STICK BOYS

by Lynne Schilling

© Bidouze Stephane | Dreamstime.com

Like a tower of graceful giraffes, Ethiopian  

boys on bamboo stilts walk high over the land.

 

The boys smile; some have intricate designs

painted on their faces or long, straight legs. 

 

Their aerial travel allows them to spot the cows 

in high grass, avoid the bites of venomous snakes.

 

It makes me think of those who bend the knee,

smudge the line between right and wrong—

 

the bottom-lined CEOs, the well-endowed

university presidents, the media moguls,

 

the politicians and puffed-up agency heads, 

the bonus-hungry citizens—

 

They look weak and cowed on the ground

among the vipers.

While Lynne Schilling has been writing poetry on and off for forty years, she began writing  seriously four years ago at age 75.. She has published in Quartet, The Alchemy Spoon, Rue Scribe, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Lucky Jefferson and others. She has a poem forthcoming in contemporary haibun online. 

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.

ABEL ASKS HIS BROTHER WHAT CAME OVER HIM

by Bonnie Naradzay

CAIN ET ABEL (CAIN AND ABEL), 1960, an original color lithograph by Marc Chagall designed for and published by VERVE for the volume Dessins pour La Bible.

after Agnieszka Tworek

 

If I gave the best when I offered my sheep

while your harvest fell short of the mark,

why turn against me? There was still time–

 

Now my blood cries out from the ground

you have claimed as your own. You know

the land mine you rigged to me will explode.

 

Alas, the loaf of bread I’d held, this pool of blood.

How could you choose to bludgeon my cows,

to wreak your vengeance against them too?

 

We are brothers; yet you attacked my humanity,

dragged me with your arms. Let me feel the snow

fall across my face as I say goodbye to life.  

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, Pinch (Pushcart nomination), Potomac Review, and others. Her essay on friendship was published in 2020 in the anthology Deep Beauty. For many years she has convened poetry salons with homeless people and with residents of retirement communities in the Washington DC area.

THE PARABLE OF THE BUTCHERS: TAIJI COVE VS. FACTORY FARMING

by Adrienne S. Wallner

Image source: Adventure Journal

Image source: Inhabit

Two butchers
both alike
in their savagery,
killed to eat and killed to sell.
They were both successful
and prosperous
and fat.
One butcher
slaughtered his hogs.
Stun
Stick
Scald
Split
The other butcher
slaughtered his cows.
Stun
Stick
Head
Shank
The hog butcher
used a saw
when he cut bones
and a knife to stick.
The cow butcher
used a saw
when he cut bones
and a knife to stick.
“The way you use that
rusty saw to
split your hog
is terrible,”
said the cow butcher.
“The way you use that
dull knife to
shank your cows
is horrible,”
said the hog butcher.
The butchers
wiped their cleavers
on smeared aprons.
“Something should be done
about a butcher like you,”
said the butchers.
The butchers
wiped their cleavers
on smeared aprons
and shook their heads.
Each went back home to skin.
“I’m glad I’m not a butcher like he is”
said the hog butcher.
Stun
Stick
Scald
Split
“I’m glad I’m not a butcher like he is”
said the cow butcher.
Stun
Stick
Head
Shank 


Poet, photographer, and traveler, Adrienne S. Wallner teaches composition in Wisconsin.  She is currently working on a book about her and her husband's road trip to America's National Parks.  To join the journey visit www.inkinthebranches.com.

HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN WITH LICORICE UNLUCKIES

by Tricia Knoll

NAMIE, Japan — His may be one of the world’s more quixotic protests.

Angered by what he considers the Japanese government’s attempts to sweep away the inconvenient truths of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Masami Yoshizawa has moved back to his ranch in the radioactive no-man’s land surrounding the devastated plant. He has no neighbors, but plenty of company: hundreds of abandoned cows he has vowed to protect from the government’s kill order. --NY Times, January 11, 2014

I grew up on the myth of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, that careless bovine
kicking a lamp that burned down Chicago. Hot time in the old town
tonight we sang. When Mrs. O’Leary was officially cleared of wrong-doing,
it was too late for kids that learned that song in grade school.
That kerosene lamp, and she didn’t do it. The cow was innocent.

I like cows. I’m lactose in love. Ice cream. Cheese. At the Oregon coast,
we have a herd of Oreo cows --black at the butt, black at the head, a middle stripe
of creamy white around the belly. People tell stories about those Oreo cows.
Tourists go out of their way to take pictures of them, officially --
Belted Galloways.

Today’s hot time cows...well, they surprised me. Those radioactive cows,
the Fukushima cows, all one color cows -- I guess you’d call them licorice
unlucky cows. Cows of Hope. Officially Japanese blacks. Radioactive cows
feeding on contaminated grass and Mr. Yoshizawa who says the fault
is not the cows’, they are more than walking accident debris. So he lives
along side-by-side them to stop the genocide of licorice unlucky cows,
a shooting and a push into the big pit. He too will learn just how hot
time is in the old town.

Yup, those cows. Waiting at the dwindling manger to join the ranks
            Achelos
                 Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
             moon jumpers
             Elsie
             the Oreo cows
                 Y Fuwch Frech
             Babe
           
and the Licorice Unluckies in the hot town.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. Finishing Line Press is publishing her chapbook Urban Wild in May 2014. She once rode a pregnant cow on a ranch which was a filmshoot site for a documentary highlighting the danger of the widespread use of DDT.