TERRITORIAL DISPUTES

by Karen Olshansky

Marin spotted owl population under threat from newcomers. Proposed government strategy seeks to eliminate invasive barred owls. —Marin Independent Journal,  October 10, 2023.

The Barred Owl with its stoic demeanor chest puffed feathers
perched in wooded river bottoms or swamps poked with trees
sit staunchly like the dead wood where they perch
guarding, watching with still eyes, baritone song filling the forest

who cooks for you who cooks for you who cooks for you

sometimes silent in search for food and prey 
the Spotted Owl an innocent target
brother eating sister attacks, the cruelty of nature
birds mirror the disregard for one of their species

uncaring, mean, violent,
nature wins over evolution
that calls for reason, kindness, compassion
instead of the entrapments of violence 

a world driven by base instincts
of brains riven with ripping out each other’s
identity, that fear replacement,
smoke obscuring humanity.

Karen Olshansky lives in Marin County, California with her husband and a well fed Koi named Pickle Face. Dismayed by our world gone mad, she writes poetry in order to maintain her sanity. Her work has appeared in The Literary Nest, Tuck magazine, The News Verse News, and the anthologies: Lingering in the Margins, Unsealing Our Secrets, and Unspoken.

NATIONAL PARK

by Jerome Berglund

Dogs roam the ghost town of Pripyat within the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine. Scientists have identified genetically distinct populations living in the area, including within the highly contaminated power plant. Credit: Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images via The New York Times, March 3, 2023

The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Experiencing Rapid Evolution, Study Suggests 

–Popular Mechanics, April 1, 2023

near fifty odd past,

generations of curs

in the fallout

plume rose up

into the air

but has it dissipated 

toys left behind

during hasty retreat 

from exclusion zone

through ruins 

of the power plant

feral strays mutating

irradiated populations

not eradicated

over the dog years

unmolested 

other kingdoms

time to flourish

the casualties

by necessity

continue evolving 

beneficial adaptations

can they be reabsorbed

into populations

tempering

for weathering 

this boiling world

roaming the wastes

admiring 

the many sunflowers 

Jerome Berglund, recently nominated for the Touchstone awards and Pushcart Prize, has many haiku, senryu, and tanka exhibited and forthcoming online and in print, including in the Asahi Shimbun, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku.  His first full-length collection of poetry Bathtub Poems was just released by Setu Press.

WORD

by James Gage

 

Word is the best

four-letter word

of them all—

the most effective

and least obscene.

 

I prefer the sound

of human voices speaking

with one another

with the gift of our forebears:

the bilabial smacks

and glottal stops,

the carefully wrought thoughts

in place of haste

or wind-drift spasms.

 

Our words are aural evidence

of true evolution

beyond the harnessing of fire

or the hammer-ready thumb.

And the silencing of words

is a recipe for ruin.

James Gage is a poet whose work has been published in Main Street Rag, Inkwell, Oyster River Pages, The New Verse News, and others. Finishing Line Press published his first book of poems True If Destroyed (2015).

LESSONS OF THE OSTRACODS

by Richard Meyer

The male ostracod Cypideis salebrosa, his genitals shaded in the photograph. (Maria João Fernandes Martins)

By studying dozens of fossilized ostracods, [researchers] have found that species where males . . .  have larger penises—disappear far more quickly. They say that it’s not size that matters, but what you do with it; what ostracods do with it is go extinct. —The Atlantic, 11 April 2018


Attention homo sapiens—
the men, that is, the average ones,
the less endowed below the belt—
that insufficiency you’ve felt
is but a myth—you’re now set free
by studies in biology.

Among the creatures in the sea,
the species known as ostracods
whose males possessed prodigious rods
became extinct while others thrived.

No longer lacking, flawed, deprived,
with evolution on your side,
embrace your normal tools with pride
and know in life, to their chagrin,
the biggest pricks don’t always win.

Richard Meyer’s poems have appeared in various publications, including Able Muse, The Raintown Review, Think, Measure, Light, TheNewVerse.News, Alabama Literary Review, and The Evansville Review. He was awarded the 2012 Robert Frost Farm Prize for his poem “Fieldstone” and was the recipient of the 2014 String Poet Prize for his poem “The Autumn Way.” A book of his collected poems, Orbital Paths, was a silver medalist winner in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.

THE MONKEYS PUT US IN OUR PLACE

by Michael Mark

The latest rankings are out
Human beings are third in intelligence
Last in courage
But 43rd in good looks — an uptick due to an extinction
All agree and of course the humans most heartily support
We are keenest in imagination
Now if we can get our names off the endangered species list
But the monkeys say that we’re not smart enough
The lions say we’re not brave enough
The elephants say we’re not kind enough
The waters say we’re not strong enough


Michael Mark’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, Paterson Literary Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, Spillway, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry, TheNewVerse.News and other nice places. His poetry has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and the 2015 Best of the Net.

THERE IS THIS GUY

by Howard Winn

Image source: DonkeyHotey

who believes the Earth we live on
is six thousand years old and
says the geological evidence
is all malarkey as is the physical
data that verifies much of
Mr. Darwin’s theory about the
creation of homo sapiens which
this particular gentlemen says
he can refute in a few slick minutes
if questioned about the source
of what he believes without question
while at the same time insisting
his god made the world of Adam
and Eve in six days ending with
the Sabbath which our current
calendar created by the Greeks
and Romans a few years back
places as Saturday while our
Sunday is the first day of the
week and all those days in-between
named from classic mythology
are when this God parceled out
his chores of creation since he
apparently did not want to be
overwhelmed by trying to do too
much in the twenty-four hours
someone controlling the sun had
placed in each day so named
which leads one to ask just who
was the original engineer in charge
who put limits on this God The Papa?


Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), The Long Story,  Cold Mountain Review, Antigonish Review, New Verse News, Chaffin Review, Thin Air Literary Journal, and Whirlwind. His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.

MEASLES

by Joan Colby

Anti-Vaxxer Kristin Cavallari

A darkened room. Venetian blinds
Slatted like a stern mouth.
No reading. No coloring books
Or paper dolls. I shut my eyes
Reddened like the polka dots
Of my fevered body.
The doctor with his satchel
Of uselessness. Two weeks
Or longer. It’s the hard
Measles.

Two infant boys born before my father
Died of it. They were both named
For their own father, an unlucky
Name as it turned out—he too would die
Young in a gunfight. They called my father
A different name. So names must
Matter. My own means Gift of God
According to my mother who never wanted
Such a daughter, one spotted
With original sin, who must be
Worried over, hot and sulky in the dark
Demanding one more chapter.
My father’s weary voice as Jim
Hides in the apple barrel
Listening for the thump of a peg leg.

Once a third of the tribes crawled
To the cooling waters where they expired.
I get better. A neighbor child
Loses smartness, burnt away in a conflagration
The way conifers on the mountain
Turned into ashy witches.

There’s such a thing as herd
Immunity. The few protected
By the many. How penguins huddle
Against weather, changing places constantly
For the good of all.

Age of enlightenment.
Lords of miracle: Lister, Pasteur,
Jenner, Finlay, Reed, Salk.

Yet in the forest where the children stray
The house of the witch still beckons,
People believe in angels, in green men from mars,
That evolution is a lie, that the moon is a hologram,
That science is a devil’s plot
Against the faith of conjecture.


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 was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). 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) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. 

CORVIDS

by Jonathan Travelstead

Image source: WebEcoist

Want to catch an illegal alien? Study the crow,
its shiny things. Foil hat. Mirrors, chewing gum wrappers
wadded in nests.

We haven't been family for three hundred million years.
Their minds are closer to the lizard brain
where we parted ways, descending different trees.

Yet watch them make tools from straws they use,
solving riddles which require up to eight steps of critical thinking
to deftly pincer out the strip of raw beef.

Crafty. Pistachio, floating in a glass. I watched a crow fly
between an alley and a picnic table, plinking pebbles
and small stones until enough water

displaced the nut to within reach of its beak.
They're smarter than you. We haven't evolved in the right direction
to distinguish their motivations.

Pepper them with shot, and they remember, tell the next
generation about the change in route and elevation.
Screen a dome over the tomatoes walled within your garden

and a few tunnel the fence, but first send scouts
proficient in the killdeer's portrayal of a broken wing
along your flank, divert you while a murder

marches on the front gate. They'll rob you blind. In Arizona,
I hear blackberry pies vanish from windows.
Sheets hanging on the line disappear.

Canadian fishermen drop lines into holes
rough-cut in ice, later report their lines drawn up in a spaghetti tangle
of nylon, scales, and black feathers on the red snow.

Crow, rook, blackbird, raven- call them what you want.
Hell, my Chevy broke down near Roswell and one completed
my solenoid's broken circuit with a flat-head,

then wouldn't take a dime! Each can do the job of ten men.
They don't think like we do.

They don't need much.

Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro. Having finished his MFA at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he now works on an old dirt-bike he hopes will one day get him to the salt flats of Bolivia. He has published work in The Iowa Review and on Poetrydaily.com among others, and his first collection How We Bury Our Dead by Cobalt/Thumbnail Press is forthcoming in February, 2015.

ARCHIPELAGO: GALAPAGOS

by Resa Mestel

Reclining land iguanas, the welcome committee,
footfalls ignored on primordial islands,
trails of Darwin pry the nests
of flightless cormorants, keeping house unvexed.
Blue-footed boobies on the move, magnificent frigates, no
Man O' War to us, oblivious banded penguins,
cool in the Humboldt current, somersault with baby
seals in nascent underwater playgrounds. Masked,
finned, ebullient I snorkel to a green sea
turtle, entreaty in tow.


Resa Mestel is a nurse, weaver, poet currently studying at The Hudson Valley Writer's Center. She lives in Briarcliff, NY.

STRAIGHT FROM THE PIT OF HELL

by Max Gutmann

It's overdue, this insurrection.
At last we will dispose
Of Darwin's dumb, duped cheering section.
Celestial insight grows;
We'll soon defeat its wicked foes
'Cause now we have a guy
Who'll see the House Committee knows
That evolution is a lie.

Can our distinct divine perfection
Be something that arose
At random?  Natural selection
Is clearly one of those
Base frauds a schoolchild could expose
If he should only try.
The proof's not difficult; it goes:
"Oh, evolution? It's a lie."

The larger point to our objection
Is showing science pros
We're focusing on their correction
And that they can't impose
Their will on ordinary joes.
Their wares we just won't buy.
Straight off this Global Warming slows
If evolution is a lie.

It's obvious. One must suppose
Evolving would imply
Improvement; Broun's election shows
That evolution is a lie.


Max Gutmann has contributed to The Dark Horse and other publications.