by Anonymous Remembering Reverberation Echo Ripples in the water Butterfly effect How a decision made so long ago by someone else has made my life a tornado filled with fire His choice Made her leave And she taught me what to believe And he taught me how to be treated Did he know? Did he realize or understand that his decision would kill a little girl Letting her fall to his feet Screaming for him to wait Come back Don’t leave She’ll pick up each piece of herself Try to find anything to use as glue Instead she finds rocks Harsh waves Knives Why am I so addicted to people…
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I.B.H.
You caught me honey-bee I always thought I was a wasp With a grin sting, turning green In the porch light, no, though. I turned out to be a moth with Soft wings, coming off on your fingertips I’m grateful for the bees, he says: You will hive me forever. On those movies It was only the words that turned me: each One an aphotic kelp forest, swirling otters Coming up and over the sweating sun. Antediluvian moments, he used to call them, The seven deluges you carved out in old Display cases, native beads, Asian threads. I realized the honey was mine all along. I swear on summer: the…
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Death of An English Shepherd at Flanders Fields
By L.J. Bosela Bombs are falling thick Set me free, let me run My heart stops its’ beat In this hour of my death Save me, Lord, take me home. Clutch my beads, shout a prayer My fate is sealed like a tomb.Close my eyes, see the cross A priest offering up the Sacrament, We are the hallowed flesh Given up by those we do not see An easy, near-forgotten sacrifice To the masters of our war. Our blood is naught but A cheap, unconsecrated libation. And now the crimson earth is Drunk with blood of the nations.Out beyond my trench- A fitting grave for this mass of men- The…
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The Irish Sweepstakes
By Sarah Felder Snow now is only means of weathered transport: Sleep in hinged places just so I can See the bricked fire char and breathe, Lighting the burgundy flooring. I wrote this letter a generation ago; When all those lit Augusts were Nothing but spruce, spurs, spinning And growing up and over on the Chain- link. I wasn’t in the light then because I didn’t understand the destiny of being Born in the first place: I hadn’t re-taught my youngdom To begin again. I contemplate your breathing beats, What they were when I was young: The flaws in our own ticking machines, My dinner to the floor, rocking my…
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Fairbanks in January
By Martha Amore The day Maura arrived it was cold in the way Fairbanks often is in January, fragile with frost, when it seems that even blowing on the trees will crack them to the ground. Every breath burns your lungs like smoke, and your Snowpacs squeak in the bright white snow. Ann was quiet the whole way to the airport, and I knew she was nervous by the way she kept taking her mittens off and then tugging them back on. “A whole week isn’t going to be easy,” I said. We lived in a one-room cabin with a loft, and having a guest meant setting up a bed…
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I RECOUNT MYSELF ON THIS
By Sarah Felder Eyes back, lean back, I haven’t felt The bare boned winter yet, Your face in circles trailing skin-like Apparitions, parenthetical laugh lines, Twined lips, puckered and alive with Hiccupped laughing; The Italian leather of your BMW sticks To my thighs, I dream of her there, The yellowing walls of the Ramada, Where we smoked cigarettes all night Between scratchy throws and music Humming against the floors. Back on the Island I remember you more: The broken stairs to Mconoky beach, Lambert’s cove road winds to me, extends It’s tar limbs to visit for a day, and since leaving That whistle of a place I…
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Shake Your Groove Thing
by Simon Frez-Albrecht Slogging up the south couloir on the north face of Ptarmigan Peak, my thoughts drifted to the raspberries and dipping chocolate I had waiting for me at home. I imagined I would improvise a double boiler from a pair of pots to avoid burning the chocolate; I would get some wax paper from my roommate to lay on the cookie sheet; I would then use a pair of chopsticks to dip the berries, so that they would come out smooth and pretty instead of all globbed from my fingers or a spoon. I could practically taste the sweet fruit center, cold inside the still-warm chocolate, the small…
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Fruity Economics
By Evan Nasse “The Blueberry Party has gone too far this time!” Cries the leader of the Red Apple Party, Red Delicious, pointing his finger accusingly in the direction where the patch of Blueberries are seated. “You can’t just decide that we’re going to pay for pesticides for all of the produce! This is an outrage and we will not sit idly by. Starting the day of the implementation of the Affordable Pesticide Act we are implementing a Cropwide Closure unless you agree to our demands to defund Obamegranatecare!” Screams the Red Apple Party representative into the microphone. “You can’t shut down all of the crops just because you disapprove…
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Hatchery Experience
by Angela Wilkinson “What’s that smell?” a first grader remarks as I lead my last tour around the William Jack Hernandez Sport Fish Hatchery. I take a deep breath and think hard about the fishy odor I have grown so used to during my three month internship here at the hatchery this past summer. I tell the first graders that it’s the smell of fish and it’s the best smell in the world. I take the opportunity to ask this group of children if any of them have caught a fish before and, as usual, I learn that less than half of the group has ever been fishing. Fishing was…
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Land Rediscovered
By Simon Frez-Albrecht Anticipation—and exasperation—had been building all summer toward this one special day. I had the fortune of stepping in right at the end to wrap up loose ends and hop on the bandwagon. By the time I showed up, hundreds of hours had gone into planning and arranging the logistics of putting all 35 first-year students at APU on the Yukon River for ten days, not to mention the 10 staff going with them. The last week before departure, the students spent their mornings in class while we shopped for food and sorted gear. In the afternoons, we conducted lessons in wilderness living, basic water rescue, and geared…
