THE LONGEST MILE

by Laura Rodley

Coyote reaches Alcatraz via Instagram

Escaping the prison of civilization,

to Alcatraz, the desperadoes prison

that’s now a tourist site,

a lone coyote swam

one and a half miles

to land on the rocky beach,

emaciated and shivering.

Despite predictions of his demise,

the coyote, now named Floyd,

has gained weight.

How did he survive the swim?

Though San Francisco Bay

has warmed in increments,

the coyote swam in temps

similar to those

on December 17, 1962

when escaped prisoner John Paul Scott

swam in the other direction,

away from Alcatraz.

Suffering from hypothermia,

Scott was captured, and returned

to serve out his sentence.

Perhaps his ghost whispers now

into the coyote Floyd’s ears.

Perhaps Floyd whispers of his own escape,

while rangers plot to capture him

and bring him back.

Pushcart Prize winner Laura Rodley’s latest books are Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Press, and Counter Point, Legacy Award finalist. Her Ribbons and Moths: Poems for Children by Kelsay Books was selected as a finalist in the “Animals/Pets/Nature” Category in the 2025 Independent Author Network (IAN) Book of the Year Awards, won the 2024 International Book Award for Children's Nonfiction, eon the 2025 Bookfest for Nonfiction Outdoors, and Bronze in the Moonbeam Book Awards.

BLESSING THE ANIMALS

by David Chorlton

On and around The Feast of St. Francis, October 4 this year, many churches organize a Blessing of the Animals to which dogs, cats, bird, bunnies, ponies, chickens, and all creatures great and small are welcome.

Here’s a cat who’d take

the dinner from a china plate but bless

her anyway; she doesn’t know

the rules of etiquette. Consider the coyote

blessed when he stops in the middle of the street

and looks back at a pedestrian

his wildness has touched. Bless the starlings

who were fruitful and

multiplied from coast to coast, and bless

the common pigeon for

turning waste lots into food. Bless

the rattlesnake who curls up at a trail’s edge

by stepping carefully around him,

and save

for the jaguar who returns to

ancient hunting grounds

a special blessing that will follow him through

darkness. Shall we dare

to shower favor on the rats who climb the final

daylight and cavort

in yards and vegetable beds? Or spare

an extra prayer for the Great horned owl

when he is done with ferrying souls

to comfort and a resting place?

When the Cooper’s hawk is waiting

for a mourning dove, be generous as this world

in which an ocean is the predator

and a river is the prey.

David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978, and has shared home with many cats, birds, and occasionally dogs. The creatures who visit his yard appear frequently in his new book Poetry Mountain from Cholla Needles in Joshua Tree, CA., who also published the poems his white cat Raissa wrote in the late Clinton years (of a very concrete nature) in a little book called Gilded Snow along with her owner's commentary.

ALL PARENTS WANT THEIR KIDS' DREAMS TO COME TRUE

by Tamara Kreutz

Foto Prensa Libre, July 17, 2022: Elmer Vargas

I.

Last Sunday at breakfast in San Martín, 

a Guatemalan bakery chain, my husband and I 

sipped our coffee and tea, as our three children 

raced up and down the indoor jungle gym.

While watching them, we thumbed through the paper. 

This story’s fucking awful, my husband said. 

The body of Juan Wilmer Tulul Tepaz, 

a fourteen-year-old Guatemalan boy who died (trapped 

in an abandoned truck in summer San Antonio heat)

was returned home to a village outside Sololá. 

The story showed pictures of his parents. The father’s 

hand covered weeping eyes as he sank into himself—

back bowed, arms pressing a crease in his middle.

The mother’s brow was squeezed into the shape

of a moth’s wings spread across her forehead.

She wore a purple huipil and a black bandana, 

and her hand caressed her son’s casket—the tips 

of her manicured fingers pressing into the wood, 

her thumb stroking the edge as she would her son’s cheek.

II.

My family just moved to Guatemala

to give our kids the life America 

couldn’t. Its dream had chewed us up, leaving the gnawed 

gristle of debt and burnout—the cost of gas

and rent and medical care. But in Guatemala, 

opportunity would unfold like a rug 

before our children’s feet—piano, dance, 

and horseback riding lessons—because the dollar

goes so much further here. In Guatemala,

I can pay someone to clean my house and watch my kids,

and if we’re sick and need labs, I won’t worry

the bills will hollow out our savings account. 

Our first day here, my toddler son locked himself 

into a second-story bedroom with an open 

window. He screamed for fifteen minutes, then went silent. 

I panicked, pounded the door, then raced out the house

and up and down the street, asking everyone 

I saw if they had tools to pick a lock—

until someone called the fire department.

Back in the house, I kicked the door, I paced, doubled

over, hunching in circles around the family room,

crying, I just want my baby back, now.

When the locksmith came with wires and screwdrivers

to take the doorknob off, and I finally burst through

to find my son sound asleep in bed, I pulled

his little body to my chest. He woke,

startled, but nestled his silky head under my chin,

and I felt his heart beat against mine. In the nine years 

I’ve been a mother, this was the first time

I couldn’t reach my child who needed me.

III.

I keep thinking about how I felt, locked away

from my son, wondering if he was hurt or even—

(I can’t bring myself to write it, I’ll leave the word 

unsaid). And I keep thinking about Juan Wilmer— 

the ten thousand dollars his parents paid 

the coyote for safe transport, his dream 

of education, the pictures of him alive 

and smiling placed on the family altar.

I keep thinking about his mother’s hand

that clutched his casket, her fingers spreading 

over its edge—exactly how my hand

had clutched the arm of my live and dreaming child.

Tamara Kreutz is an English Language Arts teacher and a poet who resides in Antigua, Guatemala. She began writing poetry early in the pandemic, and through poetry, she found order, peace, and joy in a turbulent, uncertain time.

CAUTION

by David Chorlton

Arizona is reporting the highest rate of new coronavirus cases in the United States, as the state’s governor continues to resist calls to install strong restrictive measures. With an average of 118.3 new cases per 100,000 people, Arizona has become what health officials call the latest “hotspot of the world” because of soaring case loads. —The Guardian, January 7, 2021

Through the cold and shaded

lantana comes a rush

and a buzz from

the hummingbirds

who flash their purple in the grey

morning. The thrasher

recently arrived with  a scimitar

beak moves back

and forth between the seed block and

the water while once

the Cooper’s Hawk has been

and gone from the back

wall the African

lovebirds brighten

the air with their hungry calls. The other

news is all

dark suits and hospital

corridors, interrupted by happiness

staged to sell

new cars in a time of travelling

nowhere. Ten

thousand new cases today

in the state. Meanwhile

at the pond the Vermilion

Flycatcher works

the perimeter, and Northern Shovelers

mix with the Buffleheads and Pied-

billed Grebes. Sharp-witted

and shy, the coyote

down to drink

melts his frozen pose and slips

through an open gate,

wearing each moment’s light

as a changing disguise.

David Chorlton has lived for many years in Phoenix, close now to the city's large desert mountain park. He will have a new book of older poems published this year by FutureCycle Press, Unmapped Worlds.

SONG OF WATERS RUNNING RED

by Bill Sullivan

“Spirit, help me to see

their broken stories…”

                                                                   The Wound in the Water, libretto by Euan Tait.

And the oceans, seas and rivers bled, then and now.

                                  1

So many unshackled black bodies,
hauled topside, dragged to the rail like sacks
of trash, worthless cargo when breathless or ill.
Unshrouded, unblessed, tossed to the sharks.

Lost: your freedom, your fields, family, friends,
songs and dances, your chanted village score,
your matching parts. Separated and silenced
you descend to the unknown ocean floor.

                                    2
Now a coyote says, “This far and no further;
A raft is there by the Rio Bravo.” Death threats,
and poverty marched the family north to the churning
spring waters, hoping to elude the border’s net.

“We will not be separated, will stay a family,”
Mid river, the rapids sank the raft, the dream.
Four will never know the opposite shore. Lost—
father, daughter child, and infant, swept downstream.

                                  3
The Mediterranean Sea, the reddest of borders,
graveyard for countless non-Europeans fleeing torture
and war.  First an embrace from the host, then rejection.
For a time, heroic rescues at sea, then cessation.

Thank the Turkish soldier who kindly retrieves
the lifeless body from Bodrum’s shore, who cradles
Aylan, in his arms, a three-year-old Syrian Kurd. Mother,
sister lost at sea; only the broken father left to grieve.


                                           4
Who knows who first pressed the knife’s tip in, opened
the wound? But slave trader, captain and merchant pushed
it deeper.  And despots, dealers, war lords, smugglers twisted
it more than a turn or two—then, hope and story severed.

If you don’t turn your head, you will see children confined,
crying out for their parents, drowning in a sea of abuse,
but also gaze at the perp’s or the collaborator’s eyes,
black and blank, a passageway to the dying soul’s cries.

                                          5
The spirit, the sea—eternal and universal; every creature
a part of the tale.  The sea, the womb; life’s origins.
Joined, at birth, our ties soon severed by Mammon’s legions.
Exiles and lords, cast apart, songless in a wounded sea.

Who in that sea will sing the first note of the song
that sparks the afflicted, that turns the cruel and greedy,
that invites every voice to join, that note by note stops
the bleeding, purifies the water, rewrites the wrongs?

Bill Sullivan taught English and American Studies at Keene State College. He co-authored two studies of twentieth century poetry, co-directed two documentaries.  His poems have appeared in a number of print and online publications.  His Loon Lore: In Poetry and Prose was published by Grove Street Books in 2015. He retired to Westerly, RI and turns to the ocean and gardens when times turn bleak.