SHAPED LIKE A FISH

by Bonnie Naradzay

Earlier this year, scientists discovered that there is about as much microplastics in the brain as a whole plastic spoon. The paper, published in Nature Medicine in February, revealed that the amount of microplastics—tiny plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters—in the human brain appears to be increasing: Concentrations rose by about 50% between 2016 and 2024. —Fortune, May 20, 2025

Reading about how NASA astronauts

grew edible zinnias while orbiting 

above us in space, I think of ways

we've chosen to live on this earth. 

 

Red lilies and oleander were the first 

flowering plants to thrive in Hiroshima’s 

charred remains.  In the rubble, gamma 

rays made the blooms even brighter.

 

Fields of sunflowers, grown in Chernobyl, 

change the radioactive dirt effectively, 

scientists say. Meanwhile, Agent Orange 

is everywhere in the soil in Viet Nam.

 

Flowers that have grown mutations, 

though near Fukushima, may be 

a mistake. Could that happen anyway?

On islands in the Tasman Sea, birds 

 

mistake ocean plastics for food to feed

their chicks, and dead birds were found

having ingested single-use soy sauce 

plastic bottles, shaped like a fish.  

 

When you mistake the song of a bird
for the death rattle of another species, 

It’s already over.  The world is filled

with microplastics, like our brains.

Source: Heliograf

Bonnie Naradzay’s manuscript will be published this year by Slant Books.  For years, she has led weekly poetry sessions at homeless shelters and a retirement community.  Poems, three of which have been nominated for Pushcarts, have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and other places. While at Harvard she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize – a month’s stay in Northern Italy – in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary.  There, Bonnie had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read drafts of Pound’s translations. 

THE ASTRONAUTS SEEK TO REASSURE ME OF THEIR SAFETY

by Kathleen McIntosh

In a news conference from aboard the International Space Station, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said they had confidence in the troubled spacecraft to get them home. (NY Times, July 10, 2024)

 

 

I know in their place I would worry, seeing earth whole

––oceans, continents, poles––

and they themselves . . .

 

No, says NASA, the astronauts are not in danger, not stuck in space; they’re just doing some additional testing of the thrusters. But the questions continue, variations on a theme:  How confident are you that the Starliner will get you home safely? Butch and Suni are patient, though they have taken time out of their work for this. A reporter persists: Can you give us examples...  about the status of Starliner as far as being able to bring you back to earth safely?  Suni smiles, bats away his concern:  It’s great to be up here.  Her casual manner seems grounded in certainty; her wavy hair flies out from her head in all directions, wiry, Medusa-like––will we be turned to stone for questioning the logic of this optimism? 

 

I know about the vanishing rain forest,

melting ice sheets, spreading desert and yet,

how thrilling it would be to see it all as they do:

our one and only         so fragile         suspended out there... 

Horn of Africa,

Malay Archipelago,

Isthmus of Panama––delicate waist of America,

the poet called it. Hell on earth

say those crossing the Darien Gap     

from Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Haiti, Ethiopia, India, China,

Democratic Republic of the Congo––

no, from up there I wouldn’t see the ant-like procession,

ragged, polyglot,

on any given day a planet worth’s sampling, citizens

of nowhere-on-earth-that-is-safe––

 

Yes, the astronauts confirm, they were able to watch the hurricane that became Beryl. The question gets more personal: What have you heard from your family? Was there any damage to your house?  Still smiling, they pass a mike back and forth between them or allow it to float free for a few seconds. Well, says Butch, we’ve got some downed trees like most people...  but thankfully we’ve got good church folks and good neighbors that are coming by... 

The news conference is coming to an end.  In Texas, concludes Suni, everybody pulls together. She launches herself into a weightless backward flip.

 

Author’s note:  NASA is now considering bringing the astronauts home on a Dragon SpaceX capsule, an option which would mean that Wilmore and Williams would need to remain on the space station for six more months. A decision about this will be needed, says NASA, by the end of August.

 

 

Kathleen McIntosh moved to New England following a peripatetic childhood.  She remained there, teaching language and literature for many years. Now retired, she lives in Connecticut where she writes poetry and serves on the Board of the Connecticut Poetry Society.

MISSION

by Wendy Hoffman

Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times, May 29, 2020.

The moon lifts its holy head like a sanctified queen.
Humans should not be there or leave bent over, backwards, reverent.
But competitive men are curious which they believe gives them the right.
This country, which turned away victims but
invited defeated Nazi scientists,
rips the untouchable veil from the bottom up
and ejects transparent astronauts,
stooges, sacrificed heroes.
A large striped boot print tattoos crevasses, crevices,
craters.

When I was four playing outside, a neighborhood boy twice my age or more

wanted to see me down there. He pointed his skinny finger. I squeezed my thighs

together but already trained never to say no, I watched my cotton undies fall to

my turned in ankles. The curious boy who rode his bicycle through hilly blocks

pretended to be a scientist. He inspected and had a good look.

They have a good photographic look while jobless people
on earth look up and remain hungry.
I watch rockets on TV,
hide my reddened face from our irreverence.


Wendy Hoffman had amnesia for most of her life. When she regained memory late in life, she wrote books about what she had forgotten. Karnac Books, London, published two of her memoirs in 2014 and 2015, as well as her first book of poetry in 2016. She co-authored a book of essays in 2018 for Routledge. Her third memoir is forthcoming from Aeon Books. Hoffman has a MFA and lives on the Olympic Peninsula with her little dog.

DUFUR HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION, MAY 29, 2020

by Penelope Scambly Schott

The NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley, left, and Robert Behnken as they made their way to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Saturday. Credit: John Raoux/Associated Press via The New York Times, May 30, 2020

Speeches, music, drive-by
awarding of all 18 diplomas:
fire engines and ambulance
lead the noisy parade
through our small town.

I sit on my curb
raising my half-empty
mug of cold coffee
to personally congratulate
each gowned kid.

Two hours later at Canaveral
astronauts Bob and Doug
are rocketed into earth orbit.
Tomorrow they’ll meet up
with the space station.

Where
can our 18 graduates go
in this time of quarantine
as the local wheat is rising
into small golden capsules?


Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books are House of the Cardamom Seed  and November Quilt.  Forthcoming is On Dufur Hill, a sequence of poems about a small (pop. 623) wheat-growing town in central Oregon.