granted, the gold may be just a few quarters
they find in the road or spotting the special green cup
they sought to replace one broken,
or a friend they’ve kept all their life,
or a talent, like painting that they don’t let go,
writing, or singing, or building,
the hammer of persistence paying off,
magnets in their hands, their polarities
perfect, no misalignment,
straight shooters, consistent.
Is it the consistent faith
in their luck that draws luck to them
or is it luck is drawn
to those who dream it’s possible,
who keep their arms wide open?

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

OUR PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES

“Table For One” 
by Bonnie Proudfoot
Published February 15, 2022
 
“Kyiv/San Francisco” 
by Susan Gubernat 
Published March 1, 2022
 
“Before I Knew Adam Had Died” 
by Susan Vespoli 
Published March 20, 2022

“Territory”
by David Chorlton
Published August 12, 2022

“New Fossils” 
by Dustin Michael
Published September 23, 2022

“Crystal Ball” 
by Laura Rodley
Published November 11, 2022

CRYSTAL BALL

by Laura Rodley

In the knuckle of the nightmare what does he see?

He swivels the joint around, sees faces

of children, no longer innocent, their faces blank,

then blown up. It is not that he had to bury any;

that was not his job. Instead, he was flown

above the rice paddies where the women worked,

their wide hats resembling shiitake mushrooms

when seen from the sky, their tiny hoes

hoeing the fields, gathering the grain,

letting the water out, sprayed with napalm

and agent orange; they all ate it, its perfume

a pollen of poison. He was up in a helicopter,

delivering paychecks, manna from

the government. What is easy to ignore

when survival demands it comes back to stare

you in the face. The children’s faces below,

his fellow soldiers, a flip of propeller blade

and they are gone, but not now, not fifty-five

years later, a whole other lifetime. He still carries

butterscotch lifesavers in his pockets

that he handed out to the children that came begging;

they saw him as Santa Claus, one of his many

camouflaged elves. He can’t turn time back

but his nightmares do it for him, every night

he reenters the war zone he left behind,

taught as a man from birth not to have feelings,

then returning from duty, not to have feelings,

with no one buying him a drink at the bar

or asking him to speak at the high school,

as the World War II vets were so honored. It’s a long

way back, to the fields of yellow pollen that was not

the dust of Ailanthus trees, a long way back to the drugs

that were offered to make you forget, to the beers, to women offered,

to the honor you held tight to your chest.

He knew all the lyrics to The Doors, the Beatles,

Dion and the Belmonts; where does that

get him now? He’s held tight in the fist

of his commanding officer suck it up, be a man.

He’s held tight in the fist of his own heart, squeezing the life out

of him and into him, regulating his every action,

his every breath. But the rhythm of the heart

is not the territory of nightmares, the nightmares

leave notches, catch his breath; he wanted a gentle life,

honor held tight in the fist that is his heart,

caught off balance, flailing, ceaselessly trying

to get into the groove, pay attention.

His life depends on it.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

REWIND

by Laura Rodley

If I write this poem

will you breathe again?

Will the bullet

eject itself from your heart,

close the hole where

the blood pumps out

over the ground,

will the blood surge

through the stunned portions

of your heart, your legs,

let them walk again?

If I write this poem

will it rewind time, stop the sale

of the automatic rifle

to a twenty-two year-old—

his whole life ahead of him—

who fired into

the 4th of July parade in Highland Park,

killing seven, no life ahead of them now.

If I write this poem

will the parade stop on 4th street

so where he stood on the roof

is too far away for his bullets

to reach, the slew of revelers

rerouted, over the river, safe.

If I write this poem

will this sky pour down its angels

to dismantle the armories,

dismantle the gun cabinets,

dismantle the twenty-two-year old’s gun,

dismantle the anger, despair, whatever

feeds this frenzy, though, yes, I know

angels can only surge their light,

flicker on the intention, even they cannot

lift the rifle, pull it out of his hands,

—given free choice,

the shooter must do it for himself,

should have chosen otherwise;

the next shooter must decide

for himself: put the weapon down.

Is it because of a lack of a way

to be a hero that they take up arms

and destroy? Rewind, give

the people back their lives. Do it now.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

THREE DAYS TO CHRISTMAS

by Laura Rodley

She panhandles at the long traffic lights

on corners of Federal and Main,

easier to have people drop money

into her hands.

She used to sell odd homemade clay jewelry

while sitting on the sidewalk,

leaning against the Martial Arts studio.

No one’s buying now.

Today, she’s dyed her hair dark brown,

holds her cardboard sign: Homeless, anything helps,

sits to the left of the entrance of Green Field’s Market.

They rarely ask her to move.

I have no change, not even for the meter,

and walk towards the market door.

“Hey, hey,” she calls, “They’ll give you a ticket.”

“I don’t have any change,” I say.

“Here, I do,” she says, unzipping her tracksuit pocket.

“No, no, I can’t take any money from you.”

Inside the store, I shop, use my debit card,

extract money for her, return.

“Here, thanks for protecting my car.”

“I do it for everybody,” she says. “It’s not good

to get a ticket, it goes against your license.”

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Wendy,” she answers.

Wendy, all grown up, no longer led into Neverland,

protecting my car, sitting

on the cold hard sidewalk,

teeth chattering.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

Our Pushcart Prize Nominees

The New Verse News is proud to announce its nomination of the following six poems, published here during 2021, for the next series of Pushcart Prizes:

"Thinking About Love During Covid and Coups"

by Susan Vespoli 

"Mandate"

by Laura Rodley

"Brave Red"

by Ellen White Rook

"Free Range Bird"

by Indran Amirthanayagam

"Displacement"

by Erik Schwab

"Postscript to an Activist's Life"

by David Chorlton

PILGRIMAGE TO EMILY DICKINSON'S HOUSE ON NINETY-TWO DEGREE SUMMER DAY

by Laura Rodley

What would Emily say? The driveway to her brother Edward’s home

is gated, the property surrounded with orange crisscrossed plastic

fencing, plastic not yet invented in her time, nor the cure for her kidney

ailments. Today her condition would have been aggravated by the chlorine

and other astringent agents the town uses to clean the water pumped

to the homes. She would have drunk water from an artesian well

in her Victorian home, writing poems at two a.m., loving someone

she could not have, not from the future, but from her own time period.

Was she ever pregnant as some suggest? Was she virginal as her white

dresses? Did she actually suffer from hypertension? Was she able

to see the future? Her poems crossed realms of time and space.

Would she have cut the crisscrossed orange fence, crushed it down,

or felt more secure to be enclosed, secure in her hermitage

peopled with family, cooks, and Irish workmen, six of whom carried

her casket to her grave in West Cemetery, where she walked in the evenings.

She was nourished by a garden that is no longer open to the public

due to Covid. A garden that fed her, kept her poetry

alive, already passed through the gates into other’s hands through letters.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

TENDING TO HIS OWN HEART ON FATHER'S DAY

by Laura Rodley

His heart is carefully tendered,

a stent maintaining a constant

opening in his left descending

artery, the artery that was

completely blocked three years

ago causing his heart attack,

before his surgery. His heart has

healed to full sixty percent ejection

fraction: normal. He takes his meds

regularly, calls me, his wife, to say

he’s taking them while on the road,

a way to remember what is so easy to forget.

Before his heart attack, the pumping action

of his heart was just an afterthought, a given,

no monitoring or overseeing required.

Now he is father to his heart, constantly

aware of its pulses, aware of pains that were similar

to his neck pain, the nausea, when his heart

was blocked, a pearl spun of his own plaque

blocking the flow. He will always be watching

the rhythm of his heart, aware of its working, or not.

His heart is no longer a child released out

into the world like his son and daughters.

His heart rides with him everywhere,

has special needs: low salt, no butter, only

olive oil, a specific regimen he must follow

to not fail his heart so his heart won’t fail him.

Though, if, in spite of this, his heart fails,

it would not be his fault: it’s genetics, an inherited

weakness that overtipped the cart, but now he’s

pushing it, all of it, his heart, his father

who had four heart attacks, his being father

to his own heart, making sure it wakes up

on time, beats on time, he’s never closing the door.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

WAITING ROOM

by Laura Rodley

Graphic from The Atlantic.

Don’t let anyone tell you different,

it takes guts to sit in the chair

after your vaccine waiting

for possible anaphylactic shock,

it takes guts to hold up the mirror of fear

and see it showing your face masked,

it takes guts to weight the pros and cons,

death and life, the accordion wings

of your two lungs expanding, their

three lobes lifting up like the mouths

of goldfish inside a koi pond, it takes

guts to fill your tank with gas

holding the nozzle that some stranger

held, hand sanitizer wiping away

germs, wiping away fear, it takes

guts to drive yourself to your appointment,

the second time, all because you don’t

want to lose your place in line of this

carousel called life, all for real, and

the whole time, your lungs, their pink

tenderness expands and contracts,

without you asking, even when you sleep.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

MANDATE

by Laura Rodley

My eyes see the road but my hands

steer the wheel, car ahead,

snow banks to my right,

more snow falling. It feels 

like a hundred years

now and still I have not

heard from you my daughter.

The daughter that was just a wish,

a dream, an incessant urge,

a tug to the infinite

and so I reached my hands

up and pulled you down

from clouds full of precipitation,

the month was November that

you were born, the isle of snow,

but conceived in February

on Valentine’s Day, my hands

full of the eyes of your father,

the sky filled with snowflakes.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and just off the press, As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

DEFIANCE AS THE TREES LET GO THEIR LEAVES

by Laura Rodley

As repetitious as concentric circles

breaking one upon the other, overlapping

but never touching, the outward circles

encroach on the returning circles,

but the swimmer’s hands keep breaking

the smooth skin of the water

sending back more circles,

her breaststroke a circle;

here, at Ashfield Lake, there is no election,

no Prince of Tides, no princes,

just to swim to the brown house

a quarter mile and return

before it gets dark. 

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

NOT

by Laura Rodley





It’s not OK that Covid lurks
on sheet metal, lingers in lungs,
six hour window between tenants
in vacation rentals, disinfecting all
surfaces, holding onto our face masks.
It’s not OK I cannot see the stranger’s
face to know what they are saying,
who they are, if they might be safe or not.
It’s not OK that school might not
start up again and all rights of passage,
hallmarked by the start of school
in September, college, the rights of passage
are now given over to the power
of the internet, now zoomed into outer
space—are we being recorded? Who is
mapping our thoughts? It is as though
all the ways we knew how to live
and be kind, follow the markers, each right
of passage has left us with an earth
that’s flat, no longer round: what if Columbus
never sailed the seas, he drowned in them,
it was someone else who discovered America
and it was not someone looking for gold.
It was discovered by accident,
and no one was taken prisoner.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Finishing Line Press nominated her Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L.L.Winship Award and Mass Book Award. FLP also nominated her Rappelling Blue Light for a Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, until Covid-19, Rodley taught the As You Write It memoir class for 12 years.  She edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI, also nominated for a Mass Book Award. Latest books Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

POWER OUTAGE

by Laura Rodley

No Covid here, just sleeping dog, sleeping cat,
no Covid here, doorknobs wiped off, laundry dry,
no Covid here, breeze courting sparrows and wrens,

no Covid here, the leaves of the maples turn it away,
no Covid here, the mice at the gates chew it away,
no Covid here, sparrows, rose breasted grosbeaks peck at its crumbs,

no Covid here, tomato plants flowering, lettuce plumping,
no Covid here, sleeping dog, sleeping cat, popsicles,
no Covid here, last night power outage, lightning bugs for lamps,

no Covid here, the chipmunks carry it away in fat cheeks,
no Covid here, porcupines shake their quills at it,
no Covid here, table umbrella up, providing shade,

no Covid here, alcohol preps in front hallway,
no Covid here, doorknobs wiped off, floors vacuumed,
no Covid here, front line Jim took navy shower, conserving water,

no Covid here, clothes off, decontaminated,
no Covid here, hands washed, twenty seconds, length of a long sigh,
no Covid here, watermelons holding onto their flowers,

no Covid here, only the clock ticked, told time, trembled,
no Covid here, candles on the table, matches, no flushing toilets,
no Covid here, lightning bugs gathered on screens, blinking,

no Covid here, neighbors wear no masks walking,
no Covid here, they say they had it, but could not get tested,
no Covid here, they say they can’t get the antibody test either,

no Covid here, antibody test hard to get, they work at home,
no Covid here, no internet, no wireless lightning bugs beating,
no Covid here, the fox carries away all corpses.

No Covid here, garter snakes keep guard in the garden,
no Covid here, maple tree leaves wave it along its way,
no Covid here, the grounds area guarded by field mice,

no Covid here, grass covered with spent dandelions, comfrey,
no Covid here, pathway into forest deep and long, but it ends.
No Covid here, sonic boom of jets propel it away,

no Covid here, rock and roll radio, oldies station,
no Covid here, new grass won’t allow it, nor the chipmunks.


Laura Rodley is a Pushcart Prize Winner. Her most recent books are Turn Left at Normal (Big Table Publishing) and Counter Point (Prolific Press).

HALF STAFF

by Laura Rodley

Flags should be at half staff
for the innocents who went before us,
the front line sounding the alarm,
take heed, watch out, we’re the first.
Without them, there would be no frantic
rushing to close the gates of the broken dam
waging Covid-19. Without them,
no one would take Covid-19 seriously.
For the other elders at Life Care Center
at Kirkland, Washington,
and for the elders in other nursing homes
who receive no more visitors,
for the taxi drivers, actors in community
theater, restaurant workers, singers,
for those on their own front line,
for the medical workers, among the first
to be ill, the first to be tested, for the first wave,
the loss of the world
as we know it, gone,
flags should be at half mast,
for the knock to internal feelings of security
for the loss for many of financial security
for the loss of a sense of direct community
found by walking amongst each other,
flags should be at half staff.
Yes, communities have regained strength
through illustrious singing and the internet,
but for the innocents who went before
alerting the souls aboard this ship of planet earth
before their leaders did,
the flags should be at half staff.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

AUSTRALIA'S BURNING

by Laura Rodley

This is for the kangas,
the koala bears,
the duck billed platypus,
the lizards in the soil,
this is for the tree trunks
left standing, for the people,
for the sky full of smoke
above them, I wish you
great clouds of rain,
nimbus clouds bottom heavy
to quench your thirst,
no more fire-induced thunderheads,
to avoid more lightning strikes.
I wish you moist cooling breezes
sent from far out in the ocean,
a place to rest.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Publisher Finishing Line Press nominated her Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L.L.Winship Award and Mass Book Award. FLP also nominated her Rappelling Blue Light for a Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, Rodley teaches the As You Write It memoir class and has edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI, also nominated for a Mass Book Award. She was accepted at Martha’s Vineyard’s NOEPC and has been a participant in the 30 poems in November fundraiser for the Literacy Project for Center for New Americans. Latest books Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

YOU DON'T

by Laura Rodley

The roll call of deceased unit members, which included 10 men killed in action, was an emotional time for Vietnam veterans who reunited in Berea, Ohio on August 9, 2019. "Even though we have had some sleepless nights, some dreams we want to forget, the remembrance of PTSD, and Agent Orange that just won't let go, we continue to be grateful and to stand for our flag," said the Chaplain. Photo credit: Beth Mlady/Special to cleveland.com, August 17, 2019

You don’t know him, he doesn’t
ask to be known, he won
a bronze star for valor
in Vietnam, he shops
on senior discount Tuesdays
at Big Y, at least he used to.
He doesn’t go out anymore,
even outside. You wouldn’t
recognize him, he’s just an
average Joe in a linen shirt,
rhythm of helicopters whirring
in his head. The Fourth of July,
Friday night fireworks in Ocean Park?
He’s seen enough fireworks, mortar
shell explosions, lights exploding,
himself exploding, he doesn’t want
any reminders. But ask for recognition,
no, valor of Vietnam vets unspoken,
stationed in Da Nang, ground zero for Agent Orange,
his early heart attack just a fluke
the doctor said, hearing loss due to age.
He slept next to a mortar shell field.
They blew up all the time.
He’s not asking anything
from his country that he served,
just to be left alone.

He only has to be as tall
as the ceiling of his livingroom,
where he chomps Fritos, swallows Cokes,
he doesn’t have to see behind him,
beside him, below him as the chopper
brings him base to base to allocate
and release funds, he doesn’t
have to see through forests, they
were denuded by Agent Orange,
someone could drop down on him
from above, but not while
he’s in front of the T.V. The front
door is locked, a cheap remedy
against machine gun fire.
He only has to manage the space
of the couch, the clicker, even
the screened-in porch reveals
too much green, someone could
be hiding in those maples, oaks,
kudzu, and that’s not paranoia,
it was real for him for two tours,
someone hiding to do him harm,
annihilate him and nothing but
his dog tags to know his name.
He would not call this being afraid,
nor is he: he is aware, hyper-aware
of leave rustle, door closing, pop-top
of the can breaking open, the fizzle
of foam. Everything he does saves
his life and those of the men he
served with- not one of them taught
to act alone but as a unit, always
aware of his buddy, aware of combat
boots squishing in the mud of rice paddies
beside him. Hyper-aware of
everything outside of him to save
them all, but nothing but his finessed reaction
for shooting or readiness to bail out of the chopper
of his own internal life. He
lived outside himself, his body, and
having survived when so many
he knew did not, he brought
it all home with him, where
it breathes in the livingroom
with him, he can’t close his eyes,
it’s inside him now, it won’t get out,
won’t let him go.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Publisher Finishing Line Press nominated her Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L.L.Winship Award and Mass Book Award. FLP also nominated her Rappelling Blue Light for a Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, Rodley teaches the As You Write It memoir class and has edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI, also nominated for a Mass Book Award. She was accepted at Martha’s Vineyard’s NOEPC and has been a participant in the 30 poems in November fundraiser for the Literacy Project of the Center for New Americans. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

SEIZURE

by Laura Rodley

Officials in Hong Kong said on Friday that they had intercepted a shipment of nine tons of scales from pangolins, the largest seizure the city has ever made of products from one of the most frequently trafficked mammals in the world. A thousand elephant tusks were in the same shipment, officials said. The scales and tusks were seized on Jan. 16, said the customs authorities, who displayed the contraband for reporters. They were found hidden under slabs of frozen meat on a cargo ship that had stopped in Hong Kong on its way to Vietnam from Nigeria, said officials, who estimated the shipment’s value at nearly $8 million. —The New York Times, February 1, 2019

Minding their own business
pangolins slurp up termites
drawing squirming bugs into their stomach
with their tongues that begin in their stomach,
not the back of their mouths.

Minding their own business,
they do not smell the poachers or the poachers’ dogs,
poachers that cover their boots with pangolin musk
and the murky water they trudge through
to reach the pangolins emerged from their burrows at night.

Not even completely dead, poachers scrape away
pangolin scales, layered like pine cone fingernails on their backs
with sharp triangle blades that could but do not
cut the poachers’ hands, as they wear thick gloves,
poachers who consume the pulverized scales themselves

to combat pain of arthritis, asthma or rheumatism
that they have gained carrying baskets of scales out of the woods.
They have no awe of the stretched out beauty
of the pangolin’s body, peacock length with no feathers,
no awe of the babies that ride on their tails,

no fear of the way pangolins fight back—by rolling into a ball
around their young who just finished drinking their milk, easy to capture,
dismantle their scales, maybe carry some back alive to raise more.
They only think of their business, harvesting
the bounty, nine tons of scales seized mid January

in a Hong Kong port, amassed from nearly 14,000
rolled up balls expired, gasping, left behind,
so the razor edge of their scales can strengthen
someone’s bones, ease their pain. What about their conscience,
Does the eight million price tag cancel that?

Laura Rodley was a Pushcart Prize winner for her New Verse News poem "Resurrection." Finishing Line Press nominated her books Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose and Rappelling Blue Light for the Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, Rodley teaches the As You Write It memoir class and has edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.