THIS BIRD HAS FLOWN

A Prose Poem

by Howie Good

President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia concluded their summit in Alaska on Friday without declaring agreement on any issue, much less the one Mr. Trump said was at the top of his agenda, ending the war in Ukraine. —The New York Times, August 15. 2025

The other day I saw a bald eagle for only the second time in my life. It soared over the treeline on the far side of the marsh. Almost in the same instant that I recognized it from its distinctive silhouette, it was gone, our national bird, symbol of strength and freedom. We are entering the last days of summer. Some of the plants I planted in the spring never grew, and the plants that did grow have begun dying. I dread the coming winter, a hulking, red-eyed monster roving streets of blackened ruins.

Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose poetry collections include The Dark and Akimbo, available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher. 

DISPLACEMENT

by Erik Schwab

Graphic source: The Daily Plant.

It’s not that they’re screaming. It isn’t pain exactly,

in the market garden, these kohlrabis and cabbages,

these garlic scapes: it’s that they’re in shock. Harvest

is our word, theirs must be apocalypse. But another

word is anthropomorphize and someone told me

once I shouldn’t do it and I believed them and found

the stump of my root dunked in a washbasin and divested

of holy dirt. Now near the end of time

I wish medications were poems, I wish I were floating

over lakewater, skipping silver marbles instead of

saying the new things I say every reluctant day: I’m

on the mend, thanks, thanks, I’m grateful for the

prayer, for the sea urchin, for the red beetle, for

the cabinet of curiosities you sent and for the gig driver

who lost three family members while my heart was 

locked behind a thick pandemic door.

The right kind of time traveler would go twenty years back

and plant that tree, but we service-patched cyborgs

haul our untested upgrades in one direction only, toward

the gracious refusal, toward the retirement of connections, until

the building falls in the middle of the night, the slumbering tenants

dreaming of skydiving and waking to astonishment.

Erik Schwab lives in Seattle, WA. Last year he started writing poems for the first time since college, with the invaluable help of a weekly workshop at Community Building Art Works.

THE REFUGEE

by Karen Mandell

 

Seedlings are something else entirely.

I’ve tried them year after year, the excitement

of new growth lulling me into forgetfulness:

Most fail miserably. Then I go to the nursery

and buy their baby plants instead, planted in plastic

Cages but at least they’re sturdy, survivable.

Most have small, hopeful flowers already laughing

and practicing their dance moves in the light wind.

Bearing flowers, doesn’t that mean they’ve come of age?

I’m told to pick off the early blooms to make the plant stronger.

I can be tough but I can’t manage that.

This year is different.

Out of two packs of seeds, a dozen nasturtium and cosmos

have come up. A dozen all together. A small victory. 

I’ll wait out the nursery and nurse these seedlings

with their too thin stems, frail, spindly,

roots thin as cobweb strands unable to soak up

the water I’ve poured with too generous a hand.

This morning when I roll up the shades to let in the sun,

a mushroom stands upright it the pot, 

its thin stem strong enough to hold its gill upright.

Gray, with a perfect helmet head, erect posture, a soldier

Standing his ground. I can’t allow it. It speaks of decay,

ruin, dank. The seedlings are impervious and lean into the sun.

I should be like them, happy with their square inch,

no begrudging or fear of encroachment. Instead,

I look for a plastic spoon to dig out, to disembody.

But I don’t go through with it. It’s not me to determine

Who will live and who will die. 

Karen Mandell’s short story “Goddess of Mercy” is forthcoming from Notre Dame Review. She has written Clicking, interconnected short stories, and Rose Has a New Walker, a book of poetry. She has taught writing at the high school and college levels and literature at community senior centers.

COVID ABATTOIR

by Philip C. Kolin

Above: Family members of JBS USA meat packing plant employee Saul Sanchez watch as his casket is lowered during his funeral after he died of Covid-19 in Greeley, Colo., on April 15, 2020.Jim Urquhart / Reuters via NBC

“Meatpackers deny workers benefits for virus-related deaths, illnesses.” 

—NBC, September 29, 2020

Upton Sinclair is roiling in his grave.

Things have not changed in Packingtowns

across America. Covid has just made them worse.

The virus works well in these damp, cold, sun-

blocked meat processing plants where droplets can settle 

and slay much longer. Gigantic fans whirl and spread 

saturated foul air as workers breathe each other's

infected coughs and sneezes.  Loud machinery demands

they must talk louder and farther to announce Covid's arrival.

All in cramped spaces.

Packed shoulder to shoulder, workers have to

butcher in non-stop 10-12 hour shifts, no plexiglass

or strip curtains between them. Processing lines

move at race car speeds, leaving workers even  more

vulnerable thanks to exhausted breath, great Covid hosts. 

It's a lung-breaking job. And sharing knives

and hammers means shaking hands with coworker Covid.

Like the animals they eviscerate and de-hide,

these meat processing workers leave the plant

with slaughtered lives, their lungs and hearts offal.

It's a jungle in these plants.

Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published more than 40 books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, African American playwrights as well as ten collections of poems. His most recent books are Reaching Forever: Poems in the Poiema Series of Cascade Books and, forthcoming from Main Street Rag, Delta Tears.

A MEAT-PACKER'S SUPPLICATION

by Caprice Garvin

One African American worker at a Koch [meat processing] facility that had been targeted by Ice, spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. He alleged that while Koch had recently begun taking workers’ temperatures before shifts, they had also withheld details of any workers who contracted the virus. He claimed the company was now handing out surgical masks, but had forced workers to use them over two or three shifts. “They ain’t offering nobody no disability, no unemployment, no time off,” the worker said. “I just keep my hands washed up, my face covered up, my whole body covered, and I pray to myself and hope I don’t catch it. The truth is there’s a chance that everybody in [here] will catch it.” —“‘We're modern slaves': How meat plant workers became the new frontline in Covid-19 war,” The Guardian, May 2, 2020

Never can I return to that unholy shape.
Hunched. Hands slipping beneath skin of lamb.
The corpse lies like wax in the ear.

Our hands are deep in the unhearing.
Fingers tread the crushed skull’s drowning place,
fingers sifting cartilage, organs snaking through.

We do not choose our own placement—tissue,
cells, molecules lain elbow to elbow on the conveyor belt.
The meat comes through our fingers.

These warehouse walls impersonate mountains.
They keep out the mountains and the voice calling down.
I would give my life for a vulture,

to see the arc of one tracing the arc of my eye,
to see that faintest movement at the edge.
To know there is something farther.

I know what it is to hear the last stream crackling ice.
A toe goes in. A knee.
A tongue soaked numb.

I am flexible as the neck of the vulture bending down.
I pick apart this body so that my son may know
his own body whole.

The skinned eyelids watch the blood drain
from floors as clean as obedience.
I will not feed my son my suicide.

Caprice Garvin, a native New Mexican, currently resides in New Jersey. She studied in the Writing Division at Columbia University, where she was awarded The Woolrich Award for Excellence in Writing, and in the Writing Division at Sarah Lawrence College where she earned an M.F.A. in fiction. Most recently her work appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry. 

AFFIRMATIVE

by The Bangkok Bards

Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

Say yes to natural existence
Observing how plants animals grow
Learning to live dying gracefully
Acceptance simply being truly yourself

Life’s rhythms coexisting in harmony
Unfinished symphony awaiting upbeat coda
Spiritual serenity vision quest guide
Wholehearted cooperation with inevitable Fate

Accepting things we cannot change
Focusing on making positive adjustments
Governing ourselves without being overruled
By external circumstances beyond control

Seedling sprouting from infertile soil
Revitalized cool breezes soothing angst
Overburdened restless spirit regaining strength
Restorative nature uplifting serene oneness

If only I could grow
Stronger firmer quieter perceptively wiser
Learning what sedentary rocks know
Perpetual stillness simply being content

Life adapts to irresistible spontaneous
Change letting things flow calmly
Nurturing nature’s strange creatures world
Freely running own predestined course

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .