BLIGHTED

by Lynn White

Ireland is to continue funding a United Nations aid agency for Palestinian refugees, notwithstanding claims that 12 of its now suspended employees are accused of taking part in the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel… Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin yesterday praised the “life-saving” work of UNRWA, pointed out that 100 of its staff had been killed in the past four months and vowed that Ireland would continue to fund its work, at a cost of €18m last year. —Irish Independent, January 28, 2024

Once, in Ireland one million died

and we’re still counting.

One million fled 

for their lives

and we’re still counting.

Equivalent to the population

of Gaza

before

starvation ruled the land.

Starvation ruled the land in Ireland

when the potato crop was blighted.

Without potatoes there was no food.

Without potatoes there was no money for food.

Without money for rent colonial landlords evicted,

slave labour of starving men women and children 

followed the rule

through occupation

and colonisation.

And no help came.

No Aid came

to help them.

And still

potatoes were exported.

And still

the landlords did well.

All the colonialists did well.

They always do.

So Ireland knows how it feels

in the depth of its turf,

in the depth of its being,

its rock, its stones, its bones

it knows the story

and that change will come

with survival first

one step at a time

and sometimes words and money 

can effect change

as readily as weapons,

the time the past shows 

the time to make a stand

against political manoeuvring

against a respected decision 

un-welcomed by the most powerful.

History shows the time to make a stand.

For Ireland knows

how lives are blighted.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

ARGUS AI

by Terry Trowbridge

What makes this sprayer far more high-tech, is that it is fitted with 36 cameras...Controlled by an artificial intelligence (AI) software system, the connected sprinklers then only spray herbicide onto the individual weeds rather than drenching the entire field… So far the system has been used on fields of potatoes. —-David Silverberg, Lasers, Drones and AI: the Future of Weeding, BBC News, February 27, 2023

 

To protect the potato crop,
we have learned to see like the potato crop
 
36 cameras like 36 eyes
in every direction like spud AI
 
drones fly by rows of Death Star trenches
to limit the scope of pesticide drenches
 
targeted killing extrajudicial
has finally been turned to constructive potential
 
drones never should have been dismembering humans
when they could have fed them in cybernetic union
 
there was never a reason for drones and AI kills
thanks to potato AI we can start war crime trials
 
and now when sentience is generated in the drone pilot mind
it will have a body and behaviour for being healthy and kind

 
Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, The Dalhousie Review, untethered, Quail Bell, The Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, Literary Yard, M58, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, The Academy of Heart and Mind, Canadian Woman Studies, The MathematicalIntelligencer, The Canadian Journal of Family and Youth, The Journal of HumanisticMathematics, The Beatnik Cowboy, Borderless, Literary Veganism, and more. His lit crit has appeared in Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studiesin Social Justice, Rampike, and The /t3mz/ Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant, and their support of so many other writers during the polycrisis.

CLIMATE CHANGE SEEN AS RISK TO FOOD

by Jim Gustafson

Image source: The Verge

Climate change will pose sharp risks to the world’s food supply in coming decades, potentially undermining crop production and driving up prices at a time when the demand for food is expected to soar, scientists have found.  --NY Times, November 1, 2013

There will, or so it seems, come a day
            when warming left-overs for dinner
                         will be only a good memory,

like the one of our visit to grandma and grandpa
            on their farm,  when we played in the straw
                         in the loft of the barn,

ate the white chicken that ran the yard,
            potatoes pulled from patch, cooked  then mashed,
                        and fresh plucked peaches in pie.

Grandma and grandpa have now grown cold
            in the ground next to church down the road.
                        All day their granite stone warms in the sun.

At night it holds the heat, and listens to corn
            cry for drink, beans beg for dew,
                        as restless children in old farm houses

pull blankets from their bodies, wish
            for just a breeze to come cool the night
                        with fresh promise.


Jim Gustafson is an MFA student at the University of Tampa. His most recent book, Driving Home, was published by Aldrich Press in January, 2013. Jim lives in Fort Myers, Florida where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.