A REQUIEM FOR ZOMBIE FIRES DEVOURING THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

by Daniel Brennan

While most wildfires burn out in the open, another form of Arctic fire is more difficult to detect. So-called zombie fires can smoulder in peat beneath the Arctic’s icy surface, throughout the winter months. When spring comes, the fires reignite surface vegetation, emitting carbon dioxide from both the vegetation and the peat, which is a natural carbon dioxide store. A report by climate scientists concluded that the increase in the number of these overwintering wildfires is directly linked to climate change. —World Economic Forum, January 11, 2023. Photo: The Bogus Creek Fire in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, a state where the vast majority of carbon emissions from fires come from burning soil.Credit: Matt Snyder/Alaska Division of Forestry, via Associated Press via The New York Times.

We should have guessed by the gray, curled perfume

reaching up from a temporary grave that all good things

stay hungry. A terrible beauty; keeping one eye open

in the coldest sleep, keeping an eye on God himself. 

Blessed be the land that cracks like old skin under 

our sun, the land that shivers off its frost to be eaten

alive by a boiling stomach. Blessed be the earth that

houses the black-nailed hand reaching toward heaven

as the soil softens, as it splits open its breast to reveal

every fiery jewel we thought lost to winter. 

The disbelievers, they will tell you it cannot be this way. 

They will tell you that these new gods, burning just

below the lips, the foils and folds of the mind, should

extinguish in the night as they have for a millennia. 

But the most famished deities find the sky. These,

my sinner’s hands, hands which have held dirt in the shape

of lonely men and men crawling deep back down into

their graveyard dirt, hands which have found every other aspiring 

angel in the dark corridors of night between body high

and exaltation, these hands must clasp in a bent prayer

for someone, for something. Find meaning in the revelations,

the peeling snowfall that has blanketed a red mask of death. 

Find God in the furious inferno creeping up through nutrient-

rich soil, screaming to the heavens, making us believe

in an eternal life, for these flames do not die, only slumber. 

Blessed be this new generation of disciples, apostles, apotheosis 

in freeze-frame. They must learn to worship the earth that

cannot keep its fiery dreams beneath a dark shawl

of rock and root and snow and seed. We inherit the 

land that devours itself, the endless eulogy below our funeral pyre. 

Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a resident of New York City, but grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Pennsylvania (ultimately serving as a focused source of ecology-based inspiration). As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Brennan’s work aims to capture both the vastness we feel in the face of our ever-changing planet, while confronting our own bodies and the daunting elements of intimacy we feel every day. His work has appeared in CP Quarterly, Grand Little Things, Feral Poetry, with upcoming work in the Garfield Lake Review. He currently lives in Manhattan, and works full-time in advertising.

ON THE DEATH OF ANOTHER AGED MOVIE STAR

by Earl J. Wilcox

 

So sorry to relegate your obit

to a short poem which might,

but does not, describe your many

roles with other aged stars long gone

along with their contemporaries—

and yours. 

 

So sorry we don’t even know a single

movie you made, nor do we recognize

most of the stars with which you danced

or lay in bed with or any song you sang

with a catchy tune back in the day. 

 

The news of the day, alas, is too crowded

with stories about starving kids, murdered

brides, corrupt lawyers, not to mention

floods and droughts and hurricanes

and wild fires and earthquakes...

for us to know how much we’ll miss you.

 

 

Earl Wilcox notes with sadness the passing of Jane Powell, Ed Asner, and way too many others to list here, though he will miss them.

500,000

by Cathy Hailey

Ascent and descent

Symmetrical staircases

Move candlelight bent

Flames flicker faces

Pathways towards transcendency

Spirits drifting in

Liminality

A presidential burden

Despite empathy

Comforts multitudes

In national eulogy

Church bell interludes

Ritual “Amazing Grace”

All, Requiescat en Pace

Cathy Hailey teaches as an adjunct in Johns Hopkins University’s online MA in Teaching Writing program and previously taught high school English and Creative Writing in Prince William County, VA. She is northern region vice president of The Poetry Society of Virginia and organizes In the Company of Laureates, a biennial reading of poets laureate held in PWC. Her writing has been published in Poetry Virginia, The Journal of the Virginia Writing Project, Written in Arlington, The Prince William Poetry Review, Grid Poems, and in anthologies associated with ekphrastic collaborations.

THE ANSWER TO THE WHY-DOVES

by Alejandro Escudé


Prince reminds me to be my own prince.
The stage-man and the music he stood behind
like a god, the gold, the purple and the purple stars
under which he danced—

his music was not music when I was a boy,
it was a cathedral under which we dreamed of music,
the sound was not sound but a voice we rode
like a current of wind-guitars—

such is the way with poets; we recall
not the awards, but the bravado that protected us
from the mean people he spoke of, the cold,
the elevator that threatened to break us down
and did not, because of him.

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.

CHAMPAGNE AND LACE

by Karen Greenbaum-Maya

Legendary stripper and Bay Area institution Carol Doda, who helped introduce topless entertainment more than 50 years ago, has died at 78. Doda died Monday in San Francisco of complications related to kidney failure, according to friend Ron Minolla. —LA Times, November 11, 2015

            --in memory of Carol Doda, 1937-2015

I think of you, Carol Dodá.
You sold Lycra cat-suit and bra
            to ladies like me
            for whom 34B
was simply inadequate. Ah.

You were out on your own at fourteen.
We speculate what might it mean
            when a girl must contrive
            so that she stays alive.
Was it solely so you’d make the scene?

You frowned as you looked at my breast.
I thought you looked somewhat depressed
            that my ribcage had sprouted
            that which you had scouted
so you’d get paid more to undress.

 Your T-shirted bosom looked chunky,
at least forty years since your spunky
            pursuit of enhancement
            for career advancement,
Lloyd’s London your insurance flunky.

Your voice recalled whiskey and gravel.
Cigarettes must have helped it unravel.
            If you smoked in your shop,
            who could ask you to stop?
I was in no position to cavil.

 The bra looked like lacy sorbet,
a lemony froth-lingerie.
            You should wear it on dates
            with your husband, who waits
conventionally out of the way.


Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a retired clinical psychologist, German Lit. major, and two-time Pushcart nominee whose poems and photos have appeared in many journals. Kattywompus Press publishes her two chapbooks Burrowing Song (2013) and Eggs Satori (2014). She still has the bra.

ELEGY FOR CLAUDIA EMERSON

by Joan Mazza

Claudia Emerson, Florida, 2008. Photo by Joan Mazza.


Even when your flame flickered, you still

shone in photos of the stitches of your

upper arm, broken when opening a jar.



Through surgeries and radiation, you coupled

your words with music, stanzas we entered

unafraid. You kept your smile when your hair



fell out, and showed us how to fall in love

with love again when you and Kent gazed

at each other. You said that when you were gone



women would line up around the block

with casseroles for Kent. He’s widowed

twice now. Another late wife.



Before your brain surgery, you wrote,

I hope I wake up! and you did.

How we’ll miss your light and words.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.