GRAY HAZE

by Mark Danowsky

Smoke from wildfires in provinces of Ontario and Quebec in Canada made Philadelphia’s iconic Belmont Plateau skyline nearly invisible on June 7, 2023. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)

The classic way to 

explain asthma

Imagine:

breathing through a straw 

Now, picture flipping burgers

on a charcoal grill

Today, that charcoal grill

is the sky

Endless red coals burning 

up in Canada 

No, Canada is the grill

400+ fires burning

Half of them

Out of control

The smoke has traveled

down to The States

Today, Pennsylvania sky

is an unnatural gray 

A gray that embodies

burnt rubber 

Now, imagine

that straw in your mouth

Imagine trying to breathe  

this burnt rubber air

All this gray 

filling your lungs

Cigarette after cigarette 

with no reward 

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of Meatless (Plan B Press) and other short poetry collections. His poems have been curated in many journals including Alba, The New Verse News, anti-heroin chic, Right Hand Pointing, The Broadkill Review, Otoliths, and Gargoyle. 

BAD BREATH

by Dick Altman

Pump jacks at sunset near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Climate-warming methane emissions rising faster than ever, study says. —The Washington Post headline, October 26, 2022

NASA said a methane plume about two miles (3.3 kilometers) long was detected southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin, one of the largest oilfields in the world. —Barron’s, October 25, 2022

Northern New Mexico

Pump jacks looked to me—as a child

on the West Coast—like animated

Tinker Toys—Half a century later—

here on the high desert prairie—

they terrify me—Cows wander

and forage next to them—Hay

grows in the same field—Backyards

brim with them—Schools look out

on them—Indian reservations dance

with them—Oil and sister gas ops

balloon the air with toxic methane

wherever I look—Except I can’t see it—

unless—over the next hill—a flame

three-stories high—shatters the view—

Drive through “jack country”

and you’re afraid to breathe—

afraid—in mid-summer—to run AC—

afraid to hike ruins—because you

never know when you’re going

to run into “jack”—and all his bad

friends—Sometimes—at a distance—

they remind me of grazing buffalo—

their humped backs—connected

to bobbing heads—glaring down

from bluffs—I know they’re

machines—but unlike most—

they exhale—and what they

breathe out—you don’t want

to be caught breathing in—unless

of course—you want—over time—

to be caught dead—New Mexico’s

called “The Land of Enchantment”—

I call it “The Land of Bad Breath”

 

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.

AVERSION TRAINING

by Robin S. Axworthy

Photo credit: Bette Ferber via The New York Times.

I have grown used to the moisture of my own breath 

on night walks, the mask, the sound of my own breathing 

pushed up past my ears.  Used to my own company at home, 

with only husband and sometimes daughter.  Used to any other

contacts as just the glass and scratch of microphone, letters 

appearing and sorting into sense on a screen. Used to touch

as poison to be scraped clean with alcohol and friction.

Accustomed now to nearness an electric buzz of warning

away from flesh, ears so used to staccato whine they have forgotten 

rippling waterfall of open mouth, mouth forgotten how breath 

feels naked and dry, thin in the bare air, my hands so used to solitude 

they’ve forgotten how to find their way to warmth.  

Robin S. Axworthy has been published in various anthologies including, most recently, Dark Ink: An Anthology Inspired by Horror (Moon Tide Press) and Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me? Women Over Forty Write on Aging (Beautiful Cadaver Project). Her chapbook Crabgrass World was published in March 2020 by Moon Tide Press. 

FIRST KISS

by Judy Rowe Michaels

Though I could barely part my lips, numb
in a starry winter night, and our breaths
nearly froze before they could rise,
                                                        we breathed
faster. Inside your mouth it was safe and warm,
exploratory, we could taste, we could trust
the invitations      handles, switches, faucets, keys.

So many years of kissing
easy as breath.
                         No lethal droplets in the air     on my tongue
can you remember
                              when it felt like time was on our side?

Judy Rowe Michaels is a poet in the schools for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and gives poetry workshops for teachers around the country. A member of the women's poetry critique and performance group Cool Women, she has published four poetry collections, including Reviewing the Skull (WordTech Editions), The Forest of Wild Hands (University Press of Florida), and a chapbook, Ghost Notes (Finishing Line Press) as well as three books on teaching writing. She has received residencies from Banff Centre for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and the MacDowell Colony. A six-time cancer patient, Michaels gives talks on ovarian cancer at NJ and NYC medical schools for the national program Survivors Teaching Students.

WHEN WE ARE THANKFUL

by Tricia Knoll

“‘Sleepwalking toward climate catastrophe:’ World must slash emissions immediately, UN report says.” —USA TODAY, November 26, 2019. Photo: Lightning is seen over the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 4 as Hurricane Dorian approaches Carolina Beach, N.C. (Elijah Nouvelage/For The Washington Post)

We know there is only today
and that yesterday failed
to stop the planet’s demise.

That egos balloon up huge
and denying. Storms twirl
on gusts and blusters.

Whoever named the Black
Friday meant those days
after the forgetting,

the pivoting on spindles
as if the sunrise will always
bring on the chitter of chickadees.

When we are thankful,
we own the worry,
plumb the despair and feel

that today we are breathing.
That today we are breathing
and for this gentle gratitude.

Tricia Knoll acknowledges the irony of the bleak U.N. climate change report coming out during the Thanksgiving week in the United States. With forecasts of a polar bomb on the way, she buckles her boots. She is an eco-poet who lives in Vermont.

HAIBUN IN ANOTHER FIRE SEASON

by Andrena Zawinski

The smell of ash wakes me in my bed, burning

my nostrils and throat, midnight, as I dream

of water webbed lashes and a cool, damp face.

Diablo winds sling fiery plumes all night across

grapevines, redwoods, schoolhouses, ranches,

livestock and wildlife left behind, everything

trying to catch its breath.

In the gloom of gray hours before down, I write

these words without paper or pen a half wake state,

while winds whistle and howl across the dock,

through trees, into my open window and this poem

                                    stumbling ahead

                                    as this dawn struggles for breath

                                    tears blurring the eyes.

Andrena Zawinski’s poetry has received accolades for lyricism, form, spirituality, and social concern. Her latest book is Landings; others are Something About (a PEN Oakland Award) and Traveling in Reflected Light (a Kenneth Patchen Prize). She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com. Her poem, “Twilit Sonnet” appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News.

EXHALATION

by Pepper Trail

"The T***p administration has hailed its overhaul of federal pollution restrictions on coal-burning power plants as creating new jobs, eliminating burdensome government regulations and ending what President T***p has long described as a 'war on coal.' The administration’s own analysis, however, revealed on Tuesday that the new rules could also lead to as many as 1,400 premature deaths annually by 2030 from an increase in the extremely fine particulate matter that is linked to heart and lung disease, up to 15,000 new cases of upper respiratory problems, a rise in bronchitis, and tens of thousands of missed school days. "—The New York Times, August 21, 2018

Edenton, North Carolina


Mother, your breath shallow and slow, almost gone
Barely moving the sheet on your hospice bed

You are reluctant, now, to inhale
To bring in the world, its noise and its pain

So much easier to breathe out, to gentle
And at the end of that emptying, to stop

But the stubborn body kicks, the heart turns over
Begins again, will not yet let you go

Mother, it’s all right.  You are strong
Nothing, in the end, will stop your dying


Ashland, Oregon


The world, the west, is on fire
Vancouver to Yosemite, all tinder, alight

Halfway between, we must breathe
What air there is, what we are given

When we speak, smoke is what we say
And so we have stopped speaking

The mountains are gone, the valley
Through the windows, everything

The smoke is where we live now
What we breathe in, and then out


Washington, DC


He does not mind the world, the President
Thoughtless, he inhales its floods and its flames

Exhales this atmosphere in which we live
Gives us, this week, the “Affordable Clean Energy Plan”

Not Affordable, or Clean, or Energy, or a Plan
Simply another act in a lifelong history of harm

Power plants, cars, planes, you all and me
Together, we contribute: 408 parts per million

We are told there is nothing to be done
We are told there is no choice.  Just breathe

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. In his spare time, he leads natural history tours around the world.