DAKOTA

by Jay Sizemore

Image source: Daily Mail, September 3, 2016

How beautiful must the world be
to make me stop and notice
I am a narcissist?
I’m so far away from the plains,
the rolling weeds and sagebrush,
dirt-dry plateaus cracked like ancient faces.
I’m so far away from open fields
stretched equidistant to every inch
of the empty and aubergine horizon;
the sky seems endless as a child’s imagination,
white puffy clouds like floating castles
turning purple and gray along the dust bowl rim,
with rain shaft ropes tethering those
mountainous zeppelins to the Earth.

How beautiful must the world be
to make me care about the future
my children will live to see?
Some hold onto hope like eagle feathers
in their hands, have seen the stars
through a portal of smoke
cloaked in a buffalo’s hide.
They have stood for centuries
at the edge of a graveyard,
watching the white man dig more holes.

How beautiful must the world be
to make me want to live here
inside its nebular womb?
With every breath, the timeline of existence
shrinks backward one step.
In my heart, I could wear a headdress,
I could smell the burnt leaves
wafting like spirits around my skull,
like voices turned to ashes
swirling and sticking to my tongue.
I could sing songs around the fire
in a language I never learned.

How beautiful must the world be
that I shut off these engines of dinosaur teeth,
that I throw my hardhat to the ground
and climb down from my mechanical cage,
that I brush the crushed grit from my jeans
and embrace the joyful tears
streaming down my face
with so many arms around me,
welcoming me home like a long lost son,
turning to stand in line
against something as intangible as time?

How beautiful must the world be
that I admit I’ve always been wrong
about everything I’ve ever believed?
This world must be beautiful,
with its birds, its light-flickered murmurations,
its ponds with surfaces kissed
by hungry fish mouths catching flies.
It’s a beauty that never asks to be observed,
and that is just what makes it
so irreplaceable.

Jay Sizemore was born blue, raised by wolves, and learned to write by translating howls. He doesn't regret his wisdom teeth. He thanks you for your concern. His work can be found here or there, mostly there.

STANDING ROCK RESISTANCE

by Akua Lezli Hope





Hey-ya Hey-ya Hey Hey O O

where is it that you go
cars stopped and searched
on their way to the gathering
where others sing and pray
land protectors, land protectors
sing and pray, police, police
stop intrusive machines
that churn holy ground
that plow the sacred into memory

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey O O

gather all ye tribes to save
life water in North Dakota
Standing Rock Sioux
started in prayers in April
avert the threat to sacred earth
defend clean streams
at this end of the fossil fuel era
battle pipelines which burst
which quench an alien thirst for profit
trespass on treaty lands

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey OO

a german shepherd pants with blood on his mouth
his nose drips with Indian blood
his handler yanks him this way and that
other dogs snap at horses’ legs which dance away
charge protectors, bite and wound
other handlers advance, spray the eyes
of protectors, mace Indian faces

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey OO

come all defenders
stand by those whose land
has been blooded by slaughter
drowned by dams, washed away
confront the threat to who remains
from 17 banks, $3.8 billion
arrayed to transgress, to dig under rivers
dirty the clean, desecrate holy places,
intruders threading poisons
through the precious warp of earth
to steal again First People’s land

Hey-ya Hey-ya  Hey Hey OO

this is prayer ground
this is sacred water way
this is where First Peoples stand
this is where protectors stay.

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal, to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, adornments, and peace whenever possible. She has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Ragdale, Hurston Wright writers, and the National Endowment for The Arts.  She is a Cave Canem fellow. A crochet designer, she has published 114 patterns.  Her manuscript Them Gone won Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize and will be published in fall, 2016.

OIL SPILL

by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

Last Tuesday, an onshore pipeline belonging to the Texas-based oil company Plains All American burst, spewing roughly 105,000 gallons of crude down a storm drain and into an undeveloped stretch of coastline just north of Santa Barbara. Roughly a fifth of that oil made its way into open water. It may be the worst oil disaster the California coast has seen since a devastating 1969 spill in the very same region sparked a national wave of environmental legislation. This photo provided by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department shows an oil slick from the broken pipeline near Santa Barbara on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. Photo credit: Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP —Gizmodo, May 24, 2015

The water
paints the shoreline
black.

No.

We did this to ourselves.


Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, The Kentucky Review, Paper Nautilus, The Tule Review, Right Hand Pointing and The Lake, among others.

METASTASIS

by Tracey Gratch

As oncology has become the hottest space within pharmaceuticals and biotech, the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is pretty much now the Super Bowl for companies in this space. Meetings like ASCO [May 30 - June 3, 2014] certainly do lead to companies releasing important data on pipeline candidates, as well as often hosting meetings/presentation to explain their pipelines and development strategies in more details. It's worth remembering, though, that a lot of what is presented is early stage, includes limited number of patients, and often focuses on metrics like response rate that are ultimately less significant than metrics like overall survival. -- Stephen D., Simpson, The Motley Fool, May 16, 2014. Image source: ASCO.

I attend the morning session
hopeful, there might be
a trial, maybe something;
she'll fit the thing they need.

Poker-faced, the lead guy says
the endpoints went unmet in this phase three,
but in some subset, it looks promising.

Back home, things would deteriorate;
she'll go back in this week,

as I'll wander the exhibit hall, endless
and commercialized, in ways nearly obscene.
The start-ups and the biotechs, lure attendees
in with chocolate crepes and fresh coffee.

At 2 PM, another friend will text:
she's made it through,
and on her brain, some pressure's been relieved.

There, staring dazed and vacantly, (after all,
it is day three) through the haze of late-stage entities,
through the fleeting, spit-shined pipeline dreams --

the posters offer palpably: the best
the best can offer here can offer only
two to three, and maybe improve quality;
and none of it comes free.


Tracey Gratch lives in Quincy, MA with her husband and their four children. Her poems have appeared in journals and  publications including Mezzo Cammin, The Literary Bohemian, The Flea, Annals of Internal Medicine, Boston Literary Magazine,  The New Verse News and The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. Her poem, "Strong Woman" is included in the American College of Physicians, On Being A Doctor, Volume 4, published in April, 2014.

FRACK YOU

by B.Z. Niditch



artistsagainstfracking.com

Frack you,
for all your flaying
of the earth
sinking us
in the quicksand
of limestone
by the dirt husks
of pipelines
with so many hands
pressuring big oil
and powerful forces
to harass
the echoes of nature
near orchards
on upturned grounds
covering floral clean air
near the mountains
of fauna and gardens
the harmony of oceans
to spiral out of hand
with upheavels
taking ready made shovels
rolling into our environment
we, lovers of the earth
are crying out
for human helpers
to alert the planet.


B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Le Guepard (France), Kadmos (France), Prism International, Jejune (Czech Republic), Leopold Bloom (Budapest), Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.