RESTING ON A ROCK AT 8000 FEET WHEN IT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SO HOT IN MARCH

an abecedarian

by Malinda Miller

The record-breaking heatwave scorching the US west [in March] would have been “virtually impossible” if not for the climate crisis... caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. —The Guardian, March 20, 2026

Above the steep riverbank, no snow or ice in sight,

 

below a craggy granite face, I’m

 

cracked open by 

 

determination to understand 

 

evolution. Not 

 

from where, how, why —

 

grand theories

 

honed in academic halls, no — more

 

incipient answers to questions I’m afraid to ask.

 

Junipers surround me, trunks gnarled, twisted,

 

knobby—able to survive relentless heat, intense winds, scarcity of water. 

 

Lichen, among the oldest of living things on Earth, 

 

mossy green, burnt orange and yellow on barren rock 

 

near my dusty backpack and boots, colonized here long before us. 

 

Other foliage and organisms are not so hardy—nor am I—left 

 

parched from a winter of too much wind and too little moisture;

 

questioning, can damage causing climate change be

 

reversed? What’s next? Can we adapt?

 

Should we expect a 

 

tumultuous future full of

 

unforeseen consequences?

 

Verdant seasons may become rare. This we must accept.

 

We’re not as resilient as juniper or lichen. With limited water, only 

 

xeric organisms will survive. Of this planet’s 4.5 billion years, in

 

yardsticks of time, humans are a blip. If, when, will we become 

 

zero, zip, zilch?

 

Malinda Miller is a writer, teacher and editor who is most at home on Weston Pass in Colorado or in the Nevada desert where her family had a ranch just off Highway 50, aka the Loneliest Highway in America. Her poetry and personal essays have appeared in A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park, Ecotone, Think, the Mountain Gazette, the Colorado Sun, the Coloradan, and others. At Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop, she teaches youth classes and community outreach workshops. She has a MFA in creative writing from Western State Colorado University and a MA in journalism from CU Boulder.

ABECEDARIAN FOR T***P

by Barbara Lydecker Crane

T***p Playing Cards by Winston Tseng

After babbling collapses,
don’t explode. Forego
grandstanding hubris,
idiotic justifying. Know
less, Mr. Neverwrong,
of prevarication, quid pro quo,
revising spins, talking
ugly. Verbatims’ woe:
explicit. You’re zapped.

Barbara Lydecker Crane is a prize-winning poet published in Light, Think, First Things, Measure, Rattle, The Writer’s Almanac, and many others. She has published three chapbooks: Zero Gravitas, Alphabetricks and BackWords Logic, and is also an artist.

SCARLET LETTER

a scrambled abecedarian (b-a)
by Kathleen A. Lawrence

Treating the Witness As Hostile by Nomi Kane at The Nib

Bow-tied braggarts, bastions
of booze-blaming bullies cry
bull, boys and badgers, confused
or calculating drunken details
dump, erode egos, discredit,
evoke faulty faith to devalue,
dirtying facts gag and gouge
as guy-gangs hustle indulgence,
high school hijinks inflict insults,
insinuate, juggle judiciary kings,
keystones knocking lasciviousness
liberties mauled lady must be
mixed-up, Mrs. mistaken, nameless,
mucking up, needling to negate
nuance, taking oath obfuscates,
old preppies paddling Potomac,
peddling principles, poach questions,
quizzing professor by quoting
quibbling red republic run scorched
scarlet supreme, titillated teens
torch truth, touch, unravel, unnerve,
undermining her vixen vows,
vilified woman wrecked, vestige
of wisdom waning with wicked
exploding exploits of extended youth
exposed yielding to yens, yellowing,
yapping zealots assume, zookeepers
attack, zombies assault, aggressors
assign her letter A, the Accuser.

Kathleen A. Lawrence spent most of her youth in a plaid navy and spruce green plaid jumper and knee socks. Since then she has not worn knee socks but still spends her days at school. She teaches Communication, Pop Culture, and Gender and likes to write poetry. She has published in several magazines with poems about such things as the blue-shelled beetles, the sophisticated lily, mean 'tweens tweeting, Tr**p's tips for getting women, the lovely Puerto Rico, and growing up schooled by nuns wielding the ruler in the black and white days of pre-Vatican II. 

INGLORIOUS BASTARDS

by Kathleen A. Lawrence





Acting badly,
boorish comics
coax deranged egos.
False good-guys
going Hollywood,
icons indecently
jones and jerk,
kindling lascivious
meager manhoods.
Nihilistic ogres, odd
paunchy producers,
quibble ruthlessly.
Ransacking solicitors,
sleazy thieves
undressing virtue,
these villains wither,
when exposed,
yanking zippers
ad nauseam.

Kathleen A. Lawrence continues to write poetry in upstate New York. Recently she received word that two of her poems have been nominated for 2017 Best of the Net awards, and another was nominated for the 2017 Rhysling Award of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA). She has also  had poems published in Rattle (Poets Respond), Eye to the Telescope, haikuniverse, Silver Blade Magazine, The Wild Word magazine (Germany), Altered Reality Magazine, Undertow Tanka Review, and Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, among others.