By Kerry Loughman never budged becalmed she was bleached by sun & beached on relentless rise of blue water liquid leeched from her eyes her orifices her great mouth agape her lungs did evaporate Climate-changed her wishes drowned in sand Kerry Loughman is a retired educator and photographer living in the Boston area. [...]
Congregation of Ibis “A barrage of storms has resurrected what was once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River, setting the stage for a disaster this spring.” – from “Tulare Lake Was Drained Off the Map. Nature Would Like a Word," Soumya Karlamangla and Shawn Hubler, New York Times, April 2, [...]
As the Waters Rise O God, look down On all our drowned. Hear us, we beg— We’re on our knees. Sorry, so sorry About the trees, The polar bears, the birds, The bees; the icebergs Gone, the thirsty lawns, Plastic gyres, redwood Pyres and all the many, many cars. The eclipsed stars We never see. [...]
By Emily Hockaday the sky becomes apocalyptic. The air is wool in my throat. I wear a mask to pick my daughter up from school. The fruit vendors sit next to their colorful carts like the world isn’t ending, and I suppose it isn’t for now or it is just very slowly. And what did [...]
By Larry Needham “Ah, what an age it is When to speak of trees is almost a crime For it is a kind of silence about injustice!” —Bertolt Brecht, “To Posterity” Before the jar the anecdote and Tennessee, wilderness. Forests primeval, grim and awful— extravagant as first growth imaginings. The Dark Ages. Then dominion bleaker [...]
By Sarah Waldner Sharp U-turn on the language around fossil fuels. The text now includes a reference to "low emission and renewable energy.” New funding arrangement on loss and damage. Phase-down of unabated coal power. Concrete demonstration that we really are all in this together. No one will be left behind. Sharp concern on the [...]
By Elizabeth Shack Last September, we hiked the forest beside the fog-drenched sea. Followed a swift stream bridged with salmon spawning, returning from gray Pacific homes. Switchbacked beside a waterfall sparkling down steep granite. Emerged into sunlight with a view of lichen-painted rock and the blue-white ice that once sculpted this verdant valley. Is still [...]
By Zoë Fay-Stindt I sing to the green anole in a made-up lizard language— fiddling tongue, whirlwinds and whistle- clucks. He curves his neck, ear hole craned to my porch perch. He pinks his bubble-throat. For years, I saw devil horns peeking from each human head. Yes, the chemical, the highway framed with fields and [...]
By Emily Hockaday I sing to the water and lower my only child into the foam, wiggling toes first. I think about all the species the ocean held that I don't know the names of that have gone extinct this past year and focus on the sound of the waves and all the metaphors that [...]
By Dotty LeMieux Where are the birds of spring? I see bees—are there enough? Black carpenter ants—we never had them before— emerge from some dusky damp place beneath the foundation. We live in a house of cards. Even a bear takes exception to exceptional times and climbs a backyard tree he must have crossed mountains [...]
By K. L. Lord The delicate blooms, alabaster petaled and fragrant, sprout from gardens across the land, mingling with the peas and green beans. They are lovely, but they’ve never grown here before. The first person to find them thought they were carrots, but when pulled from the ground, tendrils of roots ripple through the [...]
By Holly A. Stovall Congratulations! You are Deputized! Abortion after 6 weeks is illegal in Texas. Help enforce the law by reporting an illegal abortion in the anonymous form below! How do you think the law has been violated? I've had three spontaneous abortions (that's doctor lingo for miscarriages) in three years, each at 8 [...]
By Elizabeth Edelglass We stand in line beside our mothers’ stockinged legs, line snaking through the gymnasium, where yesterday we’d also snaked through same gymnasium, mouths agape for the healing cube, sugar our mothers said, but bitter, live virus, our parents had said, to save us from the deadly virus, their voices husky with fear, [...]
By Mary F. Lenox I can’t breathe the words said written on a waste container near the sidewalk I wondered what other unheard voices say I can’t breathe Dying fish of the sea echo I can’t breathe as they navigate through plastic and oil invaders Birds call out through polluted air I can’t breathe Children [...]
By Ying Wu The tide swallows most of the beach these days. Sunbathers take refuge in the reeds. And children wade in the new lagoons that stretch across the soft, loose sand. Our poles are melting. The bay spills over the sidewalk sometimes and breaches the steps of private homes. Today, in Texas, voters spill [...]
