IF THIS IS THE POEM YOU READ WHEN I'VE BEEN MURDERED BY ICE

by Hailey Elles

Cartoon by Dennis Goris.

This is survival. 

My friend says 

“we are at war

with our government.”

We also discuss

her new winter boots, 

which hold snugly 

as she walks her dog, 

clipping her prophecies 

and beaming them to me. 

This disjointed 

correspondence

is how she is with me 

as my studded tires grip 

these switchbacks 

like a prayer– 

I am praying 

there will be no children

waiting by the doors 

of the middle school 

I was supposed to open 

five minutes ago–oh, 

I am tired. It is not possible 

to go faster. And anyway, 

every tree is sparkling 

on this cold morning, 

almost invisible 

against the sunrise, 

as red as the drag in blood-

shot eyes. All the plowmen 

are out, salting the roads,

trying to preserve any

beautiful, useful thing.

Hailey Elles is a writer, teacher, and literacy organizer who lives in Bridgewater, Vermont. She has a masters in secondary English education and is currently pursuing a masters in English as a Breadloaf Teacher Network Fellow at Middlebury College. Her writing has appeared in various journals and publications, most recently in Half and One, the BLTN Journal, and Poet's Choice.

ELECTRIC DREAMS

by James Schwartz 

ElectReon, a wireless and in-road wireless electric vehicle charging technology company, will deploy its first public wireless EV charging road system in Michigan… ElectrRon's charging infrastructure can wireless charge EVs while they are in motion and stationary. The company said it is the first in the world to be successfully demonstrated on public roads. —WXYZ Detroit, February 2, 2022

I dreamt of all the roads I have walked upon,

Beginning with the long gravel swath,

Cutting through the Midwestern countryside,

Running parrellel to the Amish farm,

Housing my earliest memories,

Of March mud puddles,

Mom buckling my boots,

A nearby creek that roared,

Today is a drainage ditch,

Tamed into a narrow ribbon,

Trickling through a culver,

The dream shifts sequence,

I-75 southbound to Sarasota,

Above the quiet fog,

Palms line the boulevards,

I walked twenty years ago,

Another shift through Spanish moss,

To a red clay road,

Outside Tallahassee,

Another shift,

Through South Pacific sunlight,

Another red road,

This one of cinder,

Curving through,

The Kapoho rainforest,

Up and down Noni Farms Road,

I walked so many times,

I no longer needed the moonlight,

To navigate the now desolate,

Steaming onyx field,

Closer to Kilauea,

Lies Chain of Craters road,

For this walk,

I am accompanied by,

A happy dog,

A shift: 

The City of Refuge,

A shift: 

Across the ocean,

The Olympic National Park,

Houses green, wet,

Shimmering, sacred memories,

Roads in Mexico,

Are bloodstained with history,

The streets of Rosarita bustle,

Dreams never conclude,

Logically,

But here I am,

Waiting on the bus,

On M1,

The first mile,

Of paved highway,

In the US,

Not far from,

The old Ford factory,

As I awaken,

To historical headlines,

Heralding the news 

Of an electric charging road,

Coming to the D,

I cling to,

The last dream fragments,

Where I am walking,

Tomorrow.

James Schwartz is a poet, writer, slam performer and author of 5 poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America. Twitter: @queeraspoetry

DIASPORA

by Risa Denenberg





I see them in nightmares, or when silent in meditation.
There, they were doctors, green-grocers, artists, stone masons.
Here, they snake around barricades like a river.

I don’t see them when I’m serving dinner to the homeless
in my home town on Christmas day, because after all,
I’m Jewish and have nowhere else to go.

I see them when I meditate, or hike a mountain trail.
There, they ate breakfast, went to jobs, read the daily, made love.
Here, they lie dead on highways like roadkill.

I don’t see them when I’m working in the clinic
offering unguents and kindness to soothe wounds,
then staying late to finish chart notes, weary and irritable.

I see them when I hike, or when I pray
(which I do sporadically and) mainly when I envisage them
streaming as a long bridge across sinister waters full

of vipers, swelling the roads to a town near you.
There, they were proud of their kids’ report cards.
Here they struggle, defenseless to save children from drowning.

I pray to see them and to not see them
because it’s so much worse than I can fathom
and I can’t imagine an act that could make it right.

I see them as my family, ghettoed in their Russian shtetel,
then, crossing the ravenous Atlantic to an unknown fate.

There, they prayed and were slaughtered.
Here, we forget to pray, and prosper.

Risa Denenberg lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state where she works as a nurse practitioner. She reviews poetry for the American Journal of Nursing and is an editor at Headmistress Press, a small press that publishes poetry by lesbians. She has published three chapbooks and two full length books of poetry, Mean Distance from the Sun (Aldrich Press, 2013) and Whirlwind @ Lesbos (Headmistress Press, 2016).