Heart Rot

heart rot poems

Rust Belt Pastoral

By Lily Someson

A snap of ice beneath boot. Bloodroot, road that coils under highway overpass.

Control-fire dunes, black with soot. Dead grass, winter's imprint the color of evening goldenrod. Blue-collar hands — city cleaved from finger with tweezers from the medicine cabinet.

Growing up wading in waste ponds, big sisters on the lawn haloed in sticker burrs. A home is associative logic —

imagined light in the peripherals. City as UFO sighting, disappearing like our Jäger-breathed fathers in after-work bar crawls.

Knowing the fields by their structure of sound, corn husks languished by the early frost. The blue gill of my heart —

my city is airplane parts, steel mecca, seaweed brain. Midwest as necromancy, the past re-imagined. Blight of sun hitting

oil ribbons floating to the white-knuckled shore. Strip clubs pinching the highway on either side, truckstop jubilee

quilting the infrastructure. Outlet malls lolling in knapweed, an economy of metal and rust. I have come to understand this skeleton of buildings, this

smoke-stack sky, fire collapsing through my open window. The factory of my want, thermal in nature. The ways fate has decided who is

under the car, on the conveyor line, wielding blow-torches until snow turns to steam. Vacancy of self, like the tinny sound of January, lawnchairs and windchimes on an abandoned porch. We pray to the industrial God, who examines our weakness of will, blows helicopter leaves until they sing their

thermal in nature. The ways fate has decided who is under the car, on the conveyor line, wielding blow-torches until snow turns to steam. Vacancy of self, like the tinny sound of January, lawnchairs and windchimes on an abandoned porch. We pray to the industrial God, who examines our weakness of will, blows helicopter leaves until they sing their yearly whistle. It is freeing, sometimes, to be forgotten. To live liminally. Zest of lemon in the pie window, smell of iron crowding the lungs.

The Coat

by Kelly Nicole

We found my friend’s body in a bare room. He left a hanging plant and a mug of affir mations: My kids love me My lif e has meaning All I need is within

If you feel hollow, take hear t. T he bones of a hummingbird have nothing inside and the universe is mostly space I can still feel my daughter at two slowly tracing my hand with a blue pencil T he tickle of wood and her small pulse ! yet my del ight tur ned fast to boredom

Now she fills her pockets with whatever’s left of Ear th: sad seeds, pieces of bone, coral from a doomed reef

I don’t know where to store loss. Floating shelf ? Mason jar? I want to show off this decay

I, too, am tired and feel a duty to rot. Like the legs of his trailing ivy, my g rief is lengthening We all drag the long coat of our dead.

soon we’ll reminisce for the anthropocene

by Diana Dalton

mother swears the whole tree came down at once, that both of them did. old crabapples leaning toward each other for one last kisswhat a thunderous embrace!

it was the weight of the children that did ‘em in, really clambering the swings with apple-sticky hands, showing no respect - none! - to the branches of their elder she remembers it as an act of god burying her head in her hands to speak it now.

there’s no saving for a hollowed tree. no salve, denial, bargaining or prayer to summon the heartwood back. humble heartwood who never makes her absence known, before the birthday party revelers cry out from underneath.

the giant’s core has not disappeared, but multiplied. how pretentious we are! to think our eyes can measure time. heartwood becomes the earth underneath us, verdant stragglers gasping for light, the apple-full bellies of the ants

old Methuselah will someday lose his heart, or, too wise for that, will wish it away will give it to a generation smog-choked to a child who holds a human among their branches perhaps, just perhaps, one who will not come down

what has made us?

no gods or hospitals, but dirty dew-wet moss we’ve forgotten. our hands and smiles wizen too - beautiful! our innards stay formaldehyde slush.

heart rot

Heart Rot [1] “ a fungal disease that causes the decay of wood at the center of the trunk and branches. Fungi enter the tree through wounds in the bark and decay the heartwood. The diseased heartwood softens, making trees structurally weaker and prone to breakage” (wikipedia). [2]

out. the world … our hearts crumbles apathy rots

so let’s face ourselves & release our sins into the wind~~

heart <3 on a bright day, rot :( sunshine sneaks through scattered leaves \ atop a lush, live oak tree; not just dancing across burly branches, casting for trees~ shadows of freedom onto joyous, / fertile grounds of liberation.

heart rot is / | / | / / | unchecked / | / supremacy; / / / \ \ / this entire godforsaken “amerikan” (anti- ) “society,” the vitriolic bile that undergirds \ | \ \ enabling | | | \ rich & powerful str8 white men

its manifestations: \ / \ to destroy us all self-righteous | / contradiction, | / consumer domination, \ supremacy is a mere twig settler occupation, ============== on the scale of cosmic eternity, commodity fetishism, =========== a futile aberration amidst the cartesian dualism, abundant roots of serenity non-profit careerism

we must understand the problem supremacy | and identify it within ourselves only then can we change only as we change do we begin to (eco-) grieve. we start to understand that our hearts are rotten we begin the lifelong practice of releasing supremacy. we allow the mycelial spores of mutuality to liberate our wretched hearts /

because we understand the alternative: \ earth’s revolt \ \ damned

Her regenerative cleanse; cop city building anthropic justice for the parasites; /

/ | supremacy denying, for the all-american damned; pipeline constructing, /

we, the damned, of the colonial holiday celebrating white supremacist amerikan nation, cola popping, jersey rocking,

box store shopping, three-SUV-per-household driving, affluent suburb living

yes, this is the choice we face our world the supremacist world must end

whirling, whispering,

washing away

into the wake.

we must instead

choose the beginning

of the next world

do you have hopes, fears / & dreams about death? rivulet

i hope if i die, amidst a it’s by drowning

& a spiny softshell turtle bb nibbling on my

how about you?

my worst nightmare is being swarmed

by wasps; stingers piercing, skin welting,

until… anaphylactic shock.

if that happens, just know that i failed i remained an all-amerikan damned

who liked to pretend they’re better than “”those”” white ppl but in reality, aren’t :)

we all survive the innocent because the truth is… all of us through earth’s revolt; the damage is irreversible

meanwhile, the ones who never asked for this… they’re going to die first. and our non-human relatives splendid fauna and feral kin they’re doomed

meanwhile, we the privileged and wretched from behind our iPhones, we’ll watch the fallout.

so what’s the point? we live to release supremacy; why does any of this matter? to scramble as it crumbles;

monuments to our capitalist overlords crumbling right before our eyes

the wreckage that began years, generations, centuries past;

before we came to consciousness; before we realized we are the problem

before we realized our hearts are rotten. all of it crumbling.

we lament our casualties / / each other we survive the innocent. hearts rotten with grief. our ecology, we must live better, in right relations with ourselves,

but it won’t \ | \ dandelions bloom in the interstices; fungal spores pierce ours because what we learned before was a bunch of damn lies

because life goes on life can only go on there won’t be a rupture no such magical rupture where one day the present breaks from the past.

a tree can fall over. one individual tree can, when it’s become rotten, and when it can no longer withstand itself. bigger they are; harder they fall.

one of us might die too. we might be rotten or innocent and still die. many of us will die. many are dying. many non-human relatives went extinct LONG ago.

but life itself… life itself won’t die. there will not be a unifying rupture. we ’ re stuck. life goes on… so we proceed letting our hearts rot out. there’s no turning back. \

our hearts need to rot out. to purge the poison & \

\ | release supremacy. so we can heal and stop destroying ourselves

releasing supremacy is re-living, re-thinking; | \ each other savoring mushroom spores that infiltrate our sinuses; \ / / pungent reminders that we, too, are alive \ |

letting ourselves have an allergic reaction | / restraint | letting our eyes water and noses drip / / boundaries, \ / / / / | acceptance, | embracing inter-dependence; making sacrifices; un-locating loss rage, / catching a fraction of a glimpse of our humanity; multiplicity, multitude, / | / | /

releasing our grip, tension flowing from your (yes, your) fingertips; / | from your shoulders, neck, legs, toes / |

realizing you aren’t important enough for hell; / / / / seeing satan everywhere anyway / |

shutting up, being quiet, putting our heads down, listening / / acknowledging how small we are; listening to the trees, for once

they have heart rot too they glow nonetheless~ even the fallen | / \ \ / so can we </3 \ |

we must purge the poison and re-member rebirth. we must wake from a nightmare of our own ancestral co-creation

reparations must be our daily praxis. exorcizing the colonizer-demon within. dialectical self-de(con)struction. earth’s revolt.

if we die, it will be on Her terms, not ours; she loves </3 us, so why don’t we f*cking act like it? X

we beg forgiveness; we ask why yet on a molecular level, we know our bodies remember the damage we caused the land remembers

from the rolling plains of the “Tennessee” “Valley,” to the mystical, mountainous horizons cradling our curiosity the land remembers will she forgive us? \

“100 corporations produce 70%+ of emissions,” and yet all of us are complicit in capitalism’s relentless expansion

patriarchy rampant resource-hoarding gaslighting saviorism no we are not the heroes of this story instead, let us be its destroyers

at long last, let us face the truth we must let our ego die | because we think we ’ re more important than we are;

our world ends because of that, or in spite of it perhaps both? let’s fall in love with being mediocre simply human /

| let’s process the untenable past, together: recall, regret, shame, grief, compassion, repeat \ dwell, get stuck, acknowledge, quietly adapt. / |

maybe toppling a few statues along the way… 0.0 \

screaming, crying, cursing the person you wish you never were. the relationships you destroyed. the college degree you wasted $250k on.

the flight you didn’t need to take. the system you chose not to destroy. wishing, pretending the future could be disconnected from the past…

Heart Rot: Spell of Unbinding

by Ryen Goebel

There is a wound beneath the bark (Within the body of the Dreamer is a hollow, lightning made or animal marked, a doorway for pale silent seekers-- hands of decay )

Enter, Eater the sapstrong, the stonedark sunken quiet of Life removed from Life (Loneliest this flesh stranded beyond years, where sap no longer flows, a place apart from Time preserved in emptiness)

O sunlight creature, the world has not abandoned you

Unguard the secret places-- Return to soil in the smallest hands

Record in rings, Unseal: Remember the warmth that comes from changing Every true thing you bury with your heart will wake again.

10th Street Huntington, WV

by Jessica Anderson

When I felt most like a part of this place, I was high as a kite. Driving with the windows down, Playing Anders Osborne real loud, Sunglasses on

I waved to the big dude who’s always on his porch. He wears white tee shirts and props himself up Like George Washington crossing the Delaware, Phone and cigarette in hand

I waved at Dante that handsome man, With his two off-leash pitbulls that are so obedient. He’s some sort of a professional fighter

He remembered me from a Christmas party a year or so ago I was dancing like crazy, Digging myself into some winter depression

One day he saw me walking and stopped, gave me a lift to work. Well, I waved to him.

There’s a place a few blocks up from here called The Office Back when I was happy, I wanted to get in

“Oh honey, they’ll never let you in You could knock for hours I been in there once, and I feel proud of that.”

I saw through a worn out part of the window covering I saw Christmas lights I saw a bar in there, old guys

I waved to the old man on the other side of the street, Who sits on his porch and drinks beer everyday. He lives off social security and grows tomatoes His roommate died and his rent went up and he might get evicted He remembers my name and likes to ask me Questions about work

I think he thinks I’m a college student. He and I both really like to wave to each other For some reason

Heading down 5th avenue to the grocery store, The lights were green and it was spring.

Walking home one night, a man was following me, So I had to deal with that

I crossed the street at some unpredictable place

To see what he’d do

If I walked home, he’d know where I live

“Is that Ms Anderson?” from a dark porch

I learned then that my student is my neighbor Ken is a man in his late twenties That comes off as late thirties

I met his cousin and we shot the breeze. He tried to give me a bottle of promethazine, Some kind of syrup.

I used to see him when I walked to and from work He was always laughing and joking around He failed my class because he wouldn’t do the work. He tried to talk me into letting him off everything

I liked the small town that night

The building across the street is full of heroin. Every night, I watch cars sit out front Someone sitting there for hours

I watched cars stop at the side door around the corner. Sometimes they parked in front of my apartment And dropped their needles on the sidewalk.

I remember being the one sitting in the car, Outside of Angie’s building, making a stop with a friend. The person who lived in that place died a few months later He was the relative of someone who ran the bar, I think.

Hank the police chief saw me walking home after work, Rolled down his window, got off the phone, and stopped to talk I met him at a concert the first night I lived here

We were on the front row of a Todd Snider show. Later, I ran into Hank at a neighborhood meeting during local election time We stood in the back at the snack table the whole time, And he told me the dirt on these guys while they gave their speeches, Introducing their candidacy for this or that He introduced them to me when they came to shake his hand.

He called one guy a capitalist pig

He remembers my name, too, and likes to talk to me about work

I situated my hammock to look out my windows

I didn’t cover them I laid there and stared off in space

One time I woke up at four o’clock in the morning

Because the windows were open, And I heard men talking to each other outside and not making much sense By the time I looked, it’d been a while, and I knew The cops were out there too.

The man was stark naked And making no sense.

“Why’s that cat here Here it is All the way from Australia ”

“Because this is a cat-tastrophe, man ”

The cop talked him into an ambulance by telling him He was taking a ride on a helicopter

At six in the morning on a different day I made coffee and sat there in my hammock

A cop was out front

One went in the side door of that heroin house across the street. It was still dark and covered with snow

More cops came quietly They went right up the stairwell and into the apartment across from mine on the third floor

One cop came out with an assault rifle, put it in the trunk of a civilian car and drove away

A German Shepherd with a cop went inside.

Cops came and went

There was a SWAT team vehicle, and their marked bullet-proof vests looked like a bad action movie. There were cops in all the snowy alleyways Waiting in their cars for hours.

I never did see them bring anyone out, the place seemed empty But they used a blanket to cover the window when they saw me watching. So there were things I didn’t see

I did see a raccoon on the chimney one evening

She comes out some evenings and takes in the view

I looked up, from my hammock, watching the leaves in the neighborhood change A fluttering bird at the top of a tall, tall tree ended up to be a plastic grocery bag Kristen was there, she saw it. It was still there when I left

A Little Grief

By Chris Barton

How remorse to know only here will I see you seated in the warmth of the perfect field quoting our favorite TV shows Grass inside my forehead in a poem outside of time. Just talking like this now gives the wilt of our descent a little more meaning

The interstate lights shine brighter than spring trees

Do I sound bleak thinking about what all our living has turned into?

Compounding interest rates, uncanny loneliness, a glossy, capital Life printed across an aluminum can Let’s at least cheers about it

The endings The miles of cool sheets of exciting wind. Plain wanting. Our futures of becoming what we were not held onto by and could not hold

Death and Decay at Jamie’s Place

For Jamie, who gave more than the pipeline could ever take from him. Somewhere, on a mountaintop bided for time an old man is dying day by day, trying to show us what could have been

The ginseng is all dug up and the wells have run dry the deer still rut missing one less mountainside

There is life in the decay. and beauty too. but the end is close now and the men with guns draw near.

In the morning, the contractors will find his bones strewn among the base of the dozers but for now, in one last act The old man lays back, and says “let them come ”

This is it Oblivion and it's funny how even in the face of mountains love can seem so big

Today, love is an old man dying day by day, trying to show us what could have been.

by Christian Shushok

enamel and amber

by Julian Morrison

A lover told me about a field

He tugged me out there past wrong-doing and right-doing. His name is pine sap thick on the tongue. I’ll tell it to you later.

We were at the diner with the sticky blue faux leather, you know the one He spoke through coffee and breathed steam and I gasped I took his hand and from there the story goes tailspin.

He gave me a lesson I need teach A word to pass from mouth to mouth Over dinner and under cover(s) You could call it daisy chain godhood I’ll tell it to you later.

He took half a bottle to my adornments He said I was perfect and made it so. He cut from me rot I didn’t know I had He made me something new Got right to the heart of it.

amid trees i lost his hand

he told me his name rolled over in the truck bed it felt worn already threadbare and old

the knit quilt tickles my nose it feels warm already red, scratching, holding out against cold

he asked for mine with a tremble with the shaky anticipation of the prophet

I’m not sure what I answered at the time it rang through trees Attis Attis Attis just the same with the meaning of fire.

I missed the moment he started crying

he missed the moment I left

this is the lesson

The field is empty this means more than without trees The field is empty, meaning everything we saw it together smoking and spinning in the dark the fire threw the most beautiful shadows

Out there in the field there is peace and haven old teacher called it awakening old poet called it god, told me he’d meet me there god told me the trees are made of flames not yet burned the old poet taught me that the name of god is fire.

i’m in the trees

I have heard the lesson and am now out in the dark moving fast over red clay and black dirt. I have heard the name of the lover and I can now hear no other. I am sprinting, as he has left without me. All I needed was a moment. I only left him for a moment

I only left for a minute

his name is in my teeth he must have missed a piece it’s dark out here and I can’t see i am on fire

i don't know how to find the field he beckons from forever away. how could I do this right? where did I go wrong? it has all gone tailspin

lemme take a second to give it to you straight. I promised you that.

my lovers are all called the same. the lover’s name is Attis. he was adored by dead trannies and lesbians where every road led they called each other god in his name he lives again in my breath

All that ever echoed through the carolina pine is the holy appellation of my lover boy

Attis Attis Attis

its been a long time now and i’m still runnin’

the trees have started to crumble they are afflicted by something creeping it no longer awaits the growth of the seedling it whispers about flesh and bones it wraps tight around the neck of the stem this rot too has a name

and i will cut it from each tree and ask them their name soft and kind and they will tell me theirs and in tears i will know they will never meet me there

I will teach you that your gendersex is built onto you like a shitty trailer addition I will take sharp edge to your rot and catch you when you fall. the light of the buzzing porch lamp is ending you like an infection there is no poetry in the body killer. there is no art in the heartrot.

lover, there’s a field out there past wrong and right doing let’s run take my hand and we’ll find it together

my coffee tastes like dirt

I exhale through steam you know what happens next

My name is Attis what’s yours?

THE FIVE STAGES OF WILTING

by Grady DeRosa

long after our glass melts there will be the last flower on earth wondering why the ground refuses affection of any kind long after language is spoken there will be the last birdsong singing out to find a future & hearing only silence

& all the beings who slept through winter waking early with sore eyes wondering why the icicles are all dripping & after we join the fossils our spirits will walk the earth huddled around the last flower asking it for guidance but it will say nothing to indulge us in our bargain only to accept the petals as they wither into tomorrow

“Florida Flow” by Robyn “Avalon” Crosa

Even if it doesn’t work out Between me and you I’ll always be your fan. I have to be the Goddess knows You’re a part of who I am You are in my heart and soul.

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine!

Light up my life!

Ocean waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

I come from the peninsula. You come from the islands. We are pirates in the Caribbean. I have often dreamed of yuh. In a past life we were more than friends. What becomes of us remains to be seen.

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine. Light up my life.

Ocean Waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

Will our paths cross this time?

Will we meet again?

Will I know you in this life?

Will we be more than friends?

I will always be your fan loving you from afar. I have to be, the Goddess knows you are a shining star!

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine!

Light up my life!

Ocean Waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

Panthers spar with alligators Here in the tall green grass.

But I will never spar with you my love, Whatever comes to pass.

I will always have a soft spot for you.

I never would desert you. And after everything that’s happened now, Please know I never meant to hurt you!

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine!

Light up my life!

Ocean waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

Down in Seminole, down in Pinellas, Down in Miami Dade, What do the Seminoles tell us?

We will run away to the Everglades! We never will surrender!

In Weeki Wachi there live some mermaids!

Their hearts are warm and tender!

How could I ever forget?

Your glorious sunshine!

Light up my life!

Ocean waves at sunset!

Gulf Coast of Florida!

Ghosts in the Boathouse

by Victoria Jayroe

What is it to be born if not shrieking in terror at sudden sentience–To rather be silent and still in the chaotic midst of this world’s merciless mawing

What is it to live if not to gasp at the speckled air To claw against the melting earth and its moon-yanked currents

What is it to be held, only after.

Rainwater tears through the tattered hammock, the vestige of a world with too many holes to hold him here

What kind of life did he hope to find on the other side of time’s tide, mummified in memory, darkness and dearness

Nothingness?

Even decay is an extant form of life

And so, he tore down the house of himself, to return back to the dust the worn planks and rusted nails that splintered and gouged at him, breaking down the empty rooms of himself that he could no longer bear to warm

And then the house went the same way he had Suddenly, no longer

Later, you and I would trace the spectral skeleton of the rooms in the grass the earth below us remembering the growth of your feet

We recalled where your sleeping dogs used to lie

The cats paws falling like late winter on the weathered wood of the stairwell removed board by board

The land trust dissolved. Your trust in what you thought you knew, washed out under the feet of strangers now free to trod along the time-worn paths that took you home.

But the boathouse will remember the sound of his hammer, resounding with the wake against its stone walls that will outlive us all

Sometimes to live is just to have your name be a pressed flower in the folds of a memory–

the idea of you lingering like a fine dust–was it ice or ash? The nuclear winter of a nuclear family

This might be the only afterlife: Adrift on the longing breaths and dew soaked lashes of those who wanted more time before time became its own thumping dirge

These woods will never quite be free from the questions that linger like phantom limbs and keep us wishing in wells gone dry

But, it’s not that you can never go home again Home, too, decomposes and recomposes

It will leave you like a sigh that dissipates into the fog of the bay, and return as the sparkling squint of sunlight that makes you think of lighter days than this before we all knew such loss

Heart Rot

By Amelia Brady

Delightful death, singing spores, the mushrooms bloom where tree used to be New beasts emerge from the softest places and bird eggs hatch in the cavity Hollowbone soft heart, now worthless as timber, and saved from commodity by necrosis Heartwood crumbles, sings a weepsong, glorysong

Listen!

You, too, are rich with the rot! Changing your shape, breathing, and pouring your life into the dirt Offer up your wound, sing your lump of meat into the world, raw and bleeding in the wind

The soil is rich, deep and dark in you I see it growing mold

Untitled By Micah Morse [2]

the heritage of love abiding, dissolution of the self— here in the quiet depths slick and smothered

I trace hairs along the periphery of flesh and decay broken limbs and sinew, fibers muscle-wet, verdant beneath the skin and the supple bloom of your visceral bouquet—

I paint myself in bands of oil honey in the dark, a womb-song inviting you

the carnivore's embrace what is love but appetite

the taste of you dissolving into fat-riddled marmalade savored on the tongue and tucked into the hollows of my gums

the taut swelling of over-ripened fruit and its rapturous burst against the teeth to be penetrated by the sickly mass, compost ichor, tender embrace—to drown in the jelly of the quiet growth,

shadows mumbled or speaking ripples in the gut amid the buzz and bristle of prayers rapped out on chitin supplication carved in bark; alms begged in the shape of memory what it was to stand alone and the fetid rush of joining as we come together, fertile in the dirt

Untitled

by Sarah Vance

Some days I remember the beautiful May morning my wife and I stood on the driveway with our six young children and stared up into the sky as a mother bird frantically flogged the fatal metal of an excavator Her babies screaming as they fell from the shelter she had so carefully crafted

The tree The nest The babies

The mother - broken

On those days, when I remember, I hope my babies don’t And if I still prayed, I would whisper, please do not let this be a prophecy of the world we are handing over to them And me, a perpetrator, standing on concrete I paid to pour, on what had once been home to wild and beautiful things

The mountains The water The air

The mother - broken

Heart Rot

My sickness has made me a habitat for suffering

I did not deserve this, no sick person does, but it happened & it happened to me.

I hope I get to see another spring.

The way the lily of the valley adorn my feet

I will enjoy the view until it’s gone or I am

by Cara Morgan

What the Heart Wrought

by Kincaid Jenkins

He waited to cut down the tree

Until she had died

Until he was certain she would

Never read beneath its branches

Never embrace its limbs again as

A daughter caught in the tree’s embrace

In her youth she protested

Feeling chained to the nature of it

“It ’s heart rot ” he would say

Pointing to the conks of fungus

Growing like festering boils

A blight upon the very bark

Where below a death lay stirring

And she would respond

That the roots remained strong

That it had grown here from the idea of

An acorn falling from orbit like a capsule

To plant and find purchase on their land

To become a part of their family

“It will fall on the house” he claimed

But she won the argument saying

“ Then we must give it more love

For it ’s alive, just dying inside, like me”

Like me

Her words echoing further down

The corridors of his mind

And so love they gave and patience he had

Until a day in spring which found him

Returning from the place he had laid her to rest

Garbed in funeral attire, tears in his eyes

Walking down the path like an executioner

Carrying a stick of fli nt and forged steel

Hefted over his shoulder towards the tree

That had stood purely on the strength

Of her heart over the rot, eating away at it

Like so much cancer inside her

He swung the ax, each splinter of wood

Evoking a memory of her in his eye

Counting the hits it would take to fall

Eleven in total, one for every year of her life

And trying to find meaning in this number

As though she were talking beyond the grave

But the tree lay fallen on her words

With some unbearable finality

And he too fell, kneeling now

Dig ging through the mealy mulch inside

Like an autopsy, uncovering the poison

Discovering this discolored continent

Growing through the heart of it

Weeping openly over the wound

Fully understanding what the rotting heart

Requires of fathers left behind

Removing the things they would rather keep

Wondering aloud wh o is to say

That trees have no souls

Or that men do

Heart Rot

by Candace Herron

All timber begins as sapwood, the tender bending of the sapling, young, eager, full of vigor and oh, so, pliable, made to strengthen itself against the wind, —push —pull —grow.

Over time, after years of transportation and transpiration, cambium holding steady the coursing sap of phloem from root to trunk to branch to leaf

that which was living is subsequently subsumed; succumbing, becoming, heartwood, lignin hardened and rosin cured, capable of buttressing the weight of giants.

And yet, all it takes is a single wound to allow decay an entryway to this oldest and still tender core.

Heart rot.

Fungus, mother of conk and spore, opportunist extraordinaire, finds a crack in the arbor, and burrows herself home. Slowly. Months, years, and generations eat away the timbered marrow. Softly. The heartwood dissolves —digested —dispersed —disseminated into the earth, bringing tree to dirt once more.

“Heart Rot”

by Deron Eckert

Heart Rot - [1] "a fungal disease that causes the decay of wood at the center of the trunk and branches. Fungi enter the tree through wounds in the bark and decay the heartwood. The diseased heartwood softens, making trees structurally weaker and prone to breakage" (wikipedia). [2] “an intense grief that erodes the core of an otherwise healthy person before spoiling everything within close proximity to the person. The grief is typically delivered into the person following the death or destruction of a human, an animal, or a place that was a part of the person, causing many to consider this form of the condition an amputation. The condition can also develop from other types of loss, including, but not limited to, a love that has either withered on the vine or has never been given the opportunity to blossom. In the later stages of the developmental cycle of the person, an unrealized dream is often the culprit. While potentially fatal, the grief is treatable with time, compassion, and a recognition of the beauty that remains in the world, the pain, and the person. Those who progress beyond the initial, crippling stages of the condition exhibit pronounced scars they carry throughout the remainder of their lives, but these are marks of healing the person comes to accept and embrace as integral parts of the experience that is life” (a marked person).

Heartrot

-Devin Chambers

It started off slow, rain-wet, a small crack opened to words like elements. A resinous wound, ignored, ignoring the damage derelict to our cares. This wound has festered, untended, now memories lay wasted in my sighing bones. I can't remember before the skittering of many limbed emotions unspoken and spoken. My fingers broken, but reach, sheltering delicate families with fragile eggs. Mosses and ferns take spaces, home-making in the fragmented valleys of my roots. My ribs crumble from within, framing shelving conks in their selfish display. I do not remember what you did, that wounded so minutely and expansively horribly. I do not remember, before I became, refuge in every inch of my body.

Until Your Fever Breaks

(A letter to the Natural World as a lover)

By Jacq Guyton

April 14, 2056

Before sunrise

I got early this morning Before you had a chance to let up your light I went panning for fish eggs in the riverbed muck

I found nothing like that, but I did smell sulfur and remember there were once black snails suckling on the knuckles of these rocks. I knew you would remember them, your little children that sat like commas printed onto stone tablets

Who are these ruthless editors that are turning your golden-spined encyclopedia collection into captions: consonant-only words as small and fragmented as to get stuck in between my molars like popcorn? I wish I could meet them at the dive bar, as equals, and ask them about their childhood tree. The one who's boughs they hid behind when they wanted to be alone.

The industrial evolution of man does not save the gastropods or bivalves; poets and puppeteers won't be budgeted a plaque's worth in the collective memory How can you still care for a flower that opens at night when the moon's caving in?

You tell me to have hope. And I'm trying. I don't think I could bear the sight of a child's eyes glassing over as I try to tell them that a grasshopper's blood is green when you find it crushed by the wheel of a car It was an insect that hopped in the grass! I'd tell them, desperate and shrill I'd make shapes and motions with my hands to try and describe the insect's leaps exploding out of the sedge But deep in their eyes I see twin television sets, a million channels on a spinning reel of reality shows, genocide and flood warnings

How will your children know how to care for you, if they can't hold you the way I've held you? I know some things can be believed without being seen, but it's harder to care about those things

Last night I dreamt of a place without you I saw with omnipresent eyes your most heaven-pushing redwoods being dwarfed and swallowed whole by cities of corrugated pipe Sirens cutting through the air like the screaming pulse of god. No visible horizon that wasn't just across the street; a monarcha robota developed by techheads and trillionares spitting out world laws and regulations anew every morning, our moral center compassed by numbers

I dreamt of the elders trying to remember the exact years: When did the haunted shack become an airbnb? When was the last buffalo shot for the museum taxidermist?

Sitting in a circle opening dusty boxes with quivering, varicose-veined hands and pulling out shells, dried flowers, as widows would touch their dead lover's lock of hair once a year

I woke up and the tears blew out my eyes, and I felt I had lost you already, even as you lay with your dusky arms around me

Thinking of a life without you, even the blunt nose of a hatchet splitting my spine in two makes my heart pound. The hiss of lightning melting the soles of my shoes, a boulder crashing down the side of a cliff start to resemble our love sounds. Even now, as you lay in our bed still breathing, I keep little trinkets of yours on a shelf like you're already gone: rabbit skin stitched closed with button thread, barn owl feather, mugwort and camellias

As I look at you, the metal rod implanted deep between my hips feels a tug from another world Your living ghost is already guiding my bare, soft sleds through fir needles of grief as barn swallows gurgle through the songs they know you love best.

Remember when we swam in a creek together summers ago? The water was dyed a warm black by cedar bark melting upstream and naked, you ran your watery fingers through the cluster of seeds buried between my legs and named my chest the color of sunflowers Crawling up onto the hot sandbank, we were fish trying on our new legs again

You peeled off a bubble of petrified resin, glinting like crystallized gingerchews on the bark of a fir for me to suck on and put a crack in my tooth You sighed that already, there were no old growth trees to show the tenderfooted young ones how tall they could really be

It was then you wept - sugar instead of salt - and told me you were sick

Later that night as we sat on the porch, you whispered an ancient secret to me: that the moon is an orange inside of an apple peel Your lips curled up into a smile like a newborn fern and I knew that once you were gone, there would be no other for me

I can hear you stirring now I'll go make some hot tea and start planting those flowers in front of the house only you can make bloom I'll tuck this letter away and try not to wallow How could I stand to, when you're still trying to get well. I love you. All the way until your fever breaks.

Yours, J

Lover Nature

to be called to be called by something other than my name perhaps yours so you could view me the same or maybe you could call me by the pines prune my needles, carve your lines strip me bare to mark the way home but please don’t strike me down, a skillset that you’ve shown i fear my bark will peel, loose terror reign unknown and peer beneath the ringing of my longing years prick my eyes with hallow cries, erosion cut by tears you see, the hole you left inside enough room to feel the gap down your fingers, open mouthed, my rot slides like sap i wonder if you taste it, your love did this to me and if your heart should shudder, i wonder if you’ll see you ate my heart, i made my mark, your end began with ending me. i would like to call you by your name if that's ok any day without your lure is heartache’s true display i look for you within the pines, i’d level forests in your shrine set ablaze needles scattered, light the pathway home. set our spirits free to wander, writhe and reel and roam i swear i won’t strike you down, my heart i do this out of love this forest dark, cipher without you so tall above let the others fall to your feet they’re nothing without you and if i’m being forthright this may include me too i’d be lying if i said that i did not feel the gap laid waste to all surrounding space left nothing but a scrap you slide along my fingers as your skeleton collapsed as i hold you in my arms i wonder, we were ever made to last? my heart starts to shudder, i grasp with sticky thought you trickle down my entrails. i begin to rot

by Sydney White

Mausoleum of Giants

By Jonathan Cox

I stumble through the graveyard

Sun-bleached skeletons tower 10 stories overhead

Their desiccated bodies bursting with crimson shelf fungi

Still more bones lay scattered across the earth

Stacked haphazardly as if Appalachian giants had been playing Pick-Up-Sticks with the dead

Graverobber Megalodacne beetles, dressed in orange and black, skitter through the piles

The hemlocks are dead

Heartwood rotting and

My heart rots with them

Hemlock’s insulating blanket of evergreen needles becomes unwoven

Rubus, Aralia, Rhododendron, and Robinia bloom into a successional tug of war

Choking one another for a glimpse at the sun’s light

The soil parched; wrung out by deciduous transpiration

My heart rots

The adelgids took no prisoners

Evolutionarily programmed to feast on Tsuga sugars

But they can take no blame

We brought them here

Another ecological catastrophe wrought by our own hand

My heart rots

The hollers weep

Crumbling of their foundation ignites a trophic cascade of heart break

Salamanders seek new coves of refuge

Migratory birds rest on naked branches

Our hearts rot

The southern Appalachians will never look the same

But she is resilient

This isn’t the first invasion that’s plagued her hills and hollers

We’ll do what we can to ease her pain

As she metamorphoses into something new Something more beautiful than we can fathom

Appalachia’s heart rots

But is born anew

Darling Cora

by Phoenix S. Young

July

The night the words of Darlin’ Corey travelled from the fire of Cora Beth’s belly, gritty like a holler driveway, a balmy breeze offered the stanzas up into the heavens like a prophecy A campfire crackled in rhythm

Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow / Dig a hole in the cold, cold ground / Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow / We gonna lay darlin’ Corey down

August

Cora Beth picked a a dulcimer, bluebirds carved into the mahagony, in time of the steady rainfall, curve of the instrument snug to her knee

And while Cora Beth was asleep, the Troublesome Creek rose over its own banks, drowning out the sound of those bluebirds in their dreams

The rain took Hindman and Jackson and Neon and Whitesburg and didn’t leave anyone left for Cora Beth to sing for

Wake up, wake up, darlin’ Corey / What makes you sleep so sound? / The revenue officers are coming / They’re gonna tear your still house down

September

The papers said it was because of climate change

Cora Beth’s preacher said it was because God wanted to cleanse the earth of its sins.

All anyone knew was that the mountaintops were gone and you could see clear into the next holler over The creek took Kentucky’s roofs downstream too

The first time I saw darlin’ Corey / She was sittin’ on the banks of the sea / A 44 wrapped around her body / And a banjo on her knee

December

A winter storm came and blew out the heat in Cora Beth’s travel trailer at Jenny Wiley Their hands were too cold to the play the dulcimer even if they still had it

Cora Beth figured they done forgot about the folks at Jenny Wiley, and the neighbor told them “good luck with that” when they said they hadn’t got their FEMA money yet

Dig a hole in the meadow / Dig a hole in the cold, cold ground / Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow / We gonna lay darlin’ Corey down

mountain casket

There you are, rare and hungry summer spent in the stone hermitage wounded with holes for eyes upon a lonely mountainside tears drink the face, you’re loose veined raw and leaking breath leaking grace leaking conviction swollen with bent pleasure a skin licked saprobe sheen

the heartbreak of old growths is a pathogen, a reticent frown wormed through trunks like train-track tunnels and they are dying together in this grand cluster of sick

visible, invasive pain mourning seeping from its core there’s a space to crawl inside. to fill the void left by a vacuous and gradual consumption

by Sam Busic

Purple

By Emily Goldston

Funny how I had to learn to love the color purple

You know, the actual color. The purple of humble violets and towering liatris, of a wild blackberry’s tangy burst on the tongue, of a bruisey mid-summer sunrise washing over dreams of old flames

My childhood best friend loved purple, but hers was the artificial kind, all NuGrape and Bubblicious

I was more Sunkist and peach rings No matter

Back when I was pumping my legs too fast and perspiring too many daydreams, most hues went unnoticed if they didn’t come in a package with the promise of a sugar rush

Later on, Ms. Walker taught me not to piss God off whenever I passed it in a field, so now I politely bow my head the way I was taught in the pew, but this time it feels more true

A friend calls this an awe moment

And maybe being privy to late July offerings from an Appalachian mountaintop where bees and swallowtails congregate in a cathedral of complementary colors that sway like they caught the Holy Ghost is just another definition of awe.

Or maybe it’s just my way of saying that I am pleased I am pleased

(when my heart was rotted, this is how I healed)

by Mikayla Erskine

do you remember when I swore myself to you? to your creatures your beauty

I swore to lend my energy a moonstruck adolescent making promises of a magnitude unprecedented but I could never regret it. at my Darkest, you have always been my Light. how is it that I am still getting to know you and yetyou know me better than anyone else? you are and always will be my Calliope.

it hurts me to no end the way my brothers and sisters treat you. it sends me into pits of depression as deep as your undersea canyons but you never fail to pull me up. as my feet touched dirt at the end of myself I heard you.

whispered words that soothed promising a sleep different then the tormented limbo I had been inhabiting. as my feet touched dirt at the end of myself I felt your warmth creep into the places

Apathy had stolen from me. my heart so weary so empty I didn’t think twice. I lowered my bones to your softness to rest my head on folded arms. I felt my ankles and thighs hips and shoulders connect to you and finally let my eyes fall closed.

‘Switchback’

Jordan Budnik

Heart Rot – [1] “a fungal disease that causes the decay of wood at the center of the trunk and branches. Fungi enter the tree through wounds in the bark and decay the heartwood. The diseased heartwood softens, making trees structurally weaker and prone to breakage.” (Wikipedia)

[2] “Empathy bored out of switchback souls, we sew the mountains’ mouths shut with pipelines and logging roads.

Black Vultures wheeling in haint blue skies over mountains stripped bare down to their veins.

Vireo darting through fragmented forests whose names we will not speak, pleading her rewinding birdsong: Stop. Go back. Stop. Go back!

The self-inflicted collapse of our own lungs. Burning rhododendron branches to keep warm.

Unapologetic apocalypses

Saturn may have eaten his children, but we’re devouring our Mother.

The Indifference of Rain

by Andy the Doorbum

Saying a prayer for the side of the road where the garbage and gorgeous lie draped in fine soot

One thousand years is not enough to forget it in plastic and tin where our strained breath was put

Will feathers and flesh belch out new ways to build it a place where this altar can relish and moan?

Where meanings, thrown out - landing in love, though wasted can offer up sorely missed prayers of their own?

I stood on the edge of a moment suspended my thoughts swirling galaxies - dread, boredom, hope

The trash can was full on a horizon limitless

All that I saw scarred the brow with what’s possible

All that I feared tangled shoulders to knots

All I shrugged off gnarled my knuckles to notice them

All that I dreamt of, where blood pools and clots

And then my gaze mirrored in a mountain stream’s rhetorical ambivalence

A passage from its thesis on such supple obduration

“Dare we flow to fill an ocean or dry slow til puddles cease the volume of the water in this world will not change in the least ”

(written by Andy the Doorbum - North Carolina)

Waterlines by Kathleen Copeland-Fish

You can see how fast my home is drowning, Just watch the waterline after each flood

You can see where my neighbors used to live, Just watch the disappearing islands of mud and grass

You can see my kinsmen’s grief as they decide to stay or go To stay is death by water To go is death by soul

You can hear the marshland’s wrath, it fizzes in the wind

You can hear the marshland’s sorrow in between the ripples

Bastions of the land, marshes are overwhelmed

Overwhelmed and begging

Just slow down and take a break, and they will do the rest Just give them room to breathe and they will continue providing That’s all the marshland’s ask for Time and space to exist

They do so much for us, asking little in return

You can see the people planting fragile hope, in each acre restored You can hear the people ask for forgiveness with each pound of trash removed You can feel the people make reparation for their short sightedness with each landscape protected

But underneath it all, you can hear the marshland whisper Thank you Welcome home

Wildfires

by Hannah Houser

“It’s starting to cool down”

I told you as we watched the Tennessee sky darken before the Autumn equinox, filled with gratitude for chilly evenings and the absence of blaring sun.

The forecast called for no rain but the air was thick gray

We sat outside sipping dark and stormies and toasting to a break from indoor isolation. Then someone on Twitter said the haze was the clouds from the California wildfires, having crept across the breadth of the country.

And my cheeks flamed over my brief respite, knowing it was someone else’s torture, worlds away

Year of the rock

by Steph Wadman

I have no regrets of the past 14 years Only that I’m sure you are building a story built of your sole context

But thats the way it goes We have no context but our own Shame Shame Shame

The rock falls down the hill and lands all the same. Though a pebble it may be, the weight of time fastens it to the soft vulnerability of the earth.

Like rocks in our bellies we learn to digest hard things by grinding them together Making them smaller things that slip through the ilium into the small parts of our bodies where we file them away under categories all the same but separated by neurons that haven’s gotten to know each other yet

Our tubes are stupid They process only to process I want to sit with you and digest together But you’re busy starving yourself and calling me hungry all the while

I can see your tubes just this far away only months and miles have blurred the horizon, but I can see them still the same. Never changing. Built on seismic trauma. Anchored to an experience that was one, but not all along.

There had been tell of the landslide The house didn’t float away all on its own Foundations ain’t what they used to be!

These days We fasten nothing Our tubes won’t allow as the foundation was ripped and tattered So we are nomads with the word “home” written on all the rocks and hills There’s not a one flat ground to be found, there’s not one thing to tether to Except the road.

The road is secure beneath

Delayed Heat

by Denney

a TVA riverbank serves as a neutral court prolonged inaugural matchup your regulation quilt establishes the playing field atop brown sugar sand

a pastry and cigarette picnic icing and fumes hem your lips

the stitched chess squares shrink between our porcelain pawn fingers

first meeting jitters fuse first month shivers my bones telegraph tremors

your cropped sweater and tights baffle blackout bangs trapping waning rays

my jumping jack circulation revival provokes a mandatory trunk blanket retrieval our legs form a buccaneer addition sign knee fulcrum plateau for degloved digits

a rosy earlobe suctions my shoulder scarf locks cascade down my blade speech regains but proximity warrants a whisper my check finds a sprouting scalp bed we debate the fluidic glass’ spectrum but rosé heavens quickly taint the gradation the breeze defeats our kinetic conservation blowing us to my leased brick abode

curling up catcher’s position by glowing coils you admire perilous wood panel borders my executive movie selection doesn’t deter your blue shell perusing abandoning pillows for cradled limbs

jigsaw cuddles fall into place

a couch cocoon culls you in the third act but i don’t mind staring at menu screens

a sleepwalk caravan through creaky corridors keeping your compact loveseat posture to the king i transplant preheated living room fleece knowing later you’ll need a second several torso lengths away i mirror your configuration envious of your placid BPM collapse as my weightlifting eyelids crumble our planetary forces bid us to succumb

yells and plosive pops grapple my ears gravity has tethered us in a tangible dream menacing hell orange melts through the window i must unclasp our subliminal grips peering across the avenue roars purifying licks of amber a home sacrificed without notice my departure brings you to witness with somber looks we submerge under more covers

the halloween motif portal resets to teal opaqueness red morse beams now an astigmatic memory crawling out of the hybrid nightmare you share a near death swimming recount broken body from sparring endless wakes our private peninsula assembly floods with context tiptoeing around trauma bonds and forced parallel i save my childhood house fire for a second date

a morning patio smoke punctuates an evening of finding a night of loss

the charred scent feels too pleasant wondering if i smell similar to you only the stern consumed with the street view intact can you see through?

you voice an arbor reincarnation desire i broach the present pain of harvest and kindle

buried in the ash emerge harmless flickers mulling over our kind jousts reveal glimmers identifying my obscure quirks mislabeling my receding as double widow’s peaks still thrilled by my stale cupboard cookies decaffeinated offerings

you render lung overload and scorching mementos morbid comforts

thank you