Before the salmon-full, PUthe alewife-less, PUtropic blue Mussel-filtered water,
Was a green lake PUT_CCCCCCof indigenous fish.
A fishing industry.
Before that logging.
After eradication.
Before that trading.
Before that, words of people comprehensible over and around us –
Before most of ours – PUthat’s the take,
PUTif you’re wondering –
Describing the bounty. The ease of it.
The rise and fall Of waves on an inland sea, One of the great Cycle-keepers.
Let the gunk go down its gullet Is one way back to the true Inheritance of all that violence.
The other is to let The moist, rising earth – PUthe great Kankakee – Absorb – more than once more The particles that float about, PUand entomb them In some future peat.
New Poetry by Corbett Buchly: “Messages from Below”
SWAM AMONG STARS / image by Amalie Flynn
messages from below
the radio signals emanated from the depths
commuters puzzled over the whistles and squawks
that cut through their favorite programs
cryptologists went to work
but the waves soon turned to beams
tunnels of coded energy
aimed not at humans
but at a point somewhere near Wolf 359
first assumed to be a submarine human colony
but scans showed no excess carbon emissions
so dolphins were next guessed to be the cause
no one suspected the humpbacks
as the oceans acidified and the air warmed
the whales were busy
at last their solar ships rose from the sea
and the whales ascended
as if rungs laddered from deep to deep
born of the sea they swam among stars
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Our Backyard Apocalypse”
EARTH SLIP THROUGH / image by Amalie Flynn
Backyard Apocalypse
We set small bowls of sugar water
on the garden’s edge. Bees were scarce
since the freeze which had almost finished
what the pesticides had started. Still,
some survived. PUT_CHARAWe studied the blossoms
of plants, the parts we’d ignored before,
of squash, and peppers, and eggplant
and others. We moved pollen from one
bloom to the next with fine paintbrushes,
working early while the roof still blocked
part of the sun. PUT_CHARAIt was unseasonably hot
that year, much like other years,
and we walked on the cracks that formed
in the dirt. PUT_CHARAWas a time when the sweat
of our brow, the smell of our bodies,
made us keep our distance, wanting
showers before contact. PUT_CThen, something changed .
We began to walk, dirty hand in
dirty hand, lingering in our dry
garden even when the heat rose.
There was so much more to lose.
We could feel the earth slip through
our fingers, still we held tight,
we would carry all that we could.
Poetry from Eric Chandler: “Hetch Hetchy”
THERE’S A DROUGHT / image by Amalie Flynn
Hetch Hetchy
There are two signs on
The towel rack.
One says, “cozy” and explains that
The towel rack
Heats your towels.
It’s next to the switch
That fires up
The electricity to the towel rack.
That fires up
The coal fired power plant.
The power plant
Sends up the gas.
Is the drought because the power plant
Sends up the gas?
Either way, there’s a drought.
I looked down through that gas at the
Hetch Hetchy reservoir.
White bathtub rings surround the low
Hetch Hetchy reservoir
Because of the drought.
The second sign on
The towel rack
Says they won’t launder what’s on
The towel rack.
Only what they find on the floor.
All the water in the city comes from
The Hetch Hetchy.
They’re conserving water from
The Hetch Hetchy.
They hope you won’t mind.
Enjoy your hot towels.
“Hetch Hetchy” previously appeared in Eric Chandler’s book Hugging This Rock
New Poetry from Lisa Stice: “Water Cycle”
SMALLER WE ARE / image by Amalie Flynn
Water Cycle
No matter where we are, the oceans
meet us in some form. PUT_CHARAAAAAAAAI am small
and my daughter (who is only eight) –
is even smaller PUT_CHARAAand still, our dog is smaller
yet, then there are those microscopic zoe-
and phytoplankton PUT_CHARAAAAAand the not so micro
fish that eat them and so on PUT_CHARAAAAAAAAAAAand once again,
oil casts a poisonous rainbow on the Pacific.
Optimism is difficult to catch these days—
evasive like a baitfish PUT_CHARAAAAAAit’s so small, and we’re
so small, and the smaller we are (like my daughter
who is eight), the more we truly believe PUT_CHARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAthis can’t
happen again.
New Poetry from Ben Weakley: “Beatitudes I,” Beatitudes II,” “Beatitudes III,” “Beatitudes IV”
THE BROKEN SKIN / image by Amalie Flynn
Beatitudes I.
The Lord blessed us with knowledge. Twin curses, good and evil.
Why else plant the luscious tree there, where we were bound
to find the fruit? The purple and shivering flesh never lacks
in spirit. The ache and growl of our naked bellies are the price
for the moment’s delight. So, we gorge and the juice drips
sticky down our chins. Let angels have the eternal heaviness
of paradise; ours is the moment. The act, willful and with intent.
Advised of the penalties. Done poorly. Knowing
this kingdom cannot last. Looking beyond the gardens
for a more convincing view of heaven.
Beatitudes II.
Are we not also blessed, we who praise PUT_the clear night and its silence?
Betrayed by the absence of stars, we mourn PUT_a billion-years’ light no longer burning.
We whimper at the withered grass burning, PUT_the breathing forest burning, the one PUT_CCCCgreat and living ocean boiling and burning.
You who created time, who is before all things, who will remain after the ruin, PUT_will you be waiting for us in the cool garden?
Will we lie down with you in the dew-damp grass? PUT_Will we be comforted?
Beatitudes III.
Are the meek blessed tonight in their bundled and stinking shelters PUT_beneath frozen bridges? Are they blessed with patience in their waiting
for the Lord of compassion? For the Lord that suffers with?
They suffer together. Their children will inherit the suffering PUT_of generations,
the split lip of submission, the broken skin of the earth.
Beatitudes IV.
Blessed. From a word that meant blood.
Latin for praise. Blood and praise to the hungry; they are weak.
Blood and praise for the thirsty. For those who bathe
in fetid water. PUT_CCCCCCWhat are words
to those who hunger in a gluttonous world?
To those who thirst beside the brackish rivers,
choking on garbage? We say, wait for righteousness
to come from above. But they have starved
in their flesh so that our spirits could be filled.
Poetry by Amalie Flynn + Images by Pamela Flynn: “#150,” “#151,” “#152,” “#153”
Flow #150
SPIDER / 150
Thick in Louisiana swamps
Atchafalaya Basin
Hot cypress shooting out
Stretching in that bayou
Where pipelines
Pumping black gold oil
Cross across the swamp
Like spider veins.
Flow #151
TRACKS / 151
How I find tiny cuts
The skin of my inner
Thighs outer lip my
Labia
Cuts from his finger
Nails small bloody
Crescents
Like beetle tracks.
Flow #152
SPOIL / 152
Or deep in a swamp
How oil companies
Create canals
Push earth into piles
Push mud into banks
These spoil banks or
Dams
That block blocking
Water so it cannot
Flow.
Flow #153
CLAM / 153
The sky is full of trees
Now after
After he hits me over
The head
With a pipe metal pipe
Hard on
The crown of my skull
Bone and
Suture cracking like a
Clam shell.
Pattern of Consumption is a year long project featuring 365 poems by Amalie Flynn and 365 images by Pamela Flynn. The poetry and images focus on the assault on women and water.
New Poetry by Mary Ann Dimand: “Earth Appreciation” and “Lusting, Stinting”
THIRSTED FOR SWEET / image by Amalie Flynn
EARTH APPRECIATION
Behold this clod, umami of mould and mineral, worked
by millipedes, slowly digested
to a richness by mycelium—and fruiting,
fruiting with an explosion of possibility.
If I could put a frame around the wind—
a thin one, black, a way to point out
wonder—then we could see the paths
of gnats and sparkling moths, amazement
of maple key and mated dragonflies, tiny
rainbows in fog and flake and droplet.
LUSTING, STINTING
How we thirsted for sweet
achieving, to have the world
gush warm reward. Or drip,
or trickle, even ooze—some
something to fulfill the easy augurings
that graceful makings yield
swift returns. They yield,
in fact, to power, and to time
that’s flowed by us while
we labored and we crafted worth.
And so we climbed to pierce
time’s trunk, so carapaced it seemed
indivertible, a steely force
to move unwilling worlds. The spile
that wounded that fierce power
drew life from every hand
it touched, spilled spirit
that sighed forth and wreathed
the ray of time. But we succeeded.
Drop by stiffening drop the instants
fell, encasing empires, globing
moments—each honeyed gall,
each bittered rapture. I don’t know—
the others may be suckling sweet. But here
in my eternity, I feel the sucking wound
that is my life, steaming into snow. How
I wanted. How I failed, in getting.
New Poetry from Shana Youngdahl
After the Maine Tin Min Company Prospectus, 1880
The earth has veins we can
open with our hammers.
Follow the cassiterite crystals
down where the iron dark
is picked by the swings
of men who name minerals
by the feel of them on damp
fingers, the bands of elvan
quartzite like the rough
footprints of mythical
man, or the smooth track
Of native silver, or gold
Ore floating in the salty
Rubbish of St. Just. Imagine
Fellow capitalists, what
Enterprise can find
Rose colored mica, purple
Fluor spar, tourmaline,
And a thin river of
Tin Ore imbedded among
calc spar crystals, follow
that river, I say, crack
the vein open.
To Find the Center of a Circle from a Part of the Circumference
Which is all I am really after, the path to the midpoint
and how to get there from this little arch
of my hand I’m told to span the dividers any distance
and with one foot on the circumference
describe the semi-circumferences: today pollen and blue sky,
book bound in navy cloth and draped with black
velvet. The ache in my wrist, throat and head dull
like the birdsong we stop hearing weeks ago.
I’m trying to find the center: the point I can cut from.
I pencil out two indefinite lines and lean
under this dome into the illuminated center.
Someone a very long time ago, told me to call point P.
There is comfort in such specifics, but still I feel
like all the unwound clocks that fill old buildings;
there is something I am supposed to do, but
in the fog I am unfocused, turn my head
to another arch and am led away.
—
1.
First or only?
My child is three—
wakes three times
a night
has no room
I would know. Wouldn’t I?
Piling her piss-soaked
blankets on the wood floor
I leave them to fume,
wait for the calendar or the swelling.
8.
I know
and don’t. I’m half-open
hungry, two days
from late.
I dreamt my name wrong.
I dreamt a boy laughing,
my girl pulling his
baby boots on, spelling
her own name that I
could read by water.
37.
Find a stone to fit the palm,
our last iris, photographs of daughter’s wet curls, half-burned
and broken candles, recall when sister
believed the rainbow alive.
Collect your pebbles.
38.
I leak
dying larkspur and the strain
of mileage.
It’s a glass night,
with clean towel,
and midwives in
the basement room
where spills won’t
wet spines and this damp
brings the cool harness
of crying.
39.
We set out walking
the child grabs a stick
points at clicking marmots
shakes the trees and piñon
bleeds into her fingers
she twists it into her hair.
She is pitched
and dust rises like fire
billowing between sisters.
New Poetry by Amalie Flynn for the WWI Centennial
Zone Rouge
(for the centennial)
photo by Amalie Flynn
1.
When the land was.
2.
Full of bodies dead. And twisted.
3.
When the fighting was.
4.
Sustained.
5.
With bodies. Dead. Twisted on a riverbank.
6.
Wrist bent. Hand hovers. Over water.
7.
Dead bodies with fingers. Like feathers.
8.
Stretched feathers or the calamus.
9.
Attaching to bird skin.
10.
These are bodies. Bodies of war.
11.
Dead with. Feathered fingers.
12.
Wing of a bird.
13.
300 days of shelling.
14.
The shells were 240 mm. Full of shrapnel.
15.
Mustard gas.
16.
Hitting men and hitting ground.
17.
Making holes. Upon impact.
18.
Shrapnel bursting.
19.
Bloom and rip.
20.
Ripping through dirt and faces.
21.
Ripped skin. Ripping off tissue.
22.
A nose.
23.
Hole in the center of an ear.
24.
Exposing canal and bone.
25.
Missing teeth. One lower jaw is.
26.
Gone. A set of lips.
27.
The chunk of a chin.
28.
And the shells. Shells from Verdun.
29.
Are still there.
30.
Unexploded ordnance. Sunk.
31.
Into dirt pockets. Like seeds.
32.
This blooming. Metal war.
33.
Shrapnel that looks like rocks or.
34.
Smooth egg of a bird.
35.
Soil made of mud and men and metal.
36.
How. Metal leaches and clings.
37.
This soil of war.
38.
Chlorine and lead and mercury and arsenic.
39.
Where every tree and every plant and every animal.
40.
Each blade of grass.
41.
Where 99% of everything died.
42.
Ground stripped raw.
43.
Stripped earth tissue or how this is.
44.
What war also.
45.
Also does.
46. Damage to properties: 100%
47. Damage to agriculture: 100%
48. Impossible to clean.
49. Human life impossible.
50.
The government declared it uninhabitable.
51.
A no-go zone.
52.
Broken skeletons of villages.
53.
And the craters that bombs make.
54.
Deep and round holes.
55.
How the bomb craters filled with water.
56.
Making. War ponds.
57.
This is a place.
58.
Where almost everything died.
59.
But the land.
60.
The land was still alive.
61.
Grass stretching again and.
62.
Grafting itself over the bone.
63.
Bone of what happened.
64.
Stretching over trenches and scars.
65.
Like new skin.
66.
And plants and trees and vines.
67.
Rodents and snails and voles and mice.
68.
Deer. Wildcats with metal stomachs.
69. Still living I say. To my husband.
70.
Who went to war.
71.
War that he did not want.
72.
Afghanistan.
73.
How he came home with hands and feet.
74.
Covered in blisters. Lesions the doctor said.
75.
Skin burning. Waking up to him crouched.
76.
On the floor and scratching. Saying I don’t know.
77.
And I know.
78.
That this is how war is.
79.
Or later. I will lay in the darkness.
80.
And think about burn pits in Iraq.
81.
Black smoke and jet fuel and fumes.
82.
About Vietnam sprayed. The bare mudflats after.
83.
Defoliation of trees. And birds. Missing mangroves.
84.
How dioxin poisons wind. Sleeps. In a river or sediment.
85.
The fatty tissue of a fish. Atomic blasts in Hiroshima and.
86.
Nagasaki. The incineration of bodies and land.
87.
Tearing skin off people. Tearing trees out of ground.
88.
Tearing everything.
89.
Away.
90.
How black rain fell. Radioactive bomb debris.
91.
Into mouths. Of people and rivers.
92.
How radiation lives. In grass and soil. The intestine of a cow.
93.
About the GWOT. Blood soaked years and streets and.
94.
How many miles of land. Where we left bombs.
95.
Unexploded or forever.
96.
I will think about Zone Rouge.
97.
Trenches like scars.
98.
My husband gardening. The tendons in his arms.
