PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

by Eric Goldfarb

A smudge no larger than a lentil
darkened the water glass.
By breakfast, yellow tape
had reached the horizon.

No body. No blood.
Still, the cameras arrived,
speaking softly.
Ten percent, said an expert.
The morgue made room.

By noon they chalked
an outline around the species.
We photographed from every angle.

The suspect had begun
finishing our sentences.

We emptied our pockets onto the table:
a crown, a deed, a stock certificate,
a launch code, the brass key
to somebody else’s door.

At dusk they brought in the machine.

Someone had brought cuffs.
There were no wrists.

Under the white lamp it waited
for us to tell it
what it wanted.

Behind the glass,
we leaned closer.

The lab called about the smudge.

Every ridge
was ours.

Author’s note: Preliminary Findings is prompted by the recent reporting on Jacob Coxon’s resignation from Anthropic and Evan Hubinger’s estimate of a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade. <https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/ten-days-that-changed-course-ai-2026-09-19/> After more than thirty years in technology, what caught my ear was the language surrounding the warning: probability, risk, benefit, proceed? I’d spent much of my career inside that vocabulary. Hearing it applied to the possible extinction of our species was the starting point for the poem.

Eric Goldfarb writes poetry, essays, fiction, and literary nonfiction. His work has appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle, Hippocampus Magazine, ONE ART, Sky Island Journal, Third Wednesday, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Atlanta.

A MARRIAGE OF EAGLES

by stella graham-landau 

From Nest to Deathbed, Jackie the Eagle Entranced California and Beyond. The bald eagle and her mate gained fame during the pandemic, as a livestream tracked their nesting attempts. She died while being treated for anemia. —The New York Times, August 10, 2026

mated for years

jackie is larger than shadow 
her compadre of the skies 
both hardwired to protect 
each egg each feathered chick
perhaps they met in a playground of clouds 
an accidental encounter 
not paired by families imagining 
a coupling worthy of majesty 
they soar
own the sky 
build aeries in the tops of giant trees
relying on architectural instinct
carried in their bones
jackie 
an unpretentious name 
for a mother 
tasked to save her species
eons of ancestral instructions
to keep eagles aloft

build a nest
mate
lay eggs
hatch
fledge 

repeat

stella graham-landau is a poet in richmond va. she has been published on the new verse news and other journals, websites, and anthologies. she loves the generous community of poets she has found online and welcomes conversations with other creators.

QANON AND THE BUTTERFLIES

A Found Poem with the Species List of the National Butterfly Center

by Pepper Trail

Why did the National Butterfly Center in South Texas close last week? 🦋

Because of a conservative conspiracy, of course! @mehdirhasan brings you the troubling tale: pic.twitter.com/FLTzl14LeT

— The Mehdi Hasan Show (@MehdiHasanShow) February 8, 2022

In a country where many believe that Satan-worshipping pedophiles 

run the government and the resurrection of John F. Kennedy Jr. will 

 restore a Trump presidency, the Butterfly Center has become 

the latest unlikely victim of wild misinformation 

and outright lies spreading rapidly online.

 —The New York Times, February 6, 2022

 

How are we to make sense of this?

The Question Mark

 

Among the flowers are butterflies, only butterflies

The Monarch and the Soldier and the Queen

The Blue-eyed Sailor and the Painted Lady

The Dainty Sulphur and the Silver Emperor

 

All mingling together in peace

The Black Swallowtail

The Great Southern White

The Mexican Yellow

 

Outside the fence, all is fire and storm

The Malicious Skipper

The American Snout

The Fatal Metalmark

 

But here, can we not agree on beauty, at last?

            The Common Banner

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.

CONTINUOUS MIGRATION

by Joanne DeSimone Reynolds 

“[At McAllen TX detention center on July 12, 2019] VP saw 384 men sleeping inside fences, on concrete w/no pillows or mats. They said they hadn’t showered in weeks, wanted toothbrushes, food. Stench was overwhelming. CBP said they were fed regularly, could brush daily & recently got access to shower (many hadn’t for 10-20 days.) Facility we saw earlier in the day with children was new & relatively clean and empty. There were cots & medical supplies & snacks. Children watched TV and told Pence through translator they were being taken care of. But at least two said they’d walked for months to get here.” —Josh Dawsey @jdawsey1 White House @WashingtonPost

The species depends on the freedom of movement
It's in the DNA
Wings of the fathers and fathers and of the mothers and mothers too
All come for one milk
Metabolizing a weed's poison to foil enemies
Five generations to complete the journey
Butterflies like bees tell the harvest

The species depends on the freedom of movement
It's in the DNA
Baja or ports of call or the Bering Strait
All come for one milk
Who knows the many generations to complete the journey
Fear a poison to a nation's people
Children like blossoms tell the harvest


Joanne DeSimone Reynolds is the author of a chapbook, Comes A Blossom published by Main Street Rag in 2014.

IN THE DEEPEST TRENCH

by Anne Graue

dark/cold/silent until the submerged
vessel/submersible grinds its way
with its own ethic/light and the eel/fish/
snail/dog floats in search of food

in its own water its own dark/cold
swimming deep as deep as the sub
has sunk in search of something
to catalog/write/study/announce/name

in the name of science with God's
backing who commissioned
the naming of all earth's creatures
and so the work continues—a new

species never before subject
to the flashbulbs, its white
translucence necessary
for surviving in the depths

of the Mariana Trench
along the inner slope where
plankton and other food float
into the snail-fish mouth, waved

in by wing-like fins, steered mouth-ward
by the eel-like tail day in and out
where no day is marked with light
or its absence, the existence

is a new discovery for the fish
explorer of the ocean bottom
in deep/dark/cold/blackwater
where the adapted snailfish/eeldog

surviving lightless floating for food
is lost to hubris with no other
survival mode—the naming
changes everything—recognizing

life that has been—protected
by molecules now dependent
on a name which is why someone
took the time to write it down.


Originally from Kansas, Anne Graue lives, writes, and teaches online from her home in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Compass Rose, Ginosko Literary Journal, The New Verse News, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly.