ONE DAY

by Peg Quinn

I’ll let your adrenaline rest,
not itemize facts on
how we’ve destroyed Earth's
environmental balance—
though I’m confident
it will survive
without us

I only want to let you know,
in spite of this,
I waited in line at Trader Joe’s
while the clerk recited
a Mary Oliver poem
to a customer
standing,
enchanted.


Peg Quinn is a mural painter and poet who keeps afloat in Santa Barbara, California.

THE THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS OF TRADER JOE SHOPPERS

by Kristin Berger

Image source: Kim's Cravings

That tonight will be the quiet, easy Sunday when all cars obey
the lights and the moon escorts clouds to the other side
of the overpass, under which homeless families are thankful
for no rain and church tips—
That tonight you reduce the odds and leave the children home,
the one fuming that you won't let him get the Nerf gun
that handles & loads like a semi-automatic;
Because you are the mother, and tonight will be the random night
you return with a trunk full of groceries, nothing
but a split nail and no sirens in the distance.

Kristin Berger is the author of the poetry collection How Light Reaches Us (Aldrich Press, 2016), and a poetry chapbook For the Willing (Finishing Line Press, 2008), and co-edited VoiceCatcher 6: Portland/Vancouver Area Women Writers and Artists (2011). Her long prose-poem, Changing Woman & Changing Man: A High Desert Myth, was a finalist for the 2016 Newfound Prose Prize. Her most recent work has been published in Contrary Magazine, Half-Mystic Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Timberline Review and Wildness. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she hosts a summer poetry reading series at her neighborhood farmers market.