WHEN YOUR EYES DON'T WORK ANYMORE

by Kyle Hunter

 

 

 

 

I keep adjusting my glasses.

My blurry eyes feel older than me,

like I’ve been lending them out

and they’ve come back all used up.

There’s no way of telling how many bodies

will decompose enough to float up

and how many will stay on the bottom of the sea

or be carried by currents out to the Atlantic.

I shouldn’t be surprised, the loose

and languid skin around my eyes is not taut

anymore, it slouches against my sockets

waiting to hear it’s time to go.

As the bodies fill with gases

and distend sometimes layers

of skin will detach and float away

like a second ghost leaving the body.

I have known for many months

that I should set up an appointment

and talk to an expert.

There are solutions to this.

The governments involved refuse to talk

about the more than 655 migrants that died

in two months, the deadliest start ever

to any year in the Mediterranean.

But it’s easy to get distracted,

and sometimes it’s easier

not to see.

Kyle Hunter is a poet and managing editor of the 50. His poems have appeared in Main Street Rag, DASH Literary Journal, So It Goes, Tipton Poetry Journal, Rat's Ass Review, and elsewhere.

PALLAS (ATHENA) AT A SUMMIT

by Dawid Juraszek

Countries’ climate pledges built on flawed data, Post investigation finds. Photo: A large plantation of palm trees, which produce palm oil, borders an undrained peat forest in Simunjan in the Sarawak region of Malaysia. When peat-rich bogs are drained and converted to farmlands, they release a rapid pulse of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as the once-waterlogged plants’ remains degrade with the sudden exposure to air. —The Washington Post, November 7, 2021

The ways the wise ones of our pasts

warred on the bodies of the land

all the while

crafting key words and ideas

for you and me

to grow up with

shaped and scarred us for life

Mountainsides stripped bare

underneath the blazing Sun

is not how it always was

a side effect of wanting more

shrugged off

or sorrowed over

then accepted and assimilated

A shortcut to wisdom

when exploring a narrative

what & who & why & how

hindsight is best

not indulged

as belated foresight

everything so very clear all along

Words and ideas now being crafted

justify unjustifiable

with solutions that could truly impress

only in hindsight

premised on there being a future

to look back on this moment

and give us a thumbs up

Dawid Juraszek is the author of Medea and Other Poems of the Anthropocene (Kelsay Books 2020). A bilingual writer and educator based in China, he is working on a PhD project in cognitive ecocriticism at Maastricht University. His fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in multiple venues in Poland, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.

THE FRAGONARDS PLAY A HOME GAME

by M. A. Schaffner

Image source: Pébéo

Through all my life I’ve grown up just enough
to step back through the looking glass and sing
nonsense songs while shaving.  You know the tunes.
Context has everything to do with death,
and that changes constantly, so today
I’ll settle for a six pack and a game
of football or Scrabble.  Let small dogs watch
as we wrestle with ambition and win
one more time, because we know its weak points.
Last night there was a moon.  There will be again
long after we uncork our last bottle.
We solved the world’s problems.  It will have more,
but I don’t need to work them any more
than will finches nesting over the grill,
or their neighbors, the squirrels, or the cats
hunting stupidly, garden to garden.


M. A. Schaffner has work recently published or forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, Magma, Tulane Review, Gargoyle, and Skirmish Magazine.  Other writings include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels, and the novel War Boys.  Schaffner used to work as a civil servant, but now serves civil pugs.