LUNA MAGNIFICA

by Anne Gruner

 

Your radiant gaze
belies your violent birth—
a cataclysmic collision
delivering you from the bowels
of Mother Earth into
her synchronous embrace.
 
As asteroids pummeled your baby face,
lava cracked open your eyes—
Imbrium and Serenitatis—and forced
the smile of Nubium and Cognitum.
 
Your mother found you precious.
You shielded her from solar winds
and nurtured her atmosphere,
tugging her primordial soup
back and forth to salt life
upon her terra firma.
 
Now, as you age and find yourself
somewhat more distant,
you still stabilize her Goldilocks tilt,
regulate her ebbs and flows,
and calm her mood swings
as maturity and abuse take their toll
on her temperate temperament.
 
And at long last, you reveal
your greatest secret—
water ice at your poles,
holding out the promise
you will help her denizens,
the dwellers of graying Earth,
reach for the stars.

NASA’s Artemis II rocket lifts off for an historic moon mission. Cartoon by James Mellor.

Anne Gruner is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line publications including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Wayfarer Magazine, The New Verse News, Humans of the World, Spillwords, and Written Tales. A former career CIA analyst and lawyer, Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers.

OUR FAR-FLUNG FOOTSTEPS

by Devon Balwit




I came for the beaches but stayed for the O rings,
for the liter bottles, tooth brushes, buoys and bags,
for the shush of takeout boxes at dusk.

I came for the palm fronds shivering like dancers’
fingers but stayed for the orange-pinafored crews,
rubber-booted, working against the tides.

I came for the frigate birds and brown pelicans
but stayed for the seals strangled in rope,
for the whales, gullets splitting with PCBs.

I came for the once-in-a-lifetime memories,
the honeymoon and anniversary, but stayed
for the imprint of kin, our far-flung footprint.



Devon Balwit lives scarily close to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. She has six chapbooks and three collections out in the world. Her individual poems can be found here or are forthcoming in journals such as The Cincinnati Review, apt, Posit, Cultural Weekly, Triggerfish, Fifth Wednesday, The Free State Review, Rattle, Poets Reading the News, etc.

CLIMATE CHANGE

by Joan Colby

The Great Wave at Kanagawa (from a Series of Thirty–Six Views of Mount Fuji), Edo period (1615–1868), ca. 1831–33. Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849); Published by Eijudo. Polychrome ink and color on paper; 10 1/8 x 14 15/16 in. (25.7 x 37.9 cm) (Oban size). H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (JP1847). The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The tides steal the bones of the cities
Like feral dogs. This is how warming engages a civilization
Built on greed. Ambition fuels the cyclones that rove a landscape
Where the earth’s deep gases are fracked from their caves. Drones
Concentrate on brevity, the riskless killing. Fires rage
In the eucalyptus where no aluminum carapace can save us.
The earth shakes with grievous faults. A wave
Rises in a template of doom on the Japanese woodcut.
No place is immune.
In Mumbai, the boy thief says a bad life
Is still a life.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

BE PREPARED FOR THE BIG IF

by Tricia Knoll

Image credit: lukich / 123RF Stock Photo

                                      Nehalem Bay Spit, Oregon


Twenty years ago a snowy plover explored
the bay spit to nest -- I could have been there.
A June day when one palm-size trilling wader
scooted on stick-black legs on the scruff
of a minus tide poking for shore flies.
Perhaps I didn’t notice.

Were nester-plovers to show up now,
rules weigh down the bird books, heavy NO
horseback riding, kite flying, dogs,
bicycles, sand sails, beach volleyball,
kites above the tide line. Back ups
include poisoned eggs to kill
crows and ravens that gobble
plover eggs. Ropes
to keep birders out.

One commissioner complains
of  limiting family fun.
Another fears phone calls.

We’d notice the yellow signage
to save the tiny plover.
The betting at the bar
is the plover will be a no show.

So the waves have washed
across the tides of time.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet.  Urban Wild, her poetry chapbook, is now available from Finishing Line Press.

THE RAIN OF MERCY

by Laura Rodley

Image source: Dipity.

Now your waves drink the sky,
an everflowing cup,
that soothes your skin
constantly scorched by daily sun.
See how my raindrops
speckle you with sweet relief
so your tides can surge
upon the sand, keeping
the promise of everlasting life
a promise in danger of being broken
but here, the falling drops
wet and seal the cracks
so your waves tumble, tumble,
the ground sure beneath your reach.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.