BLACK ICE

by Lavinia Kumar

In Edison [NJ], thousands of immigrant workers toil in hundreds of warehouses, sorting millions of boxes arriving from nearby ports before being sent by trucks across the United States. But this summer has delivered something else. Immigration raids a few weeks apart at two warehouses have unsettled the daily rhythms of this busy corridor, where Amazon, FedEx and UPS have a large presence. The second raid happened Wednesday, [August 20] and resulted in the arrests of 29 workers, among the largest sweeps in the region since President Trump took office. Warehouses have been left short-staffed and behind schedule as detained workers were sent to immigration jails and others stopped showing up. —The New York Times, August 22, 2025

Oh, those winter mornings,

that fresh brisk air,

you go for a walk, spot a deer,

forget to look at the path,

and down you go—black ice.

Yes, black ice, its face invisible,

not like real ice, like white ice, 

in sweet slushies soothing a hot day,

or like crackling ice dropped

into an evening cocktail.

Yes, black ice, its every feature

disguised so you cannot not see danger.

 

Like tinted car windows to hide

the dark man in handcuffs taken by

Black ICE, this working man

taken from his family, from his work.

Black ICE seizing this man,

counting on a bonus award,

adding to the number 

for the White House 

Black ICE tally.

 

Black ICE in black masks,

Black ICE with tinted windows

Black ICE in unmarked vans

Black ICE with no warrants

Black ICE taking husbands,

mothers, fiancés, wives,

Black ICE taking dark men

who pay taxes, who love,

who have children

to Black ICE cages,

to who knows where

to crowded Black ICE jails.

 

And yes that young deer you saw

before you slipped on black ice

danced on its ballet hoofs

into bushes, into hiding,

hiding from you,

like a neighbor, like a friend,

hiding from Black ICE.

See Lavinia Kumar’s three food stories in Issue Five of Ruby Literary Press, The Monsoon Rain winning a 2024 Pushcart nomination.

AIR QUALITY ALERT

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

The National Weather Service has issued an air quality alert for Aug. 11-12 for multiple northern Michigan counties because of smoke drifting south from Canadian wildfires. —Lansing State Journal, August 10, 2025

We’re in charge of so little. Less than an acre; a cat. Clearing debris from the street drain. The few things we control are so inconsequential, no one cares. Not even us. Take my lungs. Please. Take Canadian wildfire smoke. Their wilderness makes civilization  hard. Even deer here in Michigan wear masks. How do they get them on?  Last week, we found out we were made of plastic. Today particulate matter is coating our lungs with Teflon. Silver Beach is like the bottom of an ashtray half full of gin. Haze, the weather man says, trying to fool the tourists. Maple/bacon smoke rolls in, a plague from the Northwest, but we are so far gone, its smell only makes us hungry.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske’s latest chapbook is Falling Women, with painter Mary Hatch.

WHAT’S THAT ANIMAL DOING HERE?

by Cecil Morris

In this provided photo from Oct. 13, 2024, an arctic fox is sheltered at the Bird Alliance of Oregon, after being spotted in Portland last week. After her arrival at the facility on Saturday, an exam confirmed her species, and determined the young female was hungry and dehydrated. The Bird Alliance is working with the Department of Fish and Wildlife to determine her next home. Courtesy of Bird Alliance of Oregon via Oregon Public Broadcasting.

First the deer grew bold, wandered between houses
and ate the blossoms and tender new growth
from the ornamentals we had planted.
They lifted their long heads, their mouths trailing
some asters or dahlia greens, their eyes wide
and unblinking, unconcerned by our presence.
They stood in our yards as placid as spring
their big ears unbothered by passing cars.
Yes, the crows, the jays, the shrieking seagulls
have long been fearless, ever intrusive,
like blackberry brambles pushing through fence
and dandelions lifting through the dirt,
insistent, tireless, quietly present.
And hungry cougars came down from the hills
to threaten joggers, snack on yapper dogs,
and haunt our dreams with their sleek fitness,
prowling embodiments of fear and guilt.
And now this—an arctic fox in Portland,
a seldom snowy metro area
of millions almost half way down the globe
toward the equator. Escaped, illegal pet?
Intrepid advanced scout for nature’s
reclamation of lost lands? One more sign
that we and all our works are just a part
of nature, as much its environs as ours?
Sure, she has that cute dog face and could be
a good best friend, a companion fluffy
and warm, but what will come next? Rangy wolves?
Polar bears after new blubbery foods
arranged along a street downtown? Slick slugs?
We are selfish and we don’t want to share.
We want wildlife to stay where it belongs.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing in The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. He and his partner, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

OH, ISRAEL

by Bonnie Proudfoot

Next Year in Jerusalem is said at the end of the Passover Seder. It is an ancient tradition that was first recorded by Isaac Tyrnau in the 15th century. Above art by Caren Garfen.

Oh, Israel, if my love is a suitcase, when I get to your house

I won't unpack, even though my mother and her mother,

my uncles and cousins are buried in pine boxes beneath

a star of David and our Rabbi wept for victims of the Holocaust,

 

cried for a homeland for the children of Zion. Yes, I used to feel

my chest swell open when I heard Hatikvah, yes, you've suffered,

people taken in sleep, in song, as they walked out of their homes.

I know you are perched on a precipice of strife. I too have felt

 

like a stranger in a strange land, my family holding our faith close

to shield us from hate or harm. Here, in the safety of my small

life, I see signs on the highway, a deer rearing up, a warning one

may careen across the road, but that isn't how it happens, not

 

right beside a road sign. When terror charged, you weren't

ready. I see stolen homes, stolen land. I see that hate calls out 

in darkness for more hate. Gazan families starve, pick through 

ashes to find bodies to bury while you shatter hospitals, shelters. 

 

I mean blood will stick to you, Israel. You shatter us too, we 

who were raised with a dream, who held you in the light each

Friday night. Two peoples, breath of one breath, voices raised to 

the same God. The more faith you steal, the less you'll keep.

Bonnie Proudfoot was raised in Queens, NY, and currently resides in Athens, Ohio. Her poetry has appeared previously in The New Verse News and many other fine journals and anthologies. Bonnie's first book of poems Household Gods was published by Sheila-Na-Gig editions, and her first novel Goshen Road was published by Swallow Press. It was named the WCONA Book of the Year and long-listed for the PEN/Hemingway Award.

DEER

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

These words will name the one 
dragged out of the woods by two men 

to the dirt road I walk on, how the day 
before I had startled one in our field, 

& all I saw was the white flag of its leaving, 
& today I see a long, limp tongue hanging out 

from the quiet mouth as the men lift it
into the back of a truck, the sagging 

body, four hooves held by their hands. 
Hands. Hooves. How a bullet leaves a body 

still & stained, & now every day I will look on the edge 
of the road for signs of blood & write 

this poem over & over. In every death
sloughed skin to become again. 

That settling of death right next to you,

how you move over, make room for it.


Sarah Dickenson Snyder lives in Vermont, carves in stone, & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has four poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera(2019), and Now These Three Remain (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2023). Poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO.

HARES ON THE MOUNTAIN

by Gail White

Families connected to a Nashville school that experienced a fatal shooting earlier this year have created nonprofits to not only promote school safety and mental health resources, but also to form an action fund to push legislative policy changes. The Independent (UK), July 21, 2023

If all the young women were hares on the mountain,

Then all the young men would turn hounds and go hunting.

—“Hares on the Mountain”

Why is your gun so hot, my son,

have you hunted the deer today?

No, mother, the deer were safe from me.

I have hunted another prey.

Is it your father’s gun you found,

that he kept on a shelf so high?

No, mother, this gun is all my own,

for guns are easy to buy.

No one bothered to ask my age,

or how much I could understand,

and it’s easy enough to find the prey

on a tracker in my hand.

I may go hunting along the beach,

or down by the hidden pool,

but the deer are all as safe from me

as the children are safe in school.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Paper Cuts, Asperity Street, and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats. 

RIFFS ON "POETRY MAKES NOTHING HAPPEN"

by John Minczeski

"poetry makes nothing happen"

—W. H. Auden, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

Some nights, like this one, something  

thuds against the house, a tennis ball or branch  

from the shrub below our bedroom window.  

  

Poetry makes nothing happen.  

I mean, we lie awake   

as a bitter wind slashes at the house.   

  

We have no need to shelter in a mosque or subway,   

but still my heart aches. Poetry makes nothing   

happen. It could be a deer  

  

that got into fermented crabapples.  

It could be a deer gnawing the shrub  

below the window. Some windows  

  

crack from the cold. Some explode.  

Poetry makes nothing happen  

and life goes on as if there’s no bounty  

  

on our ordinary world. Remember when the oracle  

said a great general would win the battle?   

The moon continues its unhurried changes  

  

as it has in the small forever of my life.  

It makes nothing happen, poetry. Skin cracks  

in the cold, like a tax on breathing.  

  

Stepping inside to instant warmth  

from the wind, we tell each other  

what we already know about brutality   

  

and winter. Once again poetry has made   

nothing happen. People go on dying daily  

for lack/ of what is found there.   

John Minczeski is the author of A Letter to Serafin and other collections. Recent poems have appeared in Tampa Review, The New Yorker, Harvard Review, Cider Press Review, Bear Review, North Dakota Review, and elsewhere. 

NATIONS REBORN ON THE SALISH SEA

by Alfredo Quarto

                   

My sleep awoke in me last night a vision

that warrior clans returned to Puget Sound.

I dreamt that cedar canoes once more

plied upon steel waters

wooden vessels hewn by hand…

the head of deer carved upon each bow

bounding through the waves

propelled by the flat ends of many legged oars

ruminant hooves slapping against

            the wizened face of sea.

 

Something was reborn when the paddlers pulled again

their oars like tense wings fashioned

from the inner strength of the yew tree…

revival was at hand as a coastal people

once more walked upon the waters

each pull of oar one step in two directions

linking the severed past with future.

 

Deep within the red earth

remnant roots are recalled

as an old people revive

feel their pliant pulse range once more

along the arterials from the breasts of mountains

to the beat of the heart of the sea…

new life may grow from the same soil

            that buries us after all.

 

From the arching stern the captain

steers with eyes fixed towards home

his rhythmic song in the ancient tongue

sets our pace as old wisdom is rediscovered.

Near the shore a lone deer swims

holds its antlered mantle above cold water

behind him, steepled conifers climb green hills

rise to where sea gulls glide and scream

in great excitement, as if proclaiming

            the People have returned.

Alfredo Quarto is an environmental activist and poet living on an organic farm in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains in Washington.  He’s been published in numerous poetry publications including Poetry Seattle, Catalyst, Raindance Journal, Piedmont Review, Haiku Zashi Zo,  Paperbag Poems, Seattle Arts, Spindrift, Arts Focus, Arnazella, Dan River Anthology, Amelia, Americas Review, Vox, Middle House Review, The Closed Eye Open, Elevation Review, Montana Mouthful, Tidepools, and Wild Roof.

KNIFE

by Katherine Smith

(Ann Telnaes/The Washington Post)

I asked the apple tree

how can you live, knowing?

and the trees answered

scattering brown fruit for deer.

I asked the field sectioned off with black tarp

how can you live, knowing?

And the grass answered

cracking the sidewalk with green.

I asked the mother

how can you live, knowing?

And she answered

holding her child in her lap.

I asked the smiling family posing

with their guns, how can you live, knowing?

And they offered 

silent smiles glittering like knives.

Katherine Smith’s recent poetry publications include appearances in Boulevard, North American Review, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and many other journals. Her short fiction has appeared in Fiction International and Gargoyle. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press) appeared in 2014. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.

THE USUAL AMERICAN ELEGY

by William Doreski

In Michigan, another school

shot up by vain disgruntlement.

The freshly dead were tossed aside

by the rush of unbridled history.

I’ve never fondled a gun

with the affection that’s its due.

 

I’ve never savored the death

of a twelve-point white-tail stag

or even a rabbit hopping

toward its fate in a tasty stew.

The boy who fired that pistol

wanted to kill for reasons

 

I probably shared at his age.

But the guns my great-uncles gave me

to make a man of me remained

unloaded, unloved in my closet.

Later I gave them to an aunt

who liked to kill small animals.

 

Today the wind ruffles the pines

with affection absent from life.

The cold challenges my parka

with its warped and stubborn zipper.

I should wander deep in the woods

with orange safety vest averting

 

bullets from careless hunters.

A hundred people shot to death

every day in our enchanted world.

I keep an empty brass cartridge

on my desk to remind me that

like Mayakovski I could shoot

 

myself anytime I wish.

I don’t wish. The blowing dawn

brings a pale layer of blue,

and the ruined families of the dead

face another day of absence

indifferent to the winter sun. 

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Mist in Their Eyes (2021). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

SWING STATE

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Missy Mandel photo on Instagram via Pinterest.

Yard signs shimmy in November’s wind.

They only have to last two more days.

Our deer huddle as snow sifts over their backs.

There is something to see here: the way

they groom each other. No one is in charge.

They browse downed yellow leaves

then chew for hours against the fence, safe

from cars, dogs, the buck that moves through

like he owns the place. Like them, we want

to live out our destinies. To kiss each other’s

velvety ears and bank our spines together

for warmth.  The signs are red, white, blue;

the deer are almost invisible against the fallen

leaves, the pine needles.  If only human congress

could learn deportment from the deer. Winds

through the branches promise nothing. 

No party affiliation. Deer days will be the same. 

Simple. Without rancor.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske spends her time looking out windows, managing two nonprofits (Poetry Society of Michigan and Friends of Poetry in Kalamazoo, Michigan, or Kamala-zoo, as some call it), and hoping to meet Olive Autumn, the newest member of her family.

THE RUT

by Pepper Trail





They are coming out of the hills into town
Young bucks, spiked with peachfuzz velvet
Old bulls, necks thick and haunches heavy
Veterans of the autumn brawls of many years

They enact the understood rituals of threat
Send signals of dominance, await submission
This has worked among themselves forever
In the sparring, none got hurt, usually not

But now, nothing is enough for respect
Not the bellow, the big beard, the big arms
Not the waved flag, the holstered sidearm
Not even the AR-15 - nothing is enough

So there will be trouble - how not?
Baffled by the strangers in their way
Hearing only challenge in the voices raised
They lower their heavy heads and, blindly, charge


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

SPACE AVAILABLE

by Sharon Olson

They call it the landscape of fear,
the sense that humans are near,
ears pricked to catch the menace
of car engines, commerce unabated.

So the deer were always nearby,
watching for safe spaces, as if
they might be able to read
the stickers on library doors.

The map has now been redrawn,
if the foxes can come out of hiding,
say the deer, then so can we,
nobody seems to be stopping us.

We are now hosting a family of deer,
our yard a new venue for outdoor dining,
our menu of specials features straight-up
hostas, day lilies, rosehips for dessert.

In dark of night, though, a new creature
has joined the neighborhood menagerie,
squirrels and mice beware, the fisher cat
pierces the silence with its strangling call.

Sharon Olson is a retired librarian who lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Her book The Long Night of Flying was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2019.

THE TWO WORLDS

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

The digital steel electronic world
wears an overlay of nature, a waxy
mist. If we are lucky, we choose
which world we live in.  A cat in
sunlight looks out the door while
the stock market crashes on tv.
Certainly more relaxing to look
at the cat.  A FedEx truck goes by,
three deer in the drive, the skunk
has a route and a name: Jackie O
because it’s fun to say: “Jackie O
is at the woodpile.”  I have never
felt manipulated, used or bamboozled
by raccoons.  Deer paw and nuzzle
at the lick in my trees while sirens
head toward another man-made
disaster. The Dow Jones may fall,
but I’m waiting for bright leaves
underfoot, crunching in that real
way, not like numbers.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske reports here on what is happening in the Midwest.

AFTER THE ESCAPE FROM PRISON IN DANNEMORA

by Alejandro Escudé

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin hold a news conference in front of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y. Shumlin said his state is ready if the escaped prisoners are found hiding there. —SETH WENIG/AP via NY Daily News, June 10, 2015

Raw world,  animal transfiguration,

Governor         at a podium,
acetone square,  enforcement, 

his word,         forest of 
microphones, gulps of blood, 

mere prey, pair of stags 
stalked for weeks,

footprints

pride, mystery,  a wall a god, 

law, scripture,         a man like deer 

sprints  for the treeline.


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.

IMPRESSION

by W.F. Lantry

Our marbled cherry trees have lost their leaves.

It’s not yet solstice. Birds are gathering

in hidden trees along the riverside.

I listen to them from the forest’s edge

and mark the dew on willows, heavy pods

of wisteria, weighing down each separate vine,

disordered grass stems tangling Mary’s feet.

We’ve each spent lifetimes learning all these signs:

our Fall is coming, even though the days

seem long enough to finish everything.

I take on so little. I take on far too much:

the red clay pond, half dug and filled with rain

beckons. It’s pleasant work, but other tasks

with other frames conspire. Is there time?

And yesterday, at dusk, we crossed a field.

I offered her my shirt against the cold

and noticed how the hawks have disappeared

replaced by owls and foxes, how the deer

made bold by wind, invade, how sedum change

from white to rose. Some moving into red

presage feathered designs of ice-framed ponds.

W.F. Lantry’s poetry collections are The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, The Language of Birds(Finishing Line 2011), and a forthcoming collection The Book of Maps. Honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors' Poetry Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), and the Potomac Review and LaNelle Daniel Prizes. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Asian Cha and Aesthetica. He works in Washington, DC and is an associate fiction editor at JMWW.

THE FACTORY

by David Chorlton

"Richmond Hill" by LS Lowry

I
When they laid the first brick they said
This is progress,
and then they laid another, promising to carry on
until there was a wall
where previously the wind had blown without obstruction
across the grass. The wall
was high and strong, with just one row of narrow
windows for light to pass through.
Look at what is possible, they said
as they drew up plans for the second wall.
These will stand through any storms, they claimed,
and storms came to test them
and the walls remained.
Foxes came to sniff. They didn’t understand
what was happening. Swallows
flew above and in between the walls
until the third and fourth sides of a mighty rectangle
were complete. Sometimes a swallow
would go in through a window and fly playfully
out of the open space held aloft
by the walls. This is the future, they said,
this is the place
where darkness will turn to money.
So they covered the space with a roof
which blocked out light
except for the long, dusty shafts
that streamed in when the sun
was on the window side, and the valley appeared
to sit deeper in the earth
because of the weight
pushing down. Only a circling hawk
remained of the sky. They raised a tall chimney
and fed it with coal. This is the power, they said,
that nature forgot, and as they bowed their heads
in prayer a viper
slithered by and spat a hiss.

II
Many came to see it. Many more
entered by the door and stayed inside until each day
was over. Those who praised it
never went inside, but said to those who did,
You’re fortunate, be grateful. So the line formed
every morning, and each man
bowed his head as he moved to his assigned position
while outside, the deer
on their way to the river ran by
until water no longer ran there
because it had been redirected
and after it had been used
it became a kind of poison
so the decision was made
to have it soak into the ground and disappear,
but it was still there,
like fire just beneath the surface of the earth.

III
We need another one just like it,
they said, and they marked the ground
for the new one to stand on. We must cut down
these trees, they said, and lay a new foundation
that will seal the earth.
It looked just like the one before it
and those who entered looked
just like the ones who entered the first one.
Two were not enough.
However many they built
they kept on finding people to feed into them
and the many chimneys
poured waste into the sky
as if to make an offering to whichever gods
survived in the smoke.

IV
So it continued, each one followed by the next
until no trace remained
of the grass in the valley and the trees on the hills,
and nobody who came to see
what had replaced them
could ever imagine the way it used to be
when the air was clear enough
for the sparrows to be seen
with their feathers turning gold
as they flocked in early sun.
Don’t think about the past,
they said, your memories will not feed you.
And they kept on building,
beating down the earth
to make it level for another floor,
creating enclosures where once had been space,
and when they were sure
nobody could remember what they had replaced
a man old enough to have been dead several times
stood up to speak about what had been lost
but he could not be heard
above the growling of machines.

V
More, they said, we need more.
And it did not matter how many,
they were too few. Some sparrows appeared,
and a lost fox, but no matter
how few were the animals
they said, They are too many.


David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in England, and spent several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in1978. He pursued his visual art and had several shows as well as writing and publishing his poetry in magazines and collections, the latest of which is The Devil’s Sonata from FutureCycle Press. Although he became ever more interested in the desert and its wildlife, the shadow side of Vienna emerges in his fiction and The Taste of Fog, which was published by Rain Mountain Press.