New Ichthyosaur
After Theo Janssen
Wind-driven beasts roam the sandless coasts, PVC feet ankle-deep in new marshes, aerating salt-caked, flooded soil. Solar scales line their back sails undulate as their halting gaits move into the future. The plastic spines of a new ichthyosaur click like thick groves of bamboo, their visible backbones in man-made motion. And those who made them— fled inland, their only future.
That Strange Pull
My mouth is a buoyant chasm filled with song. Words, notes stiff as icicles tow themselves up from memory, stand at the edge of my lips, and leap, disrupting the air with "Love Me Do." The old tunes are intrepid explorers, weathering ice blooms in my brain. They locate lyrics I knew when my mouth leapt to meet yours.
Ode to Spring
©2023 Miroslava Panayotova
Spring, you perpetual activist, you resist Winter’s cold rantings, feign mindlessness, non-action. You understand when it’s time to return to your peaceful roots, and engage the underground. As soon as the weather eases its compassionless rhetoric, you’re out there marching. I see you pushing against hard earth until it breaks, and there’s room for you to rise.
©2023 Laura Shovan
All rights reserved
Laura Shovan…
…is an author, educator, and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt, and Stone won the Harriss Poetry Prize. Laura’s award-winning children’s novels include The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary, Takedown, and Sydney Taylor Notable A Place at the Table, written with Saadia Faruqi. She teaches writing at Vermont College of Fine. Welcome to Monsterville, her poetry collection for children, was illustrated by poet Michael Rothenberg.
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