I PLAY INTO WHAT THEY FEAR MOST

by Guillermo Filice Castro

I have crossed you, taken your job. I am
a non-divine force, succubus to wholesome
American households. Here to clean you out,
me, a spick-and-span spic. May your ears
fester with my yips and squeals after you latch
the cage. Ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay. But ah,
what an angel Earth once was to all creatures,
prey and non-prey. And your prayer is open carry
and semiautomatic. Build a wall, build a fire.
In your man cave we can safely un-selfie
one another. Mira, mister, I’m hungry,
a rude corpse. The zombie Uber you never called.
I will rise from wherever you toxic-dump me.
Darling, I’ve come to oxycontin you.

Guillermo Filice Castro is a queer immigrant from Argentina. His most recent chapbook is Mixtape for a War from Seven Kitchens Press. He lives in New Jersey.

FAT BLACK BEES

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

A common bumble bee found in the Appalachians. Photo: Kelly Graninger/USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab via Popular Science.

A May morning
More like January.
I sit on the bench in front of the house
Brooding about the unseasonable weather
And looming climate catastrophe,
Wondering what it will mean
For our children and grandchildren,
For the children and grandchildren
Of all humanity.
Wondering if we will be able
To overcome the depredations
Of the mad, greedy bastards
Pumping ppms into the atmosphere
Day and night without pause,
With lethal, sociopathic glee,
Setting loose the wild dogs
Of hurricane and tornado, flood and fire
In order to stuff their greasy pockets
With mere money,
Not much good when everyone’s gone.
Too late is almost here.
Will we beat the carbon clock
Or will we all be Ishis,
The last of our tribes?
And what about these fat black bees
I’m watching right now as they traffic
In the rosemary and jasmine
By the front porch steps?
Will they be able to adapt
To some fierce, inhospitable new normal?
Or will they follow countless other species
Out the door?
I dream of a fine May morning
A hundred or a thousand years from now
When our descendants
Will be lazing
In hammocks and lawn chairs
Appreciating the thrum and buzz
Of apian activity
As the heirs of these earnest little toilers
Arrive at the job site—
Blossoming rosemary bushes and jasmine vines—
Wide awake, scrubbed and shiny,
Ready for work.


Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and, with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California.

WHEN I AM THE DAY

by Buff Whitman-Bradley




If I were ever to be a day
I would be pleased and proud
To be like this one
Modestly performing its tasks
With competence and confidence
And economy of effort
Quietly and carefully arranging above us
The great clouds bulging
With this afternoon’s rain
Spreading pale gray light
Among the hillsides, the woods
The neighborhoods and parks
And playing fields
Toting armloads of song birds
From tree to tree to tree
Mingling with flowers and bushes
With forgotten grasses in roadside ditches
And vacant lots
Conducting the cantankeous oratorio
Of a chaos of crows
Occupying the bare branches
Of the neighbor’s walnut tree.
And when I am the day
No mauling of the climate
No wars or drone strikes
Or collateral damage
No indecency in high places
No exploitation or economic collapse
No children starved or abused or neglected
No drama, no flash-and-dazzle
Or whoop-dee-doo
A plain, ordinary day of abundant courtesy
And generosity
And a night flooded with stars
To still the noise
And remind the crowd at the top of the food chain
Whence they have come
And where they are bound.


Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and, with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California.

FOR THE YOUTH CLIMATE STRIKERS

by Pepper Trail

Greta Thunberg on a stage in Helsinki after speaking to a crowd of 10,000 people at a March 15, 2019 Fridays for Future rally.

You will lie down in shallow water
Shelter under roofing tin
Move on, keep on moving

On small screens, the most fortunate
Will remember coral reefs
Forests not on fire, elephants, tigers

You will have children, yes, because

You will sing to them
When they are hungry, feverish
When the storm rages

Some few of you, the saintly few
Will not hate us, not curse us
Will forgive


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.

THE MONSTER

by Rick Mullin


on the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein*

for Roald Hoffmann

My fame is your reflection. I am known
as Frankenstein. Well known. Prometheus Bound
shall not have half the legs that creak and groan
beneath this body I have lately found.
This bleeding mouth, these rheumy eyes impearled
in mists of the eternal night . . . how odd.
The murderer you’d hoped for is at large,
your manufactured destiny. My God,
look squarely on the bloodlust of your charge.
Do you not own the spirochete that curled
in my electrocuted heart? Am I
not yours, my friend? Or did your aim draw higher?
I’ll not apologize. I, too, aim high.
In your good name I haul this fatal fire
to the northernmost extremity of the world.


*Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus debuted on January 1, 1818, published in London by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones.




Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Transom.

CHRISTMAS SONG

by David Feela

Image: Toycome

  —for Ta-rum-pah-pum-pump— 

This earth
is a package
wrapped in tissue.

Stars
glitter and drift
in its globe.

Hold it
and ask why
it feels so small.

Shake it
and worry
it will break.

Put it
back under
the tree.

Believe in
this gift
you don’t know.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays How Delicate These Arches released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

THE SNOWY OWLS

by Joan Colby

Researchers believe there are far fewer snowy owls than previously thought, and they worry the birds' long-term survival could be affected by global warming. —U.S.News, December 21, 2017

They have arrived from the north
Exiting the tundra and the lemmings
To hunt along the lake shore
Overlooked by high rises where
They perch noble as statues.

Yellow eyes fasten on a bridge
Where the ghost of Clarence Darrow
Is said to return each anniversary
Of his death. A wreath is placed in the
Lagoon where the arctic birds
Survey prospects like the Vikings
In the long ships headed for the Mediterranean.

What is it about the south that lures them—
These voyagers—the hunger for expansion
Or to be lauded as myth?

Each summer a woman in a Boundary Waters cabin
Awaits the visitation of the snowy owl
She rescued as a fledgling.
He comes wingspread as a westerly wind
To the familiar perch on her veranda.

Here, the photographers, out in force,
Capture the invasion. On barn roofs,
Streetlights, electric poles, they land
With a taste for rats and gulls.

The Greek priests extracted
The entrails of owls to seize upon the future.
Now, the warming world foresees
White feathers floating past the towers
Of condominiums and offices
As the owls descend to warn us.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

NOT JUST LISTEN, BUT HEAR

by Jonel Abellanosa

Cartoon by Eoin Kelleher

You heart is telling you
Billions of people need this planet, too
Countless animal and plant lives
Live on this planet, too

Your brain is telling you
The desire to join an I.Q. contest
Expired 60 years ago

Your pancreas is telling you
Be compassionate

Your kidneys are telling you
You’re septuagenarian already,
Be humble

Your liver is telling you, be kind

Your blood pressure is telling you
Be understanding

Your future gout and rheumatoid arthritis
If you still don’t have them
Are telling you
It’s okay to kneel
Like it’s okay to be black

Your arterial plaques are telling you
Don’t block the entry of homeless people
People fleeing political persecutions
People who risk their lives
To hold on to dear life
You may drive away people
But you can’t change the course
Of your blood —it will burst
Through a blockage

Even if you don’t like it

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines.  His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Rattle, Anglican Theological Review, Poetry Kanto, Filipino-American Artist Directory, The McNeese Review and GNU Journal. Early in 2017 Alien Buddha Press published his third chapbook Meditations. His latest poetry collection Songs from My Mind’s Tree is forthcoming (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York).  He is a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Dwarf Stars Award nominee. A number of his poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News.

PERVERSE URGES

by Richard Schiffman

Last week on the floor of the U.S. Senate
the Right Reverend Senator Bugger Mugger
called me and my green-bellied ilk
               “tree huggers”
Has that cracker ever got my number!
He said, “Buddy, keep those muddy
mitts of yours on your own kind.”
“Amen sir,” I replied, “only I’m wondering what kind
of kind that is.” Granted I’m a bit confused
               (asexually speaking)
something to do with being raised by a missing planet,
abandoned by an ecosystem at a tender age.
Seems I’ve conceived a perverse urge to mate
with a star, or if that’s too cosmic, with a right whale,
a snail darter, a spotted owl—
any species that’s as endangered
as I’m feeling right now.
But I can’t seem to find an other
that’s other enough to satisfy
               my kinky appetites.
My eco-therapist is trying to suss it out.
Right Reverend says it’s unbiblical,
calls my fondness for nature unnatural,
says marriage is between opposite genders,
not genus, has drafted legislation
to make tree-hugging in public a federal crime.
The measure has broad support from speciests
on both sides of the evolutionary aisle.
Hell, if it passes, I’ll diddle with a river.
Hear that’s still legal in California.

Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist, poet and author of two biographies. His poems have been published in Southern Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly, New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, and many other publications. His poetry collection What the Dust Doesn't Know was published by Salmon Poetry in February.

TICK MAGNET

by Laura Rodley

When President Donald Trump announced last week that he was pulling the US out of the Paris climate accord, Yale epidemiology researcher Katharine Walter felt gutted. “[Global warming] is already happening,” she said, “and the effects are already here.” Walter studies Lyme disease, the tick-borne illness that’s spreading frighteningly quickly in the Eastern and Midwestern US, due in part to climate change. Lyme cases have more than doubled since the 1990s, and the number of counties that are now deemed high-risk for Lyme has increased by more than 320 percent in the same period. 2017 is also shaping up to be a particularly bad year for Lyme. “These effects of climate change will be felt globally, but also here in the US,” Walter said, “and here in New York, in Trump’s backyard.” —Vox, June 6, 2017

So quick these late springtime ticks
brown ones, tiny black ones, ones
with orange bellies, crawling
on my pants, on the underbelly
of the horse, attaching themselves
even to the paws of my dog.
Relent I ask, but there’s no
connection to the mind of a tick,
no telepathy, they have only one
thing in mind and that’s appeasing
their hunger, fast, and they’ll
climb anywhere to get there;
they are not even afraid of your hand
reaching down for them:
they have no fear,
maybe they have no eyes.
Certainly I haven’t seen any eyes yet,
but boy, they know how to march
carrying lyme and anaplasmosis
in their bite. Relent, ticks, relent.


Laura Rodley's New Verse News poem “Resurrection” won a Pushcart Prlze and was published in the 2013 edition of the Pushcart anthology. She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee, won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

SERENITY SERENADE

by The Bangkok Bards Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

Let reality be reality spontaneously
Flowing wherever it so chooses
Find bliss stay a while
Pause to reflect harmless pleasures

Accept what is desiring less
Achieving more relax trusting reanquility
Feeling oneness with natural quietude
No whistles horns sirens alarms

Good humor helps lighten burdens
Genuine smile soothing calming influence
Cheerfully attracting keeping devoted friends
Disposition antidote for depressing angst

Inhale exhale it does help
Breathe in deep hold it
Silencing overactive imagination which never
Knows when to shut up

The quieter you become the
More you’re able to hear
Filter out noisy stressful static
Concentrate on inner consciousness tranquility

Filling emptiness with overflowing nature
Commit energies to environmental awareness
Planet balancing equilibrium passed on
Future generations spoiled brat legacy

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .