RED FLAG

by Pepper Trail

This is the way now, the night helicopters orange-bellied from the flames, swallowing mouthfuls of ocean, dropping salt on the mansions, bungalows, trailers, the streets running wild with molten metal, airburst of exploding eucalyptus, every TV speaking wisely, hysterically of ember fall, windspeed, perimeters, acres, percents, containment, containment, containment, canyons, freeways, the survivors somehow calm, brave beside the ruins, char and ash, the scorched tricycle on its side, the bewildered chimneys of the cul-de-sacs, hell on earth you could say and not be wrong, the City of Angels twisting in the grasp of Santa Ana, beneath the red flags and this is the way now though maybe in your town it will be hurricane or tornado or flood or drought or heat unto death or maybe in some blessed places of sanctuary maybe only a tsunami of the desperate and displaced  but this is the everywhere now and we have made it so.

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.

P-22

by Barbara Parchim

The famous Hollywood-roaming mountain lion known as P-22 is drastically underweight and was probably struck and injured by a car, wildlife experts who conducted a health examination on the big cat said on Tuesday. The male cougar, whose killing of a leashed dog has raised concerns about its behavior, probably will not be released back into the wild and could be sent to an animal sanctuary or euthanized, depending on its health, the California department of fish and wildlife said. —The Guardian, December 14, 2022

you overstepped your allotment

designated when we took over the landscape—

 

wandered into the backyards of

designer dogs that scamper like prey

 

crossed the wrong freeways—

a concrete grid overlaid on the land

 

meaningless, artificial boundaries

not mapped in your DNA

 

how could you know

only certain spaces were allowed?

 

how solitary your existence

far from the Santa Monica mountains

 

the occasional park,

a checkerboard of wild between our constructs

 

what happens next is our decision

as we decide everything in our dominion

 

your celebrity may evoke some empathy

as the wild slips away

 

 

Barbara Parchim lives on a small farm in southwest Oregon.  She enjoys gardening and hiking and volunteered for several years at a wildlife rehabilitation facility.  Her poems have appeared in Allegro, Isacoustic, The NewVerse News, Turtle Island Quarterly, Windfall, Front Porch Review, Jefferson Journal, Cirque, and others.  Her first book What Remains was published by Flowstone Press in October, 2021.