Our one-hundred-and-ninth issue is something of an anomaly, as it contains much loss and destruction—of the environment, of others, of the self. Yet as the nettle’s sting is soothed by the jewelweed that grows alongside it, each piece holds some key ingredient that makes its burdens easier to bear: beauty, laughter, resilience.
There are so many things to worry about right now, and trying to keep up with what we need to do, to think, and to feel threatens to overwhelm us at every moment. We hope the words of James Donlon, Robert Garnham, K. Noel Moore, Nick Olson, Namit V. Shah, and Ali A. Ünal, as well as the art of Angelica Gonzalez, will provide an antidote to despair.
Eyeball it online or get your claws on the .pdf.
Namit V. Shah
The very land of landfill lords
is alive;
A crude creature in itself,
The sizzling scrap and smoke
its skin
and the bubbling browny broth
its blood.
The landfill lords,
a hundred half living
dead dreaming skeletons,
churn and churn
and split apart
by the great crude
creature’s heavy heart.
The landfill lords
own everything
left unowned,
and digging by
their destined graves
still search
for something shiny
in their worldfuls of dirt.
NAMIT V. SHAH, from Ahmedabad, India, has been writing poetry almost five years now. Some of his poems have been featured on online poetry sites such as ‘PoetrySoup’ and ‘HelloPoetry.’ His poems apply an acerbic approach towards expression and exude a certain sense of brevity, all the while remaining visually engaging.
Deborah P Kolodji
insomnia
those fierce Martian
winds
planted trees
in the surface dome
forest bathing
unbridled drones
the year of the horse
nebula
DEBORAH P KOLODJI moderates the Southern California Haiku Study Group and is the former president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She has published 4 chapbooks of poetry, over 1000 poems, and has appeared in several anthologies, including “Aftershocks: Poetry of Recovery,” The Red Moon Anthology, the Rhysling Anthology, Dwarf Stars, and A New Resonance 4. She has published several short stories and a memoir appears in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul. Her first full-length book of haiku and senryu, “Highway of Sleeping Towns,” from Shabda Press won a distinguished book award from The Haiku Foundation.
