Carolyn Martin

Breaking News: God’s Rewilding Plan Leaked

According to a source high up and anonymous,
God will announce this week He’s rewilding the earth.
He confesses He should have rested on day six
while He was on a cosmic roll, and laments
He missed the signs: Bipeds, blinkered
by supremacy, would try to tame every thing.

He admits to verte- and invertebrates
His human trial flopped. Therefore, next Sunday
pandas, peacocks, and silver backs will play
in Times Square and caravans of antelope race
across Pennsylvania Avenue. Every boundary line,
dam, trellis, and mended wall will rumble down.
Steel, asphalt, and concrete will be banished heretofore.
So will summerizing gardens everywhere.

Believe what you like about our superiority,
God made a mistake. He should have advised
Adam and Eve not to procreate and lounged them
beneath the apple tree. They would have spent
their ten-score years in blissful innocence
rather than sweat through parental anxiety.

Between you and me, I’d support a God
as transparent as this. If His plan succeeds,
find me hanging out – waggishly naked
and wild – on the edge of some post-paradise
with monkeys, giraffes, dolphins,
elephants, koalas, and birds of every size.

Previously published in Unearthed.

 

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. Her fourth poetry collection, A Penchant for Masquerades, was released by Unsolicited Press in 2019. She is currently the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly. Find out more about Carolyn at www.carolynmartinpoet.com.

 

 

 

Cindy Williams Gutiérrez

Eugenics Rant

A “feeble-minded” taxonomy

for females in the early twentieth century

spelled compulsory

sterility;

and for Native American women in the ‘60s,

“feeble” equaled unmarried pregnancy

or a white coat’s verdict

of promiscuity;

and for 60% of black women in Sunflower County—

victims of “Mississippi appendectomies”—

and 1/3 of Puertorriqueñas in our pulsing territory

of bomba dances—due to their  “hyper-fertility”

and their booming poverty—the US polity

decreed these ladies of the south

and commonwealth

failed to see their burden on society’s health

and must tender their tubes

or wombs as the toll,

as the means to minority birth-control;

but if they were to rise to a higher station

and if they had a voice in this chosen nation,

they would certainly vote

for sterilization.

Published in Inlay with Nacre: The Names of Forgotten Women (Aquarius Press/Willow Books, 2019).

 

Poet-dramatist Cindy Williams Gutiérrez was awarded a 2016 Oregon Literary Fellowship and the 2018 Willow Books Editor’s Choice Poetry Selection for Inlay with Nacre: The Names of Forgotten Women. She was selected by Poets & Writers Magazine as a 2014 Notable Debut Poet for the small claim of bones (Bilingual Press), which placed second in the 2015 International Latino Book Awards. Cindy received the 2017 Oregon Book Award for Drama for Words That Burn.

 

 

 

Dale Champlin

Riparian

Wade through rushes shading
river greens. Listen for leaf rustle
where dead branches list
along the bank like smoke
from hills fire-stripped to bone.

This windless spring day holds
its breath. Bufflehead clouds
drift across the stream’s mirror.
Redbuds purpling blooms
bead their boughs. Listen

for a far-off storm’s faint patter.
Listen to the story of silence.
A garter snake slips into shadow—
then winds through the grasses.
Rest your palm against a gnarled trunk,

lie face upward like shed leaves, press
past the bank’s last tangle, and listen
for bitterns to make their gulped song
as if liquid shade could prompt
their mating. Hope is a myth

thrushes sing to their young.
Listen—for when flames flick,
bearing smoke and darkness,
the fire rush you hear will
put end to their fledglings’ first lift.

 

Dale Champlin is an Oregon poet who received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The editor of Verseweavers, she directs Conversations With Writers, a monthly event where accomplished writers lead spirited discussions about the craft of writing. Dale has published work in journals such as VoiceCatcher, Willawaw, Mojave River Press, and The Opiate. The Barbie Diaries was recently released by Just a Lark Books. Find out more at dalechamplin.com.

 

 

 

Gareth Culshaw

My Place

The trees wear the darkness
like some monk’s hood.
Holly stands with their
dress of prickly ends

stretching into the bucket
of night. A streetlight gives
a rug of orange between
the beech timber.

Occasionally cars roll by
as if they’re peeling away
layers of the road. A voice
chatters like an evening bird song.

Soon all is quiet as the wood
swells and the path becomes
lonelier. I’m inside
wearing this jacket of trees.

Nothing tempts me away
from this place. It’s where
the world makes sense
it’s where I make sense.

Previously published in G. Culshaw, The Miner (Athens, Georgia: FutureCycle Press, 2018).

 

Gareth Culshaw lives in Wales and has published poems in journals through the United Kingdom and the United States. His first collection, The Miner, was released by FutureCycle Press in 2018. FutureCycle will also publish his second collection, Shadows of Tryfan, in 2020. A Best of the Net nominee, Culshaw is currently an MFA student at the Manchester Metropolitan University.