HOW MUCH CAN WE TAKE?

by Lynne Kemen

after viewing “Continuous Form” by Nishimura Yuko (Japan) 2020—washi paper

The paper is impossibly twisted, pleated

like skirts used to be. How is it possible

that this is paper? Nishimura Yuko's washi

folding into itself, holding a shape

it shouldn't hold.

 

On the wall behind, faces

also impossibly shaped, bearing witness,

watching.

 

Tensile strength. The word makes me think

of tension, how it translates to my own body

squirming to get comfortable, no longer able

to hold erect posture. Two total knee replacements.

Back pain. Neck pain. I'm so tired.

 

Pretti is our conscience. One of the helpers

who always shows up, who cares about others,

who refuses to look away. His phone

documenting what shouldn't be happening,

what we need to see.

 

I used to protest the Vietnam war. Kent State

terrified me—that girl kneeling, her mouth open,

screaming over the body. Some photographs

are that raw, that perfectly horrific.

Once I see them, they're in my DNA somehow,

in my body.

 

I can't stand for long periods now.

And I know I cannot look away.

So many do. They don't think it affects them—

until it does.

 

The sculpture before us, still whole.

Those circular faces, still watching.

We know fabric tears.

We just don't know when.

Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She is currently working on two full-length poetry volumes. Lynne lives in rural Delaware County, New York.

LET ME CALL THEM DOGS

by Tricia Knoll

A golden retriever named Kilian is part of a Swedish rescue team in Morocco after the earthquake. He's a veteran of past disaster rescue missions and his handlers say he helped find 18 people alive under the rubble in Turkey earlier this year. —Carol Guzy for NPR

Those furry creatures I live with,
the ones on a mission to sniff hunt,
find the dead, subdue, lead the blind, 
alert to illnesses. Detect mines.
Walk side by side with people 
who need them.
 
K-9 simplifies the patches 
on uniform sleeves, dispatched
cars, rescue units, disaster teams.
A term coined during World War II.
 
Let me know them as dogs,
the faithful we call to live with us,
who serve in whatever way they can
and look for a hand, a voice, a toy
to tell them job well done. 

Tricia Knoll lives in gratitude with two non-pedigree dogs in Vermont. She has known search and rescue handlers. Her poetry appears widely in journals, anthologies and seven collections—the most recent being One Bent Twig (FutureCycle Press, 2023) which highlights trees Knoll has planted, loved, and worries about due to climate chaos.