What Would the Flowers Say?


I don't want children fighting

in another war,

to argue about a livable wage

among rain drops shaped like inflation,

or to feel smart for predicting

I'll eventually be censored for writing a poem-

I just need to live,

yet even that has moments

terrifying as gunshots

and reminding me how many umbrellas leak,

leaving me with days,

where I want to crawl in the dirt,

bury myself, only to bloom

as a person sized flower,

but that would be crazy, wouldn't it?




Life's Cooling Fire


We're being used up,

worse than a candle burning

in the middle of the day,

only to surrender night

to the darkness,

where dreams are forgotten,

so alarm clocks can have their say,

as we let pay stubs

give us light,

like hungry flames,

refusing to learn the moths' names.

Unbroken Self-Portrait of a broken boy

my greatest fear is dying 
alone in a windowless apartment in the countryside. &
having my dead mass submerged 
6 ft in the tangible despair that is my aura. 
i'm still trying to figure out 
why all my stories taper into tragic endings. 
my therapist said i'm broken. she lied. 
my mouth is home to the most torturous sores 
that have been conceived by guilt. 
my body drowns in the ocean of my eyes when i'm alone.
i'm always alone. I do not believe 
love is a craft to be learned. or i do not believe
 I am capable of learning it. 
I've been hurt too many times. I've fractured every bone
in my heart. my body is a brick wall with no doors. I'm unable to let anyone in. 
I know it's hard to believe, 
but my smile is a drawing on my face that fades at night.
I know it's hard to believe, but this poem 
was not meant to end this way. I know it's hard to believe
but this poem was meant to have a happy ending.

Babatimehin Asíwájú is a student of Civil Engineering in the University of Ibadan. A Essayist, Poet and Dramatist, he writes on social issues as well as on his minority-tribe identity. He is currently a member of The Poetic Collective, TPC. 

Writing apart, he is involved with activism and while he’s not doing either, he plays table tennis.

Tan-Renga by Christina Chin & James Young 


late moonrise 
the blood moon bleeds
an unsettling howl

the clock says it is
the time i think it is



a sacrificial fowl
at the crossroad 
incoherent chants

the book falls
title page up



licking thin lips
a raspy whisper 
lights her eyes

drawing closer
we are all there



creating potions
the new priestess 
casts spells 

the cat
watching a spider



drumming 
on the lintel beam
a woodpecker

across the cemetery 
no heads turn

Precipitation and Evaporation as the Science of Human Creation

Like a boy who holds a piece of marker
Scribbling on a white board
Writing, erasing…
God writes, too,
 But erases, with purposes. 

And so when HE writes, 
Prints of shoes we find at our doorstep, 
Like the footprints of rain on the chest of the earth. 
Then I learnt,
That everyone comes as two bodies, heavenly bonded,
Showing God's journey to the earth. 

At a time, a body of water
Leaves green footprints on tree-begging palms, 
With a water pot
 Emptying itself without breaking. 

At other times, a sun that flashes the earth
To set, leaving no ray behind
 But clothes every tree with brown leaves,
With a pot's shards, 
Or bore its content for the soil or both.

Here, I knew that,
The soil upon which trees were raised
Is in serious rivalry with the trees
For God's gift whenever he visits the earth. 
Trees are closer to the sky
But this does not matter,
As a gift that is meant for the soil
Shall have its way into her mouth,
Through the thin lines in between trees' palms. 
And if a gift is meant for the tree, 
Trees shall be perfect enough to save the score. 

At first, I thought this was God's bearing a scale
Between the trees and the soil,
But no, the soil has it all in the end
As all was just about writing now and erasing later. 

Ridwanullah Solahudeen, Olalekan is a Common and Islamic Law undergraduate of Bayero University, Kano. He is a patriotic member of the Nigeria’s largest youth and teen writers’ Foundation, Hilltop Creative Arts, Osun branch. His works have appeared and forthcoming on Spillwords, the Piker Press, Synchronized Chaos, D’lit review, Al-mirath Islamic magazine, the academy of hearts and minds, inter alia. He was the winner of the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria’s Best Essayist Award for secondary schools in Nigeria, 2019; Mahmud Kola Adesina, SAN, Osun State Best Essayist Award for Secondary Schools in Osun, 2020; Brainbuilders Teen Speak Out 7.0, 2019 1st runner-up award; and Stars Writers’ Award for his short story, Without Despair. Ridwanullah is currently making ASUU’s suffocating strike win-win for himself at Ikolab Mayor Aluminium Depot, where he is doing his entrepreneurial training.

Abstract Writing:  Dialogue Between Rachel Carson and Sir David Attenborough That Still Inspire The Canon of Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities Through Their Gravitas of Legacy Charles Elton’s ‘conservation of variety’ is at the height of the fame, vainglory, appraisals and reappraisals to the ecocriticism discourse.  

How far this pedagogy  brave heartedly surmounts  conservations sanctuaries, wildlife museums, environmental stewardships and preservation centers ought to be of paramount importance in urbanity and rurality alike. In this seminal paper dramaturgical and narratological stylistic approaches have been thronged to culminate the evolutionary trends of feminist ecocriticism studies disciplines within environmental humanities.


Brief Biography of the Author: Formerly Undergrad freshman English Literature Major hailing from department of English and Humanities (ENH) at Brac University. Presently of latest accord, Z I Mahmud is a fullbright Indian Council For Cultural Relations (ICCR) scholarship fellow Suborno Jayanti Scheme achiever-awardee and UG aspirant of University of Delhi’s Department of English. Z I Mahmud exalts in the glories of glamorous explorations with glowing sparks of somber sobriety lingerings in stirrings of literary criticism, literary theory and genres of narrative. Readers are heartily welcome in cordiality to intimate in correspondence through email: zi.mahmud@g.bracu.ac.bd   


Ever since publication of her bestseller masterpiece ‘The Silent Spring’ Miss Rachel Carson might have been lionized and treasured in gamuts of memorial letters, newspaper clippings, library archives, magazine articles, biographical fiction and memorabilia so forth. Mostly the gravitas of David Attenborough’s interview correspondence with Miss Carson surrealistically and ethereally becomes the pinnacle of cliffhangers through literary interview. 

David Attenborough: Oh, hello, Miss Carson! Delighted to see your gracious face after a milestone of traveling through the Falklands. My briefcases suited with Christmas souvenirs of turkey toasts, Scottish brandy and a pelican to be adored, petted and mothered to perfection! Ah, the customs don’t charge me sterling pounds as long as I am allegedly breached of poaching.

In the meanwhile, butlers and valets are seen to work with flaming girandoles and thus lighting to warm wooden stony sculpted concrete  hearth overwhelming chimneys brimming as hobgoblins like fiery charcoal. However, Rachel Carson horrified by this wit of her residence staff storms in diglossic fury and soon this tumultuous turmoils wreaks havoc; she wroughts a lecture in the repartee as if harangue. David Attenborough, the seasons’ guest contemplates metaphysical Carson: Americana ought to be deforested in and the glacier Atlantic melting would ensue catastrophically endangering the sea albatrosses and sea lions.      

Feasting mind and mortifying flesh to contemplation of rolling mountains and breasting snow drifts cliffs amongst the Lancashire witches haunted marshland moored woods. The indigenous wolves of the Atlantic and Welsh landscapes anthropocene have embarked on their destiny of diminishing downfall:  extinction, Since genetic integrity [a term commonly used as a phrase of conservation Biology literature to evoke the value of a genome that is “pure” and “not polluted” with the genes of related species or subspecies] of genome sequences splicing have demarcated the lack of tameness in these inhabiting wild wolves. Gothic vampire stories and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga ! Ahhh, ahhh, romantic thrillers –alludes to a toasting of French imported champagne!   

Miss Carson: Fie! Fie! Attenborough…a hybridized aversion of a wolf in the wilderness is worse than useless; throngs the pangs of heart wrenching woes; the harbinger of hybrid swarm; in which establishes the dystopian anarchy; and wolves eventually dimmed out of their intrinsic wits.

David Attenborough: Indeed, my Ironic Lady ! Ah, you are absolutely fascinating with your rhetoric like the mermallaide; which takes me to the seashore atoning my mal de mar; garnishing seasoned sea-food beside the beach lines.

Miss Carson spread marmalade on their toasts, poured over the porridge and stirred quickly to thicken; bowled and plattered with amarnath doughnuts. 

Door bells! Miss Carson was very popular among the schoolchildren for fostering them doughnuts and hot porridge and chunks of digestive biscuits. 

Granny! We’ve come and today won’t depart without you! Ye shall visit and picnic upon the Atlantic seashore bays. Upon these schoolchildren and teenaged graders Miss Carson fretters in boyishness to be reticent grim faced lady to the sullied by the lurid facets of being scared to death: sea level rising, ocean acidification and mass extinction.To her the perfect world is a pungent, credulous or a form of disavowal:deck chairs on Uncle Farley’s vessel.    

Ethical and ecological commitments are necessary for imagining utopia in Anthropocene and these young generation are the harbinger of audacity to reflect epical change in utopian allegory They ought to address grievances of ecological justice by the cathartic purgation of class struggle, racism, sexual violence and hemispheric inequalities, alienation. This state of affairs interleaves coalescence of demerits of modern political and economical systems and alternative hedonism anchorage of spiritual deprivations.

David Attenborough: Ah, these sweethearts dazzled as Peach Blossom Springs in the Garden of Eden.  Anchorage of idyllic existence turns to a doom with anthropogenic climate  change and global ecological crises which strike their environmental humanists temperament. 
Miss Carson with accusatory deconstruction: Aye! And I ought to demarcate the hubristic investment instigated by materialistic impulses that we all are flawed and fungible mortal creatures in the leaky boat.  

Children grinned at the apprehension and implored Miss Carson to foil as a preacher of Biblical allusions. So Miss Carson apprises them of the testamentary evidence The Archangel Michal, brandishing the fiery “Sword of God”  and cherubim with “dreadful faces” and “fiery Arms” herd Adam and Eve out of their lost home. Cats cuddled and cushioned and woodpeckers perched plummeted their foliage and Miss Carson commences yet another anecdotal scene When Adam and eve ate the apples perhaps they took into themselves, unknowingly the absence of God and that absence manifested itself in their loss of innocence and the decay of nature. Angelic warnings to Adam and Eve would be lowly wise and they ought to not attempt knowledge above their capacities. Lucifer’s despoiler Fallen Angels’ diabolism… Spring can associated with depreciation of the environment with demonic temporality condescending air water, fire, and belching smoke.”

And the children wondered in nightmarish envisionings of post Edgar Allan Poe’s fantasy and miracles spectacles : Post Martian revolution.  Dawning the harbinger of a paradoxical Anabell Lee perisher into the symbolic life of imperishable misery and frustration. Metamorphoses of resistant species as evolutionary genes adaptations and associated  mutagens and carcinogens invoke havocs of  the rumblings of an avalanche. Take for instance, the gypse moth fluttering about among low vegetation or creeping up tree trunks in the orchards of Miss Carson and furthermore, thereafter, houseflies and cockroaches infestations overbrim the kitchen parlor, and ardor of scary menacing screaming Miss Carson. For these, secondary vectors of microorganisms control programmes reinforce stimulated life history, population densities and reactions to radiation with overwhelming outcomes.  Fermentation and nitrification might be affected in unprecedented  actions. Biological equilibrium girdled by predators and parasites might be an investigative quest to the extent of the agricultural community, fish and wildlife department, governmental and federal agencies and medicine association. 

Human rights cannot be enmeshed in the cocoons of biological warfare and environmental movement is the serendipity. “Beneath the forest floor the world accumulated with honeycombed tunnels and runaways of small mammals-white footed mice, voles and shrews of various species'' encompassing fraternizing harmony with living creatures pressures, and counter pressures, surges and recessions with  engrossing environmental justice. This is the narratology that surfeits the dramaturgy of bravura and stardom against the hubristic whims of the precariousness of living existence. Ground-breaking and lifechanging literature of the mystique feminist environmentalist would be divination of blessing in disguise; to the tempting lures of discoursing environmental humanities ; by  the vogue of historical non-fiction memoir. This reenacts perilous voyage by the diabolical menace of frosty seas and snowfields glaciers — timelessness survival stories harrowing  climate injustice to presciently supernal extent. Fabric of cultural diversity and environmental diversity are interwoven by these streams of consciousness and surrealism through harnessing imaginaries like ecocriticism, feminist science studies, environmental history, environmental philosophy as holistical radical transformation. Intergenerational memories and speculative fabulation mapping crystallizes the dictum of ‘ecological literature’ and ‘ecologized humanity’. Popular literary and film genres such as the Western establish habitual feeling states about national belonging, gender performance, racial and social transgressions. While scrambling, mumbling, rumbling and scampering through everyday anthropocene, haunting climate debacle springs from freedom individualistic libertarian choices. Insofar, none the less the popular enthusiasm and candid appealing motivation behind sci-fi metamorphoses to cli-fi genre staging Rachel Carson and David Attenborough as Hollywood might offer therapeutic catharsis to readers and theater audience alike.   

References and Further Reading


1.	Ecocriticism and Vitalism in Paradise Lost, Leah S. Marcus, Milton Quarterly, May 2015, Vol 49, No. 2, pp. 96-111 JStor
2.	The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities 

This Beauty
   My Heart
      Could see the No
              Hope 
With fears thrown on
      the fire to keep
           us warm
             tonight

I'm fearing absentia
     missed and
         Lost on pure 
            fruit-filled Faith 
                     A Basket 
                  always empty 
                Before Love
              Can Stand 
            Knowing

          our Love 
      not ours alone 

And my Palm 
is Visible to me 
  Raised to Care 
       in the Empty 
                  Light 
filled on Broth 
          & stirred 
          emotions 

 to soothe
   the already 
          Soothing 
            turn a Day
 from light to dusk 
     & Rest Knowing

by John Edward Culp


The Dreams
        that never Die 
         & will never be the
               Same again
 
for Now has no plural 
                           form
And Time is A Name in 
                   Passing 
  the Half Full Cup
    that's alway finding
       the new 
        Completion 
        to Reach for 
without bending, just
               Standing Here 

    Sleep finds me,
 Baggage at the Door,
      fallen to pillow
        where confusion
         loosens its weave
 Drawn to the fragrance 
                 of things to be

 Yes, I say yes, in my Dreams!

        The Dreams that 
      never Die & will never
              be the same again.



  Written the morning of 
Monday, October 10, 2022
   by John Edward Culp