100 DEAD BABIES

the conductor’s wand rises
suspended in the air
for a speechless moment
one hundred dead babies wail away
a mute harmony on the floor 
of the orchestra pit
& the audience sways gently
to the thunderous roar 
of the  air conditioning unit
and a billion goosebumps 
tickle their arms
and nipples 
while the rest of the 
nation sways in unison
as they veg-out
on a lethal dose of CNN

Climate sensitivity is a term used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to describe to what extent rising levels of greenhouse gases affect the Earth’s temperature. Specifically, it describes how much warmer the planet will get if the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere doubles.

In this issue, contributors grapple with the effects of our actions on our climates: ecological, political, social, and personal.

Note: If you’d like to make a difference for the Earth by planting trees, you may visit One Tree Planted for information on how to replenish natural forests around the world. One dollar plants one tree! Also, if you’re an artist who creates work inspired by ecology and nature, you can include your work as part of Earth Day’s campaign to showcase Artists for the Earth.

Several writers from the B Street Writing Group in Hayward, CA address ecological climate change in a collection of pieces which they will perform at the Sun Gallery at Hayward’s first annual Lit Hop, Saturday April 30th.

Leticia Garcia Bradford wonders whether her individual actions are making enough of a difference for the environment. Linda Hibbard speaks on climate through the POV of a melting snowman. Gloria Lopez and Tess Tyler outline the effects of environmental change on humans as well as the rest of the ecosystem.

Patricia Doyne’s work crashes into our consciousness, illustrating storms as an effect of our changing planet. Lisbeth Garcia-Lopez brings a poignant tale of flowers destroyed by pollution. Al Murdach depicts a green statue of Jesus and its potential significance, including stewardship for creation.

Finally, with his trademark humor, Hayward’s poet laureate Bruce Roberts encourages us to pack our bikinis for Arctic sunbathing.

Other writers take a more personal and psychological approach to writing about landscapes of various kinds.

Loretta Siegel celebrates nature in a piece inviting someone to join her out “where the rabbits run,” while Michael Hough describes a walk out at night with his dog and the screech of owls in the air. Gabriel T. Saah’s speaker contemplates his deep love for his partner while walking along the beach at sunset. He draws on nature within himself, his own body, as well as outdoor scenery for imagery.

Sarika Jaswani highlights the solitude that gives her the space for creative thought, which she finds in rural, urban, and literary landscapes. Jelvin Gibson evokes the rich beauty of nature while mourning a lost love, and Mahbub waxes poetic on the delicate embrace of birdsong, sprouting grass, and pastureland.

Mamadee Kanneh probes the inner landscape of his moods, often as complex and out of his control as the weather. The sun, and its mythological connotations, illustrate Isabella Hansen’s speaker’s grief over the loss of her brother. Hazel Fry stares into the ocean and muses on evolution, ecology, fluidity, and femininity.

Geoff Sawers paints European urban landscapes with language evoking their complex, rich, and sometimes dark pasts. Do Toan Dien draws on the spiritual, natural, and architectural heritage of Vietnam in his bilingual poetry. Federico Wardal covers a talk from archaeologist Dr. Zahi Hawass on how researchers located Cleopatra’s tomb in a piece that celebrates ancient Egyptian culture.

Nadja Moore depicts various miscommunications: a humorous disconnect over dinner and a more poignant tale of a child ghost trying to get her family’s attention. Doug Hawley’s flash fiction explores through humor the dangers we face in the wild: age, declining health, animal and human predators.

Stephen House looks in on others with compassion – a man with mental challenges, animals bred and destined for slaughter – and also speculates on how we might bring different perspectives to the same circumstances.

Sheila Murphy probes human nature with a mix of short pieces and character sketches that explore both our fragility and our resilience. John Grey writes of the imperfect human experience: bumbling dancers, drinkers with bad breath, marital disillusionment after a flood. J.J. Campbell conveys the awkwardness, hope, and cynicism of love at midlife, while Emmanuel G.G. Yamba vows not to let death take him without a fight.

Ivan S. Fiske’s speaker draws upon various religious images to describe his profound connection with the person he loves. Michael Robinson presents calm odes to the spiritual nourishment found through instances of beauty in urban environments.

Christopher Bernard contributes a poetic piece on history and memory and speculates that becoming a poet might be a calling as much as a professional identity.

Still other writers play with mixed media and language.

Jerome Berglund pairs nighttime urban shots through a car window with haikus, while Heller Levinson fragments concepts, definitions and ultimately words into thought pieces. Mark Young’s first piece harks back to Ezra Pound’s style while his other poems reflect on political communication.

Other writers address the global sociopolitical climate.

Patricia Doyne mourns the invasion of Ukraine in a piece from the point of view of a little boy who loses his mother. Steven Croft addresses war in Ukraine as well as Iraq from a more panoramic perspective, while commenting on Bolivia’s economic growth.

Chimezie Ihekuna urges humanity to abandon war as a means to solve differences. Christopher Bernard depicts the Ukrainian tragedy through the trauma of a young refugee boy, while David Dephy’s work honors the beauty of Ukraine and issues strident calls for chaos to depart. Ike Boat shares his service as the master of ceremonies during a Christian university’s graduation in Ghana.

We hope that this issue adds a bit of inspiration to your day while challenging your heart and mind and imagination.

As a reminder, we encourage the readers and writers who enjoy our publication to write letters of support to be included in care packages to be delivered to refugees around the world by the nonprofit New Beginnings. Click here to write a letter online (anonymously if you wish) that will support and encourage a refugee family in their new home.

Also, PEN America campaigns on behalf of writers facing persecution for their nonviolent work. Click here to read and sign online petitions for different writers at risk. Also, the organization Free Women Writers is looking for volunteer editors for pieces they are collecting and publishing from women and girls in Afghanistan.

 WHERE RABBITS RUN
  By Loretta Siegel

Come walk with me where the air is clean,
Come walk with me through hills of green.
Come walk with me where white deer graze,
Come walk with me through autumn's haze.
Come walk with me where fields of wheat
Shimmer and shine in summer's heat.
Come walk with me through snowy drifts,
We'll leave our footprints on the cliffs.
Come walk with me where rabbits run,
Come walk with me…
The best is yet to come.

I Command the Chaos

I command the chaos — turn into order! 
I command the death — turn into life! 
I command the war — turn into peace! 
I don't want to know a thing anymore. 
You know my soul yearned for knowledge 

but from this day on, I don't want to know a thing 
except for, will I be able or not to love you. 
Is it possible that the world has earned some relief? 
The wings cut the skies 
a dream hides reality within itself 
and what if I learn the truth? So what? 
Will I keep faith? 
The will, the strength to save myself, will it stay with me? 

I command the darkness — turn into light! 
I shall linger on this planet a while longer 
and I am closer to you than to anyone else 
and a realization of my existence here 
brings such bitter tears which I cannot explain 
but I still have the path to reach those peaceful pastures 

so, I'll stand up again and tell you that I shall gather strength 
and something will happen, as if by accident 
and we shall walk toward each other again. 

I command the sorrow — turn into calm! 
I command the noise — turn into silence!

David Dephy



DIVINE UKRAINE

Your eyes are the eyes of God.
Your breath is mother tongue of Earth.
Your blood is a symphony of fire.
Your lips are the truth-tellers,
no one can take your golden mystery,
no one can feel you without admiration.
Your heart is garden of kisses.
Your ears are pearls of expectation.
Your words are constellations – 
the faces of heroes, encircled by rays,
drifted on the minds of the world,
their smile, their look, their strength and its innocence, 
a tide that tugs at us. In times like these, 
a sense washes over us, and we gather together
in the deadly noise of millennium and this stillness,
a stillness that never wavers.
All we have become, divine Ukraine, 
is what your innocence has made of us.
The naked homeland of freedom 
beats right in your heart.

David Dephy
March 1, 2022
New York


TAKE YOUR SANDALS OFF YOUR FEET

You are in Ukraine, take off your sandals, 
for the place where you are standing 
is holy and the air you are breathing is holy,
touching rays on your face,
drifting through the noise of madness
from the other side of the dark,
still, the lips touch the air 
and this body is a foreign language 
addressing a foreign world,
and its foreign skies. I say, 
take a deep breath, my love, 
let us embrace this great void as an old friend, 
perhaps then we shall discover each other 
far on the other side of alone.
Have you heard a song of braves?
Take your sandals off your feet, 
the place when you’re standing is holy,
every grain is the heart of a child, 
the grain of truth—
breathing through the golden shadows.
Have you heard the laughs and smells?
This is the greatest afternoon of freedom.

David Dephy
3/12/22
New York

EMPTY STROLLERS IN FRONT OF YOU

See the empty strollers over there? In front of you.
Now you see what Russians are. Don’t say a word. 
Take a deep breath. Now you know what has happened,
why, how, where and when—
right here, not so far—
Not so far.
Just a second ago, they were alive. 
My sweetest friend, they were loved.
The peace offering love—
Earth and heavens made sacrifices to that love, 
the dews of their smiles are the words of holy. 
Who ever heard or felt anything more divine?
Is there something precious we are longing to find out there?
Their voices hit your senses, burst your temples, 
burn your breath. See the rays? 
Or the black smoke under flawed stillness?
This is the other side of our happiness— 
and its silence means the end.

David Dephy
March 18, 2022
New York

David Dephy 

A Georgian/American award-winning poet and novelist. The 1st place winner of The Artist Forum Poetry Award in New York 2021, the winner of the Finalist Award in the 2020 Best Book Award National Contest by American Book Fest, the finalist and shortlist winner nominee of the Adelaide Literary Awards for the category of Best Poem, the winner of the Spillwords Poetry Award. He is named as A Literature Luminary by Bowery Poetry, The Stellar Poet by Voices of Poetry, The Incomparable Poet by Statorec, The Brilliant Grace by Headline Poetry & Press and An Extremely Unique Poetic Voice by Cultural Daily.

SAY.  speak sundry.   from

well-up.   down under.   swell.  

                                                storm.

in(still(stigate) .   prick flame.

firmament.            flare  →       →

say = prong = prow = ______.

plunge bellow.       plumb breath blow     ges tic u late  .

gyre capacious.      decibel stew.               strew sonic.

slake.   infiltrate.    frond filigree

taut.

chamber

clamor

coruscate


 


PERCH

fend whip foil assuage go lively

          prosperity muck street hyperbole

          . position

          . loft

          . proprioception

contiguous babble courts fetches compliance

too many moons soil the siesta

by degrees, up slowly,

. . .

then hoist


 

CREVICE CURL

          cloy to

                                      abject

                                      inadmissible

       lull       a       by

frozen lute thaw

 


 

CROSSFELLING ENCOUNTER LADEN

with stone begins. unladen. ladling porous. punctuation free. curious come 

nightly timely & unsubscribed. low numbers constitute incline. flies the 

function. fiery fliers. over there then.

yonder.

 


 

Little ghost

There was a cabin in the woods
And snakes on the road
In that place
In the middle of God knows what
With the sheep
And the neighbour’s goat
My brother felt like talking to
With a sheet on my head
I tried to make my sister move
I tried to get her head
Out of those books
And her eyes
Were glued to the page
And I wished
They were glued to me
And looked at me
Not through me.
My arms were extended
And I sung “ooooooh”
Then stopped,
Then sung again “oooooh”
Until she told me off
And I made myself small
And haunted that house
Covered in white
And desperate to prove
My father wrong
In that
Everything
Was not alright.

A lesson learnt in Franco Manca

I became irritated at the thought of this man telling me that the pizza I ordered half an hour ago
was only just being prepared. My way or no way. I want to eat in, he does not. I want a million
dollar man and he wants trees. Sometimes, no one gets what they want.

Nadja Moore is a writer based in Surrey, UK. She has a day job, a roommate, a band called Lilies in my brain and no pets. Her poems have appeared in Horror Sleaze Trash and Terror House Magazine. 

Dark of the moon... 

	Walking last night with my young dog along a deserted road,
	the stars were so clear we could see by them
	and the air so still we could hear stirrings
	of night creatures in the woods to either side...

			abandoned cemetery... 
			the wind sprites
			restless 
	We could hear the crackle of a neighbor's bonfire and the laughter 
	of a few rowdies... the skush sound of a can of beer and the snort of a joke.
	And off in another direction: the voices of a pair of Cranes
	speaking to each other in quiet tones less than a tenth of how loud a Crane can be. Jack the dog heard them too, and stopped with one paw lifted 
	as he listened carefully to them. I feel that they were just talking softly to each 	other in the dark as couples do.

		reincarnation... 
		as fate would have them
		meet again

	Jack was a city dog before being rescued, and all this is very new to him.
	He knows quite well that the world is a dangerous place, 
	but these new sounds and smells unnerve him 
	because he doesn’t know how dangerous they might be.

		pitch black... 
		the hickory path 
		a chuck-will's-widow

	Further along the road the weird call of the Screech Owl 
	gave me shivers as it always does. We decided to turn back.
	The Screech Owl's calls, a high lonely wavering wail... 
	continued until silenced by four gruff and peremptory woofs
	of a Great Horned Owl.  Those birds are the top of the food chain 
	in our area, and other Owls become very
	circumspect in their presence, for good reason.

		nervous expiration 
		steam mists
		the glasses

	The Horned Owl sent us home with another
	four low tones:  Hoot… Hoot... Hoot-Hoot.
	We walked back in companionable silence.

		under 
		the crisp light
		of stars