AUBADE BEFORE THE ELECTION

by Cheryl Martone

One crow swoops down from his solo perch,

beholds a lifeless body of another. His sudden

voice nudges indifferent dawn, grates the air.

Sky stretches and shifts, grows rich with color,

streaked with wings. This is no Van Gogh sky,

though. No wheatfields here. And yet, a sweep

of nature’s gestures,

 

                                 menace on the horizon,

a certain madness in the air, and now—in my

own backyard—a community moved by and

within a murder of its own. Crows pace, scan,

echo each other. Somehow, they must know

how mythologies persist about them: trickster,

thief. Something to dread. But when I look

below my own window,

 

                                        I don’t see anything

worse than small creatures born with intent

to survive. Everywhere, it seems, some kind

of danger, another funeral. Old lamentations,

new ones not yet imagined. Eventually, each

bird lifts away, leaves one soul behind. They,

and I, begin this day acknowledging another

passing, another unease

 

                                beyond Equinox. Soon,

All Souls Day. And days later, the millions

of votes cast. Dies cast. But now, it’s still

October, the shorter days, human silhouettes

moving within the windows of their lives –

within a daily exorbitance of

 

                                               whatever’s next.

Is it this ticking brightness? Some take it all in.

Some resist. Others look down and away. Sky

anchors in cobalt, erases this dawn reflection

of our autumn world riddled with fire.

Cheryl Martone lives in Rhode Island, where she works as a grant writer for a food rescue and hunger relief nonprofit. Her work has been published in Still Point Arts Quarterly, River Heron Review, Gyroscope Review, Drifting Sands Haibun, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Unlost, among other publications. 

THE MOUNTAIN LION OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW

by Dick Altman

Utah’s new study aims to kill ‘as many cougars as possible’ —High Country News, March 24, 2026

Reclusive Monty,

as I like,

in kinship,

to call you,

visits in deepest night,

not to hunt,

as one might expect,

our abundant deer,

but to slack your thirst

at the water-filled grotto

lying just beyond

where I rest my head.

 

We each,

in our way,

share

the same story,

breathing life

here at seven thousand feet.

where our ridge overlooks

the Rio Grande Valley.

ancestral home to Puebloans,

who worship you

as “the beast god”,

revered beyond

any other animal,

including the bear,

for your lithe beauty

and stealth.

 

I see you

as a high desert

panther,

royalty of solitude.

Your prints

in the snow,

broad as my hand

wide,

leave me breathless,

in their suggestion

of power unbridled,

eager

to pounce.

 

Recent sightings

in the neighborhood,

remind how closely

our lives touch.

Though an Anglo

living in Indian Country,

it would crush me

to see your mythical

presence eradicated.

 

Another gift

of your species,

the smaller,

but far less shy,

Bobby the bobcat, loves

to roll around

on the welcome mat,

outside our glass-paneled

front door.

as he taunts ravens,

into a squall

of angry screams

and fly-bys.

 

I find it impossible

not to feel

an intense connection

with you creatures

of the wild,

 

Hunters,

yes,

you will

always be,

but much more,

as even Puebloans’

ageless reverence

for Bobby shows.

 

Which begs

the question:

should rampant

cravings

for hooved

trophies,

outweigh

sustenance

for one’s

innermost

bearings,

linking us

to nature?

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, and others here and abroad.  Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 300 poems, published on four continents.

RESISTANCE

by Christine Piatek 

Nature in its resilience and beauty

flies in the face of evil

and tethers to us hope that change

is possible even when,

day by day,

by cruelty, careless words, sheer indifference,

change looks impossible.

This is resistance.

I choose nature. 

I choose the tethers it offers. 

I choose hope. 

I choose the possible.

Christine Piatek  is a retired public sector lawyer who enjoys writing in many forms, including poetry. She has  had poems published on Spillwords.com, in the Summer Fiction and Poetry edition of US 1 in various years, and in Volumes 69 and 70 of US 1 Worksheets. 

ENOUGH WITH THE VISTAS ALREADY

by Mark Hendrickson

Luke Dexter kneels as he sifts through the remains of his father’s fire-ravaged beach front property in the aftermath of the Palisades Fire on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025, in Malibu, Calif. (AP Photo/John Locher via Newslooks)

Yeah, I get it, you poets of yore—

you've got your virgin forests, hummocks and swards,

mountains and oceans and mist and foam.

 

I, too, see an island out my front window:

a chicane raised and strewn with rock and gravel,

serving as the median between northbound

and southbound cars from the library down the block.

 

I, too, see forest hues of deepest green

and rich earthy tones of black and brown:

they are reflected in the colors of the recycling bins

in driveways down the alley, waiting

like lonesome lovers for their men to come

and lift them, open them, fulfill them—

then leave them wanting again, for another two weeks.

 

From your high vantage point you speak with awe

of looking out and down upon the spectacle of Nature,

to behold God looking back, revealed in all His glory,

sunbathing nude in every valley, kissing every stream;

while I stand looking out my window,

attempting to avoid direct eye contact

with my neighbors in their curtainless condos

straight across the street.

 

Normally, I would tolerate your arboretums of language,

your botanical metaphors, your pastoral poetry;

but today great men are being buried,

books are being banned,

there is talk of annexing nations,

love is being parsed and threatened

and is likely to be outlawed, again.

 

I just can't wax eloquent today.

I need real and raw.

Your landscapes are burning,

and I'm choking on the ashes of the flowers.

Mark Hendrickson (he/him/his) is a gay poet and writer in the Des Moines area. His work has appeared in Variant Lit, Five Minutes, Leaf, Spellbinder, and others. Mark worked for many years as a Mental Health Technician in a locked psychiatric unit. He has advanced degrees in marriage & family therapy, health information management, and music. Connect with him @MarkHPoetry.

TERRITORIAL DISPUTES

by Karen Olshansky

Marin spotted owl population under threat from newcomers. Proposed government strategy seeks to eliminate invasive barred owls. —Marin Independent Journal,  October 10, 2023.

The Barred Owl with its stoic demeanor chest puffed feathers
perched in wooded river bottoms or swamps poked with trees
sit staunchly like the dead wood where they perch
guarding, watching with still eyes, baritone song filling the forest

who cooks for you who cooks for you who cooks for you

sometimes silent in search for food and prey 
the Spotted Owl an innocent target
brother eating sister attacks, the cruelty of nature
birds mirror the disregard for one of their species

uncaring, mean, violent,
nature wins over evolution
that calls for reason, kindness, compassion
instead of the entrapments of violence 

a world driven by base instincts
of brains riven with ripping out each other’s
identity, that fear replacement,
smoke obscuring humanity.

Karen Olshansky lives in Marin County, California with her husband and a well fed Koi named Pickle Face. Dismayed by our world gone mad, she writes poetry in order to maintain her sanity. Her work has appeared in The Literary Nest, Tuck magazine, The News Verse News, and the anthologies: Lingering in the Margins, Unsealing Our Secrets, and Unspoken.

NORWEGIANS ACCUSED

by Lavinia Kumar

Russian Nature reserve demands NOK 47 million for Norwegian reindeer grazing on its territory—The Barents Observer, July 28, 2023

Such disrespect for interests of another country

it was said—yet not one inch of land stolen.

 

It is true they used up a ration of lichen and shrubs,

but kept mindfully to this vegetarian diet.

 

Such disrespect for land reserved and preserved—

insisting, we know on using four, not just two, hooves.

 

Such arrogance and disrespect for nature!

But they forbore, we’re sure, human murder and rape.

 

Yet degradation of vegetation needs compensation—

for full two months of 40 Norwegian reindeer grazing.

 

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expert on invasion

demands $4.6 million for, tsk, tsk, illegal incursion.

Lavinia Kumar’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Kelsey Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Jersey Journal of Poetry, Paterson Literary Review, Tiny Seed.  She is an immigrant married to an immigrant, and lives in New Jersey.

BIRDS IN WILDFIRE SEASON

by Cecil Morris

Gary Robertson/Flickr Creative Commons

“Birds shouldn’t go outside at all when it's smoky.” 

—NPR, June 8, 2023

1

Birds themselves are particulate matter, visible smudges

clouding blue skies and dangerous if carelessly inhaled,

if respirators are not fitted right—over mouth

and nose—and well sealed against avian infection.

Birds should not be inside at all, smoky or warbling

and tuneful or decorative splashes of color for

monochrome rooms. Birds and their mites and germs and

influenzas should be kept out at all costs. Use bars

and screens and N95 masks cinched tight to guard against

feather lung with its symptoms of chirping and flightiness,

erosion of marrow—so called hollow-bone syndrome

(HBS)—and often fatal light-headedness.

Do not wait for the Surgeon General or CDC

to issue official warnings or for Congress to mandate

cautionary labels on all birds. Birds can kill.

2

Wait. Birds live outside. Birds are outside always,

those complaining jays and crows, the warbling

passerines, the finches, sparrows, the larks.

Birds are the outside—along with round trees

and arrow trees and pollen-spewing weeds.

I mean, they’re nature and nature’s outside.

Are we supposed to bring them inside now?

Can they be quarantined? Locked in their nests

until tongues of flame kiss them into smoke?

Will their tiny bird brains tell them to come

inside, to seek an air-filtered shelter,

to take wing and flee fiery holocaust?

 

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English and now has turned to writing what he used to teach students to understand and (he hopes) enjoy. He has had a handful of poems published in The Cimarron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Hole in the Head Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The New Verse News, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

KINTSUGI

by Chris Reed

Kintsugi is the Japanese art or repairing broken pottery

with epoxy mixed with gold dust.

Cracks and repairs are not hidden but highlighted,

imperfections, part of an object’s life.

Sickly yellow lights the landscape,

like a room lit by an aging lampshade.

Great smoke plumes from Canadian forests,

blanket eastern farms, cities and shores,

swallow a line of green glittering trees

and a neighbor’s brown house

as if the fires are a mile,

and not a country away.

I taste ash on my tongue,

absorb smoke through sinuses,

and wonder about the birds, recently migrated

north across Lake Erie to nest,

On the deck, potted salmon-edged geraniums,

smaller blooms of pink and white,

and spikes of lavender, sit abjectly

in the aberrant light.

Rosemary and thyme rub against

each other in a blue pot with a gold seam.

My sister, the potter who shaped the planter,

repaired it in seven days,

mixing epoxy and resins with gold dust,

painting seams, fitting pieces together,

then aging the repaired pot in a large dark box. 

The trick, she said, is to know

that it is even more beautiful repaired.

Burnt ash in the air evokes memories

of not so distant atrocities and tragedies,

yet, seems a hairline fracture

in the ongoing dropping of our world.

Pillaging of nature, wars of aggression,

greed-driven power plays,

hate crimes and death-dealing viruses,

crack the thin ceramic of creation.

Lumpy veins of gold witness

our attempted repairs.

Is there room on this spiderweb

for another seam of gold. And how to start?

Epoxies of novenas and pilgrimages

don’t work anymore.

That god has picked up his play things. 

And even if we find the gold dust,

do we have a shoebox large enough?

And will we remember the trick?

Like others who live near or in the New York City area, Chris Reed was not only concerned about the extreme air quality conditions, but eerily reminded of the empty streets during the first year of Covid, and the indelible images of the air over New York after 9/11. Her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, US1 Worksheets, and The New Verse News.