time travelers 

you took our picture from a car window. 

i know 

because i saw the door frame on the edge of the photograph.

neither of us saw you take it, but i know it exists

because someone in the future is admiring 

the yellowing picture paper

that smells of antique stores and soap.

why had we stopped to stand in the middle of the highway?

not sure

who are you? 

i wont bother guessing because you care either way.

you stopped time in march.

the MAR on the side told me so.

what year? anyone's guess.

all i know is that she is looking at me and i am looking at the 

blue or the grey or the beige.

WHENEVER I THINK OF IT


Whenever I think of it

I see nothing but moon and star

Cuddle each other in an orderly manner

Lulling me with a cloying nectar 

That waters my tongue like fish in a river.


Whenever I glance at it

I recall its brightest teeth

That outshine the light of sun

And my heart sinks into its ocean

To enjoy aquatic feelings resting therein.


Whenever I get a chance to kiss it

Peacock and peahen we will become

To hyperbolize in realm of love

And encase ourselves in girdle of affection.


Whenever I think of it

I bring back those memories

When I smiled and cried out loudly

For the untold stories I buried

Which cage my soul in monsoon period.

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 

Twists

 

We are a tangle.

 

He sees himself

As master-at-

Arms, twists

The appendage

Behind.

 

Transmogrifies.

Becomes the monster

On the table

From memory, from

Lore.

 

Dancer, statesman,

Retiree, friend of toxic

Masculinity.

 

Who can understand

Why anyone, who would

Hurl stones through

His windows.

 

Foolish tire-waisted

King of television, who

Hides behind shiny metal

 

Instruments of fear.

 

Who hides.


 


 

 

I used to think the Kingdom

Of God was rolling in like

A fire,

 

And I had better roll with it.

But couldn’t. It wasn’t me. I was a quiet

Soul on a bench.

 

An occasional tear.

 

As though I could summon

Another person inside, another voice that would

Be more valuable.

 

Gumption, you don’t have enough gumption

To stand. Wrong, but how it wrung me.

 

I had not yet found the right place

To find footing yet, like slipping toes

On the wet stones of a forest path.

 

As though a shout was all I needed

To prove myself – to whom?

 

I worried my head

Was too full

Even with a sensing muscle inside.

 

Such worries have so often proven

False, reifying identity,

Finding compassion where others find

Fences

 

And fences where others find welcome.

 

I am who I am, perhaps created, I believe

Created – angry, silent, bereft, doubting,

Certain, confused, clear, seeing the steam’s

Bottom on mud at once.

 

            Seeking.

 

A creature of calm, not cacophony,

But speaking, not only when spoken to.

Who would rather read one

Book I love

That a thousand so-so stories.

 

Who sits, listens, writes,

Letting a thousand pasts and possibilities

Ride by with a thousand worries

 

Calling from the backseat. Awake.


 

An Upside

 

Down

            World, the floor a floor

            The cavern walls,

Rising above, this is the cold winter world

I discovered as a teenager when a new path

Opened.

 

Want to come to my house?

I knew that invitation could lead to screaming

Diapered trouble. Found that bit of fear inside

That wouldn’t trade a moment for a life.

 

Rising above, a tundra sky, welcoming

Ice that will make you slide if you don’t watch

It. Watch it.

 

When will warmer

Weather come? The climate is cold,

Like standing in a stranger’s kitchen, like

Bobbing heads of angry on the way

Out the door. Like an earthworm heart.

 

Like the blank spot next to another

That won’t be filled. Anytime soon. No one’s

Home because someone’s always hiding.

 

Fuck it, I’m not hiding

Anymore. Tired of traipsing

Worries and woes behind me like a row

Of babbling, honking geese.

 

Bread is now baking in the oven, even

If it’s not my oven. Anymore.


 

Poison in the Yard

 

The common morel, of course,

populated our dinner table, popping

up like – well, you know.

 

We had a field guide with illustrations

that were a little too imprecise

for my liking. Glossy pages, the title

might as well have been:

 

How Not to Die Around the House.

 

Decades later, as I approach middle age,

I hear the phone ring, the static story buzz

of how my father insisted he had found

 

a safe one.

 

Cooking it, liquid like blood leached out

in the butter-laden skillet, nature’s final warning,

and my mother tried to convince him.

 

He insisted and, thankfully, made it through,

a testament that even the memories that grow

locally sometimes have death in the middle.

 


Recluse 

 

No, not the brown kind,

scrambling creature with legs

and venom, fiddle belly.

 

Such creatures are proof

of the story of Lucifer to me,

fallen from some ancient ago.

 

Yet, recluse/reclusive, still.

 

I think I know enough of fellow 

humans to suggest a modicum

of reclusiveness can be helpful,

 

the stirring of murmurs commonly

drowned by the din,

 

the steep mountain of self-

acceptance, laden with barbs,

packed with prevarications.

 

Yes, rejected, I reject; refused,

I refuse; distanced, I say now I am

in my starry cavern.

 

Don’t let my inner music 

dare to disturb.


 

Stillville

 

There’s a hollowed-out mouth in the rockwall

of mountain, where the trappings of an old still

are located.

 

Visitors to the park gawk at it, some laugh, and some

touch the marks of an alcoholic’s anger, wherever

such scars can still be found.

 

I myself was seventeen the first time I took

a drink of some cheap wine from a Sam’s Club

bottle and thought: What’s the big deal with this?

 

Others swallow a drop and are caught. But I have

been raptured by other invitations.

 

A bit further up the mountain, you can look to your left

and see a giftshop where items may be purchased

to remember the days of yesteryear: outhouses, smokehouses,

 

old women spitting tobacco into open containers

with a pinging sound, like shelling beans. It’s the insecurity

 

that comes from being born of such a place that makes

me switch my code by adding my g’s to the end of words.

 

But, of course, we all come from some hollowed-out

story in the side of some grander scheme.


 

The Paradox of Connection

 

I’ve been told that men only want to gather

and talk about sports or alcohol. 

Well, aside from bouncing a basketball back

and forth with my Dad in the hallway

of my childhood memory, I don’t know a damn

bit about sports.

 

Alcohol is lovely but sits in the back of my throat

in the middle of the night. Each sip is a sacrifice

of a moment of rest.

 

I’ve been told that, as a man, my best bet at friendship

with women will always end in some kind of desire

for romance for one of us. Not that I’m insanely irresistible,

but this is the When Harry Met Sally outlook on life.

 

This is also one problem with a binary existence.

 

Relegated to a digital space for connection, I marvel

at how much human experience is captured in the click

of a like, in the share of a post. Sometimes, someone will

jump into the conversation. This is dicey.

 


 

Don’t steal my thunder, man. Don’t jump in and subvert

the post. This is the only fucking outlet I have.

Connected with more people than ever before, that

titular paradox is the inherent distance.

 

But then sometimes, in a moment of masculine bonding,

someone will surprise me over a bite:

 

            Have you thought about…

            Have you read…

 

and my ears, were they as active as a dog’s, would

settle back into a contented conversation.

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.

Seascape with Gulls: 
My Father’s Last Painting

An Ekphrasis
by
David R. Topper


Look,
they are not your usual strokes.
Not the stringent way you controlled your brush
all those years 
from Art School to an evening hobby to
this Seascape
that water
these waves
those gulls.
A lifetime drawing & sketching
mostly painting, mainly oils
with details, details, details – 
your forte.
You liked it when someone said 
“Oh, it looks so real, like a photograph.” 
But, of course, you worked from magazines 
National Geographic, Life, calendars, too.


Look again,
they are your strokes.
Someone said
“Looks like a watercolor.” 
Look closer,
the opaque white 
with traces of a brush’s bristles 
in oil paint with extra linseed oil
in very thin layers. 
The same way you made your sandwiches
thinly spreading the peanut butter & jelly.
A vestige of growing up during The Depression,
part of being frugal.
No, not frugal,
cheap … or
tightfisted, as they said then.

Look, really, 
they are not your strokes. 
Too broad, too loose, too vague 
too imprecise, too open, too unfinished
too expressive for your temper –  
not your usual rigidity.

Aah, 
the onset of dementia,
after those other strokes 
released & relaxed your brain’s severe part, 
loosening the grip on your hand, 
bringing this Seascape into being. 

And,
at the same time, as dementia
shut down another part of your brain,
all desire to paint vanished,
leaving Seascape with Gulls
 – your first and last unfettered work – 
	
as the very best artistic expression in your life.