Humana Obscura Issue #06 (Spring/Summer 2023)

FOG SKIRT, MARCIA BILYK

POETRY

Mary Christine Delea

Shelly Reed Thieman

SPRING/SUMMER 2023

ISSUE # 0 6

ISSN: 2693-5864 (Online)

ISSN: 2693-5856 (Print)

22

Let Me Tell You About Gardening 24

©2023 Humana Obscura, an imprint of Bri Bruce Productions. All Rights Reserved. All rights to all original artwork, photography, and written works belongs to the respective owners as stated in the attributions. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher.

Founding Editor-in-Chief

BRI BRUCE

Cheryl Anne Latuner

Front Cover: Thalictrum Thalictroides aka Rue

Anemone by Natalya Khorover

Back Cover:

DeLight I by Melanie Schoeniger

River 56

ABOUT HUMANA OBSCURA

Humana Obscura is an independent literary magazine that seeks to publish the best of new, emerging, and established writers and artists in what we like to call the “nature space.” As our name suggests—”obscured human”—we focus on poetry, short prose, and art where the human element is concealed but not entirely absent, aiming to revive the genre of nature-centric creative work in today’s modern world.

Saperstein

Williams

Khorover Thalictrum Thalictroides FRONT COVER Melanie Schoeniger

Marcia Bilyk .

Buffy Davis

Connor Doyle .

Pete Madzelan .

Amy Aiken

Jess Cherofsky

Kelly Schulze

Mel Adams .

DeLight I BACK COVER

Fog Skirt 2 Disturbance 99

Violet Views 8

Barely There 30

Just Cruising, Part I 15

Harbinger of Spring 16

Sway 19

Duet 35

Holding On, Letting Go 40

Unmowed Splendor 20

Luminous Lily 23

Hudson River Sunset Ripple #3 86

A Hint of Spring in the Darkness I 26 A Hint of Spring in the Darkness II 26

Humana Obscura’s mission is to publish and promote the best nature-focused work of today’s voices and talents, seeking work that is unexpected, real, evocative, yet subtle, with strong imagery and sense of place. The publication’s intention is to inspire readers and enrich their lives while providing an inclusive space for elevating the voices and creative work of its contributors.

Founded in 2020, Humana Obscura is published online and in print twice yearly, and features work by artists and writers from around the world.

SUBMISSIONS

Humana Obscura accepts poetry, prose and short fiction, and art.

Submissions are considered on a rolling basis and can be sent through the publication’s online submission manager at www.humanaobscura.com/submit.

INQUIRIES

For questions regarding submissions, or for general inquiries, please see the FAQ page on our website or please contact:

editor@humanaobscura.com

CONNECT

Twitter: @humanaobscura

Instagram: @humanaobscura

Facebook: @humanaobscura

featured contributors

COVER ARTIST

Natalya Khorover creates art for earth’s sake and is spurred on by plastic pollution and overconsumption. She strives to use materials which would be condemned to the landfill and chooses to use the unusual techniques of stitching and sewing to bring her artwork to life. Khorover earned her BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Following careers in the New York City fashion and film industries, she embarked on her solo journey as a studio artist. Her work has been exhibited in Dairy Barn’s biennial Quilt National exhibition thrice, and Quilts=Art=Quilts at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center. Sharing her expertise by teaching and lecturing on mixed-media art techniques, the creative process and inspiration is her way of making sure art and craft is accessible to everyone. She has taught at Hudson Valley Fiber Art Workshops, Craft Napa Uncorked At Home, Create with Cloth Paper Scissors Retreats and at the Surface Design Association Conference: Community Ties.

FEATURED ARTIST

Sarah Verardo is a contemporary oil painter based in Providence, Rhode Island. Having grown up in coastal New England, the ocean has always been a familiar representation of home. After living in New York City for 14 years, Verardo returned to Rhode Island, connecting with the seaside New England environment in a different way as an adult. The idea of home, and in particular proximity to the ocean, changed from a pacifying comfort to become more of a spiritual and reflective touchstone. Through her work, Verardo pays homage to the role her environment has had in her personal evolution through both trying and celebratory times in her life. She graduated from Georgetown University with a BA in Government and, when not painting, works in digital marketing. She is an Exhibiting Artist at the Providence Art Club and an Elected Artist at the Art League of Rhode Island. Her work has been featured in juried exhibitions with the Art League of Rhode Island and the California Art League. Verardo’s work belongs to private collections within the United States and internationally.

FEATURED POET

C.X. Turner (she/her) is a UK poet, mainly focused on writing short-form poems on a daily basis, and is published widely including recent and upcoming publication in Modern Haiku, Hedgerow, Frogpond, Seashores, Cattails, Otoroshi, Drifting Sands, Bones, and Kingfisher Journal. She enjoys working collaboratively with other poets and on solo projects, interspersed with long walks, oil pastel painting, and working as a registered Social Work Manager. She is part of the Wales Haiku Journal team and was a three-time Touchstone nominated poet in 2022. One of her haiku is currently on display on the streets of Washington D.C., selected as part of the Golden Triangle haiku contest. Connect with her on Twitter @lover__poetic or Instagram @love.rpoetic.

INSIDE THE FRONT COVER

MARCIA BILYK‘s images have appeared in The Sun, Burningword Literary Journal, Brevity, Split Rock Review, Cold Mountain Review, Tiferet Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in rural northern New Jersey.

ON THE BACK COVER

DELIGHT I, MELANIE SCHOENIGER

MELANIE SCHOENIGER is a photographic artist on a quest for awe and wonder. Inspired by the world’s rainforests and coral reefs, she aims to shine a light on the wonder of life. She wishes to evoke a deep connection with nature and inspire others to protect and preserve it for future generations. A Photolucida Critical Mass 2022 finalist, her award-winning work is published and exhibited internationally. Check out her work at www.ma-vida.com or on Instagram @_ma_vida.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

BRI BRUCE (B. L. Bruce) is an award-winning poet and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee living and writing along California’s Central Coast. Her work has appeared most recently in Feral, The Sunlight Press, Riverstone Literary Journal, Bivouac Magazine, Blue Heron Review, and The Lakeshore Review, with haiku in the American Haiku Society’s Frogpond Journal, Akitsu Quarterly, hedgerow, Wales Haiku Journal, Plum Tree Tavern, Cold Moon Journal, #FemkuMag, tsuri-dōrō, Modern Haiku, cattails, seashores, and others. Bruce is the author of four books, The Weight of Snow, 28 Days of Solitude, The Starling’s Song, and Measures. Connect with her on Instagram @thepoesis and on Twitter @the_poesis.

FOG SKIRT, MARCIA BILYK

VIOLET VIEWS, BUFFY DAVIS

BUFFY DAVIS’ eye is drawn to landscapes and botanicals that have contrast and imperfections. Davis takes a photograph and visualizes how she will develop it from the many alternative photography processes: from the historic process of Cyanotype from 1842, where the developed photograph turns a Cyan Blue, intentional camera movement photography, where the image looks like an abstract painting, glitch/deconstructing photography, to using interesting color hues to give her photography an other worldly look.

AND SO IT BEGINS

DICK ALTMAN

In southern Colorado’s silver-mined Plata peaks, an avalanche of snow unwraps terra’s treasured vessel of soil—moist, winter-rested, eager to embrace light’s golden sheen of spring.

DICK ALTMAN writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, Landing Zone, Cathexis, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, Beyond Words, New Verse News, Wingless Dreamer, Sky Island Journal and others here and abroad. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 150 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.

ON THE SEVENTH DAY IN A ROW OF CLOUD COVER

NICHOLAS OLAH

I close my eyes and imagine I am standing in the middle of an open road under damp moonlight while different shades of darkness take turns threading the tree line like a needle.

Later, I peer into an upstairs window from some distance to find there’s a light on.

I imagine someone is sitting on the edge of the bed saying a prayer.

I imagine the prayer is for sun.

NICHOLAS OLAH has self-published three poetry collections, Where Light Separates from Dark, Which Way is North, and Seasons. Olah’s work has been published in Humana Obscura, Free Verse Revolution, Querencia Press, Duck Head Journal, and Resurrection Magazine. Check out more of his work on Instagram at @nick.olah.poetry or visit his Etsy shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/nickolahpoetry.

LISTEN FOR THE ROOTS

KB BALLENTINE

Rain tiptoes through the leaves, woods singing under a slur of fog.

Six days draped in gray, and I can hear the trees breathe.

Beneath leaf-scatter, daffodils are stirring, the only sign of sun.

A robin trills, squirrels skittering around the pines. It’s been a long winter.

Westerly winds breach hibernation’s heart, arrow through the atoms of each cluster

of dirt and stone so that even the bedrock blossoms in warmth.

KB BALLENTINE’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, launched with Iris Press. Her earlier books can be found with Blue Light Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Published in North Dakota Quarterly, Atlanta Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, and others, her work also appears in anthologies including I Heard a Cardinal Sing (2022), The Strategic Poet (2021), Pandemic Evolution (2021), and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017). Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

REFULGENCE

JOYCE MEYERS

I hear the light singing before the sun’s rim edges over the ridge. Pale clouds turn pinkly resplendent. This the sparrows know, start their serenade even before the stars blink out. Unfazed by darkness, they nest and breed, visit our feeder while we sip our coffee, watch the trees leaf out.

JOYCE MEYERS is a former English teacher and lawyer. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, Slant, Iodine Poetry Journal, Evening Street Review, Glimpse, Xanadu, and Caesura, among others. In 2014 she won the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collections include The Way Back (Kelsay Books 2017), Shapes of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and Wild Mushrooms (Plan B Press, 2007).

HAIKU

ELLEN ROWLAND

imperceptible that split second when daylight slips its hand in ours

ELLEN ROWLAND creates, concocts, and forages when she’s not writing. She is the author of two collections of haiku/senryu, Light, Come Gather Me and Blue Seasons, as well as the book Everything I Thought I Knew, essays on living, learning and parenting outside the status quo. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and in several poetry anthologies. Her debut collection of full-length poems, No Small Thing, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. She lives off the grid with her family on an island in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram @rowland.ellen.

TWO TANKA

C. X. TURNER

along the edge of clouds I feel you shaping my world in all the softness a sky can offer

on a rock amongst wild flowers just sitting a skylark’s song and I celebrating spring

CONNOR DOYLE is a photographer and filmmaker based in the Chicagoland area. Using a number of analog film formats, Doyle’s work focuses on the idiosyncratic details of daily life in Northern Illinois, specifically his native Wheaton. Though often trivial, his subjects capture the formal beauty and potency of these everyday sites, urging his viewers to reflect on the significance of their lived experiences. His work has been published in the Hole In The Head Review, Closed Eye Open, Parliament Literary Journal, and Burningword Literary Journal. You can visit his website at connordoylephotographyfilmmaker.cargo.site

JUST CRUISING, PART I, CONNOR DOYLE

HARBINGER OF SPRING, PETE MADZELAN

PETE MADZELAN resides with his wife in Las Cruces, New Mexico. His writings and photography have appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, Fleas on The Dog, The Courtship of Winds, Sky Island Journal, Bellingham Review, Cargo Literary Journal, New Mexico Magazine, Photography Art Shows in Albuquerque, Photography Center of Cape Cod, San Pedro River Review and is forthcoming in New Mexico Poetry Anthology to be published by Museum of New Mexico Press.

HAIKU

ANNI RANNISTO

cranes rush through the veil of dawn, sunder the dense mist— chest heaves with waiting

ANNI RANNISTO is a Finnish poet, living in Finland, and the author of a poetry collection called Moonbeam Sentinels & Sunbeam Forgettance, published by Time Is An Ocean Publications. Some of her poems have also been published in poetry journals such as Free Verse Revolution and Scissortail Quarterly

FOR LORCA

SARA DIXON

Verde, que te quiero verde. Their stories say his heart rose in the night, but his body split into birds, dissolved into the air like language.

SARA DIXON is writer and artist from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She studied poetry at Cranbrook Kingswood and Michigan State University and currently works in marketing. She is a futurist, conservationist, and is drawn to the vast spaces of the natural world.

AMY AIKEN loves finding beauty in ordinary places that often go unnoticed. The complexity and connectedness of life delights her, and her art is an attempt to explore and communicate some of that wonder. She was born and raised in Texas and now lives in South Carolina with her husband and daughter.

UNMOWED SPLENDOR, JESS CHEROFSKY

JESS CHEROFSKY’s work focuses on Indigenous rights and supporting the healing of ecocultural relationships. She began taking macrophotography after falling in love with mosses, and her explorations at the scale of moss have invited her into deeper relationships with other tiny ones who sustain our world. Cherofsky is queer and Ashkenazi Jewish and lives on the ancestral and current homelands of the Onondaga Nation (known also as Central New York State). Find her on her knees in awe in the backyard, and find her work in Humana Obscura, The Hopper, and on Instagram at @mossy.wanders.

GROUND COVER

KATE KOBOSKO

March dawned roaring before it went belly-up, docile on its way out. And when you started to trust the halcyon spring I sang out bold with my cloying story of breaking dirt. My clover head a red sky warning in the bluegrass. In this bed I am the noxious visitor glistening with dew, broadleafs grinning green. Are you primed for the long drawn fight? My thick stem and lateral roots against your gloved hand pulling.

KATE KOBOSKO earned her MFA in Poetry from Emerson College and has an undergraduate degree from Eckerd College. Her poetry has been published in Autofocus, Oakland Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, and others. Originally from Maryland, she now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where she teaches elementary school.

BRAVELY

MEGAN PLUMMER

I watered you, witnessed you surrender to seduction— vibrant petals unfurling, a gallant dance with time expanding with every breath.

MEGAN PLUMMER is an illustartor, stained glass artist, writer, and traveler who finds inspiration in the physical metaphors of the woods, rivers and desert that facilitate her own understanding of herself and the world. She has been facilitating events to help others connect with nature and creativity and is most recently published in Letters to Lovers Zine. Using a variety of methods, Megan hopes to inspire others with the beauty and wisdom in the natural world, including within ourselves.

KELLY SCHULZE is a Croton-on-Hudson, New York, based photographer and has been developing her skills for the past several years. Having grown up along both the Hudson and Croton Rivers and in close proximity to many Hudson Valley land preserves, her love of the outdoors grew tremendously. Throughout her life, Schulze has always been fascinated by images and scenes in the natural world. A film camera, given to her by her father as she graduated from high school, was all she needed to get started photographing what she saw as something worth saving and sharing. Schulze’s use of natural lighting, textures, patterns, reflections, and differing perspectives invites you into a world of wonder by taking a closer look at abstract and intimate nature. A SUNY Purchase graduate, she earned her B.A. in Liberal Studies/English with a minor in photography. Her work has been shown at Teatown Lake Reservation where one of her photos, among many, earned the distinction of Staff Favorite. Join her on Instagram @kellyschulze_photography or visit her website www.kellyschulzephotography.com/

LUMINOUS LILY, KELLY SCHULZE

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT GARDENING

MARY CHRISTINE DELEA

the scent of flowers and fruit and vegetables rising from soil will make you crazy. Those perfumes find the pleasure center of your brain and burn there, make you forget the slugs, the worms, the dirty fingernails, and the pained knees, sore lower back. Those wooden boxes in the backyard tempt all kinds of dreams, will make you believe you can eat healthier, spend more time outside and be happy there. You’ll worry about weather, fret about deer and rabbits, learn the difference between heritage and hybrid and develop opinions about them. When you are not on the ground weeding, pruning, clipping, deadheading, aerating, and planting out, you will spend your time sitting in a lawn chair, staring out those rectangular segments of life growing, those things you put into the ground with so many expectations. Fruit will fall to earth as you watch, bruising and bursting before you can save them. Birds will eat your berries until all that is left is vine. Caterpillars will consume every vegetable you have cared for, indifferent to your devotion. But what will break your heart is black spot, blight, root rot, and rust smothering your flowers, stealing their scents, forcing you to kill some to save others, a task no lover should ever be forced to do.

MARY CHRISTINE DELEA has a Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing and is a former university professor. She currently volunteers for a few nonprofits. Her poems have most recently appeared in Broad River Review, Heron Tree, Ponder Review, and Black Moon. Delea’s website, mchristinedelea.com, includes a blog where she posts weekly writing prompts (Sundays) and—two times a week—poetry by other poets (Sundays and Wednesdays).

HAIKU

SHELLY REED THIEMAN

abandoned in mother’s garden the perfume of thyme

SHELLY REED THIEMAN writes to connect with the wounded. Her poetry is heavily influenced by the study and discipline of haiku. She is messenger of imagery, a mistress of montage. Recent work appears in Lyrical Iowa 2022, and december magazine 33:1. Forthcoming work will appear in Modern Haiku 54:2. Thieman is a 2020 and 2022 Pushcart nominee.

A HINT OF SPRING IN THE DARKNESS I,

MEL ADAMS is a self-taught photographer from Dunedin, New Zealand. Her subject matter is her garden which she explores daily, taking photos of flowers and plants which her bee’s forage. By exploring the same flowers over and over, Adams observes and appreciates the simple beauty of flowers whilst pushing herself creatively to capture them in different ways. Each season’s work builds on the previous and often contrasts light and dark themes. Adams is currently creating her first photo book and planning an exhibition centred around her beloved garden. Follow her on Instagram @thepollinationgardener.

MEL ADAMS A HINT OF SPRING IN THE DARKNESS II, MEL ADAMS

WORTH WAITING

JENNIFER M. PHILLIPS

Just when I was tempted to despair, I pictured them under soil’s curtain, awaiting their cue. Bulbs jostling plump knees against one another— tulips imagining their lipstick colors, come May. Lemony fists of lilies clumped in the wings for a later act. Little aconites poking up for an early peek at their audience. Seasoned iris corms reclining, slender, on their divans for their grand opening. Here up top, there’s nothing to see until spring’s overture begins. I trust all the ingredients of joy are present, even close at hand, through the dark hours, the bleak snows. A webby substance of delight will be worthy of the waiting. One of the ways this world works—replenishing itself in time, biding the sure return of the light.

JENNIFER M. PHILLIPS is a bi-national immigrant, retired Episcopal Priest and AIDS Chaplain, gardener, grower of Bonsai, painter, and has been writing and publishing poetry and prose since age seven. Phillips grew up in upstate New York and has lived in New England, London, New Mexico, St.Louis, Rhode Island, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her work has won several awards and appeared in over seventy-five journals. Her two chapbooks are Sitting Safe in the Theatre of Electricity (iblurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press 2022).

GARDEN

GAYLORD BREWER

The silky, crimson petals of hibiscus, each bloom round and wide as a plate. The great white wings of caladium draping the stone border. Oh, you know the story. Teeming abundance, curling tendril, probing pistil, palette aglow, art, artifice, wildness, design, the bee slick with lust. The garden in its glory. One could go on all day.

But I wonder, lately, as record heat surpasses record and fires whip and rage, and my wife’s daily watering seems a life sentence, and we look out over the garden from our cooled house as the west burns, as the east burns, as rattle of locust crescendos, wonder at this unsustainable beauty. To our credit, last stand against the end, or more display of privilege?

But it is pretty, from here.

GAYLORD BREWER is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and for 20+ years edited the journal Poems & Plays. The most recent of his 16 books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and cookery are two collections of poems, The Feral Condition (Negative Capability, 2018) and Worship the Pig (Red Hen, 2020). A book of flash nonfiction, Before the Storm Takes It Away, is forthcoming from Red Hen in spring 2024.

JOCELYN ULEVICUS is an American artist, writer, and poet. In her visual work, you’ll encounter colorful and energetic floral arrangements, while in her writing, she more closely explores her experiences of being a woman growing through and beyond loss and trauma. Her work is either forthcoming or published in magazines such as SWWIM Every Day, The Free State Review, Blue Mesa Review, and Humana Obscura, among others. In addition, Ulevicus is a Best Poets 2022 nominee, a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, and her in-progress memoir, The Birth of a Tree, was shortlisted for the 2019 Santa Fe Literary Award Program. She is currently in Amsterdam, finalizing her first collection of poems.

GARDEN (CROPPED), JOCELYN ULEVICUS ACRYLIC ON LINEN, 100CM X 120CM

SOLOMON’S SEAL AT HUNTERS CREEK

KEITH ERICKSON

We’d use a word like found

as in—It found itself here—but it is a plant so words won’t tell why it angles out of this wet bank but no where else nearby—only here

It found itself here living well—in fruit now

living wild—where it fit a place flecked with sandy thoughts thought in a sunlit body beyond my ken made mostly of what made me

KEITH ERICKSON is a recently retired teacher who lives and learns in Lyons, Colorado. Trained as a biologist, historian of science, and secondary school science teacher, he somehow caught the poetry bug during the pandemic. His recovery has been extremely slow.

HAIKU

MICHELLE ORTEGA

spring rain— the violet’s eye flutters

MICHELLE ORTEGA has been published at Tweetspeak Poetry, Tiferet Journal, Exit 13, Snapdragon Journal, Platform Review, Shot Glass Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Rust + Moth, Humana Obscura, and elsewhere. Don’t Ask Why (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020), her microchap Tissue Memory (Porkbelly Press, 2022), and links to publications can be found at www.michelleortegawrites.com.

HAIKU

EMILY SCUDDER

Basho, you walked and wrote and walked some more thinking of springtime

EMILY SCUDDER is a poet, librarian, and the author of the full-length poetry collection Feeding Time (Pecan Grove Press), and two poetry chapbooks, Natural Instincts and A Change of Pace (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in Harvard Review, Agni Online, Salamander, New Letters, North Dakota Quarterly and other publications. She holds a Master in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School where she studied world religious traditions and lives in Massachusetts with her family where she enjoys the ocean and writing haiku on a neighborhood bench. Visit her at www.emilyscudder.com

WHAT’S TRUE

KRISTIN W. DAVIS

It’s easier not to notice the first dogwood blossom, the flute-call of the wood thrush. It’s easier not to stalk the sublime,

muscle the word, the softest slant rhyme. It’s easier not to write it down. But the eastern woods seduce in springtime. I allow myself to wander in the wet moss.

Sun bolts sideways between hemlocks, alights on spider threads tethered to bark, fibers waving in a breeze, making the very air visible.

That’s when I glimpse the trailhead, my muddy bootprints weeping behind.

KRISTIN W. DAVIS is a former journalist and earned an MFA in poetry in 2022 from the University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Banyan Review, Passager, THINK, and the Bay to Ocean anthology, and on the Split this Rock blog and Maine Public Radio’s Poems from Here. Her work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and earned the International Human Rights Arts Festival’s Creators of Justice Award.

LILY OF THE VALLEY, TIFFANY TUCHEK

TIFFANY TUCHEK is an emerging writer, photographer and watercolor artist. She is a former elementary teacher with a B.A. in Education from Michigan State University. She lives in Michigan with her husband and rescue pets: two dogs and five parrots. Her interests include yoga, baking, and walks with her family. She enjoys reflecting the powerful and fragile aspects of nature through micropoetry. Her haiku have appeared in Humana Obscura, Rockvale Review, Tiny Seeds Literary Journal, and Plants & Poetry Journal. Other poems and photography have been published or are forthcoming in Beyond Words Literary Magazine and Culinary Origami Journal

MARY’S TEARS

KRISTIAN O’HARE

Quiet as a garden after rain

Those lilacs knew my mother, I say Those lily-of-the-valley, I point to the little sprays of white flowers she called them Mary’s tears said she cried at the cross said each tear drop turned into these bell-like flowers

At night silent sparks of fireflies

HAIKU

LUKE LEVI

full moon even the flowers shine white spring without end wildflower hills

LUKE LEVI’s poems can be found in Humana Obscura, Presence, Tiny Seed Journal, Haiku Commentary, Akitsu Quarterly, Narrative Northeast, and elsewhere. He lives in the Texas Hill Country. His recent poetry book, So Fragile Are the Beautiful Things, was a finalist for the IAN Book of the Year award in poetry. Find him on Instagram @lukelevipoet and Twitter @LukeLevi6.

VIAN BORCHERT is an established expressionist artist. Borchert has exhibited extensively in exhibitions within the US and internationally. A graduate and “Notable Alumni” from the Corcoran College of Art & Design George Washington University, Washington, DC, Borchert exhibits in museums and key galleries in major cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, and London. Borchert had her artwork exhibited in prestigious venues like The SAM Museum, Times Square - Broadway Plaza, United Nations Lobby Gallery in NYC, Art Basel Miami Beach, 1stDibs Design Center in Chelsea, NYC. Her artwork is also in embassies and in private collections worldwide. Borchert’s art has been vastly featured in press like MOEVIR Paris Fashion & Art Magazine, ARTPIL, The Washington Post, Modern Renaissance Magazine and Vie magazine. Borchert is an art educator teaching fine art classes in the Washington DC area. Borchert’s artwork can be found at auction houses and luxury marketplaces “Artsy” and “1stDibs.” Learn more at www.vianborchert.com

A SEA OF FLORA, VIAN BORCHERT ACRYLIC ON CANVAS

HAIKU

KRISTINA STOCKS

wandering and wild nature pressing her heavy body upon me

KRISTINA STOCKS is a writer and seller of books from Treaty 6 Territory (Amiskwaciy Waskahikan), colonially known as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is working on an MA in English and Creative writing, and you can find her most recent work in Miracle Monocle and Roanoke Review. She was the winner of the 2022 WANL Folklore Next Door contest and a recent alumnus of the Sage Hill writing experience. Right now, Stocks is working on a book about an influencer who accidentally starts a fire in the woods.

FAITH

HEATHER HOLLIGER

A cherry blossom’s fisted nerves—pink and red and white—fragile and aching, bared into the air, the wind’s pitch—

HEATHER HOLLIGER holds an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University and currently teaches writing at the Academy of Art University. Her creative work has been published in a dozen journals, including the Aurorean, Cold Mountain Review, Feminist Studies, Gay and Lesbian Review, Labletter, SNReview, and Sugar Mule. Her poems have been featured in the Split This Rock Poem of the Week Series and in the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory. She is a former editor of So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language & Art

TREES, LIKE FIREWORKS, 16, JASON ENGELUND

JASON ENGELUND is a San Francisco Bay Area based artist. His artworks have been exhibited in galleries and art fairs in London, New York City, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco. In 2016, he was nominated and selected as one of eleven photographic artists for the triennial exhibition “Boundless: A California Invitational” at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, California, where his artwork is now held in the permanent collection. Engelund’s studio practice expanded through his artist residency in France in the spring of 2022. Find more of Engelund’s artworks online at jasonengelund.com.

HAIKU

JANET RUTH HELLER

May snowfall— drifting in the wind cherry petals

JANET RUTH HELLER is the past president of the Michigan College English Association. She has published four poetry books: Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora, 2012), and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line, 2011); a scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (University of Missouri Press, 1990); a middle-grade fiction chapter book for children, The Passover Surprise (Fictive, 2015, 2016); and a fiction picture book for children about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edition 2022), that has won four national awards. Her website is https://www.janetruthheller.com

HAIKU

TIFFANY LIZ MACKAY

a promise to return again— plum blossoms

TIFFANY LIZ MACKAY is a haiku and tanka poet based in Seattle, Washington. Her passion for using just a few words to capture a moment led her to the world of short-form poetry. Her poems can be found in Cold Moon Journal, Plum Tree Tavern, Scarlet Dragonly, Japan Society London Haiku Corner, and various other journals. Follow her on Twitter @tlmpoetry and Instagram @tiffanymackaypoetry.

SUNSHINE, NAJIB JOE HAKIM

THE ANTIDOTE

BYRON WILSON

Stand alone among the loveless trees. Let the viscous air that unmoving creates coat your skin. Stay long enough that it seeps in.

NAJIB JOE HAKIM ’s love of photography was congenital. How else would you explain photographing GI Joes at five years old? After running into Ansel Adams (literally!) many years later, he caught the nature photo bug. Like many fellows, Hakim took one photo class and was off to National Geographic with a portfolio but without an appointment. Alas, he never got past the receptionist. That encounter set his photo career back 15 years. Fortunately, he found his way back in 1990. He has since worked as a documentary photographer and a photo instructor. He has steadily gained recognition resulting in a long list of solo and group exhibitions from California to Europe. National Geographic missed its chance. He received the 2020 Rebuilding Alliance Storytellers Award. In 2019, Hakim was an Art Fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. He is also a past nominee for the US Artist Fellowship.

BYRON WILSON currently lives in Oregon with his lovely wife and three rambunctious dogs. You can find some of his creative work in Paddler Press, Zero Readers, Wild Roof Journal, and Humana Obscura. He is working to complete his first collection.

WHERE WE ONCE STOOD

KAREN JONES

Along the Metolius River, a huge Ponderosa leans onto a neighboring tree, precarious, its root system lifted halfway from the ground, the broad skirt spread wide and shallow, revealing a partial cave beneath.

The roots hang raw, broken, displaced, still clinging to their stones of possession, their clay of home in a reluctant goodbye to the soil, but hardly a scar appears on the bank, the depression healed with new grasses. As if the uprooting wasn’t much of a disturbance, as if the earth is accustomed to life’s comings and goings, its history soon adorned by other forms, its wounds of leaving softened and greened.

KAREN JONES is a teacher, poet, and life-long learner from Corvallis, Oregon. Some of her recent work has appeared in Green Ink Poetry, The Raven’s Perch, and Circle of Seasons. Her chapbook is entitled Seasons of Earth and Sky (Finishing Line Press).

DREAM FORESTS

HEATHER HOLLIGER

Remember the pleasures of your nature, return to the deep of the woods, sweet fern, goldenrod, splendor of berries in summer, hush of swaying pines, warmth of another’s body, curled into the flushed cradle of neck, belly, legs, awaken to the deep of the night, race in the moonlight for miles across slumbering wilds, leap into the light of morning, soft lean of black willows, shade of tall grasses, sip from the river, from another’s tongue, lick each other clean and whole.

HAIKU

HUGH HUGHES

after the hawk— a field of mourning coos

HUGH HUGHES is a writer and poet, focusing on free verse and haiku poetry. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is the president of a social enterprise that supports women transitioning into permanent housing. When he is not working on poetry or his first high fantasy novel series, he can be found hiking, gardening, or drawing maps and landscapes of the fictional world he created. Hughes holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hope International University.

GHAZAL OF THE POND

CHERYL ANNE LATUNER

Four Belted Kingfishers in a branching tree. Small squadron, shooting like stars.

One universe of Nymphaea, white water lilies— Beaming stillness out of the water.

Blue lights rattle and swoop. The surface bursts. Crowding the edges, the lilies swoon.

Belted necks pass over like moons. Light clings to the blooms. The surface recovers.

The pond falls in and out of balance. What of the watcher? On the far shore,

She falls in, and out of love. Out, and in. And a deer wades with dark hooves in the stars.

CHERYL ANNE LATUNER was a fellow in the M.A. program at Iowa State University when she published the longpoem chapbook, The Ballad of Sackman Street. Her second chapbook, inspired by a local conservation area, was Soon They Will Fly: A Mediation at Fitzgerald Lake. Her poetry has also appeared in journals such as in The Comstock Review, The Naugatuck River Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and Literary Mama. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, is an avid hiker, and is at work on a place- and nature-based memoir titled No Long Island Girl.

LILY PAD COMPOSITE, MICHAEL J. ROMANO

MICHAEL J. ROMANO is a lifelong nature lover and self-taught photographer. He practices the ethos of “leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but photos” as he explores the natural world. Through his art, he encourages viewers to develop emotional responses to the beauty of nature and his way of experiencing it, which he hopes they will carry forward as they continue to enhance their own love and respect for nature.

MANY STORIES, JOY BROOM

JOY BROOM’s work has been shown at a wide range of venues. Solo shows include the deYoung Museum’s Kimball Gallery as Artist-in-Residence, Stanford Art Spaces, the inaugural StartUp Art Fair, and StartUp Small Works in San Francisco. Group shows include the recent deYoung Open, SFMOMA Artists Gallery, the Berkeley Art Center, and the Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek. Broom is a recipient of the WESTAF/NEA Regional Fellowship for Visual Artists/ Works on Paper, and her work was included and displayed in the original collection at The diRosa Preserve, Napa. She lives in the San Francisco East Bay.

HOUSES MADE OF GLASS

RUTH ZWALD

“Everyone calls the Amazon rainforest the lungs of the world, b ut it’s actually the diatoms in the oceans, rivers, and lakes of the world that make up half the oxygen in our atmosphere.”

- National Geographic

Cradling the future, a diatom is a single celled algae encased in ornate cell walls made of silica. Thousands of species. Orbs and stripes and disks and fans. Beauty

microscopic. I stare at the photos. They resemble shards of stones or pieces of a star. A minute ago I didn’t even know they existed. Now my existence is linked to theirs.

If diatoms breathe, we breathe. As Lake Michigan warms, diatoms sink. Sunlight cannot touch them to create photosynthesis for the planet. Stunned by symmetry, I sing gratitude for the smallest stuff that keeps me afloat, for words that turn light into breath, for fragile beauty in a brittle body. It is the little things that matter deep.

RUTH ZWALD is a retired social worker/minister and makes her home on a farm in Michigan, starting every dawn with good coffee and the crow of the rooster. She has huge gardens, and with her partner raises sheep and chickens. Loving the cycles of the seasons, Zwald watches the moon and never misses a solstice or equinox turning. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, she turned to words to help her heal. Her words have been published in Voices de la Luna, The Ravens Perch, Bloodletters, Claw and Blossom, Blood and Thunder, Lifelines, and Earth’s Daughters

GLOVER RIVER

JOHN GIFFORD

I awaken to a cardinal singing and a moment later the sounds of a crow calling in the distance. Soon, I’m making my way downhill along a game trail, slipping through the oaks and pines, pausing to negotiate precarious bluffs and ledges. And then, there it is: Oklahoma’s last free-flowing river, the Glover, waiting for me in the cool morning air, her emerald surface shaded by the surrounding Ouachita Mountains.

It is September and the river is low from another hot, dry summer. The fish I’m seeking—representatives of the Glover’s genetically pure population of Ouachita-strain smallmouth bass—are holding deep in these shaded pools, waiting for the autumn rains to come. I hike downstream along the rocky riverbank to a wide, boulder-strewn pool. Here, next to a school of minnows congregating along the bank, I string up my fly rod.

Already, the shade is evaporating with the rising sun. I work quickly to get a fly into the water before the growing heat put the fish down until evening. The Glover’s smallmouth have evolved to be able to tolerate the area’s harsh climate, but even these fish aren’t immune to hours of lethargy when temperatures soar to 100 de-

grees or more. Considering the river’s healthy population of minnows and darters, including the endangered leopard darter, I opt for a weighted streamer pattern that I can work along the stream bottom. I pinch the barb on my hook and let it go. And on my second cast, the frenetic pulling on my line tells me I’ve chosen wisely.

Later, splashing sounds in the middle of the river catch my attention. A school of minnows leaps from the water, chased by something larger beneath the surface. Their shiny bodies glint in the sunlight. Rather than make a cast, I drop the fly rod, remove my shirt, march out into the river and dive in. The darters and crayfish scatter across the river’s rocky bottom, where I take refuge from the heat. I hold my breath for ten seconds, twenty seconds, enveloped in the river’s cool waters and the verdant Ouachita Mountains surrounding them. How long can the Glover River continue to avoid the dams that upset the natural balance of so many other waterways around the world? I look at my watch and count the time as the second hand sweeps around the dial. Forty-five seconds pass. Then, a full minute. I’m still holding my breath.

JOHN GIFFORD’s nonfiction has appeared in Big Sky Journal, Southwest Review, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. His books include Red Dirt Country, Pecan America, and a forthcoming title, Landscaping for Wildlife

ROSE-MARIE KELLER FLAIG lives in the south of Germany. Her biggest source of inspiration is unlimited nature. In exciting complement, it is natural limits that cause her great passion: macro photography. Shallow depth of field allows her to direct the viewer’s eye to what she feels is essential in the object. She moves the inconspicuous, ordinary or even supposedly ugly, because withered, into focus. Her aim is always to trigger feelings and associations that she herself felt when taking the picture. Check out her work on Instagram @blendenglueck

REFRESHING, ROSE-MARIE KELLER-FLAIG

PLATTE RIVER SHIMMER, KATIE MOLLON

KATIE MOLLON is an analog enthusiast based in Michigan, USA. After earning a B.A. in photography, she has continued specializing in experimental photography over the last 15 years. Her work often incorporates the Great Lakes as a metaphor for the subconscious. She is passionate about sharing her love of lo-fi cameras, and ways to alter film.

AGELESS

SHANE COPPAGE

day after day the river leaves its story at the foot of the mountain

SHANE COPPAGE is an emerging writer with a fine arts degree and a certified Taoist yoga teacher. While he has self-published two books, Humana Obscura is the first publication to receive examples of his poetry. Coppage lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his fiancée, Sarah, and their dog child, Lola.

HAIKU KJMUNRO

ocean waves or mountain breeze your voice echoes

KJMUNRO lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. She is Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada, and a member of the League of Canadian Poets and the Federation of BC Writers. Her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019), and she is currently revising a poetry manuscript.

RIPPLE, DARIA PANICHAS

DARIA PANICHAS makes art because it’s a joy, and likes to explore beauty, transformation, stillness, and possibility. Through unconventional light, lines, and contour, her photographs distill natural objects, landscapes, and streetscapes into ambiguous forms; freed from the familiar, they morph into new worlds that invite the viewer to explore and wonder, just as she did. View her work on her website, www.panichas.com, or on Instagram @dariapanichas.

VATNAJOKULL S E BACHINGER

S E BACHINGER is a New York based artist. As a collaborator with the more-than-human, her work attempts to transmute their material experiences through archive and art. She is interested in exploring and opening spaces for speculative communications between more-than-human agents and humans as a means of presenting alternative perspectives to anthropocentric histories and imagined futures. Drawing inspiration from new materialism and animism, her work is intuitive, process-based, multidisciplinary and site-specific—it has included installation, photography, community art practice, audio/visual, and mixed media sculpture/painting.

AT THE FAR EDGE

ALI SAPERSTEIN

No, my mother replies, I do not want this summer to be the first one I didn’t swim in the ocean. The flesh of her hand is worn silk—thin, warm, impossibly soft.

So, at sunrise, we drive to the sea wall, head to the stairs leading down to the beach, and stretch one determined foot each into the space beyond. She grips the rail and tentatively favors her replaced hip as we descend. Loose, dry sand left on the concrete from the last high tide shifts each time we drop, step by step, closer. The Atlantic whispers across the Gulf of Maine. Shh . . . hush . . . shh . . . . We cross the expanse of wet, hard-packed sand skirting the ragged rocks.

Now, we have arrived at the edge, where the ocean keeps reaching for us, then drawing away.

I take her hand, and we move into it.

The shock of cold water makes us wince and whimper before it begins to numb our soles, ankles, calves. We keep wading farther out, close together, until the ocean takes us completely. Our weightless bodies, smiling upward, surrender and bob with the swells, drifting apart from each other.

Afterward, while we rest and rewarm, our skin tingles with drying salt. Gesturing toward the hazy morning sky, she says, You can’t see where the horizon is today. At the far edge of sight is a soft smudge, the sea and the heavens having melted into forever. And, somewhere in the fog before then, the first summer I’ll come alone here to swim with her.

ALI SAPERSTEIN grew up searching for blueberries under eastern white pines, but her face now turns up to the mist falling on the the Pacific Northwest Douglas fir. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Hippocampus Magazine, under the gum tree, Ruminate Magazine, Watershed Review, and elsewhere.

TANKA & HAIKU

PETRO C. K.

over there the waves thunder but here I listen fingers of sea foam strumming the pebbles

redrawing the lines in the sand coastal winds

PETRO C. K. lives in the aggressive greenery of Seattle, but lets no moss grow on him. His creative life has included painting, graphic design, sound art, and DJ’ing, but only just recently dove headfirst into writing. His haiku and other short-form poems have already been widely published in dozens of eminent journals, and has been nominated for several Touchstone and Pushcart awards. He still wears all black.

VEINED CREAM STONE, SARAH VERARDO OIL ON LINEN, 16’’ X 20’’

GREEN WEATHERED STONE, SARAH VERARDO OIL ON LINEN, 16’’ X 20’’

OCTOPUS PEEK-A-BOO, PHIL LEMLEY

PHIL LEMLEY is an underwater photographer based in Seaside, California. After years of teaching marine science at non-profit organizations, Lemley shifted his career path to renewable energy in 2018. He now shares his love of “sweet sweet mamma ocean” through his photographs. By highlighting the beauty of some of Monterey Bay’s lesser known marine species, he hopes others can gain a greater appreciation for our bay and beyond.

AN OCTOPUS HAS THREE HEARTS, & OTHER WONDERS

KRISTINA PERCY

The amount of wonder in the world is unknown, but we do know this: it is, so far, not endangered. Wonder lives anywhere. Find it in a volcano, blocked storm drain, crease of a favourite page. It feeds best in the shifting dark on the far edge of sleep, but can survive on the thinnest peels of thought or pride. In captivity, where even those are scarce, wonder has been known to wander from its too-small tank and run its suckers over any ordinary thing: a pencil, a succulent.

As it grows, wonder learns that a door is not a wall. Did you know that wonder can pick a lock? That it can regrow each part of itself severed by its many critics?

Wonder lives just long enough to tend to its One Great Idea. It dies soon after the idea is born.

KRISTINA PERCY (she/ her) lives on Vancouver Island, Canada, in the traditional territories of the Ligwiłda’xw people. Neither of her degrees have anything to do with creative writing. Her work has been published extensively in her Gmail drafts folder, and you can also find it on Instagram @__kpwrites

LOW TIDE

KRISTINA PERCY

After Aracelis Girmay’s “The Dog”

Here we are in this ramshackle year. Tide runs out: leaves us with crabs the size of every fingernail, wilting jellyfish, penance of barnacles. Mussels pinch themselves, & wait. Small round stones tug at my pockets, desperate to sink like gravity intended. Salt dries on our elbows & big toes & the backs of our knees. Our paddles dip, a prayer (amen); though we have nothing to pray for, or to, we slip them in again amongst flashing silver; bull kelp, those endless nodding bells.

GROWTH, PHIL LEMLEY

THE EBBING

KATE KOBOSKO

We are tired by the time we get back to the lot, our breath shallow and humid with salt. Our feet touch and his are sandy still from the island we walked today in the rain. I picked oyster shells oil slick in color, pocketed halved clam hulls large as my fist. I have a paper bag collection of these in my car, I hear them scuff and rattle like a breaking tide each time I take a turn too fast. I can’t stop thinking about the ways we’ve scarred ourselves, our planet. I gave up plastic, meat, single-use drug store bags. I make my own almond milk. It seems breathless, manic, the way I want these actions to add up. I hope in twenty years we can return to this beach and the dunes won’t have leeched into the sea. I want to hear about divers finding mollusks living centuries before the ocean folds them home in her palm.

LIGHT CLAM SHELL, SARAH VERARDO OIL ON LINEN, 16’’ X 20’’

SHELLTER, SIA WINDIG

SIA WINDIG reveals hidden beauty. In her work as a content editor, she brings themes, companies, and people to light. In her macro photography, she likes to play with what nature gives at that moment, be it light, wind, tides or frost. She guides people to look at the world from a different perspective to evoke a sense of wonder and a need to protect all that is precious. The Dutch coast is an important place for her inspiration.

HAIKU

C. X. TURNER

finding peace in the sound of the sea— conch shell

WHERE WE RECEIVE WHAT WE NEED

KAREN E. FRASER

Grassland meets a rim of shoreline littered with millions of crushed and battered shells, each slowly decaying until grains of sand. Some have shed their calcareous skin revealing mother-of-pearl now glinting luminescent in the mid-morning sun.

This stubborn patch of greenery knows its place and does not enter here. Yet in defiance, a rebellion of sorts, lives right to the edge of possibility, overextending unanchored tendrils without shrinking back.

Perhaps this is what life wants from us all as it presses hard upon our reaching, husked exteriors, cracking us to bare bone so we may exist graciously and yet more clearly defined, lovely even— each a morsel of light that cannot be easily passed without at least being held wholly by the eye.

KAREN E. FRASER is a Melbourne-based writer and poet, with degrees in both Professional and Creative Writing, and Anthropology and has held professional roles as a writer, and as editor of Verandah Journal. Fraser has been published by Humana Obscura, Bloodmoon Journal, Freeverse Revolution Lit, Querencia, Wee Sparrow Press, and Poetica Christi Press. Her poetry embraces the beauty of the natural world; activism, advocacy and social justice; and the absolute necessity of freedom, love, dignity and belonging. Visit her on Instagram @be_nourished.

BLUE QUAHOG, SARAH VERARDO OIL ON LINEN, 24’’ X 30’’

UNTIL NOW, EWA MATYJA MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 150CM X 180CM

EWA MATYJA is an abstract artist who explores the beauty of surrounding nature and expresses it on canvas using mixed media. She explores the emotions that envolve using texture, depth, different structures, and a limited pallette of color. She invites an audience to find hidden stories in small details in her work.

WHALE WATCHING OFF THE COAST OF RAUSU

THOMAS FARR

I spy their fins above the waves—dark rise disrupts the steely ocean’s noumenal meditation. Water crashes. Magpie flanks breach and turn; saddle-patched, beautiful.

We watch them graze Nemuro Strait. Social by nature, tight-knit, matrilineal; their eyes set low, blotched by huge white ovals like robbers’ masks. Ghostly, ethereal, their monodies—those folklores of the soul alike in man and beast—float solemnly through wide sea skies. The wind cuts in. Thin, cold, it scatters their songs across watery leagues. And in Taiji pods of pilot whales are slaughtered, hauled ashore in silence.

THOMAS FARR is a British writer of fiction and poetry, much of whose work explores and challenges the human/ nature binary. He has appeared or is forthcoming in Livina Press, Tales to Terrify, Aôthen Magazine, Ram Eye Press, The Jupiter Review, what’s the theme zine, tiny wren lit, Red Wolf Periodical, and elsewhere. He tweets @tfarrpoetry.

STORM TIME

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

Cyanic bruise sutured at the horizon’s edge— grey ink-soaked sky, blurred as palm prints on window glass. Honey locust, brambled green, rose canes stripped to their thorns . . . clouds fallen into the torpor of the lawn. Beyond the breakwater, a gun metal seaboard, and one strand of sun spiking the shattered pier.

Hibiscus flowers, Red shredded crepe, wild and unwound on the border of the barranca . . . ice plant—mauve, saffron, white as frost— across the palisades like a starry sky about to rise. . . .

Wind flourishes in aquatic boughs of eucalyptus— 15 billion years and light still misting down to be here, this split second. . . .

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY edited: NAMING THE LOST: THE FRESNO POETS—Interviews & Essays, Stephen F. Austin State Univ. Press, 2021. His most recent book, One Sky to the Next, winner of the Long Leaf Press contest, is due in 2023. He has placed poetry in Humana Obscura previously.

ADELE WEBSTER is an award winning British/Canadian artist currently based along the shores of Lake Ontario in Kingston. She focuses on gesture and color, layering washes of paint on wood panels to create her work which is inspired by nature’s landscapes. Using a minimalist style she brings balance in an attempt to decipher the everyday chaos towards calm. She intends to create a mood or evoke a dream-like memory that one can escape into while enjoying the playfulness of the contemporary peaceful vista. Her work can be found in galleries across Canada. Join her on instagram @AdeleWebster_Art or visit her website www.AdeleWebster.com.

HAZY DAYS, ADELE WEBSTER ACRYLIC AND GOLD LEAF ON GALLERY DEPTH BIRCH PANEL, 24” X 35”

PORTAL I, S E BACHINGER

THE PAUSE

REBECCA WILLIAMS

It’s hot. Sweaty and fuzzy with exhaustion she groans and heaves her right leg up as she grasps the mahogany post of the bed. She groans again. Long and low and curved. Soft to loud at a steady rate, peaking at its loudest and holding there. I tell her to hold it there. Right there. Hold it longer than you think you can, I say and she hears and I know she hears because the groan does not change pitch or volume. Then it goes soft again. Sweat appears in tiny clear beads under her neck. They drip and join like little braided streams that flow into rivers down her back. They make tiny puddles on the floor near her feet where they mingle with drops of blood. I plunge my towel into the steel bowl of ice water and let it swell. I bring the soaked cloth to her shoulders as she settles, ready again for the cool relief of the water’s touch on her humid skin.

We have been at this all night, she and I. Occasional pauses in our work allow the midwife to come in, listen to the baby’s heartbeat, smile. And then we are back at it. Wave after wave brings her baby closer to shore and I remind her how to bear the force of the sea. When the sea comes to a rocky shore the waves are rough, violent, dangerous. When the sea comes to a sandy beach that slopes down to greet it, it comes in soft. I remind her to be soft. Permit the sea to come, let it swallow you. You will not die.

In a moment, she curls her hips under her body. She pulls down on the bed hard. She grits her teeth and I whisper in her ear: soften your jaw. Her face is red. I feel the heat coming off of it. Her jaw slackens and her mouth becomes a circle. The midwife places a blue-latex hand on her baby’s purple scalp. We pause. We breathe. She rests. Long, luxurious, drawn out moments go by. She is not asleep. She is not awake. She is slackened. No one speaks. We listen to each other’s breathing. Her long, slow, steady inhales and exhales ebb and flow and soon all the breathing in the room is like

hers. Long. Slow. Waiting. Resting. I watch the heat that has settled on her evaporate off her shoulder in little translucent swirls.

A shift comes. Her rest yields to something else. She tightens and coils around it. Have you ever watched a constricting snake grasp and eat a rat? There is no tension in its squeeze. It holds its prey and narrows the space, but the snake does not narrow itself. It stays the same size. All its parts organize and coalesce around a single point of focus and holds until the rat, breathless, is swallowed.

Blood floods onto the towels on the floor, red, and damp, and slick. She stays where she is for a moment—hanging on to the bed. With her baby on the red floor, still attached to her, I place my arm under hers and guide her to sit where she is safe and cannot fall. Blood flows fresh. Her feet are stained with it, the inside of her legs streaked with red watercolor lines. She collects her purple child, damp and greasy and folded.

The placenta arrives. Dark and purple as a calf’s liver. The pale violet twists of cord fan out into it exactly as the roots of a tree coil around dirt and rock in their slow search for water and purchase. Their work is finished. She subsides, her belly soft and her baby nearby but farther from her than it has yet been. Blood and water are everywhere. There is much to do: cleaning and eating and nursing and making phone calls and opening gifts and signing paperwork and answering questions and taking medicines and sleeping and all of it waits. That’s on the other side. She is here. Midstream. A bifurcation appears where there was none. What was one channel flows in two. One there. The other, over there. The world is changed. She feels the current. Hers is here. Her child’s over there. They feel the pull of their own flows. They are swallowed whole.

REBECCA WILLIAMS is a farmer, painter, writer, outdoors-woman, mother, and sometimes birthworker who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She is set to begin her MFA program in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University this August. Williams is interested in the relationships between the female body and landscape from a female perspective.

TWO HAIKU

TIFFANY LIZ MACKAY

summer reverie— a slow-moving current of billowing clouds

warm summer night— marigold melts into the pale blue

TURNING OF THE TIDE, ADELE WEBSTER ACRYLIC AND GOLD LEAF ON GALLERY DEPTH BIRCH PANEL, 40” X 40”

HUDSON RIVER SUNSET RIPPLE #3, KELLY SCHULZE

TU VUONG is an award-winning educator and writer. She has been a lead in projects with the Ontario Ministry of Education, Apple Education, and has contributed content to various magazines, blogs and podcasts. She finds joy in creating pieces that weave words and art in a way that moves others to cultivate their creativity. She currently resides in Ottawa, Canada.

ETRE, TU VUONG

EROSION

The rock rises up in a wave of pink, crashes down deep burgundy red. I am surrounded, these walls and floor of rock once a part of an immovable mountain. Wind and water washed it away, and all that remains is this tunnel. It happens slowly and imperceptibly, disintegration. There are signs for those who listen and watch. He stops tangling his legs in yours as he sleeps. Soon, he ceases to greet you with a hug. You quit talking and spending time together. And then, you realize there’s not much left. Where once there was a tall, strong mountain, there now stands only a narrow tunnel. You are barely connected. The wind whips through the tunnel, sandstone walls blow away little by little. Fine sand blows into my hair. I grab his hand and hold on tight, pray it’s enough.

HEATHER KERN is a mother, a school counselor, and an avid outdoor enthusiast living in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys writing, particularly about the intersection of nature and relationships. She is new to the world of writing and has one published poem in a journal called Deep Wild

BARE, B. L. BRUCE

BURN SCAR

MICHAEL P. HILL

Even in full sun, the bare, beleaguered aspens here beside the river appear as silhouettes,

the effect largely owing to charred husks of bark slung like tattered overcoats over their skeletal frames.

And beyond them, more still, extending up the ridge, a dreary, defeated regiment on the long march home,

the odd slash of white like that of bandaged wounds, some so deeply felt they may never heal entirely.

MICHAEL P. HILL is the author of the chapbooks Not Just Passing Through (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2022) and Junk Drawer (Kelsay Books, 2021). His poems have also appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Spillway, Briar Cliff Review, Soundings East and Gray’s Sporting Journal, among others. He lives in Northern Colorado with his family.

DESERT DOXOLOGY

WILLIAM ROSS

The beavertail, the cat’s claw, the bunny ear—a rag-tag collection of animal parts—they all bow to the sagamore of the desert, the ancient one casting the longest shadow in this blistering land where nothing green should live, much less rise, a monument to tenacity.

In the cool midnight air, the little ones intone the name of the colossus with magnificent arms raised to the black Sonoran sky: saguaro, saguaro.

WILLIAM ROSS is a communication designer who wrote the Introduction to Epistles to the Torontonians (Oak Knoll Press). His poetry has appeared in Bluepepper and is forthcoming in Cathexis Northwest Press. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

SPRING EQUINOX IN DEATH VALLEY

ANNIE CODY HOLDREN

Like pollen scattered from lilies, stars emerge around Arcturus.

Earthbound darkness shrouds steep switchbacks we’d followed to reach the bristlecone pines, whose ribbons of live bark twist around relicts three-thousand-years old.

We’d sat in the chill with them, felt our decades as flickerings.

Now you light the stove, cook our dinner on high flame.

Tomorrow we’ll go down to Salt Creek, where we’ll see desert pupfish squirm, breeding in braided rivulets, silvery females nipping and tilting toward the clasping, iridescent males. Easy to compare the brief lifespans of fish to pines, like stove light to stars. But the creek dries up unseasonably quick and the pines can’t climb higher than each new year’s heat. Here there’ll be no resurrection.

ANNIE CODY HOLDREN is a life-long Californian who lives with her husband in unincorporated Monterey County. Her professional career has centered on interpreting and writing about archaeology and natural history. She has had poems published in Anthropology and Humanism and Catamaran, and is a finalist for the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize.

LYTTELTON VI, DARNIA HOBSON

DARNIA HOBSON is an illustrator and graphic designer with extensive experience and skills in traditional drawing, design, and alternative education. Using the camera as a drawing tool, Darnia’s recent work has explored themes of re/invention and imitation, the replica and the faux, across still life, architecture, and landscape genres. Away from her pencils, Hobson can be found living the quiet life near the sea on Banks Peninsula, New Zealand, enjoying expansive skies, her family and friends, amateur entomology, and collecting far too many books.

IGNITE, JASMIN JAVON

JASMIN JAVON is an abstract artist and photographer based in Southern California. Photography as a whole has been a love of hers for as long as she can remember, and the love only continues to grow. It has been the only thing in her life where she feels completely herself with no fear or reservations. Using common household items like water, oil, food coloring, and dish soap, she has been able to create various conceptual images from things we use on a daily basis. Javon’s goal is to intrigue the minds of those who view her work in a way that provokes the imagination. She believes that it’s not about what you’re looking at, but what you SEE that makes art worthwhile. Her intention is to reach as many people as possible with her art, and to open the eyes and minds of anyone who can love and appreciate art for what it is . . . the essence of a person’s soul.

TANKA

JOHN VUKMIROVICH

A week of storms broke the drought, the rain fell in sheets, gusts, whispers. One night, the air mud thick, fireflies lit up the yard with their dance.

JOHN VUKMIROVICH is an independent scholar, freelance writer, and book reviewer. In 2000, he earned his PhD in English from Loyola University Chicago; his dissertation was on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. His note, “Crossroads of the Imagination: A Possible Musical Origin for the Character of Jupiter in Poe’s ‘The Gold-Bug,’” appeared in the summer 2016 issue of The Journal of American Folklore. His book reviews have appeared in the London-based Times Literary Supplement and The Journal of American Studies. He has also published numerous op-eds in The Chicago SunTimes on educational, environmental, and economic issues. His poetry has appeared in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, and Presence, among others.

THE GATHERING OF CHANGE

MARY ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM

This is a magician’s wind, keening, groaning. Speeches and cold spells wear on the stamina of spring. Raw blue sky with jagged edges, storms following sudden. Last year’s leaves roll down the salt shadowed road, falling petals haunt doorways.

Last year’s grief, instead of melting, rides in the air, and gets thinner and thinner. Some nights gape, long, dry and unspeaking. Some nights are frenzied, exploding with rain.

All that wanting and power, silent clouds moon-rinsed. To a magician, there’s never enough. Last year rips open again, and empties into the narrow throats of the heart.

MARY ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM was born, raised, and educated in New York City. She has studied poetry at the Joiner Institute in UMass, Boston. Birnbaum’s translation of the Haitian poet Felix Morisseau-Leroy has been published in The Massachusetts Review, the anthology Into English (Graywolf Press), and in And There Will Be Singing, An Anthology of International Writing by The Massachusetts Review, 2019 as well. Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Lake Effect, J-Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Soundings East, and Barrow Street

DISTURBANCE, MARCIA BILYK

A SMALL CASCADE, ROSEMARY H. WILLIAMS

THE WATERFALL

EDEN ARIELLE GORDON

There are things that words can’t express; things that images can’t contain.

The feeling of wind or the spider-like shiver erupting from the touch of another’s hand.

The dampness of ocean spray; the laughter of a hawk mirrored by a distant other.

The feeling of wings blooming out of your back, the boom of a waterfall, smashing against the rocks beneath it.

The pulse in the air as summer shifts to fall.  The creeping presence of time passing.

I can’t bring you to this waterfall, but I can tell you of the wind, the shadows of the trees,

the sunlight glittering off the ragged cliffs, the rhythm of the water’s motion thrumming under everything. There is a golden light shining through.

EDEN ARIELLE GORDON is a writer based in New York City. A graduate of Barnard College, she is a journalist by day and has been published in Atlas Obscura, Slate, and Lilith Magazine. By night she is a poet, climate activist, and songwriter, and has played at venues including Sofar Sounds and The Bowery Electric. She is currently at work on her debut poetry collection, Doors

ROSEMARY H. WILLIAMS is an emerging photographer living in Hixson, Tennessee, a suburb of Chattanooga, where she is winding down a long career as a paralegal. She is curious about the world around her and immerses herself in her surroundings in search of the seen, the unseen, the commonplace, and the unusual as subjects for her photography. She searches for these details and in doing so is able to share with others the world through her eyes. Connect with her on Instagram @rosemaryhwilliams.

www.humanaobscura.com