Archive for: Poetry

Fiona Ritchie Walker
Surveillance

When the aliens came, they hovered undetected
above polluted skies, took their time
recording readings, analysing day to day
activities, global change, how ancient ways
of living with nature had long ago been lost,
the friendly forms of living, travelling
diminished by human borders, senseless wars.

They saw rivers no longer nourishing the soil,
recorded rising contamination, vast hidden poisons
entering blood streams, destroying warming seas.

Sometimes they found pockets of joy, quiet goodness
happening in the midst of drawn knives, drugs and hate,
but not enough to make them explore more,
stop them from heading home.

Jessica Bundschuh
Moving Postcards

Dear Pebble,
On an afternoon walk to no particular place, a small stack of pebbles will lie at my feet; I will make up their histories for any lover: looking into his blue or brown eyes, explaining how they will bounce along the riverbed like letters in a sloppy sentence, pebbles worn round and smooth by abrasions, no place to go but downward, to the ocean; I will tell the story as if it were my own, my mouth opening each letter; and as my lips will open, pulling out the last rrrrr sound, he will certainly see my pleasure in making this sound—raunchy, rough, like a motor revving, and my tongue will suspend itself in the middle of my mouth, like a guilty lover’s; what I will say with aplomb is how I love how grey they are, all of one colour; I will bend to pick up a pebble, a smooth one, and taste it—running my tongue across its surface (to hear its salty, marrow-ribboned history, how it will come from a distant sea; how it will have no mother, no father, and no vowels to spare for its dry, hot future: OOO).

Dear Gondola,
Unser schönes Südtirol will write my dead German mother-in-law on a creased and scalloped photo. She will it hold against her umbrella, posting letters outside the hotel. Without gravity, she will slide in a gondola towards ceramic blue, higher certainly than any god, and she will let the clouds greet her, snaking her waist, while she takes picture after picture of the highest place she will ever stand—the film will stay undeveloped. She will then pass back and forth across the village wall, the five tower gates, and the church steeple—still awfully brave and awfully Gothic—to secure for me the precise dot-dot-dot […] when the up-gondola and the down-gondola will kiss and will embrace their swing or Schwung, while her streaked gondola window will reflect her passage outside: the clouds will lift between the tulip poplars and her warm breath will still on glass—and later a batting taffeta lid—caught in tomorrow’s quiet emergency, tomorrow’s unsent postcards.

Nimruz De Castro
salt for good luck

here, your great dreams have abandoned you.
or on days that you feel taller,
you say it was you
who sent them away.
you packed their bags,
lined their pockets
with salt for good luck,
with money enough
for tickets back
to that mountainous place
you left behind
so many years ago,
where the Internet was so bad, you hoped they
would give up on sending emails.
it was your choice to leave,
to live quietly, to live unbound,
unfettered, unseen.
it was you that chose
to live in a house without a door
for Opportunity to knock on.
Opportunity who speaks a different language,
whose hair is golden as flowers
your mother tongue did not have names for.
there are days he still comes to visit.
he stands beneath the doorframe,
he shakes his head, realizing he is still unable
to pronounce your name.
you smile at him, with teeth showing.
as you tuck yourself in,
outside, by the window, you watch your dreams
stand under the rain like ghosts,
as the water washes their faces away.

Pamela Alexander
Nomadic

My house is a box
with a wheel at each corner.
I think of the earth underneath it
and conserve:

not too many miles a day,
no other house left behind
to heat or cool, or furnish.
All the lights LEDs;
the furnace sips
propane. Conserve: don’t

spend energy on what
might have been–

pots tucked into lockers, knives
in drawers, everything lashed
or bungeed, secure–

or worse, on what was.

Couch and table become
beds. Storage under,
over, clever, crafty.

Land-liner, piloted
toward better weather,
outer and inner,
wherever that may be.

Adrienne Stevenson
Too Many

we have already tipped, have you noticed yet?
violence escalates through nature, led by us
denial cannot make us unnatural—merely blind

take any population:
      a dish of bacteria
      a cage of rats
provide food, allow to multiply
observe the crash when food gives out

extrapolate to humanity
solve for how many planets we need
      to satisfy endless appetite and growth
divide our population by double that
(we deign to permit other species)
subtract the industrial age
      to calculate a stability point
aim for that

if we don’t act, we will be acted upon
our planet will slough us off
like so many dead skin cells
disappearing down the shower drain