ANTHROPOPHOBIA

by Daniel Lurie

More than a week after four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in a house near campus, the police chief leading the investigation said on Sunday that the police had not been able to answer many of the crime’s most pressing questions, such as how the victims’ roommates were not awakened during the overnight killings or where the killer might be now. The few details that have been uncovered have only deepened the mystery of a crime that has unnerved students and residents in the college town of Moscow, Idaho, and left victims’ families trying to help piece together what happened. Photo: Friends and community members celebrated the victims’ lives during a candlelight vigil in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Wednesday. Rajah Bose for The New York Times, November 21, 2022

Credi

You never trusted easy/when you first got here/every night you’d push a couch/ 
in front of the door/a dark cloud hangs/over an emptying/Moscow like quarantine/
you haven’t slept in 3 days/the faces of the 4 victims/a constant rolodex/
a handful of years younger than you/same age as your students/you hope/
they get home/after you canceled classes/you have nowhere else/to go/
over a phone call/your mother tells you to buy wood/for the ground floor windows/
all the stores are sold out/your friend Beck was struck/while on her bike/months ago/
drivers still floored it through town/this moment is a cardinal/ 
in a field of snow/you haven’t been there/but you know there’s a bouquet/
resting against a stone slab/an unrested abode/wrapped in yellow/
police tape/no one deserves to lose/their lives/the suspect still/
at large/fills every corner/every room/the eyes you won’t meet/
on the street/the shadow outside/your loved ones/homes/

Daniel Lurie is a Jewish, rural writer from Roundup, Montana. He attended Montana State University Billings, where he received his bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communications. He is currently in his second year at the University of Idaho, pursuing an MFA in poetry. Daniel is passionate about the environment, human rights, rural life, and conceptualizing grief. He is the Poetry Editor for Fugue. His work has appeared in The Palouse Review, FeverDream, The Rook, Sidewalk Poetry, and most recently in Moscow’s Third Street Gallery. 

AFTER THE FLAMES, FLOOD

by Dick Altman

I’ve learned that no matter what

your faith—we on the high desert

plains – aloud or to ourselves—

pray for rain—and lots of it

Two-months of unquenchable

wildfires left us parched

for water—anything to restart

the charred landscape

 

Fill our depleted reservoirs—

revive our withered crops—

awaken our weakened pinion

and aspen—I pray—and while

at it—I add—our yellow cow-pen

daisies—red-orange mallow—

purple Russian sage—to round

out the bouquet we call—

with now-and-then fondness—

our “desert bloom”

 

A deluge ensues—not our usual—

if one can use that word—monsoon—

what we half-jokingly call our rainy

season—but rain of epic power—

rain that washes away people—

houses—cars—roads—and not

least—in the grand scheme—ash

 

I scoop up a handful—light—

innocent—a mere handful

in an ocean of ash layered over

a charred seabed—until hurricane-

like floods set it in motion—

sweeping it into ponds—river—

community water systems—

killing stream life—sickening

people – disrupting life already

disrupted by epochal fires

What next—I can only ask—

half expecting to hear a cloud-

enshrouded voice intone—

without a trace of a smile—

“Locusts”

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where,at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.