BOWSER THE RUNAWAY TORTOISE

by Cecil Morris

Slow and steady runaway tortoise crosses highway before Portland police rescue —Oregon Public Broadcasting. August 2, 2024

This summer’s heat beat his hard shell
like a hammer on an anvil,
and even the dandelions
were discouraged onto wilting,
so he decided he had to go
like OJ in his white Bronco,
slow-mo escape through open gate.
He thought he’d find a place both lush
and cool, the greens still succulent,
the dandelions crisp delight.
He thought Cool Hand Luke shaking it.
He hummed slow tortoise on the run,
felt the sun like cymbals on him,
heard passing cars as electric
guitars. In two days gone, he went
a mile and crossed the 205.
This was his flight, his fancy free,
‘til he was caught. Should we say found?
Now Bowser’s back in the yard,
a new tracker on his arm,
and wishing like all of us
to taste freedom one more time.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing or forthcoming in Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere. He and his patient partner, the mother of their children, divide their year between the cool Oregon coast and California’s relatively dry Central Valley.

I WILL

by Xebat Bradost

translated from the Kurdish by Sarwa Azeez

Advocates for justice for Iraq’s Yazidi community say much more needs to be done 10 years on to address the brutal genocide it experienced at the hands of Islamic State militants on August 3, 2014, and its aftermath. On August 3, 2014, Islamic State militants invaded Iraq’s Sinjar province brutally attacking, killing, displacing, and enslaving hundreds of thousands of Yazidis in their ancient homeland in the country’s north. Ten years on, more than 6,000 women and children remain captives of the Islamic State with nearly 2,800 still missing. Many of the displaced still live in camps which Iraq says will close. —VOA, August 4, 2023. Photo: Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Islamic State in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian border, on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain, near the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate, Aug. 11, 2014.

Keep walking 
towards the Zagros—
womb of the world,
find an oak tree there 
and rest my back against it.

I am weary of the desert's stuffy heat,
the weight of history's shadows—
stories of our mass killings,
our mass graves,
echoing through me.

I will rebuild the place 
where humans first met 
the peaceful face of God,
stretch my arms to the sun 
like those mountain mornings.

I will wear a white dress,
sit in front of a bonfire,
sing my holy Gathas
three times a day,
renew my vows 
to my wise Pir and my ancestors.

I will carry a sack full of plant seeds,
return to the Daitya River,
create streams from it
bury the seeds 
and rebuild my shattered life.

Xebat Bradost is a poet born and raised in Bashur, Iraqi Kurdistan. She writes in Kurdish, using both the Sorani and Kirmanji dialects. Xebat's work has been published in various local publications. She is the author of the poetry pamphlet A Hundred Coral Beads. Her poetry resonates with a deep sense of cultural identity and the pursuit of liberation.

Sarwa Azeez, a Kurdish poet, researcher, and translator, is a Fulbright alumna who earned her second master's in Creative Writing from Nebraska-Lincoln University. Her debut poetry pamphlet, "Remote," published in the UK by 4Word in 2019. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Sarwa's work graces numerous publications including Parentheses Journal, Writing for A Woman's Voice, The International Journal of Genocide Studies and Prevention, the other side of hope, Collateral, and more.

WARNING

by Jacob Richards

Dangerous air today
they say,
as if i could hold my breath
or turn back the industrial revolution.

Dangerous air today.
Forests burn all around us
old growth turned sunlight 
into sugars
a strange alchemy
now turning sugars into 
a carbon haze
and air quality alerts.

Dangerous air today.
An “I-told-you-so moment”
if only I could catch my breath.
Ed Abbey laughing–
he tried to warn us–
that we were falling and not flying.

Our fears lulled by PR firms 
and impossibly cheap plastic baubles.
“Please put your seat and tray into the full and upright positions.” 
Falling not flying.
Dangerous air today.
Red flag warning,
no burns,
red-eyes
impossible heat.

Dangerous air today. 
Can’t see the mountains–
might as well live in Kansas–
a long nothing.
Without mountains
how can one tell which way is north?
The cardinal directions
are all mashed potatoes–
featureless like a cartoon heaven–
a special kind of hell.

Dangerous air today.
People breath it in
and hate–
as if
that will clear the skies.

Jacob Richards is a writer, editor, activist, and wilderness guide in Western Colorado.

BENEATH THIS HEAT DOME

by W. Barrett Munn

AccuWeather, July 10, 2024

The red juiced rooster-shaped thermometer
crowed a whole octave above 100 again today.
Being forged from tin, feathers can’t be touched
unless a blister is accounted for by a salve
or some suitable soothing lotion.
In the evening beneath this heat dome,
I can see the Milky Way, and weigh in that
the temperature matches all 88 constellations,
explain how some are seen only in New Zealand

or elsewhere below the equator, forming 
constellations with names like Eridanus, Carina, 
Hydrus and Hydra, Octans and Pavo, and Sagittarius.. 
If only the smaller dipper would drip, or bigger tip 
over and spill; but the earth spins slowly, carefully, 
there's no spillage to share. In a few hours the world 
will turn, and we'll face the sun again; who knows 
how many more will die today beneath this dome, 
ferns left in the sun too long without being watered.

W. Barrett Munn is a graduate of The Institute of Children's Literature. His adult poetry has been published in Awakenings Review, San Antonio Review, The New Verse News, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Sequoia Speaks, and many others.

MY MOTHER IS SUING THE US GOVERNMENT FOR POISONING HER HUSBAND

by Bill Garvey

The government doubts his
cancer was caused by Camp Lejeune.
How do you know he was even there? they ask. 
We lived in New Bern North Carolina, 
she says, and every day Bill took the bus to Cherry Point 
or Camp Lejeune depending on his orders.
 
But even if he was at Camp Lejeune,
how do you know he drank the water?
It was hot, May to September 1952.
I'm sure he drank the water.
Were you with him at Lejeune?
Did you witness him drink the water?
 
Of course I wasn't with him. 
Of course I didn't witness... 
So for all you know he could have quenched
his thirst with an ice-cold Coca-Cola.
Or even a Ginger Ale. For all you know he was never 
exposed to the water at Camp Lejeune. 
 
I was madly in love with a Marine 
with crooked teeth and a cocky grin. 
Every day from May to September he came 
home to me seventy-two years ago,
clean and showered, so handsome 
in his crisp uniform, stepping from the bus 
 
into our tiny apartment, ready for me. 
Embracing me so close I forgot all about the heat. 
I'll always remember how good he smelled 
at the end of a long day, his hair still damp from 
your showers, not a whiff of Coca-Cola—
or even a Ginger Ale—on his lips.

Author's note: This is a true story. My mother is 93, still sharp, and she is suing the US government for my father's death from kidney and renal cancer in 1977, when the world was ignorant to Lejeune.

Bill Garvey's collection of poetry The basement on Biella was published in 2023 by DarkWinter Press. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Rattle, One Art, San Antonio Review, Connecticut River Review, Cimarron Review, The New Verse News, The New Quarterly and others.

ON THE HOWLER MONKEY DEATHS IN MEXICO

by Pepper Trail

Their howls were pure vowel, shapes
in the mouth of existence: Here, here, we are here,
bringing the forest to monkey-life,
vibrating the leaves of caoba and pochote,
the fruits of zapote, guarumo and nanche,
howls that named the family, organized the world.
 
Yes, there was always heat—but now
different, a heat that makes silence 
through the night, through the day,
loosens the baby’s grip, then the mother’s.
They fall from the trees like rotten fruit,
their open hands holding nothing but questions.

Author's note:  As a field biologist, I have shared tropical forests with these monkeys, have been awakened in the night by their prodigious howls, have marveled as they leap from tree to tree with their infants on their backs. The news that we have made the planet too hot for these fellow primates, superbly adapted to the heat and humidity of the tropics, is tragic and terrifying. How can we not understand that we are next?

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.

NAPTIME ON A HOT OCTOBER AFTERNOON

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

These days we ask ourselves
If the weather we are experiencing
Is typical of the month and season
But we can no longer remember
What is normal
And what is extraordinary.

For example,
Is it usual for an afternoon
In late October
To be a cloudless 90 degrees?
Maybe not,
Yet I seem to remember 
Sweltering on after-lunch yard duty
In the days leading up to Halloween
When I was a kindergarten teacher
Back in the 1990’s.
But in “Big Time”
Thirty years is just a fraction of a nanosecond ago
So what does that prove
One way or another? 
.
Besides, we know what’s up,
We don’t need to ask.
We are cooking the biome
With carbon
And there seems to be so little will
In high places
To turn down the heat
That we could sauté the whole planet
In a couple of generations.

Plenty of people know this.
Plenty of people are banding together
To protest, to disrupt, 
To go mano a mano
With the perpetrators.
But it is a massive undertaking
And who knows if plenty will be enough?

The little dog and I are lying on the bed
Not discussing any of this
As we look out the window
Watching yellow leaves
Detach themselves from branches
And drift slowly downward
Through the honeyed autumnal light
As they always do
This time of year. 

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife Cynthia in northern California.

PLAY FOR THE TEAM

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

“Why Summers May Never Be the Same” The globe’s warmest months on record redefined summer for many Americans. —Julie Bosman reporting from Chicago, where it is 84 degrees in October, for The New York Times, October 5, 2023

Even though summer heat

Has stopped by to remind us

That we are living in precarious times,

Autumn is unmistakably upon us.

The light is liquid gold,

Long, lanky afternoon shadows 

Are sprawling all over 

The houses and gardens and lawns

Up and down the block,

And there is something about

The taste and smell of the air,

Something leafy and loamy 

And earthily aromatic.

Even though summer heat

Has stopped by to remind us

That we don’t have a whole lot of time left

To flip the climate narrative,

To turn the dire story on its head.

Seasons do still come and go

And will keep doing so

If we are smart enough

And brave enough

And passionate enough

And organized enough

To resist the despoilers of earth and air,

Confiscate their piggy banks,

And stick the spoiled kids back

In their play houses and their little red wagons

Until they can learn

To get with the program

And play for the team.

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife Cynthia in northern California.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN FISH FORGET?

by Mary K O’Melveny

This summer, Florida’s ocean water temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A recent scientific study revealed that rising water temperatures can cause crucial memory loss to damsel fish and other reef-dwelling species. The fish in the study who were subjected to temperatures as high as F 89.6 did not fare well, failing “to find shelter, recognize their neighbors or find food easily.” —The New York Times, August 23, 2023
Credit.Credit...Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild, via Getty Images]Credit...Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild, via Getty Images] The New York Times August 23, 2023

As Fahrenheit rose, some damsel fish forgot 
where to find their food sources. With each degree,
memories shifted far away. First to go: 
 
finding a meal. Next was fear. Who posed a threat. 
Where danger lay. Which reefs might safely hide 
them, what might portend trouble in sargassum 
 
seas or bubble upward in their pathways 
turning marbles of algae into floating 
spectral groupers or snappers. As memory
 
fluttered away like flotsam, reef fish failed 
to thrive, survive. Each day’s heightened heat seared
off some tiny thought, some echo 
 
that time had taught, some souvenir of before.
Yesterday’s cache of jeweled thoughts scattered
now into a vast void. Who can ever 
 
truly know what is lost as heat sears, scalds?
As oceans warm, equal risk befalls both 
predators and prey. Who will remain alive 
 
as seas simmer and pale coral reefs blanch
white as brides? Will these warmed fish discard scales
of azure, sapphire, magenta, or wispy 
 
tails of sunshine yellow, peachy orange?
Will they recall where eggs were laid or where 
sharks stayed hidden as reefs shrank? What tales
 
will they recount as awareness shapeshifts, 
then fades away like images in an infinity 
mirror? As they spin through steamy waters,
 
adrift in the present tense, our questions
float along beside them. Will we have a future?
What flashbacks will follow Fukishima?

Mary K O’Melveny, a retired labor rights lawyer, lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York. Mary’s award-winning poetry has appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on national and international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s much-praised fourth book of poetry Flight Patterns was published by Kelsay Books in August 2023. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Mary was a finalist in the 2023 Poetry Competition sponsored by Slippery Elm Literary Journal. She is also a co-author of two anthologies of writing by The Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group, including Rethinking The Ground Rules (Mediacs Books 2022). 

BLIZZARD OF OZ ‘23

by Scott C. Kaestner

Frostbitten existential mood swings

my fingers can’t feel my toes

numb 

        frozen

try to twist, try to wiggle free

nothing. My mind is a mine field

explosive blue diamond 

in snow drift icicle sky

and damn it gets so cold

when an angry sun scorches

everything in sight. The world is

upside down, reason I know

do you hear the shit coming out

of peoples mouths? The aliens

no doubt are bored with us and

have moved onto planets with

                intelligent

                                 life

something religion and politics

and 24 hour news cycles

eliminated from Earth

quite some

         time 

                ago

so here I am, here we are

freezer burnt waiting for the end

or a new beginning or at least

some warm socks to apocalypse in.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, writer, dad, husband, and an invisible man in plain sight. Google “Scott Kaestner Poetry” to peruse his musings and maybe even buy a book.

AUGUST

by Juditha Dowd

This evening it occurs to me I ought to call my mom and dad
because it’s been a while. And for a moment they are not
gone some fifteen and thirty-six years, but still at the house 
where I left them, the first of their children to depart.
It’s summer and steamy and all the windows are open wide.
She’s on the porch working the Sunday crossword.
He’s out back picking tomatoes or wielding some tool—
lawnmower, drill, or paint brush. For what they may lack 
in talents or skill they substitute perseverance.  
Today I took tomatoes from the garden we extended again
in this post-pandemic summer, the leaves already mottled 
with a virus that will kill the plant but doesn’t harm us. 
Here too it’s hot and humid, like that year my twin brothers 
caught polio, from swimming at a public pool some said.
The same August our younger brother almost drowned 
in the deep end and our country joined the Korean war,
though my father was too old to fight in that one. 
If only my phone could find them tonight, I’d assure them 
I’ll get another booster. Or bemoan the endless shootings,
the forest fires, the latest wars… Or instead I might say 
It’s 100° and I’m making a tomato sandwich. 
Maybe leave it at that. They’d know what I mean.
 
 
Juditha Dowd’s fifth book of poetry, Audubon’s Sparrow, is a lyric biography in the voice of Lucy Bakewell Audubon (Rose Metal Press). She was a 2022 finalist for the Adrienne Rich Award and has contributed poems to Beloit Poetry Journal, Cider Press Review, Florida Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere.

THE OILIGARCHS

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

We are living in deadly heat

We are living in a climate inferno

Growing in intensity season by season

We are living in fire

We are living in weather conditions

Created by avarice and greed

Created by the princes of petroleum

The captains of capital

We are witnessing temperatures soar

We are witnessing our fellow humans

Particularly the most vulnerable

Expire of the extreme heat –

People living on the streets

With nowhere to escape the sun

Elders with weakened immune systems

Infants whose little bodies cannot cope

The weather today:

110 degrees in Phoenix, 107 in Grand Junction

105 in Tulsa, 101 in Casper,

No relief in sight

When I was a young boy

We lived near a greenhouse

Where the neighborhood kids sometimes gathered

On sub-zero winter days

The embracing warmth

The rich, organic stink of humus

And manure and decomposing straw,

The summer-in-winter just next door

We knew why the heat couldn’t escape

Up through those hundreds of glass panes

We learned it in sixth-grade science:

The greenhouse effect

An exquisitely balanced system

That lets just the right amount of heat out

That keeps just the right amount of heat in

That makes life on earth possible

Now carbon emissions have thickened the glass

To trap more heat

To skew the ancient equilibrium

To weaponize the weather

We have protested outside office buildings

We have blockaded refinery entrances

We have ranted and chanted and invoked the future

To change the hearts and minds of the oiligarchs 

To remind them of sixth-grade science 

To remind them of the delicate balance

To demand that they cease and desist

But they won’t stop, won’t stop, won’t… stop…

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife Cynthia in northern California.