A REQUEST TO THE STATE

by David Chorlton

Aaron Gunches is not going to get his wish to be executed on Valentine’s Day. In an order Jan. 8, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a Gunches pleading to forgo any more legal maneuvering and finally put him to death after he pleaded guilty to the 2002 murder and kidnapping charges of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband. Instead, the justices said they want to hear arguments from all sides, including Attorney General Kris Mayes, who wants Gunches executed, but not on his schedule. —Arizona Capitol Times, January 8, 2025

The sun must wish events
were kinder when it climbs the sky
and looks down on
the latest shooting incidents, fires
gone wild
                  and a prisoner deciding
his time is due to die. The forecast here
is for deportations but
no rain. It’s playoff time, every touchdown
seems like another shot
and the elements are favorites to win
against all opposition. No sign
                                                         of clouds today
just wind in California
and Arizona waiting for an execution. 
Department of Corrections, chemicals
imported, nostalgia for
old West public hangings with the law
as violent as the criminals.
                                                 Legislation’s
language does not cover  peace
or love. A man condemned
can do no more than ask
that he become the state’s revenge
on Valentine’s Day.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix who finds comfort in keeping track of local birds and creatures on the fringe of the urban world. Having spent his early years in Europe, he still observes his surroundings with the pleasure of being in a foreign place.

TRAIN A-COMING

by Christopher Woods

Trains move toxic chemicals through small towns daily. Most aren't prepared for disaster. In the wake of the East Palestine, Ohio, disaster, other train towns wonder: Are we next? —Grist, July 12, 2023

Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Chappell Hill, Texas. His photographs can be seen in his gallery. His most recent work is poetry chapbook WHAT COMES, WHAT GOES. 

AN ABCEDARIAN ON FOODS I USED TO LOVE

by Jen Schneider

Additives have been debated for years with
bills proposed, then denied. Just this week
California (Assembly Bill 418) has tried. Again. To 
drum up support all while the 
Dollar General can no longer afford to sell 
eggs—a source of dense nutrients. Aisles instead 
full of fruit chews, colorful candies, cookies, cakes. 
     Oh my—Gigantic swaths of shelf space, all prime. 
     Products under fire for
“generally safe to consume” promises with limited review.
Hot Tamales and Skittles. Cupcakes and ice cream, too.
I’d like to know, I say as I chew my microwaved stew,
Is it too much to assume the 

            Foods
            Water
            Poetry
            
            we consume are safe to drink?

Jokes on you, my colleague explains,
     craftiness on all corners
Kraft mac and cheese, too? I ask.
Love you, but yes, she says – 

      phthalates, 
      plastics involved in processing, plus 
      fat content

loopholes in laws persist
more foods make the danger list
Nerds? Double Bubble Twist gum? Not good news
Open the cabinets but be warned – there’s
propylparaben in caramel chocolate and high sugar in Nestle
Quik. Red Dye No 3. lurks in 

     protein shakes
     instant rice and potato products, and 
     cake mixes.

Rare is the boxed life form that doesn’t make the graph or
score in the game of
Skittles, Screams, Sell More

      Who. What. Where. 
      When. Why.      

The economist and poet in me wants to know.
      With 3,000 Red Dye No. 3 data points and 

that’s just the beginning—is relief in store?

Trolli Gummies and Trail mix, too. 
Titanium Dioxide can be found in cupcakes and ice cream. 
Underreported and overconsumed. 

     My graphs are in toil. 
     My plotting doomed.

Values collide. 
Voracious marketing blooms
ways of fudging ingredient lists
with words I can’t spell or repeat 

titanium dioxide
potassium bromate
brominated vegetable oil 

phthalates and 
propylparaben 

Xtra-large Slurpees, too? 

Yogurts with bright red candy mix-ins.

Zero room for error. We wait. We philosophize. We think. 

Is the safety of our food supply too big a drink?

Author's Note: When ABCs Collide with Plot Points

As an econ major, I’ve long been interested in prisoner dilemmas, graphs that map (seek to match) supply and demand, and hikes of varying natures. On levels both macro and micro, I’ve wrestled with data and wondered, what is too much to ask. Of consumers. Of suppliers. Of truth tellers. Of faulty logic deniers. It’s a delicate dance. Public health and behavior as much commodities as any other letter that becomes targeted then charted as a supply meets demand number. Analytics morph in ways analogous to philosophy and experimental poetry. Personal choice a waltz subject to underutilized form and (sometimes) overindulged scorn. Ethics aside. No matter. Whether graphed in pencil and ink or AI-generated ChatGPT-think, I still believe that assuming one’s food supply is safe shouldn’t present an oxymoron (enjambments and plot points undenied). Instead, I accept realities, however baffling, I cannot change and bid farewell to a handful of foods (and ABCs) I used to love. 

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups.

ATLAS OF AVIAN FLIGHT

by Mary Lux

The skies are emptying out. The number of birds in the United States and Canada has fallen by 29 percent since 1970, scientists reported on Thursday. There are 2.9 billion fewer birds taking wing now than there were 50 years ago. –The New York Times, September 22, 2019. Video of sanderlings by Washington State, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.


Gone from the River of Foul Run-off
flowing with trash-plastic and sick fish–

Gone from the Prairie of Emptiness,
of bee and grasshopper, gopher and butterfly–

Gone from the Killing Fields of crops coated
with chemicals, deserted
by cricket, tatydid, firefly–

Gone from the Feral Cat Jungle of woods,
back alleys, fenced yards, waterfronts–

Gone from the City of Lethal Towers
of implacable, break-neck glass–

Gone from the Choking Skies of Smoke
covering the dearth of insects–

So has departed the Passenger pigeon:
now falls the Swift, the Oriole, the Jay,
Bobolink, Meadow lark, Wood thrush,
Barn swallow and Bluebird,
even the commonest, the House Sparrow.

Fled, all, into another
Country,
that of No Return:
the last eye frozen in death's ice,
the last wings lying still, bent off-angle,
on earth's sterile ground—

Gone into the Cosmos of Absence
of all but memory and imagination.

Mary Lux is a Milwaukee poet, longtime practicing member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.  Has appeared in four anthologies including Masquerades and Misdemeanors, edited by Marilyn Taylor; in print and online publications.

SARIN WORK

by Alejandro Escudé

Volunteers wear protective gear during a class of how to respond to a chemical attack, in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on September 15, 2013.JM LOPEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES via Wired.

The mood is sarin and the light is sarin
there are sarin children dancing in the air
convulsing skyward, there are sarin trees
and sarin ships firing sarin missiles
at sarin airports where sarin helicopters
sit ready to traverse sarin lands, over sarin
rooftops, blanketing a country of sarin,
a language of sarin, the sarin of resorts
where the leaders of sarin meet to discuss
treaties over sarin and ice cream. But one
needs two chemicals to form sarin, and sarin
lasts a short time, sarin is short as life itself,
meaningless really, unless it is packaged
just right; still, a world without sarin is a world
flooded in sarin, with sarin dreams like those
of the sarin children who felt it rain down
on them and saw their fingers turn to roads,
their lungs become mountains, their hearts
pumping sarin into their sarin souls.


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.

THE PEDICURE CUSTOMER'S DILEMMA

by Catherine Wald

Across the country, countless workers in the nail salon industry, mainly immigrant women, toil in misery and ill health for meager pay, usually with no overtime, abused by employers who show little or no consideration for their safety and well-being. It is a world of long days and toxic chemicals, where the usual protections of government have failed, at all levels. —NY Times, May 11, 2015; Photo: A pedicure at a salon on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times. 

Time to choose: should I deprive you of your
livelihood or your unborn children?

Do your lungs need air as badly as my toes need to be
decked out in glorious colors that never existed in nature?

Is it frivolous to pay another human being to caress the
arches and balls of my feet in a way no lover ever will?

In your hands, oh modest Korean or Chinese or Thai woman,
shy, unsightly appendages, emboldened, grab the spotlight.

For two dollars apiece, you give me ten hand-crafted
oriental miniatures, perfect and miniscule as gemstones,

sparkling harbingers of summer, delightful butterflies
birthed in a cloud of formaldehyde, ethanol and XX.

Pedicurists, like most winged creatures, enjoy a short
lifespan: but we all know beauty demands sacrifice.

In this world where gainful employment is hard to come by,
where aesthetic pleasure is so desperately needed, is it

time to turn off the tap?


Catherine Wald's books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly and Westchester Review.

CARGO SHIP SPILLS

by Joan Mazza

(CNN February 22, 2014) -- On any day, between 5 million and 6 million containers are on the high seas, carrying everything from potato chips to refrigerators. But not all of them make it to their destination, as the crew of the Svendborg Maersk have just found out. Their Danish-flagged ship was in the Bay of Biscay last week as hurricane-force winds battered the Atlantic coast of Europe. Amid waves of 30 feet and winds of 60 knots, the Svendborg began losing containers off northern France. After the ship arrived in the Spanish port of Malaga this week, Maersk discovered that about 520 containers were unaccounted for. Stacks of others had collapsed. It's the biggest recorded loss of containers overboard in a single incident.

Image source: Shipspotting

Containers stacked, packed into ships overloaded
by unknown amounts until they buckle and bend,
tip their load into water. Each one the size
of a semi truck trailer, fully loaded, in stormy seas,
they dump flyswatters with sports teams’ logos,
thousands of Lego pieces.

The Hansa Carrier lost 80,000 unlaced Nike sneakers,
making it The Great Shoe Spill of 1990. Two more
containers of Nike Cross Trainers went overboard
in ‘99, offering a second chance at free shoes.
They race on ocean currents to land on shores
around the world, a colorful, startling pollution.

Traveling from China to the US in 1992,
28,000 rubber ducks and other bath toys
were dumped in the Atlantic by a rogue wave,
making them collectibles when found, turning
the waters into a bathtub for giants.

In Florida, a container of Doritos was discovered
and broken into, chips dry and mostly undamaged,
delighting beachcombers and gulls. Like trucks
spilling money on the highway, scavengers descend
for a free meal, toys, or mystery object: a huge
standing Lego Man, commanding Florida dunes.

The rest sinks deep or disperses like oil, results
to be seen later. Much later. Artificial reef or slowly
diffusing chemicals, leached into our oceans,
packing pellets in the guts of the fish we eat?


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Whitefish Review, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Slipstream, American Journal of Nursing, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.