PALLAS (ATHENA) AT A SUMMIT

by Dawid Juraszek

Countries’ climate pledges built on flawed data, Post investigation finds. Photo: A large plantation of palm trees, which produce palm oil, borders an undrained peat forest in Simunjan in the Sarawak region of Malaysia. When peat-rich bogs are drained and converted to farmlands, they release a rapid pulse of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as the once-waterlogged plants’ remains degrade with the sudden exposure to air. —The Washington Post, November 7, 2021

The ways the wise ones of our pasts

warred on the bodies of the land

all the while

crafting key words and ideas

for you and me

to grow up with

shaped and scarred us for life

Mountainsides stripped bare

underneath the blazing Sun

is not how it always was

a side effect of wanting more

shrugged off

or sorrowed over

then accepted and assimilated

A shortcut to wisdom

when exploring a narrative

what & who & why & how

hindsight is best

not indulged

as belated foresight

everything so very clear all along

Words and ideas now being crafted

justify unjustifiable

with solutions that could truly impress

only in hindsight

premised on there being a future

to look back on this moment

and give us a thumbs up

Dawid Juraszek is the author of Medea and Other Poems of the Anthropocene (Kelsay Books 2020). A bilingual writer and educator based in China, he is working on a PhD project in cognitive ecocriticism at Maastricht University. His fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in multiple venues in Poland, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.

ODE TO THE GOD OF FRAYED WIRES

by Megan Merchant 

High speed flash bird flight photo by R. W. Scott via Pinterest

How terrible it is to pretend
that god has a hand in it,

that he built windows into the river,

that the man I lay with is his image,
hums divine,

and that the smallest deaths
are trade-ups—

child-soldiers for his army,
collecting their milk-teeth in a jar.

I wake to the news of bombs,
and a flight of cardinals

from my window that sees
only miles into the world—

their red breasts choking the light.

I have to imagine that his hands
shook at the bomb’s final inspection,

frayed one of the wires, so that
it stunted, landing as an ache,

and not a shattering.

But also that he cursed the blessing
of foresight,

the all-knowing ruin
that no one saw coming,

soundless as a wintered sun.

Megan Merchant lives in the tall pines of Prescott, AZ.  She is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Gravel Ghosts (Glass Lyre Press, 2016 Best Book Award), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Prize, Glass Lyre Press, 2017), four chapbooks, and a forthcoming children’s book with Philomel Books. She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera, the Poet Laureate of the United States.