WORLD CUP

by Amy Jean Bailey

The stadium is filling with red

and white striped shirts, a swimming

zigzag. What was left of the potential

rain has melted now into pure light. 

Voices in unison singing 

Seven Nation Army 

by The White Stripes could be heard 

by a barista all the way in Lower

Queen Anne and I want so much

to love it here—the depth 

of our coffee, the sparkle in our sea. 

I want to point to the eagle’s nest 

by the walking path, maybe even have you 

over, where I’ll slide open the closet door

to display my colorful collection

of rainboots of varying heights,

before I gesture towards the Locks 

and explain how salmon 

swim upstream and might still make it—

as if they didn’t need a ladder,

as if we don’t.

Amy Jean Bailey is a poet and educator who has a PhD in anthropology from UCLA. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Timberline Review, Clockhouse, in the anthology The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (University of Arizona Press), and elsewhere. Born and raised in Chicago, and then living all over the U.S., she now resides with her dog in Seattle, Washington.

KLAMATH RESURRECTION

by Pepper Trail

The Largest Dam Removal Project in U.S. History Begins Final Stretch, Welcoming Salmon Home. After being impeded by dams for more than a century, the Klamath River will be restored to its historic channel this year. —Smithsonian, January 22, 2024. Photo above by Pepper Trail.

When the dams rose, the river did not die
But lost its body, became spirit
Haunting the slackwater depths of the lake
Invisible beneath the dull skin of surface
For those long years, suspended, adrift
It awaited the touch of resurrection
The returning salmon, barred behind a locked door
While a new rabble stirred the helpless warmth
Bullhead and perch and pumpkinseed
Soft-bellied and sleepy in the stillness
 
Now, just now, the iron gates broken
The river is gasping back to life
Moving again time-withered muscles
Reaching blind careful fingers
Retracing its path through the canyon of mud
Remembering, curve by curve, its body
Its purpose, to move without stopping
To dance with the shapes of the land
To keep its ancient promise
To welcome the salmon, and meet the sea

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

ABDUCTED GOLDFISH

by Kenton K. Yee

Dean Young, 1955-2022

In The Art of Recklessness (Graywolf, 2010), the poet Dean Young's exhilarating book-length essay on writing poetry, he repeatedly questions and rejects the idea that the most important thing in writing poetry is an acquired mastery of craft, suggesting that it comes at the expense of intuition, risk-taking, wildness, and negative capability. He writes, exasperatedly and in all caps, "WE ARE MAKING BIRDS, NOT BIRDCAGES!" —Michael Dumanis, Editor of Bennington Review

I ping. I ping love.

 

I ping love and I love pings.

Here’s one from the library:

Due in two.

 

Love me my deadlines.

Ping me butter melting,

cantaloupe ripening,

gasps quickening.

 

Dean Young.

 

Ducks.

 

Abduct.

 

I’m waiting for the gulls to return my goldfish.

I’m waiting for squirrels to sing like nightingales,

daisies to bear me raspberries,

and bonsai trunks or cornflakes.

I’m waiting for bugles to herald the dying of salmon.

 

All this sun and all that sun.

The melting hours. Starlight. Dew.

The lackadaisical one

who settles for steam turned to rice.

Author’s Note: This poem is in memory of Dean Young, who passed away a few days ago. When I first took up poetry, I didn't know what to make of Dean Young and his rich language and ranging movements. Now, he's become one of my poetry role models.

Kenton K. Yee recently placed poetry in Constellations, Plume Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Indianapolis Review, Matter, Lily Poetry Review, and Pembroke Magazine, among others. An Iowa Summer Poetry Workshop alumnus, he writes from northern California.

IF ONLY ORCAS ATE SEAWEED

by Linda Stryker

The orca named J35, or Tahlequah, carrying her dead calf on the seventh day. Credit: Ken Balcomb/Center for Whale Research via The New York Times: “The Orca, Her Dead Calf and Us” by Susan Carey, August 4, 2018.

Our babies are dying, she said
without words. Look!

as she held up her newborn
and newly dead on her nose.

Days go by, and she still
clings to the tiny she-orca.

Do something! she says
without words. Look!

Our clan will die of hunger,
where are the salmon we

feed on? grandmother
orca says without words.

Our babies die of hunger,
as do we. You, humans,

can solve this. You must,
she says without words.

Her loud voice carries over
the waves and into hearts

who want her to live, but
who know she cannot.

Linda Stryker writes from Phoenix, Arizona, and is a volunteer radio reader for Sun Sounds. Her chapbook Starcrossed was recently published by dancing girl press. Her creative writing has been published in Highlights for Children, New Millennium Writings, Ekphrastic Review, Third Wednesday, and Chiron Review, among several other venues.

THE GREEN CITY

by m.nicole.r.wildhood

Shell Arctic Drilling Fleet OK'd To Use 'Green' West Seattle Port. —KUOW.org, January 14, 2015

Boxes clickclack like LEGOS
escorted by confident cranes over
fragile veins to keep the whole world
up and racing.

The city, from their point of view
a sidebar, has enough year-round jade
for mercantile satiation
if only it were capital

and not growing things.
Traditionally, the city has guarded
all its life – it would rather
articulated bus jackknife all over the highway

than salt the roads during a snow
because of the tainted runoff
into the salmons’ stream.
This city that cares so much for its fish

is the same city that is making room
for an armada of royal oil drillers
to station among the blocks and birds.

Every green movement
can be whitewashed;
every commitment to fish
can be watered down.


m.nicole.r.wildhood is a Colorado native who has been living in Seattle – and missing the sun – since 2006.  She has been a saxophone player and registered scuba diver for over half her life.  In addition to blogging at http://megan.thewildhoods.com, she writes poetry, fiction and short nonfiction, which have appeared in The Sun, Lodestone and Ballard: A Journal of Street Poetry, ditchpoetry.com and Café Aphra.  She and her husband, who is gifted both as a structural engineer and as an artist, often collaborate on poetry/painting pieces.  She seeks to be an advocate for those experiencing mental and emotional suffering and celebrates the misfits, the non-conventional and the bold.

FITS AND STARTS ON THE BIG YELLOW FISH TAXI

by Tricia Knoll

Image: A pool in the Sacramento River where young salmon were stranded last year (Fish and Wildlife Service via KQED)

                           California Drought Has Salmon Hitching Rides in Trucks 
                                                                 --Bloomberg News, March 26, 2014


Oh, as rare as hen’s teeth, or when pigs fly
under a rain of cats and dogs and the horse in my pasture
is purple.

Or as surprising as the black President
and peace in the Middle East.

When fish ride bicycles,
there are so many fish
so far to go

thirty million salmon grab taxis
from Sacramento to the sea.


Tricia Knoll had a salmon omelet for breakfast. She writes poetry in Portland, Oregon and has a chapbook Urban Wild coming out in May from Finishing Line Press.