Humana Obscura Issue #07 (Fall/Winter 2023)

MELLOWING, DEBBIE STRANGE

POETRY

Powici

Muthupandiyan

The Way a Deer Looks at You 24

Watching the Deer in the Shadow Hour 25

FALL/WINTER 2023

ISSUE # 0 7

ISSN: 2693-5864 (Online)

ISSN: 2693-5856 (Print)

Jeffcoat

Colasanti . Far Back in the Woods by the Wolf Print in the Mud 37

Dustin Marley Hackfeld

Laussmann

Kerstin Schulz .

Howells

Sally Anderson Boström

The Second Frost 53

Winter Sky Tinted Lavender 56

Winter River 59

©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

Front Cover:

Fractured by Amy Aiken

Back Cover:

Conversations with Trees by Bryan Stweart

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.

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

Amy Aiken is a photographer based in the southern United States whose work captures the beauty and wonder of the world around her. She started practicing photography in earnest in 2017 after earning her PhD in economics and developing a passion for macro photography, which she continues to explore. Photography is her means of engaging with her environment in a creative way. For Aiken, making pictures is a process of discovery, and she endeavors to bring our attention to the beauty in the everyday that is often overlooked. Find more of her work at amyaiken.com.

FEATURED ARTIST

Debbie Strange is a chronically ill short-form poet, visual artist, and photographer from Canada whose creative passions connect her more closely to the world, to others, and to herself. Strange’s work has received multiple awards, and thousands of her poems and artworks have been published worldwide. Her most recent book, The Language of Loss: Haiku & Tanka Conversations, won the Sable Books 2019 International Women’s Haiku Contest and Haiku Canada’s 2022 Marianne Bluger Chapbook Award. Her award-winning haiku collection, Random Blue Sparks, is forthcoming from Snapshot Press in 2023. Please visit her publication archive at https://debbiemstrange.blogspot.com/ for further information.

FEATURED POET

Mary Katherine Creel lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she has worked as a journalist and counselor to children and families. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is author of the poetry chapbook when fire injures, it leaves a distinctive wound (dancing girl press). Her second chapbook, Every Note, a Lantern, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Her poems have appeared in Atticus Review, The Weekly Pause, kerning, Nature Writing, otata, 1932 Quarterly, and the Pittsburgh Poetry Review. Read more of her poems and short essays at asmallspectacle.substack.com.

INSIDE THE FRONT COVER

MELLOWING, DEBBIE STRANGE

ON THE BACK COVER

CONVERSATIONS WITH TREES, BRYAN STEWART

Bryan Stewart is an emerging Canadian artist from Oakville, Ontario. He primarily uses photography to explore a variety of subjects, including landscapes and nature, examining ideas such as the passage of time and its effect on the land. Inspired by painting and drawing, Stewart likes to incorporate impressionism and abstraction into his photography. Using methods like intentional camera movement and multiple exposures, he creates original photos that offer fresh viewpoints on common scenes. Previous exhibitions of Stewart’s work have been held at the Twist Gallery, Gallery 44, and Blitz Art Gallery.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

BRI BRUCE (B. L. Bruce) is an award-winning poet and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee living and writing along the California coast. Her work has appeared most recently in 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. Her fifth book, Blue California Sky, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2024. Connect with her on Instagram @b_l_bruce and on Twitter @the_poesis.

VIAN BORCHERT is an acclaimed award-winning artist and an internationally collected artist. Borchert has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions within the US and internationally in museums and key galleries in major cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Washington DC, London, and Berlin. Borchert’s artwork has been on display in prestigious venues such as Times Square on Broadway in New York City, United Nations in NYC, The National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, The SAM museum in PA, along with world embassies. She is a Notable Alumni from the Corcoran College of Art and Design George Washington University, Washington, DC. Borchert’s art has been vastly featured in press/interviews such as The Washington Post, Museum Week Magazine, ARTPIL, Oxford Public Philosophy journal, SHOUTOUT LA, Canvas Rebel Magazine, Pensive global journal, Collect Art Book, and others. Borchert is also an educator teaching fine art classes to adults in the Washington DC area. Borchert’s art is available at “1stDibs” and “Artsy” marketplaces with auctions. Learn more at www.vianborchert.com.

LEMON ZEST, VIAN BORCHERT

THE DAYS ARE COOLER NOW

MARJORIE HANFT

Who can live in this time & not have painful nerves? The Meskwaki brewed a root tea for them from wild geranium whose rosy tone is missing by September. Lone dayflower, cool yellow against cobalt, is a lucky find: each one lasting for just one day. The days are cooler now & I spy yellow false foxglove with wide blooms filled with bumblebees. There’s something about their hue that strikes me as a cross between jaundice & anemia & the way they obtrude is vexing. I draw in my arms as they catch my eye along the trail.

MARJORIE HANFT‘s poems have appeared in such journals as Calyx, Cauldron Anthology, First Literary Review-East, Graham House Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Obsidian, Persimmon Tree, and Unleash Lit. A chapbook, Scrutinizing the Dust, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2024. She is a grateful member of the supportive and nurturing online poetry collective, Brevitas. Having retired in 2015 from Eastern Illinois University where she taught in the psychology department, Hanft is an avid hiker, monitoring two trails for a conservation group. With the help of her partner, a geologist who studies volcanoes, she cares for her 102-year-old dad. Two adult daughters live near her in Central Illinois.

OCTOBER MORNING

JOYCE MEYERS

Dead leaves flutter in a spider’s web like ghosts.

Shimmering reds and golds, such beautiful dying.

Between seasons a bit of green lingers, a lone rosebud with no time left to bloom.

Along the creek the day drifts with the current.

Stay with me here in this place, this time.

Keep winter at bay.

JOYCE MEYER‘s poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, Paterson Literary Review, Slant, Iodine Poetry Journal, Evening Street Review, Glimpse, Xanadu, and Caesura, among others. In 2014, Meyers 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). Meyer’s manuscript entitled Twisted Threads was recently selected as a finalist in the 2023 Blue Light Press Poetry Contest.

HARRY BAULD was twice All-Ivy shortstop at Columbia and broke Lou Gehrig’s records. (His academic records.) Books: The Uncorrected Eye; How to Paint a Dead Man. He has performed as a magician and jazz pianist, and his paintings have been exhibited in group shows in Vermont and New York.

WAVE HILL, HARRY BAULD

BEFORE WE KNEW HOW TO SHRINK THE DISTANCE

DENISE MILLER

Alaska sky stretches silver, reflects its metallic face— wrinkles across the big water. This close to the top of the world, I scour the sky for eagles—skim earth for stones. You nest so much further south, sit in the bottom most curve of the Midwest’s hand.

Mornings, sea gulls straddle rocks near water’s edge— two herons call each other—their desire cuts air— diminishes distance—their wild want as clear as glacier water. Afternoons, I watch otters skim and sink in and out of the Pacific’s wet like lovers—waves batter boats edge—threaten to throw me in.

Nights, stars assemble at skyline. Settle so close— I imagine you a constellation.

DENISE MILLER (they/she) is a poet, playwright, and mixed media artist whose poetry has been published in the Offing, African American Review, and Blackberry: A Magazine. They were named the 2015 Willow Books Emerging Poet, an AROHO Waves Discussion Fellowship awardee, a finalist for the Barbara Deming Money for Women Fund, and a Hedgebrook Fellow. Their book publications include Core, released by Willow Books in 2015 and nominated for a 2016 American Book Award and a 2016 Pushcart Prize; their chapbook Ligatures was published in 2016 by Rattle Press; and most recently they won the 2020 Sexton Prize for Poetry for their full-length poetry collection A Ligature for Black Bodies. Their chapbook How to Make an American Mass Shooter is forthcoming through Querencia Press. Their produced plays include Ligatures (adapted for the stage) and Before the Shooting. Their fellowships and residencies include a 2012 Hedgebrook Residency, 2016 William Randolph Hearst Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society, a 2020 Storyknife Residency, a 2022 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Fellowship, a 2023 Willapa Bay Artist in Residence, a 2023 Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts Fellow, a 2023 Bethany Arts Community Fellow, and a 2023 Renaissance House Fellow.

SARAH GARLAND is a photographic artist living in Malvern, England, UK. Her work is inspired by the hidden “jewels” of the mundane and ordinary in nature and the urban environment (often intertwined). The joy of creating new beauty through abstraction is her passion and reward in itself, but it is also a deep expression of the artist’s relationship with her surroundings and with herself. It is a search for “essence”—both within and without. In this sense, Garland’s creative practice is both personal and transpersonal. Ultimately, it is an act of love. Find her gallery on Instagram @sarahheartsoul.

SORROW, SARAH GARLAND

FOG BOUND, BRYAN STEWART

HAIKU

PETRO C. K.

across the lake one sad song after another

PETRO C. K. is a temporal being living on a spinning rock in a vast universe who captures infinitesimally small moments of time through ephemeral writing, photos, and art. He is the founding editor of dadakuku (www.dadakuku.com).

WATCHING YOU GO

JOCELYN VELUSH

I watched you go slowly, the way a flower wilts. The rise and fall of your body like petals stirring in the wind. I looked away for a second when I thought the frost had passed. Suddenly— you were gone.

JOCELYN VELUSH is a multi-passionate creative—intuitive painter, photographer, designer, and writer. As an artist, she seeks out small moments of beauty that make her feel alive, and is inspired by nature, color, movement, music, and emotion. She believes that art can transform your space, energy and life, and her goal is to help you see as much beauty in the world as she does. Her education is in business and French, but she is always enrolled in some type of creative course. She is a mom of a 4-year-old and lives with her family near Boston, Massachusetts. You can see more of her work and inspiration on instagram @jocelynelizabeth_studio or on her website www.jocelynelizabeth.com.

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. This effect is further enhanced by short prose fragments that accompany each photograph. Check out her work on Instagram @blendenglueck.

AFFECTIONATE, ROSE-MARIE KELLER-FLAIG

COMPULSION, JASMIN JAVON

JASMIN JAVON is a photographic artist from Southern California.Taking photos grasped her attention at a very young age because of her grandmother’s dedication to capturing family memories. That deep rooted love for taking photographs has since evolved into the vivid colors, commanding shapes, and unique contrast found in her artwork today. She began experimenting with oil and water photography in 2021, and eventually her curiosity ran wild. A need for variety soon led to the addition of common household items such as food coloring, coconut oil, water, and soap to the mix. What she discovered was fascinating. Shooting these elements under a macro lens helped capture the tiny details, and exposed minds to a world unseen by the naked eye. Javon has a background in surgical dentistry, loves the beach, and playing with her 5-year-old son.

THE EDGE OF WINTER

JANNA KNITTEL

Tired of drinking waterways of thought,

I lower the curtain on the day, walk at sunset to the lake, trace black glass water soon to be reborn as ice.

I hear a distant sob, a voice I know.

I ask the loon what holds her up.

I hear her cry, The moon

JANNA KNITTEL is the author of Real Work (Nodin, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Minnesota Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook Fish & Wild Life (Finishing Line, 2018). Knittel has also published poems in Blue Mountain Review, Constellations, North Dakota Quarterly, Pleiades, The Trumpeter, and The Wild Word as well as the following anthologies: Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Anthology (Split Rock, 2018); The Experiment Will Not Be Bound (Unbound Edition, 2023); and Broad Wings, Long Legs: A Rookery of Heron Poems (North Star, forthcoming 2024).

MIGRATION, NAJIB JOE HAKIM

NAJIB JOE HAKIM caught the nature photo bug early in his career after meeting Ansel Adams at an exhibition opening. He now works as a documentary photographer and photography instructor. But his love for nature photography remains. Since 2009, his efforts as a visual artist have steadily gained momentum and recognition. Before the pandemic, Hakim was the recipient of the 2020 Rebuilding Alliance Storytellers Award for several of his Palestine-related projects. In 2019 he was an Art Fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and his piece Sending Wings Instead of Arms received first place in a global competition. He is also a past nominee for the US Artist Fellowship.

WONDERLAND LAKE

LUCY FLOOD

At sunup, the swallows skim the silk-flat surface, steel gold out of the sky, bring light down to these surface waters. Here where silver clouds imprint on the water’s silk screen goslings plane ahead of their elders. Aspens quake “hello” to the rising sun, greet deer and their fawns. Stags stand, felted antlers pointed into morning.

LUCY FLOOD has written for The Atlantic, InsideClimate News, The Jackson Hole News and Guide, The Louisville Courier Journal, and Berkeleyside, in addition to other places. She is fascinated by what makes people and ecosystems flourish, and writes about the tiny, wonder-filled moments she finds in nature and with those she loves. Flood lives in Colorado with her beloved husband and five-year-old. She enjoys writing under the grape vine in her garden.

WHITE-TAILED DEER, COLORADO, BRI BRUCE

THE WAY A DEER LOOKS AT YOU

CHRIS POWICI

through the bare oaks of Kippenrait Glen black unblinking eyes head, neck, stone-grey winter skin everything about her terrifically still as if she knows exactly what to do with the moment.

Then a scuffle of old leaves, quick hooves. The pale January sun. The leap.

CHRIS POWICI lives in Perthshire, Scotland. He teaches creative writing for the University of Stirling, and writes poems and essays. His latest poetry collection is Look, Breathe (Red Squirrel Press). His essays have been published in a variety of magazines and books, including Antlers of Water: Writing on the Nature and Environment of Scotland, edited by Kathleen Jamie.

WATCHING THE DEER IN THE SHADOW HOUR

MEGAN MUTHUPANDIYAN

Velvet backs slide into the shadow hour, grazing skin to skin—bodies like ours—

bodies at night, undressed by the sweet rumor of shadow beneath the new moon.

MEGAN MUTHUPANDIYAN is a writer, visual artist, and ecologically minded public humanities scholar who teaches in the University of Wisconsin Superior Writing Program. As the founding director of Poetry in the Parks (poetryintheparks.org), much of her creative enterprise celebrates how individuals’ participation in their land communities fosters their ecological consciousness. Two of Muthupandiyan’s chapbook manuscripts have been semi-finalists for Wolfson Press’s poetry prize. Poems, illustrations, photographs, and nature essays have appeared in thirty journals and anthologies, and her illuminated poetry volume, Forty Days in the Wilderness, Wandering, was published in 2021.

GIFT

KERRI BOWEN

Face to the wind I watch the sails lurch— breaking crests and scattered rays in the fury of a rising storm.

A single sail further out, in irons, augurs uncertain returns.

My mother had a vision the night my father died. His body was a blinding orb of light racing across ocean’s edge, horizon bound, wild, free.

A gift—to dream he left the world this way, threading water and sky, shedding illness and pain.

Wind at his back.

Leaving in light that returns.

KERRI BOWEN is the founding director of City Lights Writing, an arts education nonprofit in Boston, Massachusetts. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Tufts University and previously worked as a visiting assistant professor of literature and writing.

LISSA WATSON is a North Carolina based travel film photographer, featuring European and coastal charm fine art prints. Her artistic approach is capturing and sharing the visual stories of places she visits. Watson specializes in film to bring a timeless and romantic feeling to her work and to evoke a sense of connection and nostalgia. She enjoys experimenting with different film stocks and creative techniques like intentional camera movement like that which was used to create “Hope.”

HOPE, LISSA WATSON

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.

EVEN KEEL, ADELE WEBSTER

HUNGER

KIMBERLY PHINNEY

That grainy taste is in my mouth again. They keep telling me that nothing lasts (as if it helps). But still, I wonder how there can be meaning without forever.

I need the blade of grass to live on in its green goodness, never to be bludgeoned, the lark to fly on across her infinite skies, never broken-winged or crestfallen, the infant to want his mother and never leave that fragile bird’s cage of a body.

It feels like blasphemy to watch the gardenia in peak bloom wither into a brown ghost, to watch the cupped water in my hands be carried off downstream and vanish into vapor, to watch young lovers shrivel and hunch down toward parting, like nothing happened at all.

It is a bitter taste: to kiss the ground one last time, or each other, to watch the horizon swallow the sun and hunger— to blink our eyes closed and welcome the coming dark.

KIMBERLY PHINNEY is an English professor, writer, counselor, and photographer. She’s been published in Ekstasis, The Dewdrop, Fathom, Wild Roof, and more. A current doctoral candidate in community care and counseling, she holds an M.Ed. in English and studied at Goddard’s MFA program in Creative Writing. She was recently featured on Good Morning America for a national award with the Nobel family, recognizing her career in education and teaching through critical illness. She is founder and editor of www.TheWayBack2Ourselves.com. Connect with her on Instagram at @thewayback2ourselves.

VESPERS RACHEL JEFFCOAT

The new dark has fallen soft over the day and holds your longings safe. Go out to where the cold is stealing over stubble fields and speak your dream—the dark keeps it, and the trees bend fondly over you to hear it, and the cuckoo takes it carefully under wing. Hold your hand

over your heart and name the thing you are afraid to name. The new dark has fallen soft over the day and knows you, loves you, wants the same.

RACHEL JEFFCOAT is a UK-based writer whose work has been published in various publications, including Spelt Magazine, Atrium, and New Welsh Review (forthcoming). Jeffcoat’s poems often examine the experiences of faith and womanhood through the rhythms and transformations of the natural world.

MAUREEN BENNETT is an artist, art activist, and educator who makes drawings, paintings and mixed media works inspired by the natural world of her backyard and woodlands of Northern New Jersey. She is drawn to the beauty of this ecosystem and feels it is magical and sacred. The stillness belies a system of constant change and yet a reassurance to the ebb and flow of nature’s rhythms. Her recent work is in response to the beauty and the imbalances that she observes from climate crisis and its effects on trees and proliferation of invasive plants and insects that have changed the biodiversity. As an activist, Bennett has been awarded numerous grants to use art as a transformative force for social change.

METALLIC LIGHT SERIES II, MAUREEN BENNETT

REBECCA LACEY has been a professional actor all her working life. She is also an exhibiting artist, life coach, and an emerging poet. She lives in South West London with her family.

THE WITCHING HOUR, REBECCA LACEY

WHERE THE MAP TOOK US

TAK ERZINGER

In the woods, I saw light shred the dark between the branches. I remember a time we escaped

hours and routine, followed the path through the highlands. The cacophony of crickets intensified with each footfall until we lost ourselves in a fortress of pine.

Exhausted, we leaned into the hillside— our bodies spoke without words, your knees pushed against mine.

Maybe you recall the outline of the treetops, the pungency of their scent and your knowledge of their classification.

I thought about family.

However it was, we held each other up, the sun’s long shadow chased us down the slope directing us home.

TAK ERZINGER is an American/Swiss poet and artist with a Colombian background. Her poetry has been featured by journals at Indiana University, Cornell University, McMaster University, the University of Baltimore, and more. Erzinger’s poetry collection At the Foot of the Mountain (Floricanto Press 2021) won the University of Indianapolis Etchings Press Whirling Prize for 2021 for best nature poetry book and was a finalist at The International Book Awards 2022. It was also a finalist at the Willow Run Book Awards and Eyelands Book Awards. Her poetry collection Tourist (Sea Crow Press 2023) was released in April. Erzinger has been awarded a spot by the Art Centre Padula Artist in Residency Programme Summer 2023. She lives in the foothills of the Alps in Switzerland with her husband and two cats.

TWO POEMS

NICHOLAS OLAH

AUTUMN SCENES

October lays itself out like a welcome mat. An exhalation. A map of how to get home.

Reflections of green and gold leaves dip in and out of collected rain.

The fog hangs low enough over the highway; I reach out and touch it.

None of this is anything if not magic.

TAIL END

And as for us we were like two leaves at the tail end of fall: we barely hung on and then no longer did.

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, Resurrection Magazine, and Wild Roof Journal. Check out more of his work on Instagram at @nick.olah.poetry or visit his Etsy shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/nickolahpoetry.

AUTUMN TANKA

TIM DWYER

Inspired by 13th century anthology Ogura Hyakunin Isshu

Entering the pine forest, scuffing through parched needles under foot, sun wavers through the canopy— how I long for you

TIM DWYER’s poems appear regularly in Irish and UK journals, recently in Causeway/Cabhsair, Frogmore Papers, New Irish Writing, and Under The Radar. His chapbook is Smithy Of Our Longings (Lapwing). Originally from Brooklyn, New York, he now lives in Bangor, Northern Ireland.

LIFE HAS DETOURS, BRYAN STEWART

FAR BACK IN THE WOODS BY THE WOLF PRINT IN THE MUD

AUDREY COLASANTI

Was there a thump on the ground when the paw hit mud? Did the woods, just for a second, join in the panting?

How long did it take for the heat from the paw to lose its afterglow? And the mud to turn cold again like the clay on a forgotten potter’s wheel?

In other words, how long did it take for the instant to become an imprint? And the imprint, a brief stamp of time, soon to be scrubbed away by wind and rain?

Truly, how long does it take for each moment on this earth to erase itself? Each thump on the ground—from our shoes, from our fists, from our mouths

to become nothing again, but the sound of a forest—breathing?

AUDREY COLASANTI is a just-emerged poet. Her first poetry manuscript, Thoughts From The Oak, has been published by Maida Vale/Black Spring Press Group/UK, March, 2023.

TRUST, AMY AIKEN

FOLLOWING THE LIGHT, DEBBIE STRANGE

HAIKU

SHANE COPPAGE

cloud cover November maples lean into the infinite

SHANE COPPAGE is a poet and artist with words published or forthcoming in Prune Juice, Trash Panda, Modern Haiku 54.3, Hintology, dadakuku, The Purposeful Mayonnaise, Humana Obscura, Scarlet Dragonfly, Cold Moon Journal, and The Japan Society London, among others. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his fiancée, Sarah, and their dog child, Lola.

HAIKU

SARAH DAS GUPTA

leaf veins autumn’s frail skeleton waits for a new spring

SARAH DAS GUPTA is a retired teacher, currently living near Cambridge, UK. She lived and taught in UK, India, and Tanzania. She began writing last September while in hospital recovering from an accident. Her work has been published, both online and in print, in a number of journals/magazines, including Paddler, Waywords, Parcham, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Dipity, Overtly, Tangience, Cosmic Daffodil, and others. Her interests include history, the countryside, animals, art, plants, and re-learning to walk—not perhaps in that order.

ANNA FREYNE uses a sustainable art practice to explore the archetypal patterns and organic symbols that emerge through the process of eco printing. Her work is inspired by the natural beauty and diversity of the plant world. By using natural materials and techniques, her aim is to create art that is both visually interesting, but also environmentally responsible. Images of her work are featured in The Waxed Lemon, Kithe Journal, Cerasus Magazine, The Jupiter Review, and others. She has a BA in Painting (UCA, UK) and an MA in Art, Psyche and the Creative Imagination (TUS, Ireland). You can view more of her work on Instagram @artdreamspace.

FREEDOM I AM, ANNA FREYNE

KERRY MCPHERSON

After the bog, we can stop, but not before.

Once the gold leaf has been stripped by sleet and the branch we lift to the young moon is bare.

Once we are sure of the swamp. Once your last beard grows in red and the Granny Smiths are ripe, then we can climb the craggy hill.

Sitting on my black raincoat we can lean in and you can tell again and again about porcupine quills asparagus by the can cloves

and most important of all: how marshes keep the world from being on fire.

I believe this. I trust in this. Until we can share a green apple in the wind.

KERRY MCPHERSON is a poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker from a fishing village in Nova Scotia, Canada. She has dwelled in Hollywood for the past decade, making art, blowing seeds on the wind, hustling, and communing with the landscapes of California. Her first book of poetry, The Ecstatic Orphan (Cloud Publishing, Vancouver), came out in 2021. A poem therein has been turned into a ballad by Natalie Carol of Valley Queen, and just released on their new album, Chord of Sympathy. She is working on a rock opera, a film set in the Mojave Desert that will be her directorial debut. Her punk noir tv series, Baby Saigon, was the Honorable Mention for the Maven Screen Media Fellowship with Stowe Story Labs last year.

LATE YEAR SONATA

DUSTIN MARLEY HACKFELD

I. MORNING FOG

mauve mist on the soft curve of a mourning dove’s breast

the first light falls like slow wind through a hollow bone

II. NOVEMBER SUNSET

as Earth turns away the last light fills her dark ear with the plainsong of crickets

III. WINTER WIND

hair of silence tangled in barren trees

DUSTIN MARLEY HACKFELD is pursuing a B.A. in Literary Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. His haiku have been published in Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, and tinywords, and one is forthcoming in tsuri-dōrō. He is currently working on a chapbook, The Deep Line, wherein he seeks to render into organically poetic forms the myriad manifestations of creative energy surging through all existence. He lives in Ingleside, Texas, with his wife, daughter, two dogs, and cat.

VINES I, MAUREEN BENNETT

TALITHA MAY is an adjunct assistant professor at Portland State University.

WINTER RAINS, TALITHA MAY

HAIKU

MELISSA LAUSSMANN

at dawn dewdrops on autumn grass one hundred moons

MELISSA LAUSSMANN is from the island of Guam and currently resides in Texas where she works as an Administrative Assistant at a community college. Her passion lies in creative writing and eco-critical research. She received her MA from Midwestern State University and has a profound interest in nature writing and world literature.

VALENTINE’S DAY

JOSÉ A. ALCÁNTARA

The dead trees have a thousand thousand ears, every one of them, closed, stiff, and dry as bones. The whole forest, quiet as the site of an ancient massacre. I will not speak of love today. The trees will not listen. But tomorrow, the rains come. The ears will swell, soften, swirl in ribbons of ivory and coffee brown. The rain will whisper things the trees love to hear. I will eavesdrop, stay silent, wait for spring.

JOSÉ

A. ALCÁNTARA

has worked at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, on a fishing boat in Alaska, as a baker in Montana, and as a calculus teacher in Cartagena, Colombia. He is the author of The Bitten World: Poems (Tebot Bach, 2022). His poetry has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Poetry Daily, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, Poetry Northwest, Bennington Review, Rattle, The Southern Review, and The Slowdown. He lives in western Colorado and wherever he happens to pitch his tent.

WINTER IN THE WIND, JOCELYN VELUSH

FIRST FROST

PATRICIA ROCKWOOD

The grass grows rigid, cold. Sharp spears and turrets edge each glittering rim. One step would set a hundred kingdoms splintering.

PATRICIA ROCKWOOD lives in Sarasota, Florida, where she teaches creative writing and mosaic art at Suncoast Technical College. Her poems have appeared in Split Rock Review, Plains Poetry Review, Hiram Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

THE SECOND FROST

JODI BALAS

the second frost is always more settling in the bones than the first— it doesn’t become easier just more familiar as if the cold was already calling the body home.

JODI BALAS is an ever-evolving neurodiverse poet from Northeast Pennsylvania. A lover of words (salacious, being a favorite—it just rolls off the tongue), her poetry has been accepted in Hole in the Head Review, Wild Roof Journal, River Heron Review, and elsewhere. Balas has been a poetry session leader for The Think Center in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, and is in the process of developing her first chapbook to market to the poetry world. You could dive deeper into her world by following her on Instagram @jodibalas_

SILENCE, AMY AIKEN

COLD SNAP

KERSTIN SCHULZ

Spray from a cascade forms slick icicles— a red-twigged dogwood bends over Wahkeena Creek.

KERSTIN SCHULZ is a German-American writer living in Portland, Oregon. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Read650, River Heron Review, HerStry, The Bookends Review, Raft, and Relief, among other publications. She is also the winner of the PDXToday 2023 Poetry Contest.

WINTER SKY TINTED LAVENDER

ANN HOWELLS

Halfmoon balances on its tip, twilight deepens, slant of moonlight slips into purple darkness. Shimmers. Fractures.

Frigid air carries sound. Silken waves unfold— quicksilver ebb and flow. Water clenches night’s chill; wind draws fingers across smooth skin.

Morning arrives hard as stone. Ice. Everywhere. A kaleidoscope of prisms.

ANN HOWELLS edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years. Recent books are: So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Painting the Pinwheel Sky (Assure Press, 2020). Chapbooks include: Black Crow in Flight, Editor’s Choice in Main Street Rag’s 2007 competition, and Softly Beating Wings, 2017 William D. Barney Chapbook Competition winner (Blackbead Books). Her work appears in small press and university publications including Plainsongs, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and San Pedro River Review. A multiple Pushcart nominee, Howells was named a “Distinguished Poet of Dallas” by the public library in 2001.

SNOWGLOBE, ROSE-MARIE KELLER-FLAIG

WATCHING

THE CYCLE, PETRO C. K.

WINTER RIVER

SALLY ANDERSON BOSTRÖM

If you live close to the source, the water flows even in winter, dark under snow banks. A sound you could confuse with wind, but there, under your quiet beating heart, it flows.

SALLY ANDERSON BOSTRÖM is the author of the chapbook Harvest (Kelsay Books) and numerous essays, poems, and short stories. Her most recent work is published in Ms. Magazine, Blood Moon Poetry, and Two-Thirds North Originally from Santa Barbara, California, she has spent the last decade living in the Czech Republic and Sweden. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing, Poetry from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a PhD in American Literature from Uppsala University in Sweden.

HAIKU

JEROME BERGLUND

biting wind a thick coat of ice on the cattle

JEROME BERGLUND, nominated this year for the Touchstone awards and Pushcart Prize, has many haiku, tanka, and haibun exhibited and forthcoming online and in print, most recently in Bottle Rockets, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, and Seashores. His first full-length collection of poetry, Bathtub Poems, was just released by Setu Press.

TWO POEMS

MARY KATHERINE CREEL

SIENNA WINTER

red ochre fields frozen still a coyote roams

DECEMBER OMENS

camellia pink sky morning snow a sparrow’s white throat

A TOUCH OF SNOW, DEBBIE STRANGE

HAIKU

JOSHUA ST. CLAIRE

midwinter snow silence fills the hollow

JOSHUA ST. CLAIRE is an accountant from rural Pennsylvania who works as a financial executive for a large nonprofit. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Lana Turner, Modern Haiku, Burningword Literary Journal, Allium, and Ligeia Magazine, among others. He is Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award, and Best of the Net nominee. His work has appeared in the Dwarf Stars Anthology and he is the winner of the Gerald Brady Memorial Senryu Award.

HAIKU

LUKE LEVI

walking together two faces on the pond the moon and I

LUKE LEVI‘s poems can be found in Presence, Humana Obscura, Tiny Seed Journal, Haiku Commentary, Akitsu Quarterly, and elsewhere. His recent poetry book is So Fragile Are the Beautiful Things, which was a finalist for the 2022 IAN Book of the Year Awards and the 2022 SPR Book Awards. He currently lives in the Texas Hill Country. You can find him on lukelevi.com and Instagram @lukelevipoet.

FROZEN POND, BRYAN STEWART

KIMBER DEVANEY is a Brooklyn-based photographer and curator inspired by nature, science, time, and memory. She enjoys the playful element of surprise and spontaneity that is present in film photography. Her work aims to push the limits of visual communication by combining various elements into a single frame, creating cinematographic portals that interplay with different realms of reality. See more of her work at kimberdevaney.com and on Instagram @mybegonia.

TIME GONE BY, KIMBER DEVANEY

FORCING BULBS

DERON ECKERT

Maybe the light will come before we forget the warmth it provides and why we need it despite sitting dormant for months with no hope but the short glow of an opening door closed quickly for our own benefit.

The darkness of this solitary confinement will empower us in the end. These shadows starve us, so when we emerge from within, we will be hungry for life and burst into blooms so beautiful we will not think to ask for more.

DERON ECKERT is a writer and poet who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His writing and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, Door is a Jar, Ghost City Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Fahmidan Journal, Boats Against the Current, Sky Island Journal, Querencia Press’ Winter 2023 Anthology, Treehouse Literary, and Rue Scribe. He was a flash fiction finalist in New Millennium Writing’s 54th Writing Awards. He is currently seeking representation for his Southern Gothic coming-of-age novel and his first collection of poetry.

TALL FIRS

WALLY SWIST In Memory of W. S. Merwin

The evening I heard that you had passed, I looked out and watched

the long rays of twilight touch the tops of tall firs across the field’s expanse,

and thought about the first spring buds I’d have to relearn in order to remember their names.

WALLY SWIST’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds and Nature, winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Poetry Prize. Recent poems and translations have or will appear in Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, The Comstock Review, and Poetry London. A Writer’s Statements on Beauty: New & Selected Essays & Reviews was published in 2022 by Shanti Arts. His translation of L’Allegria by Giuseppe Ungaretti was just published by Shanti Arts in August 2023.

THE TURNING SEASON, DEBBIE STRANGE

IN ELLIPSE VII, VANESSA PEJOVIC

VANESSA PEJOVIC is a photographer living and working in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Through her images, she explores themes of beauty, memory, wonder, and renewal in the most ordinary of places, but especially among the trees or at the water’s edge. Self-taught, she enjoys wandering her neighbourhoods, practicing the art of noticing.

THE WEATHER HAS CLEARED

HAROLD SNEIDE

The weather has cleared. The sun has returned. The trees are sparkling with the melt of new fallen snow.

HAROLD SNEIDE has lived on the North Shore of Lake Superior, in the foothills of the Cascades, and in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. These places have influenced his poetry and his love of nature.

HIBERNACULUM

JENNIFER BROWNE

Through winter, only you, sheltering idea I’ve built, a hollow into which I folded, dreaming of emergence, the boundless spring.

JENNIFER BROWNE (she/her) falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. Her chapbook Whisper Song is forthcoming from tiny wren publishing, and her poems are forthcoming or have recently appeared in the Poem for Cleveland anthology; the Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak, 15th Anniversary Volume; Tiny Seed Journal, South Broadway Ghost Society, One Sentence Poems, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly. She lives in Frostburg, Maryland.

JENNIFER STEENSMA HOAG is a conceptual artist working in photography and video. She holds an MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Awards include a Wendover Residence with the Center for Land Use Interpretation and grants from Target Corporation and Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs. Her work has been exhibited nationally in the US and internationally including PH21 Photography Gallery’s Project Room in Budapest and in Environment Documenta in Rome. Publications include Minding Nature, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, and The Hopper. She is a professor at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

UNTITLED, PHOTOGENIC TRACES, JENNIFER STEENSMA HOAG