DRY JULY

by David Chorlton

Today the inside knows what the outside’s like,
cats asleep and windows closed
with nobody walking on the street
and birds in the yard waiting for a shadow
to perch on.

                     It’s a hundred-
and-Hell degrees this afternoon, the devil’s
breath for a breeze
and climate change denial melts
when the temperature dances
on the asphalt in the road.

                                                The midnight low
is too high for living outdoors. Another
record falls. The homeless camp
was swept away and a public nuisance
turned into a death threat.

                                                     A dove
has made a dust bath in a bare patch
on the lawn, a man with no address
lies down with his belongings
at a bus stop where there’s shade.

A lizard on the back wall
flashes his lightning scales as he climbs
a few more degrees
                                     of dry heat
and doesn’t stop until he’s safely reached
the air conditioned sky.

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems often reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. He still produces occasional watercolors and is attentive to the local wildlife.

POOL PARTY CANCELED DUE TO HEAT

by Marsha Owens


Above: New York children read the words of their peers held in U.S. Border Patrol facilities.


like cancelling Christmas due to December
we celebrated my friend’s birthday in air conditioning instead
her 2-month-old great-granddaughter slept among us, fourth generation sweetness
all had a turn to cuddle, I held on to her innocence like a prayer
until my mind circled back to those tiny faces in, well, you know, cages
children I take to bed with me every night, every night I see bright lights stalk
     across cement floors, babies in puddled urine (never cuddled in this life)
     tear-streaked faces of 2-year-olds, eyes wide open to terror
suddenly my eyes open wide, I’m underwater, I hold my breath, kick to the
     surface to find I wasn’t in water at all.

I was in hell

children’s arms and legs flailing beside me, trying to stay afloat, I swam to the
     surface stumbled into another day, someone’s birthday maybe, read the headlines:

Life Canceled Due to Hate.

sun blazing over my roof today will cool in September


Marsha Owens’ poems have appeared in both print and on-line publications, including Streetlight Magazine, Huffington Post, TheNewVerse.News, and Wild Word Anthology. She co-edited the newly released poetry anthology, Lingering in the Margins.

(RED) HEAT / HOT / HAT (RED)

by Ron Riekki

“By 2050, the Northeast can expect approximately 650 more deaths each year because of extreme heat, the [National Climate] Assessment found.” —“Dangerous heat wave brings misery to 195 million from New Mexico to Maine,” CNN, July 19, 2019

for Robert Francis, Mark Strand, Hayden Carruth, and Reiko Redmonde

Heat and the colors of heat, like coal-mine hells,
and it gets so hot that the moon looks burnt
and the horizon itself is now a broiler pan
and my girlfriend in Lille says, “The fan broke.”
What about the AC?  “What AC?  We don’t have AC.”
And she tells me a neighbor died.  I say, “How old?
as if that’s an acceptable excuse, as if degrees
represent years.  And I remember a line from
Shakespeare: “the very birds are mute.”  And
I remember a line from a newspaper article today:
“June of this year was the hottest June on record

for the world.”  Temperatures climb and I think
of the moment in Free Solo where the guy fell
and we gasped until the parachute opened up
and we aren’t the ones gasping now, but we're
the ones falling.  And when I broke my ankle
in the military, one of the corpsmen said,
“Put heat on it” and there was another
corpsman there and he said, “No, put ice
on it.”  And they argued about it while I looked
down at the purple and brown and orange
under my skin, wondering if I’d ever walk again.

Ron Riekki's latest book is Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.  On August 25, he appears at Revolution Books in Berkeley with Berkeley Poet Laureate Rafael Jesus Gonzalez and Sacramento Poet Laureate Julia Connor.

FIFTY-FIVE DEGREES

by Laura Rodley

USA Today

What do I do, what can I do,
in the face of global warming?
I paint my house, cover holes,
burn less oil, wear sweaters,
give praise for the fifty degrees
to get one more coat of paint on
before we’re clobbered with snow,
give thanks for the large moth
that slept by my doorway last night,
forgetting how to knock,
all moths welcome, birch moths,
lunas, crecopias, though not
clothes moths; I climb on the roof,
slather paint like shaving cream
on the face of my house, work it
in, lubricate each cedar siding board,
hoping such a shield will require less oil,
hoping for peace on earth,
hoping Santa will find his way
in the dark with no snow to reflect
the light of his lanterns.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

IT IS DRIZZLING HEAT

by Martin Willitts Jr

NEW DELHI—The death toll from the blistering heat wave in India exceeded 2,000 on Sunday as weather officials said the sweltering conditions would persist for another four or five days. —WSJ, May 31, 2015

It was ninety degrees with humidity topping a hundred,
and the heat felt atrocious
until reading it was one hundred and twenty-two in India
where the roads had melted.

Here the haze was merely white blossoms of agony,
and the residue of moisture disappears before forming.
In India, their minds must have been cooking
and their eyes must feel like frying while sleeping.

Some politician denies climate change
and car tires in India explode overheating.
Somewhere night promises more heat for tomorrow.
Politicians must have air conditioners hearts.

The angry god of furnaces depletes water to bone.
Somewhere a rich person wonders about the fuss.
Comparatively speaking, I have it good to India.
Politicians have assured me heat is my imagination.


Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian. His poems have appeared in Blue Fifth Review, Stone Canoe, Centrifugal Eye, The New Verse News, and others. He has 8 full length collections of poetry and over 20 chapbooks including his social issue chapbook City Of Tents (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2014). His forthcoming full length collection, God Is Not Amused What You Are Doing In Her Name (Aldrich Press) should cause a ruckus or two.

AFTERMATH

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

 

Image source: PostcardCollector

Birch postcards scattered on the lawn this morning.
They’re for me though I can’t read them.
Zinnias all spindled in the storm’s path.
My neighbor rakes the street because he hires his yard done.
A downed limb arches over a small tree, very St Louis.
An empty nest means the storm came late enough.
Air so fresh there’s still cellophane on it.
Spider webs scoured from the shrubs.
Thanks for thinning the sunflowers.
We can all start over.


Elizabeth Kerlikowske reports here on what is happening in the Midwest.

REMNANTS OF A 100 DEGREE DAY

by Don Kingfisher Campbell

Image source: Brain Pickings

I. Walking to the market

Moist wipe on the sidewalk
and a matchbook that says Thank You

In the mortuary planter
an empty Menthol Marlboro

And a Funeral car window sticker folded
on a parking space looks like Fun

No surprise, a discarded used cigarette
and a Popsicle stick in the other planter

Farther, on the driveway, a straw wrapper
and a pack of Camel Menthol in a flowering bush

At the corner gutter a plastic twisted
shopping bag waits for any flow of water

Across the street a trail of toilet paper
forms an S in a rectangular planter

On the church steps an opened veggie bag
is imprinted Stay Open To The Possibilities

Bus stop planter sports a half-used Arby's
Tangy BBQ Sauce tublet and what I believe
is a mangled Kit Kat wrapper next to a
torn four tablet package of Pepto Chewables

There is also a balled up sandwich wrapper
printed with the word Comment inside

II. At the market

Parked next to a car an almost clear McCafe cup
and next to another one a barely sipped
El Pollo Loco drink might be lemonade

G Series Gatorade Prime 01 packet squeezed
out and discarded on a parking lot median

On the asphalt between the lines of a space,
hard plastic container used to hold
Home Grown Sweet Flat Peaches

A concrete space bumper has the ripped off
label of a pack of Value Soft White Facial Tissue

A classic crushed in two red plastic drinking cup
reflects late afternoon Alhambra sun

And what's this? A soiled menu for a Chinese
restaurant and another crushed cup (this one
was a Golden Mini Oreo Bite Size Go-Pack!)

III. On the walk back

A banana peel in a parking space
looking like one of Prince's guitars

A Popsicle stick partially stained orange
and stuck in its plain white wrapper

An upside down In-N-Out smashed cardboard tray
with equally flattened red palm tree emblazoned cup

I think I found the clear plastic lid
that belonged to that soda

Yellow soda cap, another Arby's wrapper,
another moist wipe, another emptied clear cup

Finally!  A single dandelion on the mortuary lawn
ready for a confused child in need of fun

And not far away two tossed Super Heavy Duty
Eveready batteries in the grass below the viewing room

IV. Back home

One apartment's got 14 cigarette butts
resting on the window air conditioner

Another has three recently finished
plastic bottles: two water, one Coke Zero

And the pool below our apartment supports
two broken parts of a blue Styrofoam noodle
floating near an un-tethered life saver 


Don Kingfisher Campbell has recently been published in Statement, Poetry Super Highway, Writers At Work, The Bicycle Review, Crack The Spine, Lummox, Poetic Diversity, The Sun Runner, and Poetry Breakfast.  He is currently working on an MFA in Poetry at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

STIFLING HEAT

by Laura Rodley


This poem is going to cool you off
no jumping into a bathtub
full of ice cubes, no witch hazel
drenched in sheets
across your chest, no rapid
heartbeat of starlings, your heart
beating, siphoning air,
it is this poem rubbing
the dripping condensation
of its long green bottle
against your forehead,
gurgling down your throat
when thirsty; you tip the poem
up to drink.  It is this poem,
its ice cubes set between
your breasts, its shorts
that you are wearing, pink madras
cotton with only one slim zipper
the halter top that matches;
feel the soft cotton against
your skin, run the cool green
bottle of the poem
against your arms,
drink it, drink slowly,
make it last.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.