VAGRANT

by Pepper Trail

This photo of a Ross’s gull, a rare bird generally found only in Siberia, Greenland, Canada, and northern Alaska, was taken Saturday [February 1] in southwest Kansas by Carol Morgan, president of the Topeka Audubon Society. Provided by Carol Morgan to The Topeka Capital-Journal, February 6, 2025. The body of the bird was recovered Wednesday evening, said Laura Rose Clawson, chief of public affairs for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

The explorer Ross (James) ventured to the Arctic
            planted a flag on the North Magnetic Pole
and shot a gull, new to science (1824)—
small, delicate, remarkable for the soft pink blush
on its blood-stained breast—
Ross’s Gull
 
A High Arctic bird, mythical or nearly so still
            in this warming century and so its appearance among us
            —Kansas, January 2025—
was a sensation, and the bird-listers ventured from everywhere
aiming to see this last unknown, or nearly
 
Days later, it was dead, this Ross’s Gull
its body in the strange Kansas snow
end of an errant voyage, faulty spin of the magnetic compass
the disorientation of an unfreezing North, perhaps
 
Natural causes, is the thought
starvation (a goose carcass pecked in hunger and bewilderment)
avian flu (across the world, bewilderment a symptom and then death)
or exposure (the Kansas snow perhaps too strange)
and the birders turned back
the expedition a failure, nothing still to be found
only the known, and the dead

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.

NEX

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

In his three years as state superintendent for Oklahoma’s public schools, Ryan Walters, a former high school history teacher, has transformed himself into one of the most strident culture warriors in a state known for sharp-edged conservative politics. Following the death earlier this month of a 16-year-old nonbinary student a day after an altercation in a high school girls’ bathroom, gay and transgender advocates accused Mr. Walters of having fomented an atmosphere of dangerous intolerance within public schools. In his first interview reacting to the death of the student, Nex Benedict, Mr. Walters told The New York Times that the death was a tragedy, but that it did not change his views on how questions of gender should be handled in schools. “There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us,” Mr. Walters said, saying he did not believe that nonbinary or transgender people exist. He said that Oklahoma schools would not allow students to use preferred names or pronouns that differ from their birth sex. “You always treat individuals with dignity or respect, because they’re made in God’s image,” Mr. Walters said. “But that doesn’t change truth.” —The New York Times, February 23, 2024. A state senator [Oklahoma Republican State Sen. Tom Woods] said during a public forum in Tahlequah that LGBTQ+ people are “filth,” and that he and his constituents don’t want them in “our state.” —Tahlequah Daily Press, February 23, 2024. The police released video of the student, Nex Benedict, recounting the altercation a day before their death, which has drawn national scrutiny. —The New York Times, February 24, 2024

 

 
People insist flyover country 
gets a bad rap. It’s a place of trigger
happy Trumpy fundamentalists 
and bigots, dull and flat, filled with hate
incensed that Jackson could be replaced
by Tubman on the twenty where school 
principals don’t call ambulances 
when students are beaten for being 
who they are and thanks to someone named 
Chaya you can’t access the works of Toni 
Morrison or Kwame Alexander don’t you dare 
mention Harry Potter.
 
In the past I’ve insisted 
you can find fine dining 
excellent wine 
and terrific company anywhere
beauty is in the eye of the beholder
the flatlands are profound places
perfect for soul searching silence 
 
and now there are fine vineyards 
everywhere, even places where few
people if anyone speak French. 
 
But I feel prepared to recant 
any previous defense 
because you won’t be killed 
for using a bathroom
just anywhere. 
 
The State of Oklahoma has decided 
it officially, legally hates people 
who see themselves as people 
first, rather than female or male
 
and so a person 
—aren’t we all people first—
named Nex died 
after they 
a person 
used a bathroom for girls 
but some other girls backed
by the State of Oklahoma 
decided Nex shouldn’t 
because they wouldn’t 
say (like Beyoncé once did) 
if I were a boy 
 
it makes me think of the old bad days 
when people of color had to piss 
their pants because of No Service 
they could not be caught taking a leak 
in the street or out back of a building 
since the law 
always in vigilante hands  
would catch them dead 
for answering nature’s call. 
 
Oh, nature. Evil since Eve ate the apple. 
The State of Oklahoma seems to think 
nothing has changed since fictional Adam
couldn’t die when someone reached into 
his chest cavity—in a time before antiseptics—
and stole his rib, to plant in the Earth 
all so this curious miracle could be betrayed 
by one of only two genders. 
 
I want to ask those legislators 
in flyover Oklahoma and the 10  
states whose lawgivers spend their 
time snooping in stalls
(I want to ask my question preferably 
to their face)
 
And who’s the snake?  

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears/will appear in Terrain.org, Belt, Rattle, Wilderness House, Mad In America, Writers Resist, Poetica Review, and Unlikely Stories. Jeremy’s latest book is Flint River published by Alien Buddha Press 2023.

TO THE DEAD

by Sarah Edwards

They say

you died for something noble

flag

cause

defense

revolution

greater good

They say

you died for something gained.

​ground

​territory

​respect

​equality

​justice

But if you are a child…

they say

this time you died for nothing

except my right to kill you

before you learn nobility and gain,

before you get a chance to choose

what is worth dying for

Rev. Sarah Edwards is a retired clergyperson in the United Church of Christ.  She is active in the North Carolina Poetry Society, is a student of poetry at Duke University and the poetry of life.