JUST ONE WORD... PLASTICS

by Steven Kent

The plastic Trump straws being sold at $15 for a 10-pack. Photograph: Official Donald J Trump Store

Trump signs order to bring back plastic straws, claiming paper ones ‘explode’ —The Guardian, February 10, 2025

Exploding straws? A liberal joke!
   The Prez says with emotion--
More plastic now for Diet Coke,
   More plastic for the ocean.
Ecology's a Commie plot,
   An antiquated notion—
More plastic now for stuff we've got,
   More plastic for the ocean.
The EPA, the Silent Spring—
   Abandoned, our devotion.
More plastic now for everything,
   More plastic for the ocean.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collection I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.

CUSP OF WHAT COMES NEXT

by Annie Stenzel

The Bay Bridge and San Francisco skyline, seen from Treasure Island, are barely visible through Sept. 11’s hazy air because of smoke from the state’s wildfires.Photo: Nick Otto / Special to The San Francisco Chronicle, September 19, 2020

Avert your eyes. That window frames a post-apocalyptic sky. Standard issue.
Darkness at 9:00 a.m. Six months into one cataclysm; three-plus weeks into
another. Make no joke involving sword, famine, or beasts from the wild.

Solace is scarce. Mental shelves looted of stock a person needs for survival.
Inventory now includes next to no patience. Scant fortitude. Very little
good cheer. How to re-order, regenerate, when the supply-chain is depleted?

Impossible not to think the worst. You sketch a picture captioned, “The End Times
Loom.” Remembered images from other horror stories crush barriers hastily
built to keep reality out. Reptile brain advises flight, because

how could one even begin to fight such an enemy? We are the tiny creatures
around which ash swirls wildly in our inescapable globe. All those prior
chances to live and learn; to change the course of our headlong tumble

into climate chaos. Fifty-eight years since Silent Spring. Fourteen years beyond
An Inconvenient Truth. And us with two hands still over our eyes, two
over our ears and our merry mouths declaiming, “Move along! Nothing to see here.”

Annie Stenzel was born in Illinois, but has lived on both coasts of the U.S. and on other continents at various times in her life. Her book-length collection is The First Home Air After Absence (Big Table Publishing, 2017). Her poems appear in print and online journals in the U.S. and the U.K., from Ambit to Willawaw Journal with stops at Chestnut Review, Gargoyle, Gone Lawn, On the Seawall, Psaltery & Lyre, SWWIM, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Lake, among others. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she currently lives within sight of the San Francisco Bay.

EARTH MOTHER

by Cynthia Neely

The New York Times, July 22, 1962

To Rachel Carson, mother of the environmental movement, who died April 14, 1964

Was it a good day to die
when we were young,
when the earth was younger
than it is now?

Silent Spring had sprung
and we were bell-bottomed and braless,
flowers in our hair.

Today would have killed you
now that we’re old
and the world is older

but no wiser.
Our kids are tweeting,
the birds too for now.

Yes, I’d say it was good to die
before you could witness
the work you’d done undone,
Mother Earth again made “useful”
to us in useless ways.

And you aren't able to see
the undoing continue
as sea stars lose their limbs,
polar ice cools the sea,
oceans rise, our winters shorten
and our springs become silent.

Poet and painter, Cynthia Neely is the 2016 winner of the Bright Hill Press chapbook contest for Passing Through Blue Earth and the 2011 winner of the “Hazel Lipa Prize for Poetry” chapbook contest for Broken Water published by Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. Her essay work has appeared in The Writers’ Chronicle, and her poems have been included in numerous print and online journals, including Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Floating Bridge’s Pontoon, and Terrain.org. She has been nominated for “Best of the Net” as well as had work included in several anthologies. Her full-length volume of poetry Flight Path was published in 2014 as a finalist in the Aldrich Press book contest.