ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

by R.W. Rhodes

  after the war poem of Wilfred Owen

In Texas we still prize our purebred cattle

   while monstrous Leftists plot to take our guns.

For us a rifle's like a baby's rattle,

   with cartridges we measure out in tons.

Our cemeteries are such peaceful places.

   And there are countless young in other schools,

so we can just forget these names and faces.

   Let none restrict our guns by stricter rules.

We'll light more candles and repeat more prayers,

   and freely arm more boys, and one and all.

A maniac not armament's the slayer,

   as on our kids we place a bloody pall.

The floral tributes in the heat turn rotten.

And by the dusk these dead will be forgotten.

R.W. Rhodes was a teacher for over 40 years before retirement. His classes ranged from global religions to death & dying. He published a series of hand-crafted books, many for children, with The Catbird-on-the-Yadkin Press in North Carolina.

COWS WHO DIDN'T JUMP OVER THE MOON

by Dick Altman

Jason Grostic's cows are tame and relaxed on his small Michigan farm. But after repeatedly testing his farm for PFAS chemicals in biosolids applied to his fields, state officials stopped Grostic from selling any meat or cattle from his farm. Feed grown on his farm is contaminated as well, and he's having to buy feed for the herd he can no longer sell. (DTN photo by Chris Clayton) —Progressive Farmer, May 9, 2022

After euthanizing several thousand contaminated cows, Art Schaap is losing not only a once-thriving dairy farm but a place where he and his family have lived for a quarter-century. He has no choice, he said, because the polluted runoff from Cannon Air Force Base that tainted the groundwater, soil and his livestock with cancer-causing chemicals has left Highland Dairy in Clovis [New Mexico] an empty shell… Schaap euthanized 3,665 dairy cows in phases over the past four years, when he first learned they’d become contaminated with PFAS from drinking polluted groundwater. PFAS is short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Dubbed “forever chemicals” because they last indefinitely in the bloodstream, PFAS can cause increased cholesterol, reproductive problems, impaired immunity and cancer. Highland Dairy, a 3,500-acre farm, is a casualty in an ever-growing environmental and health issue as PFAS increasingly turn up in public drinking water, private wells and food. —Santa Fe New Mexican, May 19, 2022

Hey, diddle, diddle.

The cat and the fiddle.

The cow jumped over the moon.

Except the bovines,

all thirty-six hundred,

who couldn’t overcome

pollution’s deadly gravity.

Who weren’t invited

to your last barbecue.

Whose cream didn’t fortify

yesterday’s Frappuccino.

 

Hey, diddle, diddle.

The cat and the fiddle.

The cows who didn’t

jump over the moon,

died rife with PFAS,

“forever chemicals” etched

into their bloodstreams.

Cholesterol/reproduction/

immunity all impacted.

Cancer lurking.

 

Hey, diddle, diddle.

The cat and the fiddle.

The cows who tanked up

on PFAS-ed groundwater.

Who drank the brew/runoff

of airbase firefighters practicing

with PFAS-laced foam.

The entire herd euthanized/

farm closed/soil toxic.

PFAS showing up

in public drinking water,

wells and food.

 

Hey, diddle, diddle.

The cat and the fiddle.

The cows’re all dead.

No place to rest/exit.

Oh, just this once.

change the flight plan.

Let them jump on the moon—

rather than over it.

 

Dick Altman writes in Santa Fe’s high, thin, magical air, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. The Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, Haunted Waters Press, and many others have published his work in the U.S. and abroad.  A poetry winner of the Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems, Voices in the Heart of Stones and Telling the Broken Sky.

AMAZON FIRE MONEY

by Kristin Yates






We’re consumed by the beef
we’re broiling
Earth’s lungs
to farm more cattle
we are burning every
minute the size of a football
field to breed, slit

over 40 million
throats

Lungs, logged

$Indigenous persons, the Mura tribe Jaguar Cashapona tree, the Barrigona tree
Pataxó tribe Giant Armadillo, the Parintintin tribe Harpy Eagle Strangler Fig tree

are the change
ranchers gain
but do not count

as if they own the forest

charred, already spent


Kristin Yates hopes more than space can see the price of our consumption. #ActForAmazonia