CONTROLLED BURN

by Joan Leotta

 

One might think that in an area 

Used to the force of hurricanes, 

Uncontrolled forces of wind and water

That wreak havoc on the land 

Might better understand

The paradox of their mission.

Setting a “controlled burn”

That’s how it started, they say.

To burn four hundred wooded acres 

to lessen fire’s damage.

“They” ignited the flames, watched, and left, 

not realizing until the next day

embers had reignited, blazed hot

and traveled on the wind

in the night.

Now, as I write, 

a week later,

almost sixteen thousand acres of 

woodland are now ash. Countless

animals, birds have lost homes,

people not as yet,

but the flames are still unextinguished,

blaze still only partly contained.

Red suns at dawn and dusk are beautiful 

but terrifying at the same time.

Wind, fire, water, earth—

four elements have already shown themselves

to be beyond our ability to reign them in.

We poets have known since forever, 

that these are forces beyond our control.

The only true controlled burn is anger.

Forgiveness extinguishes those flames.

We wait now for heaven’s forgiving

soaking rain to quench these flames

to stop this fire’s spread.

Joan Leotta is an author and Story Performer.

ZENO IN AMERICA

by Dale Wisely

A Black teenager was shot in the head by a white homeowner in Kansas City, Mo., after showing up at the wrong house to pick up his siblings, lawyers for his family said. Family members identified the victim online as Ralph Pual Yarl, a 16-year-old high school junior. You can contribute to a GoFundMe to help pay for the boy’s hospital bills.

 

Imagine a bullet approaching its target. It may help to think in slow motion. Let’s say it’s seven inches away from impact. No, let’s say eight because it is important for us to be able to divide readily. No pesky fractions. Haven’t we had enough fractions? Eight inches and... slow that bullet way down. Before it reaches skin, layers rich in capillaries, then skull... but if you’d rather think of, say, a sheet of drywall, that will do. So do. Do think of drywall.

 

Before the bullet makes contact it must pass the four-inch mark. Then the two-inch mark; then it’s just an inch away from, let’s say, plywood. Sheet metal. Or a STOP sign on a rural road. We can’t avoid fractions after all. When we keep dividing, we get fractions.

 

Then one-half inch. Then a quarter inch. Almost there. But next is the last one-eight inch. Stop there. Or halfway from there to the target. It doesn't matter where you stop. Just stop. Wherever you stop, think of that as a place where nothing is struck. Where the space left to travel is nothing and everything. Where nothing is pierced, shattered, ended. Where everything is as it was. This is a place where things go so fast and have so little space remaining and so little time left. Where a thing is about to happen but never does. I’m trying to say that this is a place where the skin remains intact and blood is retained in vessels, and bone unshattered. 

Dale Wisely runs Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press, publisher of the journals Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, Unlost, Unbroken, duality, and first frost.

GEORGIA ON OUR MINDS

by Art Goodtimes

Feels like we’re moving

Pushing like we did in the 60’s

Knowing it’s still kiss & kill

Former poetry editor for Earth First! Journal, Wild Earth and the Mountain Gazette and current poetry editor for Fungi magazine, Art Goodtimes was Colorado’s Western Slope Poet Laureate (2011-13) and has been poet-in-residence for the Telluride Mushroom Festival since 1981. He retired recently after 20 years as the Inner Basin West’s only Green Party county commissioner. His latest book is Dancing on Edge: the McRedeye Poems (Lithic Press, Fruita, 2019)

NAKED WOMAN CONFRONTS FEDERAL TROOPS

by Richard Garcia 

 I have been granted immunity from my dreams. Just let them try and testify against me. See how far they get on their own. My wife's tribe has begun their journey toward the promised trailer camp. Surely they shall be received and granted a plot of eminence. My wife has been sentenced to remain behind. We shall be protected by Sheela na gig, the naked goddess of history. Surely her maw of origin and its gnashing teeth will frighten away the storm troopers. Just a young woman really, sitting on the macadam with her arms and legs spread open in welcome, a garter snake wrapped around each wrist. But how the soldiers and their attached mob drop their banners in the clouds of teargas and run—they, who had cried out loud in the plaza, Long live death, Long live death! For creatures not accustomed to paradox, this was quite an achievement. Or would have been, if they knew what they were saying. No one knows who distributed the signs and banners. It was long ago. When these people could speak. When they could read, and listen and learn. When I began this testament I still thought it was tomorrow. But I know better now.

Richard Garcia's poetry books include The Other Odyssey from Dream Horse Press, The Chair from BOA, and Porridge from Press 53. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart prize and has been in Best American Poetry. He lives in Charleston, S.C.