ONE IN FOUR

by Deborah Kennedy

A study in the journal PLOS ONE found that extreme temperatures resulting from climate change could cause one in four steel bridges in the United States to collapse by 2050. By 2040, failures caused by extreme heat could require widespread bridge repairs and closures, the researchers found. Photo: A bridge connecting North Sioux City, S.D., and Sioux City, Iowa, collapsed in June after flooding. Credit: KC McGinnis —The New York Times, September 2, 2024

Squire Whipple's careful pen strokes flickered in the candlelight. A self-taught engineer, he drew his new design, the bowstring truss bridge built of iron, not unreliable wood. From the 1870s to the 1930s, his bridges arched across rural and urban American rivers knitting together a growing nation. 

(Houu-hou-wit. Mourning doves mate for life. All the tiny parts, unseen, unnamed, unloved, holding together whole worlds. Houu-hou-wit.)

Bowstring truss bridges feature sturdy arches and bracing studded with innumerable round-headed rivets set by teams of three men. A good team could set fifteen rivets a minute, all day long. The first man heated each bolt in portable coal forges cranking the fan and setting the bolts in the white-hot coals. When a bolt glowed cherry-red, he tossed it up to the next man who caught it in a tin cup, grabbed it with long-handled tongs, and set it against the milled holes. The last man formed the head with the ringing blows of a ball-peen hammer.

(Kraa-kraa. Ravens remember the faces of their enemies and teach their young. Did the ravens scold the men who brought rank smoke and sharp sounds to quiet rivers? Kraa-kraa.)

For decades, dutiful communities painted these bridges a patient flat grey, fending off creeping rust. Now, these bridges strain under the weight of modern cars and trucks delivering our endless needs and whims. Through the winter the metal freezes, draped in icicles. In our scorching days, triple-digit weather silently heats each rivet and expands each joint and slab. Rivets shear, expansion joints twist, concrete buckles, and bridges collapse.

(Tchew, tchip, tchup. In one day, hummingbirds can eat up to 2,000 small bugs and mosquitos. They are slowly disappearing. All the tiny parts, unseen, unnamed, unloved, once weaving our world together. Tchew, tchip, tchup.)

A writer and artist, Deborah Kennedy’s work has been presented in the United States and Europe. Her recent book Nature Speaks: Art and Poetry for the Earth (White Cloud Press) combines poetry and illustrations to capture the bond between ourselves and the larger natural world. Nature Speaks won several national awards including the 2017 Eric Hoffer Poetry Book Award and Silver Nautilus Poetry Book Award. Her writing has recently appeared in great weather for MEDIA, First Literary Review-East,  and Canary: A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis. Kennedy lives in San Jose, California where she teaches college classes and poetry workshops. She presents poetry readings with multimedia slide lectures to poetry, ecology and spiritual groups. Kennedy lives in San José, California, and is a Creative Ambassador for the City of San José working to advance creativity in her community with her innovative Broadside Art and Poetry Project. 

VENICE SUN

by Alejandro Escudé

Venice has finally revealed the details for its entrance fee, making it the first city in the world to charge daytripper visitors. Starting in spring 2024, visitors to the floating city will have to pay 5 euros ($5.40) to enter on peak days if they’re not staying the night. But this isn’t a permanent move yet – the Venice authorities have committed to a 30-day “experiment.” —CNN, September 13, 2023

When you first get there—

Your ocean liner looms over 

The island city and you spot

The ancient roofs and the plazas,

The gryphons, and the gold-fringed

Streets, both real and imagined,

And the people on the cruise

Get off onto the bridges, you 

Smell the canals—leafy, oily, 

And the mask you purchase is 

Expensive, the plague doctor,

And you drink a cold beer

And you eat in a restaurant

Down a corridor, and you think

Of the writing you should be

Doing, and every corner brings 

That lifelong, exquisite guilt, 

And you sidle through crowds

And get too hot and walk

Out too far, where there are

Fewer people, only sunlight

Splashing against a cracked wall.

And you are in Venice, but

At night, it’s Euro-urban scary, 

And you’re alone and lost

And you almost miss the boat

Though the boat is docked close.

You take the tender back 

To the pastel-colored cake-boat

That is every cruise and you 

Go to the ship’s casino and sit at

The red neon bar, and you forget

That you were ever in Venice

And it’s almost twenty years

Later and you learn that now

Venice wants to charge a fee

Like an amusement park, and

It makes you sad to look at 

Your mask, hanging on your

Wall, remembering the latest 

Plague. But it makes you 

Even sadder to learn there

Will be days in that city

Where it’s not advised 

That you visit because of

Crowds. And you think:

I’d go anyway. I’d go

Right now just to smell

Those canals again. Just 

To see that palace, fringed

In gold. To feel that heavy,

Doge’s sun like one coin

Of the two that sit upon 

My aging poet’s eyes. 

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.

ZERO SUM HUMANITY

by Tricia L. Somers

“All the People—Oppressed by Black Cloud,” 1982, by Evelyn Williams

Under the rubble

Our loved ones, homes, and any kind of hope

We’ve been robbed

by a criminal we cannot see

Our loved ones killed and already buried

We are victims of this Climate Crime Catastrophe

Under a bridge

Huddled with our scared children

Our faith has been shaken

and our babies are still...shaking

Invite the world to witness your humanity

Anxious and jittery awaiting a fleeting glimpse

Like an endangered species or already extinct

Under hooves and cracking whip

We find ourselves in seeking but a mere chance

Have us to walk over your bridges

Only in shame do you chase us away

You don’t necessarily need an earthquake

for your country to crumble away

Tricia L. Somers can be found at Outlaw Poetry, Milk Carton Blog, and the upcoming Rat’s Ass Review for Winter 2021. Also the semi-annual print journal The American Dissident includes poetry, essays and debates with the editor, who is known to be somewhat testy. Issues 41 and upcoming 42.

EXTREMIS

by Carol Alexander

Your voice in Saint-Germain-de-Prés is pastis
in a glass of fog, held by an invisible hand.
How phrase this in a nomenclature vivid
as a lipstick smeared at the bar?

In the hotel lobby, Arab girls and boys
praise a wine never to be served
and potted palms are sleeping, curled and dry.

That great beast, the wind, noses pavements
soaked in blood that dries before the world's eyes.
Raised on every bridge are unwavering lights
where once smoked oil lamps strung on narrow streets.

My camera pinches off lanterns and loaves,
a pink dress hung in the galleries
while your meeting, not to be postponed,
is soup and cigarettes under martial law.

Dogs off-leash bare teeth and wheel
at the unfamiliar smells of men.
Muted leaves that missed their moment
when September made an oven of the streets
mostly now have fallen into loam.

I've a little forgotten disaster in these months;
it could be the sound of wind through husks
or a tremulous breath breaking in mid-song.


Carol Alexander's poems have appeared in such journals as Bluestem, Caesura, Canary, The Common, Chiron Review, Illya's Honey, Mad Hatter's Review, Mobius, TheNewVerse.News, Poetry Quarterly, Poetrybay, Red River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Sugar Mule, THEMA and Zymbol, as well as in various anthologies including Through a Distant Lens (WriteWing Publishing) for which she received the award for best poem, and Proud to Be, for which she was a poetry finalist. Alexander's chapbook, Bridal Veil Falls, was published by Flutter Press (2013).  Recent work appears in Split Rock Review and Clementine Poetry Journal.

AT THE SIGHT OF THE WATERS

by Cally Conan-Davies

Flooding in Boulder, Colorado on Wednesday evening, September 11, 2013. Photo posted by brandish on Instagram @photogjake

(An Australian in Colorado relives . . .)

Bring your pillow, what comfort you can carry,
when you evacuate. You wont be home
any time soon.

Keep clear.

Revise your estimate. You will be caught
in a matter of minutes.
Pontoons and yachts are breaking from their moorings,
mangled hulls are hurtling downstream,
battering at the bridges.

Although we sunk our sandbags in the heart
of city streets, and braced against the waters,
the city’s pride— its cafes, party-barges—
powers down the river to destroy us.

The river is collecting all our junk,
rushing away with bathtubs and backyards,
broom-handles, buckets, pots and picnic benches.
Things become missiles when they’re in the flow.

Never cry for what can’t cry for you.

Bury the thought of what waters might unearth;
forget what you’ll recall—
stench, stains, stuff you never thought
would have to be replaced; and despite all
the waters everywhere, we must preserve
our water from the waters.

Find high ground because you cannot know
what lurks inside the waters – snakes, car doors, bodies
wrapped in tarps and blue pool-linings.

Below, backwater bubbles up through drains;
disease will come this way. Sever everything
you thought you knew of water, except for this:

when all revising up and down is done,
and levels finally marked, and mess is cleared,
and rivers shrink from us, and we look back
to praise the volunteers, think of the dead,
and honor the man who held a woman’s son
when the line holding her in his other hand went slack,

we’ll only know how far this flood has spread
when boy and man (see his eyes! how wild the water!)
drown again in the dream where he had caught her.


Cally Conan-Davies taught and practiced bibliotherapy in Melbourne, Australia before moving to the United States in 2012. Her poems have appeared, and are forthcoming, in Poetry, The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Raintown Review, The Sewanee Review and The Southwest Review, among others. She lives in both Colorado and Oregon.