CALIFORNIA SEPTEMBER 2020 WAITING FOR RAIN

by Phyllis Klein

Says the Climate Arsonist, “It will start getting cooler. You just watch,” as he participates in a briefing on wildfires with California Governor Gavin Newsom, left, at Sacramento McClellan Airport, Monday, 14 September 2020. Source: AAP via SBS News.

Any way you look at it, things are pretty grim.
Even an optimist (not me) has uplifted about as much
as they could, and still the rivers with their

muddy waters lope over the banks of hope,
stranding us in a flood of bad news. But no showers,
no torrents in sight. The lens of the future

becomes a Picasso painted kaleidoscope.
Rocks from an ominous silted riverbottom sink
even lower, lugging words, thoughts,

images down. Paperweighted laments underwater.
But the truth is so dry. See it coast past the window saying,
Get used to this. The sun must be angry,

or maybe it’s goldening another planet
with better behaved inhabitants. Or maybe
it’s the air, beyond rage, depressed, grieving, draped

in its gray facade. Eventually the situation blurs
into a barrier, a dam, a kink in the hose, pressure
on the rise. Combustion on its warpath.


Phyllis Klein writes, lives, and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Silver Birch Press, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Portside, and Sweet, a Literary Confection. She also has poems forthcoming in I-70 and 3Elements. She believes in artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. And the healing power of anything as beautiful as poetry.

FALL IS BEAUTIFUL

by Katherine West

Holly turning red
all along the winding trail,
little flames of fall
amongst the wildflowers—
silver hair of the forest

She is dying, dry
before rain, dry after rain
her children all dead
before they are born, before
the holly can burn, it burns

Eighty years to die—
eighty years for the river
eighty years for me
amongst the wildflowers—
silver hair of the river

She is dying, dry
before rain, dry after rain
her children all dead
before they are born, before
the trout can spawn, they are gone

Fall is beautiful
leaves now turning red as blood
all my long, long life
I was a leaf on your tree
but now we fall together

Katherine West is the author of three poetry collections—The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle–and has had poetry published in such journals as Bombay Gin, Lalitamba, TheNewVerse.News, La Petite Zine among others.  She lives and teaches poetry workshops about wilderness writing near Silver City, New Mexico.  

ANTHROPOCENE STOMP

by Peleg Held

Hail the ant mill's circling spinners
we cry from our chests at the screenlight fire.
March to the end in pomp and shivers.
Round round rosey sings the choir
as the bell-penny promise of the mule-skinner
piles the pocket posies higher.

"Hail the ant mill's circling spinners!
Aquifers! Drink 'em drier!
Well to whistle!" chant the buyers.
We dance in thrall as the air goes thinner,
our lashlines labeled stress and sliver,
a tightening backwards down the gyre
to the holding center—paid entire—

all the ant mill's circling spinners
marching to the end in pomp and shivers.

Peleg Held lives in Portland, Maine with his partner and his dog Emitt. There is also the semi-feral cat, Smudge. And a kid or two. pelegheld(at)gmail.com.

DEAD LAKE

by R. Nemo Hill 

LLAPALLAPANI, Bolivia — The water receded and the fish died. They surfaced by the tens of thousands, belly-up, and the stench drifted in the air for weeks. The birds that had fed on the fish had little choice but to abandon Lake Poopó, once Bolivia’s second-largest but now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, left as well, joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change. “The lake was our mother and our father,” said Adrián Quispe, one of five brothers who were working as fishermen and raising families here in Llapallapani. “Without this lake, where do we go?” —“Climate Change Claims a Lake, and an Identity,” The New York Times, July 7, 2016

Take from the albatross all air,
from the worm the lived loam.
On dust farms, on salt flats,
on what used to be the shore
of all that made a here of there,
leave the wingspread, the blindcurve,
leave one liftless, one unburrowed.
“I am living in someone else’s home.”

Drain all that was from all that is,
forget remembering.
Forget to float.
The past is this shrunken husk of a boat,
a souvenir woven from straw,
an orphan for sale in the marketplace.
The future’s this salt we grind and gather.
“The lake was our mother and our father.”

Take all the waters taught of tilt,
take lilt, take lap and swell and spill.
Take from the wave all that wets—
then time will harden as it crests,
our season stilled.
We could not wake one small swift fish from its stench,
or raise one bright flamingo feather from its fossil.
“We threw out our nets, there was nothing for us.”

R. Nemo Hill is the author, in collaboration with painter Jeanne Hedstrom, of an illustrated novel, Pilgrim’s Feather (Quantuck Lane Press, 2002); a poem based upon a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, The Strange Music of Erich Zann (Hippocampus Press, 2004); a chapbook, Prolegomena To An Essay On Satire (Modern Metrics, 2006); and two collections of poems, When Men Bow Down (Dos Madres Press, 2012 ) and In No Man’s Ear (Dos Madres, 2016).  He is editor & publisher of Exot Books.