DELUGE

by Alejandro Escudé

The Los Angeles River flows at a powerful rate as a huge storm brings flooding and landslides to the west coast. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images via The Guardian, January 16, 2023

I listen to Paradise Lost

in my car as the rain pours

at night, picturing the first 

couple as they huddle among 

the grasses and fruits.

From my car window, as if 

up toward heaven, I see an

uphill rain-slick boulevard, 

passenger planes landing 

at LAX, like blurry UFO’s.

The sound is exhilarating,

an aquatic thrashing, my car

sloshing over corner oceans,

the wipers struggling to sweep

a sinless version of the city.

I roll the window down

just as Satan calls out his 

fellow seraphim, like a zillion

tuna schooling out of a 

darkened precipice. 

Even if it’s atmospheric, 

and a river, it’s still rain, 

the wind wind, the forecast?

Our fallen state, our bodies

water-logged, the reflection 

of all the lights at night

splitting heaven and hell

into equal refractions.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

ALLURING MONSTERS

by Imogen Arate

Old games parade as old storms churn 
into nebulous knots to hypnotize the 
engaged gaze and whip the bewitched
Ouroboros to stalk and swallow its own 

Tail then torso then head tuck into
singularity's impish wicked wink 
before the glutted ingestion implodes 
to gush diarrheal waterfalls

We gawk at the wondrous displays 
disasters dazzle before the eyes 
as brittle bones crack to form the
new veins of sanguine traffic lanes

Crimson lanterns blink our woes
as greenbacks slush to blanch hope
from budding evergreen while slid mud
pools to crackle as scorched summer bark

Ancient feast-and-famine tales we
fantasize to tell as spirits of our progeny
braid their flickering lifelines into the wispy
fingers of another atmospheric stream

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Director of Poets and Muses which hosts a poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest, where Imogen had served as a national-level poetry judge in 2021 and 2022.  You can follow her @PoetsandMuses and @ImogenArate on Twitter and Instagram.

ATMOSPHERIC RIVER

by Pepper Trail

Storm-battered California communities are bracing for another round of likely flooding, mudslides, toppled trees, closed roads, power outages and even perhaps a few brief tornadoes as the latest in an unrelenting parade of atmospheric rivers hits the West Coast. The storms Monday into Tuesday are expected to bring another surge of hazardous heavy rain, mountain snow and damaging winds to California, where thousands are already without power and some have been ordered to evacuate or warned they could be asked to flee. —CNN, January 9, 2023

Heavy current in the ocean sky

Twisting between black cliffs of cloud

You make yourself visible here below

As deluge, as flood, as smothering snow

Liquifying the air, breaking the fragile earth

Unruly twin to your silent brother, drought

You remind us of fables, forgotten curses

Visitations of judgement long ignored

As now we bend beneath your fury

Mumbling the magic trick of prayer

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.