second becoming

new poetry, Vikki C editing

forgive my dark ides. soon the equinox, a parity of night and day — each a long bone in the lowlit chasm. I come to the edgeland, her meridians marked by receding tides. the old wound furrows back into its own suffering. heart-wood splintered where a goddess fell below moral ground. her body bruised by governance, spirit dredging the canal. still, like teeth, her milken buds resist. beauty pardoned over an empire’s widening fault. in violet notes, spring steeps my body’s whereabouts. by morn, every flower is knocking in a crossbreeze — and i am afraid of oversleeping. Vikki C.

i enter March’s rhythmic shift, tracing her cardinal points, her transformative pulse, my bearings washed in rainlight. A meditation on time is relearnt from another age. Glyphic patterns between ancient and future, erosion and salvation, soon become her.

in this week’s newsletter, poets Brandon Shane and Camille LeFevre take us on an introspective journey with poetry that explores both ecological and human landscapes at the fragile juncture of seasonal change. Inspired by HINTERLAND, these poems interrogate the cyclic ruptures and spiritual warfare born of the temporal, reconciling our animalistic origins with a dwindling natural world poised between destruction and healing. 

in a wider premise, we revere spring as an agent of change, acknowledging endangerment, but also reclamation. Just as Persephone was granted the grace of returning to revive Earth, we too bear witness to a second becoming. 

alongside our featured artist, Maryssa Paulsen’s exquisite art piece ‘Sea’, these written works converse seamlessly to deconstruct a harsh terrain, where both the wildness and vulnerability of animals and their symbolic resonances embody our own transience, our own wounds…our miraculous endurance. 

THE RUSTY CHAIR
Brandon Shane              

Alone in the dark pasture
of a farm left behind to harsher
climates than the man with a pitchfork,
and the pigs have turned into boars,
the wild cattle are majestic
over hills and splashing across ponds,
but always returning to their winter
barn that sways and cracks, an old joint,
an athlete once glorious
under fire and threat of catastrophic
injury, like the horse that has broken
their hooves, needs to be put down;
but these wild things
in an unkempt land
share no risk of execution
by the swift bullet
or stoic device for execution
that works better than all
the tools available for purchase.
 
Lying at the edge
of grass and forest,
above colonies,
between insects
like grains;
I know my place
and my insignificance
among the hedges,
even the places
that cannot be seen,
and like a blind man
that has realized
the inner workings
of his eyes,
I sit at the cliff
of a mountain, an ocean,
let my feet dangle,
think about faith,
think about falling.



THE STONE WHALES
Camille LeFevre        


Do you see them? 
	          The stone whales 
		         breaching out of bedrock 
			       nibbling at the sun

their slender mouths holding atmosphere 	 
their humps spouting juniper into an oceanic sky 
their sandstone skin wearing marine-calcified coral 

along this desert remnant of ancient inland sea. 

Do you hear? 
            The coyotes sing for them 	
	           down rocky washes 
		         between boulder-fall 		

along red dirt unearthed 					
by hatchet swing and pickax pound 
and biker tire and hiker tread 
until scraped bare into the trail below 

the stone whales on the west end of the old town dump.

I sing for them too right here 
where boots scuff and poles poke 
where fingers tap as words evoke 
the heft of ghosts.
					
What is conjured for you?
		        As the tender cup of mariposa lily	
					    endangered at last
				     sways with doubt  	
			     between roofing and rebar 	
		     steel beams and rusted cans 
	       sacred Datura   	  and broken glass. 

thank you for walking with us through this delicate shift in seasons.

Until next time ~ Vikki C. and Jai Michelle Louissen.

read more about today's featured poets and artist here:

Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in trampset, the Argyle Literary Magazine, Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Ink in Thirds, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Winged Moon, among many others. He would graduate from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English.

Camille LeFevre’s poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Dodge, Fugue, Electric Lit, Brevity Blog, Bridge Eight, The Ekphrastic Review, and other publications. She teaches arts writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She lives on the unceded lands of the Hisatsinom, Yavapai, and Apache in Northern Arizona.  

Maryssa Paulsen grew up in rural northwestern Wisconsin and currently lives in northeast Wisconsin along the shores of Lake Michigan. In her free time, when not out admiring the sky, the birds and the trees, she attends book club and reads literary fiction. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Great Lakes Review, bramble, Unleash Lit, Wandering Toft Point: A Nature Journal, and Green Bay City Pages. You can find her on Instagram @maryssapaulsen or Substack at @marsonearthxo