Issue #17

Art in this Issue by KJ Hannah Greenberg

KJ Hannah Greenberg uses her trusty point-and-shoot camera to capture the order of G-d’s universe, and Paint 3D to capture her personal chaos. Sometimes, it’s insufficient for her to sate herself by applying verbal whimsy to pastures where gelatinous wildebeests roam or fey hedgehogs play. Hannah’s self-illustrated poetry collections are: Miscellaneous Parlor Tricks (Seashell Books, 2024), Word Magpie (Audience Askew, 2024), Subrogation (Seashell Books, 2023), and One-Handed Pianist (Hekate Publishing, 2021). Her coffee table book is Real and Otherwise (Seashell Books, 2025).

I went out on a limb (pun intended) and decided to put out a call for nature poems for this issue. I typically don’t do themed issues, but with the surreal nature art I’d selected for this one, and with spring creeping in at the edges of a particularly cold winter, it felt like the right thing to do. I loved seeing each poet’s takeaway from the assignment. Some saw the calm pastoral beauty, some saw a call to action. Some poets focused on the brutality of the natural world, others drew metaphors from it for life and relationships. I love poems that surprise me and give me pause, and many of these did just that!

Each April, and October
he lops unruly straggles
of the forsythia bush
off the side of the garage
out from the soffits
away from the swallowed-up path
so the mower can fit between 
the bush and planting bed
to get the shady corner
behind the house.
He chops enough so branches
don’t scrape scrape the siding
in wind like an animal wanting in.
I know what you’re thinking: 
he planted it after all
so how can he resent its growth?
But he agreed to
what its nursery tag assured 
of maximums
not this unwieldy sprawl
and swagger.
He didn’t need another wife.

Kerry Trautman is a lifelong Ohioan whose work has appeared in various anthologies and
journals. She is a Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominee, and in 2024 her one-act play, “Mass,”
was selected to be performed as a staged-reading for the Toledo Repertoire Theater’s “Toledo
Voices” competition. Her books are Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To
Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) To be Nonchalantly
Alive (Kelsay Books 2020,) Marilyn: Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas (Gutter Snob Books
2022,) Unknowable Things (Roadside Press 2022,) and Irregulars (Stanchion Books 2023.)

Still and noiseless, 
only my breath resonates, 
in and out, 
air with virtually no connection 
to the built-up world beyond.

No other people here. No conversation.
Animals easily fill the breach.
Waters lap against the heron’s thin but sturdy legs.
Egrets patrol the shallows.
Deer nibble the shore’s lush green.

It is always early enough or late enough
or dark enough or light enough 
for something to be here.
They are each bound by need.
They come in confident bunches.
Or creep silently out 
of the surrounding forest.

I wallow in vigil’s calm, 
harmony of light and place, 
where senses elevate the spirit,
and time is purely 
what the warm sun says it is. 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, New English Review  and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”, ”Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.

Another waking up
It is that dream again
Where your house is burning down
You see your face
In the window.

You’re free
But you don’t leave. 

Have you had this dream? 
Have you felt your throat, raw, 
After the worst
Kind of screaming?

In my dream
I am not screaming
As much as I am filling.
With the dead
Cement.
So it is more
That I am drowning. 
Fixed in that place. Beautifully quiet. 

There is a scream that a mother understands
A different scream, silent, like the deer
Who crosses the road but her baby, naive, lanky
Behind her
Doesn’t make it.

There are threats. She doesn’t understand.
Simply doing
what an animal does.
Learning the way. To the water. 

There’s a phantom baby sound
Forever behind her. 

I think we
Have these. 
phantom screams, that we lead around
Behind us. 
They break our relationship
With every kind of god. 

E. Lynn Alexander is an artist, writer, and reformed workaholic who has earned the inevitable status of “crazy cat lady” in the Lehigh Valley. She makes handmade and printed books and zines and collects them in an attic archive that will someday become her children’s problem. 

yes madness no
i cannot –
hear
for all the talk talk …
nor see 
for the smile displays a horror
the 
odoriferous stench 
of the inevitable inimical political scientifical 
is a rough toughie 
I refuse the obligation when the 
taste 
rankles to a treacle so 
keep talking –
while I  
touch 
a leaf 
to feel my life
…

Tom Pennacchini is a flaneur living in NYC and has been published in numerous journals.

Despite the ecologist’s knowledge, skills
thinning forests, adding age and species diversity
the dream not easily recreated
Old growth forest complexity mock our attempts
to put Humpty Dumpty back together again

And with trees crown to crown protected from small forest fires
wildfires now rage
Firefighters, bulldozers, chainsaws, fire breaks
struggling to protect homes on the forest fringe

Cameramen, on-scene reporters, press conferences
knowing exactly how to frighten us
Saving structures that should never have been built

Local politicians responding to homeowner rage
wanting to rebuild as quickly as possible
Fire restoration contractors hauling away debris
reconstructing out of solid air

I imagine Sierra Nevada Mountains in the 1850s
crawling with prospectors infected with gold fever
clearing everything in their way
trees, mountainsides, Native Americans

Fires set by previous inhabitants kept the trees apart
White men on horseback galloped through the forest
Old and young conifers, rare plants, fungi, symbiotic relationships
teeming with wildlife, crystal clear streams

And we the inheritors of this tragedy
thinking we are the conjures, wizards
throwing away nature’s blueprint
redesigning the forest in a new image
what can be achieved with the remaining scraps
to reduce fire risk through climate-resilient design 

Despite the choices of our hearts, our amorous yearnings, our dreams
we could be swept away by economic and political reality
and then the alarms clocks rings

Roger Funston came to poetry late in life after a long career as an environmental scientist. He worked on projects in remote locations on four continents, which informs his writing. Roger writes about his life journey, his travels (internal and external) and things he has seen that you can’t make up. He finds his muse in the natural world.

we stare at each other 
wispy heartbeats in the dead day
it’s just me

Emma Grey Rose is a writer based in San Diego, California from Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Passenger’s Journal, Ranger Magazine, Quibble Lit, Pinky Thinker Press, 100subtexts Magazine, Panorama Journal, and elsewhere.

making a handshake 
by spadina and college 
with the man who now takes you
to dinner and also
to bed. being polite
since one must 
in such moments; 

like a professional gardener
who has sold a prize lily
and now making small talk
at the counter while I staple 
receipts. and you, 

looking – looking 
at me and at 
him. comparing 
things carefully
after the fact.

like a gardener also,
trying her hand at it,
deciding she’s cut
the right weed.

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)

The river reposes in the fold of blue damselflies
willows lilt in the current,
you untie and retighten the cord belt at your hip.

Trees shade the depth to give of our swimming
into cold water over moss rocks and river grass, 
the river enlightens as our clothes flow clear 
in the arc sun we efface flaring a bracelet of limbs. 

John Swain lives in Le-Perreux-sur-Marne, France.  He has published two collections of poetry, Ring the Sycamore Sky, and Under the Mountain Born.  Additional information may be found at www.john-swain.com.

A tree in itself breathes-
From the roots, 
swallows rain from the sky.
Blooms flowers and fruit,
and in a billion crevices fosters life-
nests with birds, hives of hornets,
ants chewing-
thirty to a single leaf.
Within teepeed branches 
from the tree of fruit and life-
the brightest flames ignite,
creating warmth in freezing cold,
roasting rawness into substance and taste,
sustaining will and body
through harsh winter days.
Gloom spreads when flames subside-
the deep forest dims.
Branches once in abundance 
become hard to find.
Slowly- 
glow surrenders to the embers
begging to create light,
and fizzle into a time
when insights are lost 
from the outside.

Michael Roque, a Los Angeles native, now residing in the Middle East, embarked on his writing odyssey amidst the bleachers of Pasadena City College. His literary voyage has traversed continents, gracing the pages of esteemed publications such as Aurora Quarterly, Veridian Review, and CascadeJournal. Social Handle: https://www.instagram.com/roquewrites2009/

Green beans, like snakes, longer than your arm
Longer than a cubit, or so the math book says
(A gift from your aunt who also gifted you a laptop
Which even teaches you to code)

You’d stopped talking to the boy
Down the street who played Swinging Snakes
And shared a name with a Power Ranger
It was after the water fight went awry
And you hit behind the balloon
Of a different Power Ranger (not your favorite one)

The green beans make an omelet
When chopped and cooked each night
(We could afford eggs then
And gas was 99 cents a gallon)

Your cousin comes with gum tattoos
And a battered hedgehog, and athletes
Housed in sleeves in a binder
He also tells you some secrets
And you scare birds with the door latch
Like gunshots on TV

The beans dry on the windowsill
Curling, withering, browning
And pop out seeds to grow more again

He leaves, you write, there are no more letters
There are still green beans in the backyard
And bittermelon
And wintermelon
But maybe you grew too old for these friends
Who visit in the summer

Jean Liew is a rheumatologist and clinical researcher in Boston, MA. She began writing about 30 years ago, with a period between 2007-2009 when she produced the bulk of her juvenilia. 

I open my bedroom curtains
expecting broken fences.
This time, nothing has fallen.

Beyond, a lake’s appeared in the field,
new paths trampled by parents
taking toddlers to feed ducks.

I put my hands to my eye
like a telescope, study each daffodil 
surprised open like waterlilies.

I stretch out my arms,
twist my fingers to line up
with a tree’s crooked boughs

then close my eyes, feel
the sky’s intense blue
between my fingers, crush it.

By evening, the shining waters 
have all gone, families have returned
to their homes. Time I left too.

Tim Love’s publications are a poetry pamphlet “Moving Parts” (HappenStance) and a story collection “By all means” (Nine Arches Press). He lives in Cambridge, UK. His poetry has appeared in Magma, Rialto, Stand, The High Window, Oxford Poetry, etc. He blogs at http://litrefs.blogspot.com/

Sometimes in life, we walk down a road
unsure of where it’s going to go
But it feels like the right decision.
It looks like the proper path
When it starts off autumnal and scenic,
we can overlook the occasional fallen tree
The dead animal under the brush
The strange howling in the distance.
That path can change before you know it
Your gut stops feeling your feet on the earth… 
The howling can become impossible to ignore

Part of you is screaming to change direction…
but where would you even go? 
The logical part demands you stay, follow it through
Your inner voice has one foot running in the other direction,
and your eyes search for something familiar
You’re torn, and you’re waking in a place where you are lost
Darkness surrounds, and all that remains is the knowledge
that going forward would be a mistake
When you reach this point, a thunderclap
can be the difference between fight and flight

Then you feel the tiny hand in yours,
the one depending on you for safety and stability
You know you could not possibly provide it
on the path you’re on
You have to stop. 
Nothing else matters
Not what was written
on the sign you followed
when you started out
Not the warmth of the sunlight that came to fade
Not even the idea that this weather might clear up-
and probably will, given enough time and space
When your child is cold and scared and wet,
you do what you must to get them out of the rain
And only then do you realize you’ve been cold and scared
yourself for a very long time. 

Jaimie Fortin is a single mother of one living in the Philadelphia area. She has a background in independent film, owns a hair salon, specializes in custom hair coloring and writes and paints in her spare time.