THE CLIMATE SCIENTIST

by Ash M. Corvo

AI graphic by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

My morality is not pretty
Not gartered in roses or smelling like honey
It is iron and snapping teeth
Demanding and loud and spitting on money

And I'll be honest: I hate gilded pulpits and podiums
From where I should beseech gods or powers that be, giving tithe
My authority is nameless in the bitter autumn wind
I know spring blossoms follow the scythe

Look at me and judge: my nobility isn't an eagle, soaring
Even the vulture must eat
Head naked and bent over what is rotten
Clear-eyed, swallowing mouthfuls of pungent meat

They all argue, pen or sword? What does it matter?
I have written words for so long, there is a season for each
A time to inscribe law, a time to rend flesh
And a time for discretion to teach

So yes, my morality is hideous
I endeavor for factual hands to mold it
It does not promise flowery hymns, nor to caress the ear
And we have precious little time for bullshit

Ash M. Corvo is a novelist of dark adult fantasy and science fiction. She writes for readers who want stories to break them—and piece them back together. Her novels confront impossible moral dilemmas, conflicting loyalties, and the gruesome aspects of human nature we prefer not to examine too closely. She holds a Ph.D. in biology, and has seen firsthand the effects of humankind on the natural world.

A CLASP

by George Held





So as I left the hygienist’s chair, white-clad Reesha
Said she’d taken a cruise to Turks and Bermuda
And, despite sunscreen, her tawny skin had turned
Black as the Nigerian queen Amina’s,

And I said, “Look at my sad white skin,”
Reddened and pebbled by actinic keratoses
(and smeared with cream to spare it from cancer)
And then I said what was on my mind about

Charleston, the city of Charles (whose name isn’t even
In the Bible), where white-racist hatred had burst
From a gun barrel and killed Pastor Pinckney
And his prayer-meeting sisters and brethren,

And I thought of all the black forbearance, the black
Sympathy, the black nobility that has steadied
A course that might have burst into whirlwind, war
And more deaths of worthy men and women,

And we two, Reesha and I, standing face to face
In the cramped space between high-tech dentistry
And the human race, the only race, clasped hands
And said to each other that in our own history

We at least are friends as I hoped that I was not
Just a superannuated white man
Deluded that he was without the taint
Of racial prejudice.


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.