ODE TO PROGRESS

by Tim Walker

Where are the mayflies of years past?
Or their descendants for that matter,
missed for many a May? But hey, at least
our windshield’s free of bug splatter.

Are night-blooming plants bereft of pollination
by moths confused by light pollution?
Praise be to LED lights, so productive,
we splurge on ever greater wattage!

And how does the little busy bee
keep up morale in its collapsing colony?
Being a social insect is overrated, vastly,
like being a seed-dispersing beasty.

The plants will learn to do without them.
We’re all tightening our belts. In the long run
we’ll concoct “honey” from sorghum
and petroleum byproducts, Amen.

Tim Walker read, for pleasure, the complete novels of Charles Dickens while earning a BA in Environmental Studies, and the complete novels of Anthony Trollope while earning a PhD in Geological Sciences, and has worked as a computer programmer, healthcare data analyst, used book seller, and pet sitter. He lives largely in his own head, while he corporeally resides in Santa Barbara with his son Dana and their cat Cassiopeia. His essays and poems most recently appeared in Harpy Hybrid Review, 3:AM, Fatal Flaw, Rock Salt Journal, and are forthcoming in Sneaker Wave Magazine and TYPO: The International Journal of Prototypes.

CARCASS

by Melanie DuBose

World’s Rarest Whale Washes Up on New Zealand Beach, Scientists Say: Only six specimens of the spade-toothed whale have ever been identified. This carcass could be the first that scientists are able to dissect. —The New York Times, July 17, 2024

swimming by
he notices 
on the ocean floor 
something long  sleek  dead

they hang the body by its tail on the beach
some things never change

very small fins long beak
an endless loop on repeat in my brain

my brain with its depths I can not reach
but perhaps could synthesize and become a pop star
if I knew how to make thoughts into sound
outside the window the hills are outlined  in red
along the horizon

am I ashamed to be human?
the whale comes from mountains higher than any on earth
I get vertigo floating  

Ex means out  my brain circles the parking lot
Extinction Existence Depth
very small fins long beak 

proof of life in death hanging by its tail on the beach
another dead whale out of water hoisted not quite extinct 
it seems though rare

another summer of fires
I swim in the deepest water and wish for something
sleek and alive

Melanie DuBose lives in Los Angeles. Recent poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in the Los Angeles Press, Kelp, Gyroscope, and Drunk Monkeys among others. Her favorite award is from the National Weather Association for helping six-year-olds write about the value of wetland preservation. 

THE BISON, THE PASSENGER PIGEONS, THE FORESTS WARN THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE

by Cecil Morris

They think these invaders cannot kill us all, will not,

if we stand together, shoulder to shoulder, in ranks

like sunflowers or stalks of corn, benign and unarmed.

They think these invaders will see we are good people.

We know better and would tell them but they don’t listen,

or, if they do listen, they do not comprehend

the languages of destruction, forget the beige

indifference of words and how they camouflage

a red intent. They forget, on both sides, the quiet way

surprise waits in them and their sad myopia.

Still we do try to tell them true. We send the breeze

of our ghost wings over them, the distant rumble

of our ghost hooves spooked across plain and steppe, the sound

of our falling, a whole forest of calamity

that echos around them and they don’t hear. We try.

We try to tell them: no boundaries in the hearts,

the minds of men, no lines limit devastation.

If they don’t want to end up like us, they must run.

Cecil Morris lives in Roseville, California, where he taught high school English for 37 years. In his retirement, he has turned his attention to writing what he once taught students to understand and (maybe) enjoy. He has poems appearing in Cobalt Review, English Journal, Evening Street Review, Hiram Review, Hole in the Head Review, Midwest Quarterly, Poem, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines. He likes ice cream too much and cruciferous vegetables too little for his own good.

SHARHRK-FIN SOOP

by Rémy Dambron

A new study in the journal Current Biology has published some stark news: one third of the world’s Chondrichthyan fishes – sharks, rays, and chimaeras – are threatened with extinction according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List criteria. —Forbes, September 15, 2021

They arrive in massive ships

industrialized killing machines perfected 

for the hunt.

Nets stretching far and wide

enough to ensnare an island, 

sprawling from the wakes of the stern like

giant mechanical tentacles 

baited with the flesh of bonita, king mackerel, ladyfish 

eager to grab hold 

of any life form that touches it.

Sea turtles, dolphins

blue fin tuna, birds, even whales

an endless list 

all by the day falling prey 

to the savage entanglement

collateral damage, what they call bycatch.

As if this were somehow normal, 

fisherman reeling in their lines 

knives at the ready

taking seconds to sever the sharks’ limbs,

stacking them up into piles 

like gambling chips on a casino floor 

waiting for the highest bidder, 

who will market them to purveyors 

who will sell them to chefs

who will prepare them for servers

who will present them to fancy diners

high-profile entrepreneurs,

hedge funders and yacht goers,

the power hungry and privileged

plotting the expansion of their empires, 

anxious to boost their status

by flaunting one hundred dollars 

for a bowl of distasteful soup.

While somewhere, off the coast

not far from their lavish banquet

bleeding bodies slide down a ramp

back into the sea from which they were poached 

helpless, 

unable to maneuver.

Hearts still pumping. 

Eyes still watching.

Electroreceptors still firing, 

fully processing the repugnance 

of their own slaughter

as their living remains plummet, 

down into the deep. 

Author's note: It may be hard to find compassion for ocean life when the lives of humans, every day, are being attacked by disease, violence, and unconstitutional legislation. But to dismiss the perils of our environment is to turn a blind eye to a global crisis that, on its own, poses the greatest threat to our collective existence.

Rémy Dambron is an author and activist whose work focuses primarily on denouncing political corruption and advocating for social and environmental justice. His poetry has appeared on What Rough Beast, The New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, and Writers Resist.

LINGUICIDE

by Akua Lezli Hope

 

No elder bids are there to sing

Regent honeyeaters’ male song

So young ones copy other things

their bird culture nearly gone

 

Regent honeyeaters’ male song

tells females if they are strong and fit

Their bird culture is nearly gone —

we play old recordings to fix it

 

Tells females if they are strong and fit

if they sing the right song

We play old recordings to fix it

fearful they won’t last long

 

If they sing the right song

extinction will be kept at bay

We’re fearful they won’t last long

as their habitat shrinks away

 

Extinction will be kept at bay

when females hear the strong songs

As their habitat shrinks away

we strive to correct our invasive wrongs

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music,  sculpture, and peace.  A third generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, SFPA, Rhysling and Pushcart Prize nominations. 

RE-ACQUITTED

by Imogen Arate

Dying stars burn the brightest

Europe's birth rate is falling

Italian towns offer abandoned 

homes on the cheap

Even in a COVID year

nearly 1-0-0-0 

wo/men and children

died on the Mediterranean

in pursuit of safety

The Sonoran took its biggest gulp

in 10 years

as desiccated remains are picked

from between its gritty teeth

to stage a caravan

One in five American households

speaks a language other than English

but my people can’t get in a

Best-Pic nominee

without the label “foreign”

Be grateful that you are now 

presented with a choice between 

Black and    White

Prostrate melaniferous bodies 

weave into a shroud

covering the distance between 

George Floyd and today

Be grateful for crumbs that drop

from the high table

as we scramble

and gladiate in spectacle

for droppings

Half a million seemed like 

an impossible number

Last year   Valentine’s Day

was still lonely 

but in person

Be grateful

Why aren’t we grateful

Why are we so ungrateful

We are given a choice now

Isn’t it enough

A cloth cover is the real

hindrance to liberty

The 2020 “I voted” sticker

a high-priced memorabilia

for the lives risked

to those other than minorities

forced hyphenation 

worn as a crown

trudge past other saintly feasts

lay bare the sacrifice

Be grateful for the little things

The big ones are for the rarified

the falling birth rate

the fear of extinction

I guess they always knew

Dying stars burn the brightest

Rage

rage against the dying of the light

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of the weekly poetry podcast Poets and Muses. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her work was most recently featured in the Global Poemic, Rigorous and The Hong Kong Review.

TO KNOW A MONARCH

by Phyllis Klein

To know it only as a photograph, a memory.

Never to witness again a community of millions clustered 

on Eucalyptus branches, now empty.

These fragile slivers of stained glass

no longer clinging to winter respites.

What is a world that would allow

this extravagant pollinator to die off?

This migrational miracle. 

Rumi says, You were born 

with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?

I want a humanity that weeps 

copiously for this animal who starts off 

in a crawl, shows us how to fly. I want

processions, dirges everywhere,

want to howl over milkweed, bereft, without 

purpose. So much loss. I want to rend my garments.

Burn kaleidoscopes of butterflies into my skin.

What good would that do? Or I could slice

open the sky, so their ghosts torrent down. 

What do I know of softness—my origins 

in an ice-house, in a tradition of cruelty,

of abhorration, torn appendages. Where

are the wings for this? Where the flashes 

of orange slipped through our fingers?

Phyllis Klein’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest, 2017, the Carolyn Forché Humanitarian Poetry Contest, 2019, and the Fischer Prize, 2019. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2018 and again in 2020. She has a new book, The Full Moon Herald  from Grayson Books. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, she sees writing as artistic dialogue between author and readers—an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. 

ACHE

by Ron Riekki

Artist Frederic Remington painted “The opening of the fight at Wounded Knee” in 1891. The massacre took place on December 29, 1890.

"There have been more mass shootings than days this year: As of December 25, the 359th day of the year, there have been 406 mass shootings in the U.S., according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which tracks every mass shooting in the country. Twenty-nine of those shootings were mass murders." —Jason Silverstein, CBS News, December 25, 2019

“The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history took place in 1890, when representatives of the U.S. government executed as many as 300 Native men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, for practicing Ghost Dancing, a spiritual tradition within our culture.” —Allen Salway, Teen Vogue, June 14, 2018

“Arise from their graves” —William Blake, “Ah! Sun-flower”

Ugh! Gun-powder!  weary of EMT
shifts, how it may look like an entrance
wound in front and an exit wound in back,

but it was really two bullets, fired behind
and in front, and bullets, now, with shitty
NRA-backed legislation are made to

ricochet around in the chest once they
enter, going from organ to organ, intro-
ducing themselves with a bloodbath,

destroying colons and lungs and spleens,
the way that colonizers smallpoxed
and large-poxed and sent poxes upon

thee—the Pawnee, the Cherokee, the
Kansa?  Have you never heard of the
Kansa?  Because extinction is erasing—

worse than erasing, de-racing, destroy-
ing the -ing of a people: their breathing,
talking, writing, hearts beating, cultures

living.  And over an Xmas dinner,
we get on guns, and I say that I wish
I could take all the gun-owners and

put them on an ambulance with me,
allow them to see what bullets do,
see bullets in merry-go-rounds and

bullets in dollhouses and bullets in
Etch A Sketches where you shake
the world and nothing changes.

Ron Riekki's most recent book is Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press, 2019).

DARK OF THE MOON, HEAT OF THE SUN

by Pepper Trail

“One hundred percent girls,” whispered the biologist, crawling next to the pregnant reptile. “This nest will be 100 percent girls.” As the earth gets hotter, turtle hatchlings worldwide are expected to skew dangerously female, scientists predict, making the animals an unwitting gauge for the warming climate. —The Washington Post, October 22, 2019. Photo: A marine biologist helps a newborn sea turtle reach the sea on Cape Verde’s Boa Vista island. Credit: Danielle Paquette via The Washington Post.

In the dark sea, a greater darkness
An absence of starlight, moving
Then on the wet sand, a stone

Stone into turtle, with gathering of breath
And the climb begins, pull and drag
Against all the weight of earth

Far up the beach, with pause for gasp
The turtle curves wings
Into mittened hands, and digs

For this warmth of nest, the ocean shed
This gush of eggs into the place prepared
Hidden among the grains of sand

Then the lurch, the thrash
The torn-up ground, last concealment
Before the run toward home

At the first break of wave
She lifts head, trailing earthly tears
Rests, breathes full, and flies free

So it has been, the mothers forever
Returning to their mothers’ beach
The fathers waiting in the fathers’ surf

But now, the warmth too warm
The nests send only girls into the sea
Until fathers can be found no more

For long barren years, turtles will swim
Far from the beckoning useless land
Bearing eggs for no generation, the last


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.

THIS IS HOW WE DO WHAT WE DO NOW

by Alan Catlin

A dead dolphin was found washed ashore in Westerly RI, Oct. 27, 2019. Photo: Zac Perrin, Channel 10 Providence.

Kill things
                 Dolphins
                 Seals
                 Birds
                 Endangered species
                 Separated from parents children
                 Allies

Then we send troops into the country
we betrayed to defend the oil fields


Author’s note: Written after finding a full grown dolphin washed ashore on an offshore island


Alan Catlin has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books, most recently the chapbook Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance (Presa Press), a series of ekphrastic poems responding to the work of German photographer August Sander who did portraits of Germans before, during, and after both World Wars.

SCURRYING

by Carl Mayfield 

A man is a child
at both ends of life

and much of the time
between dawn and dusk,

touching his toes
to illustrate how the head

can drop out of sight
and still send thoughts

scurrying in every direction
to bounce off other heads

not all there but alive
in a juice neither visible

nor mute, allowing the new arrival
to pick up a language

to discover how far away
words can be from what matters

while noticing how few travelers
sense there is but one tribe

gathered under a toxic sky
which kills everyone, though

not all look up in time to see
their assassin—themselves—

winking back. A pail should be issued
at birth, to play in the sand at first,

then later to bail water out of the desert
as the second childhood shows up,

a little too late to be enjoyed
but with no less power to stun

as it performs the dead man's float.

Carl Mayfield lives and writes at the extreme northern edge of the Chihuahua Desert. His two most recent chapbooks are High Desert Cameos and Gather Round All Ye Wild Children of the Defrocked Atom.

THERE IS GRANDEUR IN THIS VIEW OF LIFE

by Pepper Trail

A tangled bank, near Sandwalk, Charles Darwin’s walking path near his home at Downe House. —Image by GrrlScientist via Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

“Around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.” —The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, May 6, 2019

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank,
clothed with many plants of many kinds,
with birds singing in the bushes,
with various insects flitting about,
and with worms crawling through the damp earth,                                                      
and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms
have all been produced by laws acting around us,
and that from so simple a beginning endless forms,
most beautiful and most wonderful,
have been, and are being evolved.
          —Charles Darwin, the final paragraph of The Origin of Species, 1859
                                                                 

It is interesting to contempl te  t ngled b nk,                              
clothed with m ny pl nts of m ny kinds,                                      
w th b rds s ng ng  n the bushes,                                                  
w th v r us  nscts fl tt ng bout,                                                                              
nd w th w rms cr wl ng thr ugh the d mp e rth,                        
nd t  reflect th t these elb rtely c nstructed fr ms,                                
h ve  ll been pr d ced by l ws  cting  r nd  s,                                            
nd th t fr m s  s mplbeg nn ng endless f rms                          
m st  b   t fl  nd m st w nd rf l                                                      
h v   b   n,nd   r   bng   v lv d.          


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.

FAREWELL, NAMESAKE I NEVER KNEW

by George Salamon

"For roughly a decade, the land snail species Achatinella apexfulva, which used to be plentiful on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, was believed to be down to a single survivor. His name was George, and he lived his last days alone in a terrarium in Kailua. Hawaii . . . but on Jan. 1, George died. . . . His death was symbolic of a steep decline in the population of land snails." —The New York Times, January 10, 2019  Photo Credit: Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources

I wish I had met you, on a
Stroll on a beach in Oahu,
One George and another.
Two anachronisms in
The age of speed.
Your species and mine
Face extinction, mine
By its own hand, yours
By predators that hunt you.
I read that you looked like a
"Swirled scoop of mocha fudge."
Ours would have been a sweet
Friendship, and I would have
Watched you as a buddy does,
And wondered if you knew we
Were both of a dying kind.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

WATCHING NAT GEO WILD FROM A SMALL APARTMENT IN A CROWDED COUNTRY

by Jessamine Price

Korea’s national creation myth also tells of a tiger and a bear who asked the son of the ruler of Heaven if he would make them human. He agreed, but only if they could endure 100 days in a cave eating nothing but garlic and mugwort. The steadfast bear endured and became a beautiful woman, who gave birth to Tangun, the legendary father of Korea in 2333 BCE. But the tiger grew hungry and impatient. He left the cave early, unable cope with the hunger and waiting, and has been slinking through the Korean mountains ever since. That is, until the last century when hunting and habitat loss pushed the Korean tiger over the brink of extinction in the wild in South Korea. With it went an important symbol of Korea’s identity. —ExpertSure. Image source: Zenzar.

The tiger’s eyelash
brushes the arc between sky and skin,
between sleep and the sweep of a vigilant paw.

Lash upon lash,
stripe upon stripe,
such dangerous grace is made.

The boar, the antelope, the bustard,
fed these teeth for a million years.
But the oceans rise—the deserts grow.

Drop by drop
drought by drought
such dangerous grace is maimed.

Jessamine Price, an American poet from Virginia, lives and teaches in South Korea. Her poems and essays are published or forthcoming in publications such as Hunger Mountain, the Lascaux Review, Delmarva Review, Poets Reading the News, and Rust + Moth. She has an MFA in creative writing from American University and an M.Phil. in economic and social history from Oxford.

SELECTIVE MEMORY AS FUTURE TOPIC FOR AN ELEGY

by Lyndi Bell O'Laughlin


The “good old days” induce a thin,
waxy coating on the outermost cells
of the lining of the throat,
carry a subliminal aftertaste
of Let's pretend that didn’t happen,
our capacity for denial so dignified
it should wear a chimney pot hat,
its name unmentionable, like Yahweh,
multiplied by seven billion.

The pain of contradiction and repetition
destined to repeat the curly climb
of Pacific Salmon full of eggs,
ignoring the promise in each other's eyes,
there is just the blinkless
death spiral of instinct to extinct,
this being the only way
some are able to rise each morning,
are able to shove a foot down a pant leg
before brushing their teeth with the frightful paradox
I am not to blame, but the blame is mine,

and the sunrise spreads its royalty over
bombed-out ruins and refugees,
exiles, gut piles, and Goldman Sachs;
water and air grow confused,
don’t know where to go

Image source: Smith & Wesson

to escape the uncle's hand,
dry earth shrivels and shrinks,
tries to swallow.

The poets conjure sublime descriptions
of the beauty of a spruce bough in winter;
poems that sing rhythmic sunrise colored
sleights-of-hand that make me yearn for the day
my sister and I snuck into our parents' closet,
hoping to catch the loose corner
of a shiny-bowed Christmas present;
and for a moment we did,
then remembering hard enough,
the glittering gift of my imagination disappears,
and there is only the stack of dog-eared Playboys,
the empty vodka bottles,
the battered 20-gauge shotgun
leaning cockeyed in the corner.

Lyndi Bell O’Laughlin is a poet from Wyoming, USA. Lyndi’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (Sastrugi Press, 2016), TheNewVerse.News, Gyroscope Review, Unbroken Journal, and elsewhere. 

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.

SUMMER'S HEAT

by F.I. Goldhaber

Pele. Image source: Dragons Faeries Elves & the Unseen

In the Pacific Northwest we've a
love-hate relationship with the sun.
While we treasure our short summer for
blue skies and joyous celebrations,
the natives sigh with relief when Fall's
first rain brings water to thirsty plants.

Though winter skies are ever dreary,
Spring's vibrant colors compensate for
months of precipitation. Here we
know the difference between drizzles
and sprinkles, cloudbursts and showers;
applaud brief sun break appearances.

But now summers last too long. Spring rains
refuse to fall. Winter's snow pack shrinks
every year, cutting skiing time short.
Fire season starts earlier and lasts
longer, kills more firefighters, burns more
acres, and destroys more homes each year.

Perhaps we should beg Lono to cross
the ocean and join Pele whose fire
rumbles under our feet, threatening
to burst from the peaks surrounding us,
and tear asunder the land on which
we build houses and cultivate food.

Maybe if we welcome the old gods,
eschew worshiping the trinity
of money, power, and oil,
we can avoid inclusion among
the species eliminated in
the planet's sixth wave of extinction.


As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, F.I. Goldhaber produced news stories, feature articles, essays, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now, her poems, short stories, novelettes, essays, and reviews appear in paper, electronic, and audio magazines, ezines, newspapers, calendars, and anthologies.  Her newest book of poetry Subversive Verse collects poems about corporate cruelty, gender grievances, supreme shambles, political perversion, and race relations. 

WE LAY WASTE

by Ruth Maassen

“We are the asteroid now.” --Elizabeth Kolbert

We tell ourselves the tale of Gaia, a budding girl
with flowers in her hair, in mortal peril, and nod
and sigh and turn away. Oh, well. What’s on TV?
If we bleach out the richness of what remains
we needn’t know what our every breath endangers.

We can’t see what’s gone when it’s not there.
Species drain away unmourned. Forests shrink.
If the biosphere dies and no one is left to grieve,
will it matter? No one weeps for the dodo.
No one from our galaxy will weep for us.

Blessedly the stars are far out of our reach.
Our incessant observations do no harm.
Stars are impervious to myth and sky-sketched
constellations, they never know our eye-I-eye-I-eye.
Their atoms go on fusing in the far-off long-ago.

Why does the pelting rain not penetrate our skin?
Why is the wind no more than a mass of air moving,
not malevolent, not malign, however it buffets
the thin walls of the house and drifts the snow?
Why does it not burst open the prison cell of self?

Oh, for a sea serpent to surge onto the beach
and grapple us to our doom, like Laocoön.
Oh, for rough music to leak from the crevasse
where ancient gods live on in granite. Sing on,
old ones, before the music goes silent forever.


Ruth Maassen is the poet laureate of the small seaside town, Rockport, Massachusetts.

SHOULD NEVER

by Jay Duret

On the grassy plains of Siberia 42,000 years ago, a baby woolly mammoth fell into a sticky mud hole and choked to death, leaving her mother to grieve for her. Now this little mammoth is the star attraction of [London’s] Natural History Museum’s Ice Age exhibition, which opens [May 24]. Because of her riverbed location, her body was . . .  pickled by acids formed by bacteria that entered her body soon after death, which was then frozen in permafrost. . . . Her DNA is well preserved and there are very few samples of this type of mammoth. --Daily Mail (UK), May 21, 2014

Image source: SingularityHUB

 I.

Should never
I see that now.
Twisted by logic
Played by logicians, swept
By the force of cunning argument.
Should never.

Debate will do that.
The river of words
Slow, languorous even, at the edges
Where you first step in.
Gently seductive, gently urging,
Gently gently gently down the stream.
But further, towards the sluicing middle, the current
Irresistible. The logic, the argument, the hard claw of debate.
Irresistible.
I was carried down the stream.
I am sorry.
Should never.

I blame Google.
It is one thing, after all, to search for words.
We do that.
We are human; we have no choice.
But pictures? Images?
This should be taboo.

Once I saw you I could not straighten my thinking.
I knew the arguments, heard the debates,
I have a mind that can hold opposing ideas in balance.
In equipoise.
But the swoop of your ivory. Its magnificent curl.
The rich dignity of your coverings.
As a people, we dream of a coat like your colossal swinging fur coat.
We hear in dreams the deep poundings of your stride
Turning tundra to grassland, step by booming step.

To see your image was to fail you.
Should never.
Should never have brought you,
Woolly Mammoth, Woolly Mammoth,
I should never have brought you back.

II.

I was born in a glass tube in a clinic in LA
Cloned from a morsel of DNA, that DNA exhumed
From a nugget of amber,
Or a bubbling tar pit, or a fossil in the Dakotas.
My papa, not mammoth, not woolly,
A balding man in a white lab coat
With bad breath, like he stunk inside,
Like all humans.
Stunk inside.

I don’t speak human.
Human sounds won’t pass my mouth.
We took a vow, my brothers and sisters,
Even as we dwindled,
Even as the light that burned within us
Flickered
We would never utter words that had been spoken
By humans or their kind.
Poisoned meat. Poisoned grasses.
The rapaciousness of hunters.
The voraciousness of human hunger.
You hunted us down. You ate us up.
All of us.
Extinction.

I know why it is you brought me back.
I know what it is you want.
The debate, the logic, the business with Google; all lies
I know why you brought me back:
You want me to blow life into you.
You want me to give a gift of words.
But I won’t speak them.

To be extinct is to be beyond words.
Beyond any words, beyond all words,
Human words, mammoth words, it doesn’t matter.
I am beyond words.
I am dead to words.
I don’t speak human.
I took a vow.

Jay Duret is a San Francisco writer and illustrator. His stories have appeared in many online and print journals. He blogs at www.jayduret.com and welcomes feedback at jayduret(at)yahoo.com.