EXCERPT from MANATEE/HUMANITY by Anne Waldman
******************** Internationally recognized and acclaimed poet Anne Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community, a culture she has helped create and nurture for over four decades, as writer, editor, teacher, performer, magpie scholar, infra-structure curator, and cultural/political activist. Her poetry is recognized in the lineage of Whitman and Ginsberg, … Read more
TWO POEMS by Jonathan Skinner
******************** Deepwater Horizon: One Year Later “Auger” takes its title from Shell’s first deepwater play in the Gulf of Mexico (in partnership with BP)—drilling in 2,860 feet of water to a depth of 19,360 feet—in the mid-1990s. (With Deepwater Horizon, BP ultimately would drill in 4,000 feet of water to a depth of 35,055 … Read more
![Sarah%20Browning%20at%20Capitol,%20Split%20This%20Rock%202010[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/sarah20browning20at20capitol20split20this20rock20201011.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Sarah%20Browning%20at%20Capitol,%20Split%20This%20Rock%202010[1]")
TWO POEMS by Sarah Browning
For Dangerfield Newby, Freedman This is for Dangerfield Newby, lying quiet amid the muskets and white men in the fire house in Harper’s Ferry, waiting. This is for Dangerfield Newby, and all those men whose families worked some other farm, waiting to be sold, waiting for the carts and whips to take them south. This … Read more
THREE POEMS by Janet Holmes
– From The ms of m y kin (Shearsman, 2009) ******************** Janet Holmes is author of The ms of m y kin (Shearsman, 2009), F2f (U of Notre Dame, 2006), Humanophone (U of Notre Dame, 2001), The Green Tuxedo (U of Notre Dame, 1998), and The Physicist at the Mall (Anhinga, 1994). Her work has … Read more
AUTUMN BEACH by Scott Sweeney
Autumn Beach It’s Black Friday, and we’re miles from any mall, where Capitalism will trample whoever opens doors at the Wal-Mart at six in the morning. Evening, waves tumble ashore to the echo of Thanksgiving, tossing billions of dead bivalves over the island sand. Promised rains never came and, as night falls—unfolds its Orion, Cassiopeia, … Read more
TWO POEMS by and INTERVIEW with Michael Rothenberg
***** ******************** The following interview too place via email in April 2011 between Heidi Lynn Staples and Michael Rothenberg: HLS: What is the 100,000 Poets for Change initiative? MR: 100 Thousand Poets for Change is a global action of poets and artists scheduled to take place on September 24. So far we have 70 … Read more
THREE POEMS by Sandra Simonds
Safe House http://knstrct.com/2011/04/10/the-safe-house/ Hello there. Welcome to my safe house. Here you will find numerous porcelain Afghanistans. In the safe house safe there are coins cut the shape of Malawi. In the study where I wish you to relax please find a number of wood carvings of John Lennon & Sons. The lampshades are German. … Read more
HEAVEN AS NOTHING BUT THE DISTANCE by JOSHUA ROBBINS
Heaven As Nothing but Distance Maybe it was enough to believe the Zodiac’s blazing entirety would be cast from the sky, an effortless handful of salt scattered to the Kansas plains’ red wheat. Out West, souls every day were shedding their Earthly inheritance—the refused histories of cause and effect, blight, hunger with a trace of … Read more
A QUAHOG FOR WALT by ROGER FANNING
A QUAHOG FOR WALT “‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said.” How many inscrutable angels does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. How many mice? Two, but there’s not much room. Two of Ma’s favorite expressions: “It smelled like low tide at Coney Island.” “She looked like the last whore at the clambake.” … Read more
CHANNEL by Katherine Factor
Channel We all live downstream. Osteoblast rings are an enormous thing. Have you ever seen inside the heart? If you have, you have entered a forest. Ventricles abound. Now lie down on its floor. Looking up is the miasma of trees; leucocytes scan the scene – can you believe it? You are watching your chest … Read more
UPON OUR DYING DAYS WE DID SUCH by Steven Karl
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Steven Karl is the author of the collaborative chapbook, State(s) of Flux, with Joseph Lappie (Peptic Robot Press, 2009) and the chapbook,(Ir)Rational Animals (Flying Guillotine Press, 2010). He has e-chaps forthcoming from Scantily Clad Press and h_ngm_n. He lives in New York City and blogs here and does this.
TWO POEMS by Michael Schiavo
– “Spiritual” was originally published in CUE (Volume III, Issue 2, Spring/Summer 2006). It is “about” Katrina, though I hope like any good poem, its various analogies speak to any manner of degradation of human and/or material spirit, not just by the perpetrators but by those, including the author, who’ve stood by, in their own … Read more
THE EGGS OF HOA HAKANANAI’A by SJ Fowler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT I am an employee of the British Museum and on September 1st 2010 a group staged a protest against BP’s long standing support and sponsorship of Museum events and programs. I experienced the protest first hand, and this poem stands as a response. Here are two links to the incident itself, filmed by the … Read more
BLUE by Laura Quigley
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Laura Quigley is a writer from south west england, writing mainly for performance, with Amnesty holding a reading of her human rights play “the advocate” in London on 2nd November 2010. She’s also had some success in short stories, films and poetry, the latter mostly published in Reflections magazine (ed. Steve Smith), with a … Read more
Veiled Spill #1 by Jan Clausen
Veiled Spill #1 One/ This is the world: we agree on that much. Spilling, they loll on their mojo here and there, hurling much to the winds. Idle. Ashing. Desperately kindled. Roasting marshmallowy virgins on the points of bayonets. Muffled within the uncanny. Incandescent. Not to blame. (Above all, not to blame!) Regard their beautiful … Read more
FOUR POEMS by Julia Johnson
Patterns The seamstress describes the bodice and the rows of seamstresses in training fold their fabric in ink to mark the pattern. Their own green satin billows on the table next to each of them. He goes on to describe the shirt. We are seamstresses describing the bodice. We fold our fabric in half. We … Read more
GUMBO by George Comeaux
Gumbo I Oil and Water have always mixed well here – Priest and prostitute; Anglo; Creole; Plantation owner; wet nurses; sharecropper – Gumbo stirring in everyone’s soul. Acadians trapped in the swamps no one wanted; Africans danced to the auctioneer’s song; Battered by strong winds, and social upheaval, Twice reconstructed, more fertile and strong. II … Read more
TWO POEMS by Julia Bloch
Level for Sarah Dowling In a view from the train, as if the mixture of trees organized the water, or a face over the surface of it, or a new set of structures in the water. One object hinges into another and we know that is like ethicality, if only from a long view, even … Read more
![Photo%20on%202010-11-11%20at%2005.56[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/photo20on202010-11-1120at2005-5615.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Photo%20on%202010-11-11%20at%2005.56[1]")
The Ninth Star by Mai’a ‘
The Ninth Star When the hurricane hit New Orleans black and white newspaper image in my coworkers hands. Her black curls, her white skin. I went back to sipping black coffee in a white mug and only said, my family’s from there but thats another story, Yankee. This story the tiger who pulled me to … Read more
![Vernal%20Falls%2A[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/vernal20falls2a1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Vernal%20Falls%2A[1]")
Lullaby by Dana Teen Lomax
Lullaby I’m sure God has a mean streak whoever there is whatever there is picks what we’ve decided can’t hurt us or won’t happen to humble everyone when we least expect it Superman can no longer move then dies Wendy Wasserstein leaves behind her 7-year-old daughter BP and our own subtle habits spew on and … Read more
TWO POEMS by January G. O’Neil
Engulfed —Gulf Coast oil spill, June 2010 It is an armband around the Gulf Coast, a quiet black ribbon on the dark sea wrapping the waters in grief, smothering the ocean’s secret mouth. From a black ribbon on the dark sea dolphins uncoil from the convulsing waves that smother the ocean’s secret mouth, slicked brown … Read more
Two Tarballs by Frank Izaguirre
Two Tarballs She snarls at Tony Hayward’s squirming face What a criminal! I wrap her bagels in plastic and she drives away ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Frank Izaguirre is a candidate for the MFA in creative writing at Chatham University. His poetry has most recently been published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
CALL IT ACCIDENT by Monique Wentzel
Call It Accident Call it midnight thump and boom. Gumbo lockdown. Call up gush; swirl and spread. Forward moving call it stalled. Call a party, crown petroleum queen. On call the creeping, race for land. Call it caught drifting in a starless sea. Long-billed or swell-bellied, sway in the bilge. Call it quits—trolled, talked-down. Roll … Read more
A BLESSING FOR THE WATER by Judith Roche
blessing for the water beginning no end circle the earth blesséd water blood of life ~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT This is the text of a public art installation at the Brightwater Treatment Plant in King County, Washington. Jane Tsong is the visual artist, who proposed making three “blessings” for the water treatment plant: for water, air … Read more
MAY 21 by Chella Courington
May 21 She spent the morning reading Mrs. Dalloway, flinching at Rezia’s extreme solitude in a strange city with a strange language and Septimus Smith her only friend. For she had left the comfort of home, left Italy with a husband she hardly knew, a man who spoke to the unseen. And Diana felt Rezia’s … Read more
SCIENCE FICTION by Ariana Reines
SCIENCE FICTION Just now I touched my chest And felt my heart quivering there. This must be one of the bad times. I think it is quivering with remorse And exhaustion. Once I saw a heart Beating in a documentary. I was a very Little girl and the sight disgusted me. Throbbing and not stopping … Read more
THE EARTH IS BLEEDING: POETRY ACTION & FILM by Ghen Dennis
~~~~~~~~~~~~ For more information on Ghen Dennis , click here.
FLARE by Chelsea Lemon Fetzer
flare -April 19th, 2010 an old man walked from the barbecue area of the Beachview Resort Hotel to the water he concentrated past the obstacle of children who stole shells from under his foot or traced borderlines in the sand with gull feathers plump lovers bounded ahead with some float device at last he reached … Read more
TWO POEMS BY DIANE ELAYNE DEES
Progress Report Tar balls appear thirty miles from my from my front door. In the early morning and near dusk, the perfume of pines–even the familiar rot of Louisiana summer– are vanquished by the smell of oil. After so many dispersant-soaked red eye mornings, after so many cracked pelican eggs and broken promises, after … Read more
THE DAY WE ADDED ECOCIDE TO OUR VOCABULARY by Andrew Rihn
The Day We Added Ecocide To Our Vocabulary No longer constrained to the lexicon of activists and free thinkers, the word spilled onto the barren shores of our lips. No longer content to bomb cities, blockade countries, or tell indigenous peoples theirs is only an imagined community, the guilt of our disaster attacks an entire … Read more
WHAT FAR AWAY MEANS by Rachel Mennies
What Far Away Means In western Pennsylvania, the news brings us the ruined ocean. Flush against the Allegheny, we drink our coffee black and, thirsty, read and read. We understand: waterway, pollution. We imagine: brine, gull. Far away is like a thesaurus of empathy: here, oil is coal, but lost is lost. Both leave a … Read more
TWO POEMS by Alexander Roussel
That’s What I Am! Bonfire builders from way down the river, These are my people. The proud son of a Mardi Gras queen And the festival king – that’s what I am! I know I’m home When I see the cypress peekin’ out From the low-hanging fog. Seafood boiled, spiced and crimson Against the green … Read more
DAUGHTERS OF THE DELUGE by Nijla Baseema Mu’min
Daughters of the deluge black mermaids face disaster 1. Oil stains our blood mothers we are not clean, our scales singe red the chains are chemicals they form rings around our wrists, we cry to the bones that gave us life the bones disintegrate the new ships are steel the only bodies that drop- our … Read more
TWO POEMS by Rebekah Bergman
properties of limestone On broken bicycle spokes, our guide pokes at mosquito bites bathed in horse shit, speaks of luck like the octopus who picked world cup winners Oohing at all the appropriate flora, we have more or less adapted to the cacti the stray dogs so skinny they masticate the spines, a hunger running … Read more
THE VIEW FROM CEDAR KEY by Lola Haskins
The View from Cedar Key There are acts we shouldn’t risk, the way we’d not send our children across busy streets alone. Perhaps nothing of ours would slick the Gulf, no black goo coat the feathers of staggering birds, nothing clot the sand our toddlers love to mound. Perhaps we’ll never wake to brown beaches. … Read more
BLUE by Laura Hinton–in memoriam (Paul Daniel Lyon aka Vickers B. Gringo, 1978-2010)
Blue “How do I now determine that a surface … has this colour?*“ – Ludwig Wittgenstein (for P.D.) I am just a woman on a beach watching blue-evening fishermen set up shadow poles I am just the sound of blue water hitting stones in a time approaching transparent I am just a tract of blue … Read more
WE DREAMT OF A CITY OF MIRRORS by Amy Schrader
We Dreamt of a City of Mirrors It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise and was keeping the inhabitants of Macondo in a permanent alternation between excitement and disappointment, doubt and revelation, to such an extreme that no one knew for certain where the limits of … Read more
PLUMES FROM YOUR BED by Laura Fenwick
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Laura Fenwick lives in Austin, TX. This is her first published poem.
FIREWATER by Allen Hines
Firewater My river. A friend’s ocean. Each oil-mucked, each has burned. Cuyahoga, the Iroquois word for crooked, has come to mean it, too, burns. Gulf, hard, hollow Germanic, may maintain its meaning but gain context to what it is that’s missing – vibrancy in algae, flushes of oxygen from the sea. Meanings, though, are not … Read more
THREE POEMS by Andree Cosby
On Noticing the Gulf Breeze at Grande Isle for the First Time as a Small Child I was the smallest frilly put to nap at noon in the high cotton bed at Lointaine’s camp. I could hear the women in their lawn chairs below the pilings peeling crabs and talking French, when a daydream thick … Read more
POEM by D. Ellis Phelps
poem outside the cyclone fence surrounding the space i call home havoc-happenstance horrific predictions (the end is near, again!) but here in the Cicada’s drone- a long, dry, hum a rhythmic, Shaman’s rattle speaks: take off your shoes bare your feet put your back down let the earth’s spine silence your mind … Read more
INCANTATION FOR OUR MOTHER by Barbara Barnard
Incantation for Our Mother Mother, we knew the caress of your deep currents before we grew feathers and took wing. We knew the rock and lullaby of your waves before we grew legs and tottered out from between your sunkissed limbs onto the shore. Mother, we knew the salty sustenance of your body, the irresistible … Read more
TWO POEMS by Andy Young
DEEPWATER HORIZON Take a deep breath, I say to myself, then remember the petroleum wind, the spreading slick, rig workers blasted and sent to bones and wreckage in the Gulf now gushing plumes of wealth. The wellhead swells and looses filth. Each tide is slick with thick, sweet crude which etches delicate marshes and blends … Read more
THREE POEMS by Stacy Kidd
gray like black waters oil isn’t gone here, isn’t part for parcel— (a tower) a man lifts his feet on water, — can’t stomp across, can’t call across for the hearing. how, when simple gestures bring snakegrass, bring a vast blueness and hoodoo, he wants so much to move exactly this way & — no, … Read more
BIG BLANK PAGE FOR MARINE LIFE by Qiana Towns
Big Blank Page for Marine Life The rule book says not to care if they live or die. If a woman screams the word dizzy loud enough her mind-well disengages. If a man believes he is God then he is the founder of organized crime. Religion is a jellyfish sting in the eye. Only … Read more
EVERYBODY COOL IT by Jason Morris
EVERYBODY COOL IT right now as we are in the moment of destroying all life as we know it beginning with the largest & most terrifying animals— wolves lions buffalo etc., lately I read pollinators also—hummingbirds bats & bees, traded for scary architecture, stopsigns SUVs roll thru, the shopping cart that homeless guy pushes allegorizing … Read more
THREE POEMS by Geoff Munsterman
According to the Drunken Elders of my Past When you like a girl you tuck your shirt in. Buy beer cheap as possible. When the flood came you slept like a baby in our skiff, and the moon was a rabid dog eating raindrops from your face. A paddle works in most fights. A shirt … Read more
THREE POEMS by Penny Harter
Symbiosis The Hawaiian bobtail squid forages in the night surf while waves of moonlight, of starlight fall like sediment into the sea. Its globular eyes pulse green; its spotted body glows orange, brown and blue. Smaller than my thumb, it is a galaxy, an organ of light inhabited by millions of luminescent bacteria. In the … Read more
THE RIVER, ONCE by Marc Vincenz
The River, Once once she went to quench then she went to scrub now she collects dead toads grinds them with cornmeal to feed her sows once she ploughed the land toiled with her face deep in dark soil her back burning in hot sun now she works in the paper mill making laminated labels … Read more
LINES WRITTEN UNDER THIRTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS PER SQUARE INCH by Donald Levering
Lines Written under Thirteen Thousand Pounds per Square Inch Deepwater Horizon Spill The ink from within has plumed through mile deep water, festoons the reeds and fishes, turtles and birds with iridescent pearls of smotheration. Under such force a single tentacle of ink escapes the gravity of glued pelicans to narrate the tale of the … Read more
TWO POEMS by Abby Millager
Status Quo “After” the Gulf Incident for JoAnn Now that the estuary is a well-oiled machine, ball bearings in the slippery, every blade a dipstick, the Government and the BP’s and the Halliburtons can breed plants down there, import workers, who will care how much it all stinks. Just think: rampant oil could be a … Read more
HUSTLE + BLOW, A SONG by Brett Evans with Skin Verb
Please click below to listen: hustle+blow_mp3 STATEMENT Poet Brett Evans lives in the Bayou St. John neighborhood of New Orleans. This bayou, which runs into the middle of the city, is home to nutrias, pelicans, and flying fish, and was a Native American trail and portage. New Orleans is made of water. Its streets are … Read more
TWO POEMS by Byron Beynon
AGROUND The slick would engulf the conscious coastline into disorder, facing a wintry sea the estuary braced against nature’s principles, the prescriptive balance threatened by a stench like genocide, the malevolence of human actions, mute dollops on a treasure of sands; the praised mythology of dolphins, the guillemots, cormorants, grey seals aground, their character despoiled … Read more
THIS POEM IS FOR YOU by Megan Roth
Please click below to listen: This Poem is for You – Megan Roth ~~~~~~~~~~ Megan Roth is a poet in Miami Florida and author of The Green Guide to Daily Living. She recieved her MFA from the University of Miami, and has published work in Opium, POEM, and Elimae. Her website is www.mrothillustration.com.
LOUISIANA SWAMP POEM by Sheryl St. Germain
Louisiana Swamp Poem –for the Atchafalaya, for Greg Guirard 1 Your swamp’s not my swamp, he says, by which he means a New Orleans swamp’s not the same as a Cajun’s, that the way I sometimes use swamp as metaphor for all that’s family-dark is not what he sees when he looks into the waters … Read more
SIX AQUATIC GODDESSES OFFER THEIR NOTES ON THE NEW CENTURY by Quintan Ana Wikswo
SIX AQUATIC GODDESSES OFFER THEIR NOTES ON THE NEW CENTURY ZÉMYNÁ AND IX CHEL When she crosses the dunes, she leaves holes instead of footprints. Standing hip deep in the Gulf, her thin limbs don’t disturb the waves. She is young and her gut is strong but the gulls die around her with a flap of black … Read more
TWO POEMS by Kate Noakes
Window cleaning The scaffolding crashed, a balsa wood plane, missed Marco’s coffee stand by inches – I‘m swinging over the steel and toughened glass canyon by a thread. Safe. Tied to the roof in case today happened. An acrobat spinning by the teeth and a strop of leather at the top of a circus tent … Read more
GAZA WATERPRAYER by Vanessa Huang
Gaza waterprayer –after Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese.” Dear human body, You do not have to be good or bad. You do not have to pray angelic, veil each thousandth tide this dying body. You only have to let each shrivel loosen and tell what it tells: fire from the air, fire from the sea. Love … Read more
TWO POEMS by M. Begnal
Yellow Wave Yellow ocean wave cresting at the sand cresting toward the reeds in mid-crest yellow and speckled with dark globules of the board meeting thick black spheres of the dividend pretty yellow ocean out of whom come bottlenose baby corpses beleaguered brown pelican [angry and slick!!!] credit card numbers one single hard hat hard … Read more
DARK ENERGY, DARK MATTER, AND DARKER MINDS by Tom Savage
Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and Darker Minds This poem is not about the cosmos And the dim ideas some have Concerning a consciousness Responsible for it all. This poem is about the oil (glug glug) currently spilling Into the Gulf of Mexico Out of a pipe Some greedy capitalists erected To give themselves more money … Read more
FOUR WORKS by Jennifer Scappettone
~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT These pieces come from a work in progress called Exit 43, conceived of as an archaeology of the Superfundament and opera of pop-up choruses—a response to the fallout of industry in localized bodies, including those of my family and neighbors, present and past. These particular “pop-ups” were written not in the wake of … Read more
EVIDENCE by Karen Neuberg
Evidence Start today as always. Time is matter. Pluck, stitch. Threads of moment a darling addiction. Collects in the wisdom of the oceans. Evidence is crude & wide. Watch & watch more. No time for complacency. Weeping is not sufficient. Let’s learn something here. Now. Dammit!, let’s at least learn. ~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT It’s so much … Read more
PHOTOGRAPHS GLOSSY AND SMUDGED by Tony Iantosca
photographs glossy and smudged a whole city’s smog-dust on my desk must have something to do with it I think I’m supposed to say something about all this how about: I exist and this sea turtle does not like oil under her shell an airplane is landing at the edge of sky … Read more
TWO POEMS by Don Antenen
I The Greyhound bus station was the jail just cages and cops and rude soldiers I talked to old men who got beat and young men who got beat then I drove a woman home who just got out of prison she called me handsome but my throat hurt after the hurricane in New Orleans … Read more
LOGGERHEAD by Dave Bonta
Loggerhead Caretta caretta Loggerhead: originally an insult applied to people, later a kind of cannon shot, the post on a whaleboat anchoring the harpoon line, a bulbous-headed iron tool used to heat tar & the largest sea turtle in the world. Its jaws can crunch through the thickest armor: queen conch, giant clam. Like all sea … Read more
NATURAL DISASTER by Jen Coleman
Natural Disaster Always have to wonder: Was it the water, or was it the wall? The story always makes me wonder: Was it the wave, or the breaking of the wall. Which was the natural part of disaster Flooding the city, after all? Makes me think twice: Is it the oil, or is it the … Read more
NEW PATHOLOGIES by Gillian Conoley
STATEMENT I grew up swimming every summer in the Gulf of Mexico. It was an escape from the land-locked center of Texas, where I was raised in a small farming community. The farmland, which seemed to be not just on the outskirts of the town, but also under one’s feet, was considered extraordinarily well fit … Read more
THREE POEMS by W.F. Lantry
Duration …and if the sound of something distant bends these ears towards desire, or renews emotions of a night long past, can we recover, in a moment, what had been a world to us, who invented then a universe of longing, out of all our visions of those diverse elements: water and wind and light, … Read more
![Peter%20closeup%20cropped[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/peter20closeup20cropped11.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Peter%20closeup%20cropped[1]")
THREE POEMS by Peter Cooley
HOW I ONCE SAW THE PELICAN AS ETERNAL SYMBOL, NOT VICTIM OF THE OIL SPILL Everything just in miracle as planned so long as I keep focused on what’s here, refusing to reach beyond this moment— oh tell the truth, it’s trying to refuse the tide of the white page, running in, out, whose whitecaps … Read more
OUR VISIBLE DEPENDENCE by Chas Holden
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chas Holden is a freelance writer, photographer, struggling poet, and grad-student. As a former practitioner of journalism, his words and images have appeared in newspapers around WV and PA. Since then, he has become a disciple of poetry as a more potent way to disseminate discovered truths. Besides writing and photography, he enjoys hiking, … Read more
THREE POEMS by Helen Losse
Rain had fallen all morning before an orb of yellow sun drew sheer gray curtains back, peeked to the left of a mountain: lone, purple, tree-covered pyramid. Fog then plunged to the valley like a sky-diver from a plane, reached the valley in fading light just before night came with enough time left to see … Read more
TWO POEMS by Caroline Klocksiem
At first the waves Morning. Blood I did not want to tell you about. My god this heat. Your family. And we are not even allowed at the gulf right now maybe years from now even though it swings itself towards us. Once a baby hound with a punctured throat followed me to the door … Read more
BRING ON THE SUN by Chris Landau
Bring on the sun. The Chasm, The Gulf. We see. Change has come. Bridge and bright, sunlight the Gulf. Divide no more. Bring on the heat. Break up the oil. We meet. Light, clean our world. Clouds cover no longer the Gulf. Sun, break down the oil. Oil dim and fade. Fight surf, wind and … Read more
THREE POEMS by Barbara Henning
FROM Twelve Green Rooms Bayport, Long Island A shock of black hair, little cleft chin, round face, little feet like a fish. Pelican. Pelican. Pelican. Two weeks later he is more than one-third larger. One day he’ll be over six feet. With a ten foot wing span and a layer of webbed fibers. Throat pouches … Read more
SIGNS by Mary Ann Sullivan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mary Ann Sullivan has an MFA in Writing from Norwich University and a Doctor of Arts degree from Franklin Pierce University, where she studied digital poetry and completed her dissertation, “Digital Poetry and the Greek Notion of Nous.” Her digital poem, “Il Pleut,” created in collaboration with Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, has been anthologized in … Read more
DEEPWATER HORIZON WELL by Lauren Birden
Deepwater Horizon Well is unfolding disaster. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Emergency Response Document says: The following is not public. Two additional release points found in the tangled riser. A release volume, an order of magnitude higher than previously thought. An order of magnitude means something is ten times larger. An order of magnitude higher … Read more
MY LOUISIANA LOVE by Anne Barngrover
My Louisiana Love Your gulf-town tonight is a bedpan sloshing with rain— So I’ll begin by confessing, I miss you, and I’ll sympathize from the get-go, down to the barnacles on my heart, that you will trudge among the oil-fish gumbo, dragging thoughts of me like a rosary while I sit at a sushi bar … Read more
DOLPHIN ISLAND by Randy Bates
Now locally pronounced Dauphin (Daw’ fn) Island, Ile Dauphine is in the Gulf of Mexico near the Alabama coast. In 1699 the French-Canadian explorer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville named the island for the many human skeletons he found on its beaches. In 1708 Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville changed the name in an effort to … Read more
BURNING WATER by Minnie-Bruce Pratt
Burning Water In the YouTube video a man flips a lighter, flare, holds it to a belching faucet, the water catches fire, not a miracle, the companies hydro-fracking us for gas, the movement of capital in ground water— And there’s that unpoetic word again, so overt, admittedly abstract, some even say clichéd, a word I’d … Read more
TWO POEMS by Michael Rothenberg
DAY TRIP The world is always prettier after lunch Orange and yellow starfish In tide pools at Cape Perpetua Devil’s Churn Sea-foam green anemone Spruce, fir, agate beach Cross a driftwood bridge Balance regained after a stumble A false star (is) swept into the drumming Hollows of a sea lion cave Dark into dark Raging … Read more
JULY POEM by Kathleen Ossip
July Poem Probably lashes the moon to its neck, overawed opal in a forest of joy, the Dolphin prints himself on the wavering line, and Good Health fireworks the twilight away. While Bad Guy blackens the beach with oil, Never does all it can to erase the smiling Dolphin who splatters his face printing and … Read more
LETTER #1, TO THE CONSCIENCE EMBODIED by Richard Hamilton
Letter #1, to the Conscience Embodied Dear Kathy, your body as oiled, a rig, an unidentified sea turtle, botched and barely. As the I am, the slosh crab apple, which finds itself in the sea. I’m there—the hazy gurgle, a crude bunch. Somebody’s responsible. Some bodies are thick, with ooze and spilling. Spit and muddle … Read more
A POETRY ACTION by Matthew Falk
A Poetry Action This poem is a bird. Not a petrol-coated pelican but a bird to be flipped at those oily bastards. We don’t care if they don’t give half a shit about poetry and what we poets think. We’ll show them: I call upon Yeats for an image out of Spiritus Mundi: the BP … Read more
SUMMER VACATION by Susan Browne
Summer Vacation snorkled in toxic water between the crossings of glass bottom boats loaded with tourists from four cruise ships anchored like floating skyscrapers in the bay blocking the view of the coastline then climbed into a motorized polyurethane raft crammed with scuba tanks stun guns soda cans saw one bald eagle on the one … Read more
FROM THE UNFINISHED by Mark DuCharme
–from The Unfinished To still be held, against an atrocity. Some of this is vague. Things go on without repeating. One atrocity leads to another, I know. Some of this is whispered. In childhood, it was simpler— this folly, the seemingly ambient skies. At the edges of some moment we aren’t sure. This is a lyrical … Read more
TWO POEMS by Marie-Elizabeth Mali
Knife I pick up the knife and begin to chop, the same knife that almost sliced off the tip of my finger last night as I prepared soup. Another day is another day. An oil well’s gushing non-stop in the Gulf and the Drill, Baby, Drill gal sends her prayers. A fishing boat captain working … Read more
TWO POEMS by Timothy Pilgrim
Slick — to Exxon then and BP now I. Number of the 23 species seriously depleted by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill that have recovered — 1 – Harpers Index, September 1997 “The current worst-case estimate of what’s spewing into the Gulf (of Mexico by BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well) is 2.5 million gallons … Read more
THE SEA GODDESS TELLS HIS STORY by Christine Swint
The Sea Goddess Tells His Story Part of Giordano Bruno’s heresy was his conception of a universal soul, which he compared to the Greek ocean goddess Amphitrite. I In the evening, so close, my lips graze your lobe. Where you sit at a table splattered with beeswax, roomed above a stable in Rome, I open … Read more
MOURNING by Kirsten Ogden
Mourning Bubbling inside curved gulf waves, blackened, swirling slick—chunks of it glistening in orange water; And I am homesick for Louisiana. My paw-paw, dead five years this week, taught me to clean catfish, peel crawdads, spit tobacco. He called me bay-bee! He let me ride the dump truck–squirt gasoline onto burning skidder tires until flames … Read more
TO CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS…A MEMO by Mara Buck
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mara Buck is an artist and writer who lives in the Maine woods within a self-built sanctuary. Her novel “Highway to Oblivion” has just been chosen as a Short-Listed Finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Award. Her latest published poems have appeared in the anthology “Vwa: Poems for Haiti” and Caper Literary Journal. A video “Autonomic … Read more
THREE POEMS by Mackenzie Carignan
A conversation with my 5-year old son while looking at oil-mired birds in the Gulf Those were wings, I try to tell him, feathers for flying. Tell me what they are now, he demands. We look at the picture again, together, as if we might discover some filament of this animal reaching through the muck. … Read more
A CENTO OF THE GARBAGE PATCH by Brad Richard
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Brad Richard’s book Motion Studies won the 2010 Washington Prize from The Word Works and will be published in January, 2011. He has published one other book of poems (Habitations, Portals Press, 2000) and a limited edition chapbook (The Men in the Dark, Lowlands Press, 2004). His poems and reviews have appeared in American … Read more
WITHOUT REPRESENTATION by Rita Banerjee
Without Representation No words sings the sunset yellow sparrow No wants echo his eyes against the midday they try to open but close like a broken metronome his small body barely marks out time against the tar, inside the feather there is no sound for this slow loss of gold, for gossamer wings clipped in … Read more
I AM A NATURAL WONDER by Anne Cecelia Holmes & Lily Ladewig
I AM A NATURAL WONDER Where there is wetsuit attraction is where I go. When I am singing to the showers there is no stopping it. I swear once in your town I appeared as if by wave. I powered your well. I jarred every ounce I could touch. Now I know about conversion, about … Read more
THREE POEMS by Mike Espana-McGeehon
Oil Spill-Ambergris As they gather the balls of petroleum off the beaches of Louisiana the voice of my grandpa comes to me: “Keep your eyes peeled for the vomit of the sperm whale, kid. It’ll stink of death and shit, but listen! One grey ball of it can bring us enough cash to buy off … Read more
TWO POEMS by Jason Crane
The Last Piece Of Ice Under The Sky There would be no point in climbing this mountain, not even to speak to the wise man at its summit. He has no answers, no solutions. He is merely old, and that’s no achievement when you live on a mountaintop. There are two men trapped at the … Read more
TWO POEMS by Louie Crew
Word Wisps for the Gulf The GOM Fed ultra-deepwater production has become significant only in recent years. O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light GOM oil production began from shallow water fields (water depth of under 1,000 feet) in the twilight last gleaming? but shallow water production began to fall in 1998. … Read more
THREE POEMS by Matthew Gavin Frank
Parts of a Feather The superstitious geometry of the rock dove rests between its first and fifth rib. And you rest between it. It’s easy to call you a disease. Better: a heart or rain or our dinner plates, last night draped in the leavings of cherry. Of course, you say, my hands are the … Read more
DEEPWATER by Saeed Jones
Deepwater April 20, 2010 – 10:00 pm When the only light is flame, I run to the end of myself. Metal bridge mangled, other men jump into the ocean’s open throat, choked water somewhere under smoking blackness. Pray the waves aren’t stone-faced when I meet them. Is this the night we were promised, the fire … Read more
THREE POEMS by Amy Dryansky
Somewhere Honey from those Bees Try to see the world’s backstage machinery, its business— Look, said O’Keeffe, look closer. So the man on camera keens for his wife, and for the flicker of a signal he’s ours, the sun shines equally—gracing, gilding, revealing, damning—it depends on where you stand. Looting or surviving? Taking or taking … Read more
FOUR POEMS by Carla Martin-Wood
Too Late It’s too late the alarm sounded long ago but we didn’t listen let marketplace manlogic rule preferred profits to prophecy of tree huggers and biologists it’s too late for talks between the big oil bullies and failed government our wetlands have been sold out shining green and gold nursery to sea life breath … Read more
THREE POEMS by James Brush
A Necklace for the Goddess of the Empty Sea After years in the desert, when he reached the empty sea, he knelt in the sand and prayed to the rusted ships bobbing lifeless on the shimmering black waves. Syringes and glass glistened in the sand like ruined stars. He knelt in the sand and prayed … Read more
TWO POEMS by Shaun O’Reilly
adorned in gold dark liquid continents slowly converge on the mouth of the great Mississippi river like 15th century conquerors finding the coasts of the Americas, exploitation and greed drifting ashore. but 1492 was columbus and oceans blue 2010 is black gold adorning life (in disguise) of the sea and we’ve dressed them, our brothers … Read more
THREE POEMS by Curtis Jensen
THE BURNING & SINKING OF DEEPWATER HORIZON 6 figures in a loose circle going on about God knows I am the 3rd I am the 4th I dream the others I am all 6 with infinite more the surface —a Euclidean disk drifts towards the river’s mouth ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ YAMPA RIVER You are unknown & unseen … Read more
Demolish a Small Grove by Rebecca Kinzie Bastian
Demolish a Small Grove Thorn-stitched, my ankle bleeds. Blooms across the floor. Petals and petals. The garden is weeds. There are weeds at the door. Click and whirr, beetles mate among stalks. Our dog is lost in tangle, wild as she is. A second whistle. Sound’s entirety in the holes. Come in. Come inside. Under … Read more
TWO POEMS by Stacy G. Ericson
SKIN BOAT A skin boat Rises on the breast Of an unswum sea Borne on frozen waves Yet liquid, into The quick mercy of the tide. In a skin boat He rides the breathing waters, Swallowed by The dusk, on a Cold and golden sea Where only heat is human. In a skin boat, He … Read more
THREE POEMS by Kamau Rucker
Cotton and Creek Water We cruise through farmland speaking of the charm of small towns, passing fields of cotton. Cotton has jagged stems, spilled blood is rich with iron, equal in proportion to the earth’s chemistry. It’s the land where Job was reading in the dark from fear of being whipped, reading blind. It’s the … Read more
Press Release: 10 June 2010 by Julie L. Moore
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT Using the technique of erasure seemed fitting when writing about the catastrophe that has erased so much beauty and life in the gulf–and seemed to indict BP with its very own words from early June. We now hear talk of the kills to come–the “static kill” and the “bottom kill” as BP works to erase … Read more
Requiem for a CEO by Jenne Andrews
Requiem for a CEO “And darkness covered the earth…” You sir, should take off your clothes and walk into the red and viscous sea of your making. Take with you the smothering pelicans other dying birds. Relieve them of the travesty of all attempts to breathe, fly– they cannot open their bills. they cannot spread … Read more
Leaking Oil Well as Lunchtime Entertainment at My Husband’s Hi-tech Company by Penelope Schott
Leaking Oil Well as Lunchtime Entertainment at My Husband’s Hi-tech Company In a distant quadrant of the country a bunch of guys in a conference room watched direct feed from under the Gulf. They cheered for the hook and booed when the long wire swung sideways and missed. They chewed sandwiches or peeled oranges or … Read more
THREE POEMS by Rebecca Foust / Art by Lorna Stevens
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FROG Trapped in the pail the frog slow-arced in back flip, two extra legs half-folded, flapping like unbelted umbrellas. The radio said that the poison had not seeped into the aquifer, that the poison not gotten as far as Slough Pond. It’s true that Nature not-meddled-with makes her mutations and does not deem … Read more
LETTER FOR UP NORTH ASSOCIATES by Brian Boyles
LETTER FOR UP NORTH ASSOCIATES you/i separate generational skins recall sight of a dolphin couple ebb and skip in the gray water how brotherly whimsical measure steady. smothered, partner, smothered and beached. mud for your descendants mud for you net particles bred in the bean counter’s lab hold your fingers, horseman you’ll be bigger, loom … Read more
WE LIVE IN A PERMANENT STATE OF CLEAN UP by Joshua Schuster
We Live In a Permanent State of Cleanup We can survive on oil and meat for years in this bunker You eat your heart out The hole is the good: goods come from holes A team of anthropologists were digging in the Sahara for bones in a middle-Paleolithic cemetery but found oil – it was … Read more
![Jill%20Magi%20photo%20summer%2010[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/jill20magi20photo20summer20101.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Jill%20Magi%20photo%20summer%2010[1]")
THE GULF OF I STATEMENTS: WATER EXPERIMENT #1 by Jill Magi
The Gulf of I Statements: Water Experiment #1 I relax at the beach. I stretch my body out on a towel, look out, and note the long horizontal lines and bands of color. My father taught me how beige and blue are compatible. He wanted those colors for the interior of our local church. Since … Read more
CLEMENS AND ANNA by Louis E. Bourgeois
Clemens and Anna 1. J.P. Clyde I was sent out in my father’s tattered coat into the streets of the city Zarbo where there are hidden roads that run into mill grinders. There I found you, and you promised a sacred dinner with a promise to be kept at the end. When we had finished … Read more
TWO POEMS by Greg Santos
Shell/Cave The hermit crab lives alone in its own small shell. I, too, live in my own small shell. Its walls are dark and cozy like a cave. I scuttle about from tide pool to tide pool and I am happy. But lately my shell/cave paintings trouble me. Images of dark seagulls and undulating creatures … Read more
![Seattle%202008%20202[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/seattle202008202021.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Seattle%202008%20202[1]")
A SURVIVOR STATE by John Lambremont, Sr.
A SURVIVOR STATE We survived Kennedy We survived Hilda We survived Betsy We survived King We survived Johnson We survived Camille We survived Saigon and we survived the Rings We survived Agnew We survived Nixon We survived Kruschev We survived disco We survived Uncle Ho We survived the Chairman and we survived the Corleones We … Read more
![Briante[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/briante1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Briante[1]")
JUNE 4—THE DOW CLOSES DOWN 9931 by Susan Briante
JUNE 4—THE DOW CLOSES DOWN 9931 My heart drops a note, systolic beats for you, Jim James sings on the radio, the radio sings: yesterday the Dow rose, a flood. Outside not a leaf moves, I can’t feel a single branch, let alone the oil in plumes, feathers of a thousand estuaries. How do you … Read more
TWO POEMS by Vivek Sharma
A Missive to Ancestors, about Oil Spills in Nigeria and Gulf of Mexico Tell us again Marlow, that saga of my wanton ancestors. Let my grandsons know, we were like our rotten ancestors. I have joined the tribe of world-wide-web philosophers, We formulate the myths for our forgotten ancestors. Like callous children, we let you … Read more
![dan[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/dan11.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "dan[1]")
COMPLAINT by Daniel Lin
Complaint A SEA A FLAME This slick is vinaigrette flambé Pero, pero Where’s the fresh, green salad? The dying animals should sing a ballad In Esperanto or other language of hope. The guilty should wash with Castille soap Until their dry, papery skins flake NOT FOR THEIRS BUT FOR OUR SAKES Answer If you leave … Read more
PROSTRATE by Brigitte Goetze
Prostrate Finley Wildlife Refuge is lovely in June. We shared the sun with the golden crowns of Grant Lotus and the lobed lips of Toothed Monkey Flowers, the dappled shade of White Oaks with the open faces of Showy Phlox, growing prostrate along the path leading to Cattail Pond, its soft bottom clearly visible through … Read more
MOMMY, CAN I HAVE THE BP OIL SPILL FOR XMAS? by K. Silem Mohammad
Mommy, Can I Have the BP Oil Spill for Xmas? as I stated on the single mom post, my li’l man is gone how can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me, neither have I been unchaste? I own BP but do not know why I’m a cold-hearted bastard Republican and worried … Read more
CRAW-DADDY by Rebecca Anne Renner
Craw-daddy Think of killing as only making ghosts. That swamp you called your Mama reeks of pigs now. The runoff turns the magma an unearthly shade of brown. We celebrated Dia de los Muertos early that year. The sugar skulls and flores were hand-molded, hand-carved, hand-picked, and by your daughters’ hands. Those hands that in … Read more
![Dana%20Guthrie%20Martin%20Image%20PLW[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/dana20guthrie20martin20image20plw1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Dana%20Guthrie%20Martin%20Image%20PLW[1]")
AN ESSAY by Dana Guthrie Martin
Viscosity I wake with a wad of hair in my mouth, thinking about perception: its power in defining how we feel about situations and about people; its power in defining how we are perceived by people and how we come across in situations. I slept hard. I dreamed hard. In one dream, a group of … Read more
THREE POEMS by Trina Burke
Riverbed Canzone A canister of can-can curses the alluvium of winter melt. Can the 12th of the month be worse? Can’t be ides, can’t be ideas. Deposit in the bank— Can pebbles be prodigal sediment a- symmetry? Simple canal drops for the mouths of bottom-feeding muscles. Feeder creeks accrete to flow, aspire to river volume, … Read more
SOME LIVES OF WATER by Dan Featherston
Some Lives of Water All night rain falling over the house ● Kettle’s tumbled thrum drum ● Stalks stood in root scribbled glass ● One drop: the whole room dangles there ● Face floating raised between basin & palms Face falling broken ● Some sealed sweet Some suckling spout Some broken by light ● Coiled … Read more
COAST FUNERAL by Abe Louise Young
Coast Funeral CEO has the confidence of a dictator. Egg yolk and chicken feathers and straight pins in his hermeneutic mouth. Make the day new, take your vitamins, don’t look, he says. Crickets empty their breath into our lungs. Gravel collects the sound of the shoreline. Oysters pool in our palms like blood clots. We … Read more
THREE POEMS by Arisa White
Last bath –for Jamar The bubbles die and there is a different life ahead of us. The once-continent turns to islands; fish schools close to our bellies. Seeing under water is a collision on my eyes. It takes out my braids, turns cold because I didn’t want it like seaweed. You turn the shower on, … Read more
TWO POEMS by Trey Moore
Corpus Christi A cricket lives outside my door. We converse about dreams I will travel tonight that I might sleep well. Once upon a time sand dollars and horseshoe crabs washed on the beach long before skyscrapers built resort deluxe condominiums. Bankrupt before windows are never installed. All for the back weary traveler carpet for … Read more
TWO POEMS by Leslie McGrath
Anima Mundi –O remember In your narrowing dark hours That more things move Than blood in the heart. ~Louise Bogan Summer evening; the wind a riffling finger over the meadow’s tawny spine. Starlings rise, resettle as a woman might arrange her skirt. And the stone wall: rock lace tatted by the sun. Granite, like the … Read more
THREE POEMS by Shelly Taylor
Thereof the time the sun is rising upward, its fowl rising, mine. A fire set forth about his feet, devours at him burnt offerings continually before he fields the noon like whiplash; for every goat & cattle on the hill are hungry. If in the case I would not tell you or drink blood, no … Read more
WATER OFF A DUCK’S by Erin Virgil
water off a duck’s… I wake up and find I’m trapped in a lagoon, but the water is gone: something else in its place, black and brown. It sticks to me all over drags down my feathers when I try to raise my wing. What is this smell, there is weight in it and the … Read more
THREE POEMS by Richard Oyama
The Orange Antelope In my dream the orange antelope is caught mid-stride, with the spiraling horns of a kudu the image of movement and emergent life, its core sheathed in keratin. But its split hooves sink not in spongy wetlands and it’s not a long-necked gerenuk standing on hind hooves to feed on upper leaves. … Read more
GEOMETRY by Barbara Strasko
Geometry Don’t think of what doesn’t exist, search only for heat where the shallow snow flies like dust. A dark rock lost in the mist of the blue river. A few branches against yellow light. A white lily might be a cloud against a dark landscape, or one albino leaf fallen on a lake where … Read more
A KIND OF SOLUTION by Dan Chelotti
A Kind of Solution A man rips by On a motorcycle. I hope he falls off. I say that. I really say that as A guilty man on television says The earth is a screaming Whore that needs to be gagged. So gag it, BP. Shut her up With a mud shot. A junk shot. … Read more
THREE POEMS by Richard Jeffrey Newman
Like This They never touched when others were around. You had to find the presence in their eyes of hunger. That’s how I knew, and then I chose not to. Yesterday, they walked the sand of this too flat beach just inside the line the water leaves each time a wave withdraws. Her hands shaped … Read more
THREE POEMS by Deborah Meadows
We cry for the Gulf Sea heave. The way pebbles are arranged by sea heave, Democritus wrote, is an example of atomic theory, perception, a rippled pattern in sand, an idea of motion as sifting, and the sifting might cause heavier atoms to sink down through clouds of light- and middling-weight atoms, down not as … Read more
TWO POEMS by Naomi Lowinsky
PATIANN ROGERS COMES TO MIND DURING AN OIL SPILL I thank the distinct edges Of the six spined spider crab for their peculiarities And praise the freshwater eel for its graces. — Patiann Rogers If I knew as much science as you, Patiann knew migratory patterns, mating rituals, feeding behavior of those creatures engulfed in … Read more
TWO POEMS by Sarah Green
Dawn What works is dish soap squeezed and feathered over wings. One wing per apron. One entry per child. What wings is leavening; not lard, not thickening. What learns is sore. What soaps is womenfolk in rubber gloves, is old. We’ve known the recipe for longer than we say. We say it’s hard to find … Read more
WRECKONING by Amanda Parker
Wreckoning The mourning after the blast I went down alone to say a bad bye to my childhood friend. I spent an hour or two there and saw porpoises breaching into the wind She said: There is no word but loss, and not enough for me I´m older than you can comprehend I have seen … Read more
BP PT: A TOXIC TRYST by Nicky Tiso
BP PT A Toxic Tryst Characters: Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig (feminized) British Petroleum (masculinized) EPA (androgynous) Worker (racialized) Props: ? Deepwater Horizon: (said in urgent, illicit whisper) drill deeper in the same hole so if they decide to do so later records show, porous is our type BP: (with gaudy swagger) this risky measure is … Read more
TWO POEMS + VIDEO [Mourning and Witnessing Walk for the Gulf Coast] by Carolyn Zaikowski
LIFE ROAR Life roars the centipedes crawling miraculous sticks, leaf capillaries, colors are. Nuclear bombs exist but during the moon when all was apart, you leapt into the lake and extracted my roots When we are radioactive, lucent with the split, this is what we will remember ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UNTRAPPING Beneath the army boot between all … Read more
THE BIRDS by E. Tracy Grinnell
The birds, or natural numbers We are no longer young in weather. –Gertrude Stein, History, or Messages from History They kept coming at him from the air, silent save for the beating wings. The terrible, fluttering wings. –Daphne du Maurier, The Birds THE BIRDS is a rhyme, a repetition, or no reason a throat closes, … Read more
BEYOND PETROLEUM by Ana Božičević
Beyond petroleum I want to just be a torso. I’d rather not suffer the indignities of reaching for or walking towards. I put a toy train on your bound chest. I put fake barnacles in your arms, it’s a fake haunting, of the arms on the inside by no-one’s pirate. This is how a love … Read more
TWO POEMS by Myl Schulz
Chevy Enui et knowledge that those levy’s wouldn’t stay dry. Post haste ad hoc debate gross state of alarm confusion mass harm swimming puddle thick laced power lines. Free fall of anarchy race to dine fine cultural mass tourism trap of only could one fun for ages hurricane, the multi alcohol drink and Preservation Hall … Read more
FROM GREEN THERAPEUTICS THIS WHALE by Heller Levinson
from green therapeutics this whale leviathan ranges steaming the whales – arch locomotives – aerial adjutants rumble through green gateways puckering garner gabling odontecete risings purling pastures weeping therapeutic silence aqua combings syllabi rewritings days no longer injurious but supplicant envious of wind traffic & eager for contraband the skiff wardens calibrate glass cloak uprising … Read more
THREE POEMS by Ilona Martonfi
VISITING THE DUNES from this view, I see it better from this perpetual angle of scarred trees grating to find an answer blue-white freckles and strawberry blossoms a horsefly swishing across my face riddled and pinned on a leaf wild roses and blackberry bush in a soft, white crinoline skirt I don’t know how to … Read more
WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL CONNECTION TO THE OCEAN? by Mary Krane Derr
What Is Your Personal Connection to the Ocean? –Question posed by the Ocean Conservancy Birthed out my mother’s small upside-down chalice of it, I ran down and down to the Sea to keep on hearing it waving without fail, through selfsame saltwater, the Great Great Original Heartbeat, a pregnant woman’s drummed to some billionth power. … Read more
CONSIDERING OPTIONS FOR CONTROLLING THE BP BLOWOUT IN THE GULF OF MEXICO by Kristin Prevallet
Considering Options for Controlling the BP Blowout in the Gulf of Mexico Because the Gulf Stream shoots a strong current into the subtropical gyre Which circles around the North Equatorial current Which like a palm with many lines connects the Caribbean current Back into the Gulf Stream, the Gulf Stream which shoots past the Subtropical … Read more
THREE POEMS by Greg Fuchs
Pieces of the Sky The wind, the water Washed my home, My people away, My people wash far Away my home. Pieces of the sky. The wind, the water Took my home Into the lake. Home so fleeting The pieces of the sky. The wind and the water Biblical lesson. The lake came to visit … Read more
WHEN IT RAINS, IT SNOWS by Nathan Logan
When It Rains, It Snows There’s one winner and, like, twenty losers when it’s a battle for who gets to clean what birds at the natural disaster site. Stop at the next Waffle House though, I want the batter shaped like Texas––my hunger could melt a dumb snowman. Scheming is always a priority at the … Read more
OIL ODE by Gary Barwin
OIL ODE O you who are green and time together the golden voice beneath the bruise blue earth which gives back its flow and time O iridescent fire which moves and warms us O viscous technicolour coat of possibility O blood of industrial earth we commute from axon to dendrite your petroleum-blue ichor in our … Read more
TWO POEMS by Elizabeth Kate Switaj
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT We don’t even have the words to describe what is happening in the Gulf right now. To call it an oil spill doesn’t even come close: this is to an oil spill what gushing arterial bleeding is to sliced capillaries. And we don’t really know what the long term effects are going to … Read more
WHEN THE ANSWER IS NO by Gwyn McVay
When the Answer Is No The elder gods sleep and don’t care about you or your precious egrets You kicked him, you kicked the disaster god, and now a webby hand tastes nothing like persimmons or paradise Did you think you were more than tissue? A prophetic gull carried away your plastic-cup soul to an … Read more
TWO POEMS by Annie Finch
EDGE, ATLANTIC, JULY I picked my way nearer along the shocking rock shelf, hoping the spray would rise up to meet me, myself. Seagulls reared louder and closer than anything planned; I looked out to see and forgot I could still see the land. Lost in a foaming green crawl, I grew smaller than me; … Read more
TWO POEMS by Sampson Starkweather
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT I can’t help thinking about that Spicer poem, Thing Language: “This ocean, humiliating in its disguises/ Tougher than anything./ No one listens to poetry. The ocean/ Does not mean to be listened to. A drop/ Or crash of water. It means/ Nothing.” These poems are from a book I wrote about water. I don’t know why. But I wrote a … Read more
THREE POEMS by Rick Reibstein
Child of Gaia The leaf, the star, the blackness of night have belonged to me, because I have said so. The downy ones – oh – when they are abandoned…the ones who flash from within dark waters… and the ones who watch, too frightened to be seen. To me belongs the quiet before the morning … Read more
TWO POEMS by Donna Pecore
Ocean Straits Earth Day 2010 Fabian Cousteau maps oceans’ shame Rothchild’s plastic boat Plastiki explores Pacific’s plastic moat radical rich guy floats on craft, crafted of over 10,000 bottles, held together with a cashew and sugar glue formula his money put to super good use searches for islands of bags, bottle caps, Styrofoam cups and … Read more
THERE IS NO WAY BACK by Patricia Monaghan
There Is No Way Back On the radio, an old friend’s voice chokes with anger and grief. At the Stony Island intersection I am stuck, gridlocked in place. Stalled in traffic uselessly weeping I listen to the news. The light turns yellow, red again; a sudden cry of horns. Salmon in the tide pool, whales … Read more
THREE POEMS by Wendy Brown-Báez
Ashes “I close my eyes, and think of water.” –James Wright I close my eyes and think of water. Water flowing crystal clean, the brook and the forest gilded in daybreak, serene Water from an icy spring high in the Spanish mountains, the road as heated as a griddle as we wound our way down … Read more
TWO POEMS by Pamela Villars
The Pelican The pelican wears my father as her coat; it’s too heavy to remove without the help of strangers. It holds the old girl tight the same way he held me. I had fed him to the bayou fish to soften his unyielding bones, mixed him with Mississippi mud to teach him to be … Read more
TWO POEMS by Ellen Wise
DROWNED ISLANDS The islands, viewed from above, nest like a set of french curves set in a case of faded blue plush. Sand, as it migrates, becomes the body of its own changed shape. By skiff, we pass through winding cuts lined in a dense, black mud pliant enough to be carved, or dissolved. Past … Read more
AGAIN AND AGAIN I MARRY THE EARTH by Amir Hussain
[Again and again I marry the earth] Again and again I marry the earth, the shore by the grass, the loon on the tree, and the heavy deer felled on the highway who looks at me as I drive past. I am married to the parrot’s colors and the tree that is being felled by … Read more
TWO POEMS by Sandy Tseng
Sediment I. It begins without warning. The water withdraws from our feet, exposing the ocean floor. The bay that is miles of sand. Fish without water. The last thing we see is a wall of white crashing. Abandon. The water comes again and again in towering waves. A deep retching from the core of the … Read more
REALLY PRETTY IMMATURE IF YOU THINK by Mike Young
REALLY PRETTY IMMATURE IF YOU THINK Do you gawk at all the worst disasters of human fault and have the wrong reaction? Join the club. I’m so anti- disgust that amazement wells in me like a sentimental James Bond villain. Hey, this is some pure-ass poetry of witness, babe. Am I worse than the president … Read more
EARTH POEMS AND OIL SPILLS by Albert B. Casuga
EARTH POEMS AND OIL SPILLS * It’s when I’m weary of considerations,/ And life is too much like a pathless wood…/ I’d like to get away from earth a while/ And then come back to it and begin over…/…Earth’s the right place for love:/ I don’t know where it’s likely to go better. — Robert … Read more
HUSTLE AND BLOW by Brett Evans
HUSTLE AND BLOW The fuel of suffering Tanks in the mardi gras fountain look cool in a war book sort of way, but make me flash on the flood car regatta when New Orleans was an all-wrong cocktail I’m writing this with a Super Bowl pen Christie left on the counter and drying off with … Read more
EXCERPT FROM THE BOTTOM by Betsy Andrews
Excerpt from The Bottom Atop the bottom, the water-ghost the riddle-ghost tower, fireballs lapping the ghost map the ghost nets, the ghost moon, the ghost lines, the ghost traps, the fingerlings giving up ghost the long dark drive, the ghost drive, over the derelict moat the ghost era’s ghost-dish, its secrets, its swallows, its test … Read more
THREE POEMS by Derrick Austin
Resurrection Fern I only want what’s mine, a man thinks: his lawn chairs, a mailbox, washed away. Nearby homes don’t have welcome mats or windows. He can’t tell what’s his anymore, all things nameless, muddied, and green. Loss, like confusion or joy, fogs the eyes like gauze. Anchored to a wall, the resurrection fern binds … Read more
TWO POEMS by Michael Hettich
Adding it Up There are more barrels of oil spewing into our waters than the number of days you will live, or breaths you will take; more barrels than times you will blink your eyes. When you walk across a field, just think of all the blades your feet crush. But the blades stand up … Read more
TOLLBOOTH by Sarah Green & Leora Fridman
Tollbooth My dream was that a giant would eat everything. It would all get taken in. Compostables, retrievables, babies of smoke. Don’t you know from smoke? Yes, I know from earthworms listening for galaxies. I gave up galloping when horsepower became so dear. I knew there was a price to pay for intersection. Not the … Read more
POEM FOR NANA by June Jordan
June Jordan (1936-2002) Poem for Nana What will we do when there is nobody left to kill? * 40,000 gallons of oil gushing into the ocean But I sit on top this mountainside above the Pacific checking out the flowers the California poppies orange as I meet myself in heat I’m wondering where’s the Indians? … Read more
TWO POEMS by Jason Quackenbush
“Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill!” –for the Gulf Coast Rachel Maddow is clearly angry. Clearly. There’s video of her sometimes, while the oil flows, in along the gulf and in among the marshes. She’s there, standing with experts, asking them questions. The look her face more or less says it all. The oil still flows. I … Read more
THREE POEMS by David Wolach
Zbigniew Herbert’s Minotaur at the Indoor Pool, 2.0 Dear Seeming, Like like, bone comparisons Look me up and down in this Wet holding pattern In Krakow In Detroit In Warsaw In Oak Park He didn’t understand a thing Do you dangle your feet Only man with large nipples Because you cannot swim Because of NASDAQ … Read more
WE CARE ABOUT THE SMALL PEOPLE by Jules Boykoff
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jules Boykoff is the author of Hegemonic Love Potion (Factory School 2009), Once Upon a Neoliberal Rocket Badge (Edge Books 2006), and is the 2006 recipient of the CA Conrad Sexiest Poem Award. His political writing includes Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space (co-authored with Kaia Sand) (Palm Press 2008), Beyond Bullets: … Read more
EMILY SAID THAT THE KEY TO THE SHED WOULD BE ON HER PORCH ATTACHED TO A CLOTHESPIN BUT I NEVER FOUND IT by Sandra Simonds
~~~~~~~~~~ Sandra Simonds is the author of Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008). She works as an Assistant Professor of English in South Georgia and lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
SELECTIONS FROM CORSICA INSIDE THE DAUGHTERHOUSE by Paige Taggart
–Selections from Corsica Inside the Daughterhouse ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Paige Taggart lives in Brooklyn. Her chapbook Polaroid Parade is forthcoming with Greying Ghost Press. She has an e-chapbook, Won’t Be A Girl with Scantily Clad Press. She was a 2009 NYFA Fellow. Peruse her blog: mactaggartjewelry.blogspot.com
TWO POEMS by Deda Kavanagh
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Deda Kavanagh is a poet from Bucks County PA. Her poems have been published in the anthology, Freshet, the Newtown Advance, Lehigh Valley Literary Review and the Kelsey Review. She has read her poetry at libraries, colleges, and on QPTV. She received an Honorable Mention in the 2009 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award competition.
GULF WINDS by Lyle Daggett
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT The horrible human-made disaster unfolding in slow motion in the Gulf of Mexico is, first of all, a direct result of economic and political aggression by a small number of people against the earth and against most of us who live on the earth. We live in a culture whose leaders encourage, as … Read more
DEAD ZONES by Mollie Day
Dead Zones Went down to the ship, set keel to tempest, forth on the oily sea, and swung our oars in the maze of pipelines. Searing winds from the south and our bodies heavy with weeping, but we pulled fast over Gulf to day’s end. And there, where moon’s eye sees nowhere, platform corpses darken … Read more
THREE POEMS by Mark Yakich
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT If you experience a terrible event, you will slowly dilute it by writing about it. But if you don’t write about it, it will slowly dilute you. The poems here were begun years ago, have been revised to fit the occasion of the terribleness, and will be reincarnated into new terribleness … Read more
THREE POEMS by Deborah Poe
Pelican –after Charlie Riedel’s photograph (Associated Press) there is a simple way to scoop a glob into the hands of buddha when you refrain from unwholesome imagine how it would be for wildlife attached to death and my skin heavy with oily compassionate toward sentient beings the pushback against feelings of helplessness not excluding the … Read more
AT LEAST 4 GALLONS PER SECOND + Revision by Kaia Sand
at least 4 gallons per second In the time it takes me to say this, at least 32 gallons of oil will have gushed out of the Deepwater Horizon site. And now 40. And now 48. And now 56. And now 64 gallons of oil. In the time since this poem began, gushing out of … Read more
GULF COAST DREAMS by M.J. Fievre
Gulf Coast Dreams Nashua was standing by the sea when the revelation came: her body was 80% water. Even her thoughts were liquid. She wouldn’t fit anywhere on the Gulf Coast—not in the Bahamas, not in Mexico, not in Cuba, not even here, in South Florida. The world was too solid. She belonged in el … Read more
DROWNING POEM by Peter Ciccariello
“Drowning poem” was previously published by Rattle on December 2nd, 2008. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT Spill, containment, spew, divert, plume, oil slick. Are these the words that describe this catastrophic event? Who controls language? Who is writing this apocalypse? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Peter Ciccariello works at the intersection of image and word and is fascinated by the space between the … Read more
TWO POEMS by Tess Taylor
LOW TIDE LITTLE RIVER At landfall at rocks edge in a tidal channel the ocean trades continent quartz for maple plovers for orioles saltgrass for mussels— caching new silt for bottom feeders. We too come as scavengers. We hunker in the sand. We elbow land and muck that sucks and tows as if it wants … Read more
TWO POEMS by Cara Benson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT I wish I could put my poems in that hole and teach them to eat carbon. That they salve the soaked. I am not alone. I want that these words would worm into the corpse of the capitalist system that let the oil continue to spill out while its practitioners were trying … Read more
TWO POEMS by Jared Schickling
LAUGHING SONG feeding song global warming Where a cream sea tears up losing sight of fear joy of voice the with laugh woods green the when Or roaring roads sprawl tearing up and gagged, choke by laughing runs stream dimpling the and Where the molecule, that won’t tear up, loses its dull wit wit merry … Read more
ARCTIC DRILLING by Laura Elrick
“Arctic Drilling” originally appeared in Skincerity (Krupskaya 2003). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Laura Elrick’s latest text-based work (currently untitled) is a book-length series of poems that proceeds by accretive and migratory iteration; other works include a video-poem Stalk (2008), a set of audio pieces for doubled-voice (2006), and two books of poetry: Fantasies in Permeable Structures (Factory School … Read more
TWO POEMS by Brenda Iijima
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Brenda Iijima grew up in the hilly town of North Adams, Massachusetts. She is the author of Around Sea (O Books), Animate, Inanimate Aims (Litmus Press), revv. you’ll—ution (Displaced Press) and If Not Metamorphic (Ahsahta Press) as well as numerous chapbooks and artist’s books. She is also the editor of )((eco(lang)(uage(reader)) … Read more
TWO POEMS by Jeanne Murray Walker
LEARNING TO SWIM IN LAKE ADLEY –for Elaine Terranova After church I drive in the rain to Lake Adley. Here I learn how everything is hooked to everything else. The waves for instance, each flashing in like another row of teeth. From their angle I try to guess the way the sand bars jut beneath … Read more
![waterlights2[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/waterlights21.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "waterlights2[1]")
TWO POEMS by Christopher Rizzo
A NOTE ON THE INTEREST OF STAKEHOLDERS “We will meet our obligations both as a responsible company and also as a necessary step to rebuilding trust in BP as a long term member of the business communities in the US and around the world. This is in the interest of all our stakeholders.” —British Petroleum … Read more
THREE POEMS by Alana I. Capria
Piece #1 “They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence.” -Daily News article, June 2, 2010 Everything sinks eventually. The ships, even us. Even the oil. Then the men can smile and come again with their drills. We can see the many bags of our tarred bodies left out … Read more
![scan01[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/scan011.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "scan01[1]")
DEAR SARAH PALIN, by Carolyn Foote Edelmann
DEAR SARAH PALIN, I understand it’s all my fault –this Gulf oil disaster, I mean– not only all that fire bodies catapulted into air then drowned soon likely shark bait but also this volcano of oil spewing interminably into our blue mantle Sarah, you say I did this all of this and more now some … Read more
(SOMA)TIC POETRY EXERCISE & POEM by CAConrad
(Soma)tic Poetry Exercise & Poem BETWEEN CORRESPONDING WAVES for Jocelyn Saidenberg & Rob Halpern Gather sand from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. When I collected sand in Atlantic City I meditated with the ocean for an hour, then dug a hole, placed a quartz crystal in the hole, covered it with sand and crystal-infused water … Read more
TWO POEMS by Joseph Hutchison
The Gulf The marine biologist sinks a blue-gloved hand into the Gulf, then draws it out, stunned silent by blackness dripping from his fingers. === The columnist and tele-intellectual, known back in college as Little Georgie, owl-eyes the moderator and shakes off the catastrophe. “Accidents happen.” Capitalism’s dangerous, he means. Big rewards demand big risks. … Read more
PALLINODE by Wendy Babiak
Pallinode Each of us carries salt water in our veins: this portable ocean. We carry too now remnants of poisons we’ve spilled: pulsing pollution. What happened to us that we so long looked away? We want what we want. Nothing more precious than clean water to drink, clean air to breathe. Just this. Anger clogs … Read more
ENORMOUS MISTAKES by Tasha Cotter
Enormous Mistakes She says it was an enormous mistake, calling the photos Of her in the magazine a rape. She meant a violation, Which sounds better. But the oil is already out there, the black Is filling the pockets of the coast. First the marshes, Then more water goes black, then more. The thick book … Read more
GLOBAL FUCK IT by Patrick James Dunagan
GLOBAL FUCK IT –for Jason Morris The birds absorb us. Jason, this arctic shit is for real. Look out your window, (no kidding!) that’s exactly what I mean. Forbidding yet-to-be Paradise—why don’t they call it. A slow sculpted dream yet have we the means… The animals are going— Poe’s children— What we don’t do does. … Read more
THREE POEMS by Amber Clark
Maquette You start by thinking small as a button. And then resolve to attach it to a pocket of a green dress hanging from the slim frame of a girl with sunkissed hair and bluegrass eyes, swaying on the porch to some soft music – the trill of a mandolin – as you drive past, … Read more
TWO POEMS by Anny Ballardini
Like a nocturnal butterfly Oil draws thick embroideries on darker surfaces The sea glues in birds / Vomits dead fishes A black floating glove suffocating / stilling Whirling up / Earth’s deadly geometries Swallow up / down _ all life ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ nobody sees, the same with wars sometimes on screens some blood, some spots floating … Read more
TWO POEMS by Margaret Rozga
The Gulf I could not sleep It was too dark, too cold It was too hot I was too full of dreams I was too dream-deprived Too tired, too full of rest It was all too strangely familiar. I was at a funeral Maybe my mother’s only sister I was at a convention I had … Read more
![matthews_authorphoto%20(2)[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/matthews_authorphoto2021.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "matthews_authorphoto%20(2)[1]")
TWO POEMS by Philip Matthews
The Fishermen close in. Two halves share a globe: two thirds cover a surface, scaled bellies between brothers spilling out quicker the closer we come. ~~~~~~~~~~ 78% water sparkling or tap we fish w/ boiled tongue the mutated cells flickering below Mississippi — bleached nickels in stomach count the charge of a brain under water: … Read more
![MayaB&W[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/mayabw1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "MayaB&W[1]")
THREE HAIKU by Maya Pindyck
Three Haiku 1. Unlike the story of the snake that brightens skins we dim radiance 2. Spewing under earth, man’s mistake kills birds, fish, crabs— not other; our own 3. In blackened waters a mother and her children float dead on their backs ~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT My response to the oil spill has been shaped by … Read more
HAIKU AND TWO HAIBUN by Donna Fleischer
haiku rail cars stacked with wood slowly pass the living I whisper to them, kaddish originally published in Lilliput Review ~~~~~~~~~~ The Golden Scorpion a faint patina of gold, preserved in resin and suspended within the pink room of a polymer dome. its pincers open, and almost touching. an ache in the look of … Read more
TO THE MOTHER OF WATERS, TO WHOM WE NO LONGER PRAY by Margot F. Boyer
To the Mother of Waters, To Whom We May No Longer Pray Mother of Waters, grave of slaves and of those who chose the ocean instead, long home, resting place heart’s ease to the troubled mind; Here comes the Deluge we were warned of, the blasted Tower, the great Sacrifice. Mother of Waters, in all … Read more
![PiaTexasBkFest[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/piatexasbkfest1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "PiaTexasBkFest[1]")
FORMER SANCTUARY by Pia Sen
Former Sanctuary It was once picturesque, A sanctuary of foliage, Vivacious, Amidst the roar of apathetic machines. Water glistened like the eyes of a tree nymph, Exuberantly dancing, Evoking the might of the wave. It’s soft whispers were almost enough, To quell the fury of the oil rig, A silhouette depicted against the beauty of … Read more
![WatkinsF[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/watkinsf11.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "WatkinsF[1]")
TWO POEMS by Amy Watkins
Seashore Haiku 1. From the eroded dune, a cascade of sea oat roots holds the wind together. 2. Early spring. The waves too cold to enter, we pine for warmer weather. 3. At the edge of the beach mat, small as a fingernail: the shell the daughter chooses. 4. Waves fill the footprints with coquina: … Read more
![Photo1aaaaa[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/photo1aaaaa1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Photo1aaaaa[1]")
RIDING IT OUT by Gianmarc Manzione
Riding it out Even hearing the roof scream off like a cork or a crow did not startle me as much, nor did the sight of my home’s aluminum awning as a wet towel twined around a lamppost; these things I expected enough to make my meager arrangements: Asterisks of duct tape applied to shutterless … Read more
PIMP MY TOP KILL LIVE FEED MOTHERSHIP by Sharon Mesmer
Pimp My Top Kill Live Feed Mothership Pimp my Top Kill Live Feed Mothership Pimp it with a legendary Saddam relationship Pimp it with three-day throttle like a pimp beats a whore Pimp it fast with patches of dry skin from Chris Matthews ’cause pretty soon nobody’s gonna care Pimp BP’s little port-a-potty mistake with … Read more
JUST DIGESTED by Leora Fridman
Just digested 1. We thought we had an ocean, but the actual inside was glitter. These small weird particles that came apart with speed. Anything could be water in the right light. Anything could twinkle. When we reached for large chunks they dissolved into seeing. They dissolved into the kind of slickness we could ride … Read more
THREE PROSE POEMS by Michael Leong
1. Hydrogen In English, hydrogen mixed with absence poses a number of hazards to writing, from potential detonations to being an asphyxant of tradition. When we speak, we form oxygen-free air. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 8. Oxygen We know, or think we know, the method surrounding spontaneous language, as if we were writing into a vessel with a … Read more
FROM THINGS COLUMBUS SAID ABOUT GOLD by Scott Abels
from Things Columbus said about gold Christopher shits bricks. He is a fat guy in a little coat. He googles himself. Plumes of oil deep in Gulf are spreading far. Whoever owns it is lord of all he wants. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT In 1502, Christopher Columbus wrote, “Gold is a wonderful thing! Whoever owns it is … Read more
TWO POEMS by Brian Spears
“Salons are collecting hair to soak up oil.” I wish I had hair like Absalom, weighing two hundred shekels by the royal standard, cut only when it got too heavy for him. I would offer it up, sheared to the scalp. I wish I had hair like the Dad from the Play-Doh Mop Top Shop, … Read more
MISSISSIPPI by Caitlin Thompson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Caitlin Thompson is currently an M.F.A. candidate at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, but travels down the river to Biloxi, Mississippi as much as she can. Her work has appeared in Lumina, The Allegheny Review, and elsewhere.
THREE POEMS by Lara Candland
gaunt swimmers ransomed slip across the moat to autumntime shoeless aught in their pockets dumb pleas too slight for hearing— * harebell and jessamine capering tipplers humming through the chamber of august to hallow docile spectres their clocks stealing humbler and softer ticks sweep the meadows scooping out earth’s last pearls * harebell and jessamine’s … Read more
![eyeswideshut[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/eyeswideshut1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "eyeswideshut[1]")
FOUR POEMS by Kazim Ali
Lake Animal You Dead right now Deeded soft, unmustered Who’s unnameable Who’s kin Cinder or tinder Ember or ash You lose yourself Buckled to the plan To be a body Crawling up the slope Hungry for hunger How come you at all To words of fire Body of water ~~~~~~~~~~ Goya’s New York I want … Read more
FINAL POEM FOR THE BODY by Rickey Laurentiis
Final Poem for the Body (NEW ORLEANS, LA) 1. AT RECONCILIATION There are two tragedies to life, Father. The first: that we must be born. We must be born to place with no obligation to us. This earth will just as soon fill a lake as it will a city. If I know this theory … Read more
THREE POEMS by Michael Lee Rattigan
The climbing plant Careful, careful With the flower of añil Do not check that which seeks to blossom Do not entangle The blossoming plant Or spite its white flower Or warp its yellow flower Careful, careful With the flower of añil. (Tarosco, 19th-20th Century) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Turtles The turtles pass by with their spry little necks. … Read more
![James-Reidel[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/james-reidel1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "James-Reidel[1]")
MARE PETROLEUM by James Reidel
Mare Petroleum Wading out to the bar because I drove here— The undertow’s nothing, A cat’s cradle around your ankles. You just have to kick off with your toes in the trough, Kick off the last of your clothes, The little gasp of elastic from its waistband. Then the sand begins its long, low … Read more
BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER by Jonathan Skinner
“a word about the ditch — sorry — uh, the wetland” the proposed retention pond was greater than the existing wetland according to the corps’ ecological judgment the word navigable must be given some content the corps must necessarily choose a point at which water ends and land begins the transition from water … Read more
Fundraising TO SAVE THE GULF–Michael Rothenberg of Big Bridge Rallies Upcoming Community Action
It is important to note that these Save The Gulf Benefits for The Louisiana Bucket Brigade are not Big Bridge events. They are community events, created out of collaboration with poet Katherine Hastings, founder and host of the Word Temple Poetry Series, Geri Digiorno, former Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Terri Carrion, poet and assistant editor of … Read more
![Hauke,%20author%20photo[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/hauke20author20photo1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Hauke,%20author%20photo[1]")
ECHOES by Nathan Hauke
Echoes Electric blue maiden flies double on the surface. Wind (when.) Mike’s voice ripples through snake grass, the reflection of snake grass, maiden flies// maiden flies through my voice— ……………………………………. Wreckage of stray logs along the bank. Threads of blurred tint when the wind increases violet (disturbance), violet (fire). That the eye does this. … Read more
![desert%20walking[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/desert20walking1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "desert%20walking[1]")
FIVE POEMS by Amy Sara Carroll
Built Environmental –isms How could the heart—albeit, a cliché—not ache at the sight? (Not see Dam/Age?) Meanwhile, the mind works overtime not to aestheticize aerial perspectives. An ink stain’s never an ink stain for the Enlightened. Let’s call it a Rorschach test. Abstract as expression –isms, oil spills… the sea floor, hemorrhaging… barrier islands, Christo-wrapped … Read more
![Picture%20004[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/picture200041.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Picture%20004[1]")
SPIRIT BEAR by Conrad DiDiodato
“Spirit bear” (a uniquely Canadian solution to the Gulf disaster) I wish a Spirit bear (from the hanging tree)— it’d tear thru the larynx, and past otters and cold stray shields, straight to the groves I spidery-browed and creased at the mouth honestly do! From there fan out at dawn, to eye you & pray … Read more
FOUR POEMS by Michael Robins
Caligynephobia We ushered provisions. We joined frontiers to ask what war was like. By war vis-à-vis oil. Oil vis-à-vis we were asking how some wildlife would survive. We were a secret lured to the halogen of a window. Well-renowned was our handiness: We put down our cots & the cots of others, we advised swimming … Read more
Honoring WORLD OCEANS DAY–Alaskan Action
On June 6th, in anticipation of World Oceans Day 2010, Anne Coray and her family gathered to honor the living waters of Qizhjeh Venain (Lake Clark) in Alaska. Below are pictures and sound files of their action. Please click on the poems’s titles to hear the recitation. “Water” by Marjorie Kowalski Cole, read by Anne Coray ~~ “Testimony of … Read more
TEMPUS FIDGET by Geoffrey Gatza
Tempus Fidget Poetry expects poets to do their duty Ex nihlo nihlo fit The leaves are attacking we get terribly excited butter grows in blocks on butter branches ninety-nine out of one hundred times we get let down concentrating extraordinarily hard on a miniature desk It was a hundred quid human drawing A series of … Read more
Honoring WORLD OCEANS DAY — Brooklyn Action
Poets for Living Waters Action — Tuesday, June 8th @ 7 p.m. @ Unnameable Books Tamiko Beyer’s poetry has appeared in The Collagist, Little Red Leaves, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. She serves as the poetry editor of Drunken Boat and leads community writing workshops with the New York Writers Coalition. She is a founding member of Agent … Read more
DEEPWATER HORIZON POEMS by Nicole Mauro
Deepwater Horizon Poems 1. Something struck and it sprang. It was insoluble. Like all depth in a spool—a kind of wellhead was tapped that the Lord Jesus flang until pooled. And ANDERSON, Jason—you’re dead. And REVETTE, Dewey, too. O pneumatic ocean. We’re endeared to the tarballs. Because in casings, various kernals. Remember, 100 years ago. … Read more
CHANDELEUR SOUND by Marthe Reed
Chandeleur Sound A categorical exclusion, birdfoot deltaic lobe sprawling eastward. “No significant adverse impacts are expected”, planned for. A lapse, this: piping plover habitat, brown pelican nursery. Caspian and Sandwich terns diving against sludge. Catastrophe too “unlikely” no (additional) mitigation measures necessary. Though urgency obligatory (revenue management), abrogating safety and environmental— Oil “plume” blanket, mantle … Read more
TWO POEMS by Molly Gaudry
GLASS CINDERS Emerge, lion-maimed. Expand a monstrous mouth. Between awe and the child without a face, know of the wolf. Remark: “Shame in its creature heart,” but never needle it. That emits bones, notes its tongue. A lizard has her dividing masks, will also voice means: if that was at the atrium, the sister terrarium’s … Read more
AN ORDINANCE OF POSSESSION by Tony Mancus
~~~~~~~~~~ We, humans, remain animal however distantly removed we think we are from the ground/water we use and use and our sense of control over natural processes is astounding. A one-way route of distribution ending in piles and piles of wealth and nominal possession doesn’t make for a sustainable form of existence. I am you here … Read more
DESCENDING BLUES by Brandon Lamson
Descending Blues Floating across Lake Ponchartrain in a sleeping car suspended above water, above bayous that feed salt and storm surge, I couldn’t feel the thinness of my skin and how what I called my self was already in crisis, how the city lights I surged toward, an Atlantis on stilts, slit the webbing between … Read more
ORIFICE by Marcella Durand
Orifice Shape of takes place as thus replacing sentient at the order of an insect if most truly alive what in place if to be replaced about an empty/gusher pushes against water & hydrocrystalline presence. What is needed now is a neutrino but even that is a replacement for the pure positive force of fission— … Read more
TWO POEMS by Melissa Tuckey
GHOST FISHING LOUISIANA “These people are in prison and there’s poison loose.” –Rev. Willie T. Snead, Sr., Mossville, Louisiana It gets in your clothes it gets in the way you talk That’s not an ambulance that’s the sun going down in your rear view mirror Gambling boats ghost fishing on Lake Charles And the thunder … Read more
![michaelbeekeeper[2]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/michaelbeekeeper2.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "michaelbeekeeper[2]")
THE FLOODING THAT WRITES ITSELF by Eileen R. Tabios
The Flooding That Writes Itself Mudslides brought about by weeks of heavy rains almost buried the village of Guinsaugon in Southern Leyte, Philippines. Gov. Rosette Lerias said most of those feared dead were school children who were attending classes at the Guisajogon elementary school when the landslide occurred. “It sounded like the mountain exploded and … Read more
![d[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/d1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "d[1]")
A MOODY STREAM by steve dalachinsky
a moody stream a moody stream to kingdom come when lantern hung midpoint liteminate as shadowed/crookedness laid bare what weakend is this bas(e)tard wilderness here the walk much stronger than the stench of sunset much longer than averageness when gas was become a needed source &energy left in the hands of power horse squid full … Read more
![Anne%20Higgins[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/anne20higgins1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Anne%20Higgins[1]")
LICKETY-SPLIT by Anne Higgins
Lickety Split Dig a well at the bottom of the Gulf So that we will have gas for our cars So that we can get to where we’re going Lickety split Whenever we want. Then you will see what will happen Said the old woman. Disappeared shrimp. The bottom feeders who are they And what … Read more
IN EXTREMIS [+ video] by Neil de la Flor
In Extremis By a rock the Egg lights up out of that sound of wind. How does the Bay’s Paradise above my baby bird shake its head? Does your small heart beat like a cricket’s? What’s cuckoo-doodle-do in a million languages? I’m told you chirp uncontrollably for me. My little tor- quatus, I have lost … Read more
APORIA by Robert Philben
aporia moving to the very edge of things, life even, a bitter spring for mongolia’s nomads, millions of livestock dead, people in a state of shock. here the obese dress in green, a man in a wheel chair thumbs through a history magazine, the music drones on and on, a nation filled with slobs, barbarians, … Read more
TWO POEMS by Caitlin Plunkett
BIG MOOSE LAKE As I lay in the kayak chamber a pike hovers over the length of my arm, the bullheads brush my thighs with their whiskers, they say Blessed is the pencil lead you have carried in your flesh. As I lay in the sunken cavity, I let in the cold lake water until … Read more
![Elizabeth%20Twiddy%20-%20Water[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/elizabeth20twiddy20-20water1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Elizabeth%20Twiddy%20-%20Water[1]")
THREE POEMS by Elizabeth Twiddy
The Animal that Lives in Fire The Animal that Lives in Fire is a shape I make out in the tile on the bathroom floor. Inside the strawberry, at the center of the Earth, inside the First Cherokee is the Animal that Lives in Fire. Embedded in the pages of the book my lover reads … Read more
Philadelphia World Oceans Day Reading!
AS PART OF POETS FOR LIVING WATERS, WE CELEBRATED IN PHILADELPHIA WITH A SPECIAL LORINE NIEDECKER URCHIN READING ON THE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BRIDGE. THIS BRIDGE CONNECTS PHILADELPHIA TO CAMDEN, CROSSING THE DELWARE RIVER. WE READ NIEDECKER’S POEMS AT THE CENTER OF THE BRIDGE WHERE THE CURRENT BELOW US WAS STRONGEST, PULLING EVERYTHING OUT TO THE OCEAN. Poets reading in … Read more
TWO POEMS by Frank Sherlock
from Very Different Animals They are waving goodbye or hello What was I doing that was so important the day the water died Was I just thinking could it have been that deep ~~~~~~~~~~ –Frank Sherlock ~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT I wish we knew what we think we know. Oceanographers like Dr. Sylvia Earle recognize what indigenous villagers … Read more
![IMG_0110[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/img_01101.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "IMG_0110[1]")
TWO POEMS by Martha Serpas
Fais Do-Do A green heron pulls the sky behind it like a zipper. Sharp rows of clouds fold into themselves, erasing the framed blue tide. Barrier islands disappear into the Gulf’s gray mouth. Everywhere something strives to overtake something else: Grass over a mound of fill dirt, ants over grass, the rough shading of … Read more
TWO POEMS by Michele Battiste
Homer, Distracted, Sings in Astoria (Blackout, July 2006) We were quiet, the patrols unnecessary. No one gouging the price of ice. Neighbors checked on the invalid, haunted their stoops in the dark. Even the shopkeepers lowered their voices. The ice cream melted, the milk turned, the fish began to reek. We weren’t frightened, knowing this … Read more
FOLLOWING THE RUN by Grace Cavalieri
Following The Run And so it continues like a book open with words escaping each page turning, here and there a bend, leaving the earth. The oil endures beyond what I write with my finger in the soil, so yellow it’s brown. The first person on earth could have looked and thought, this water is … Read more
![img014[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/img0141.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "img014[1]")
TWO POEMS by Brooks Haxton
Submersible Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Psalm 42 Down from twilight into dark at noon, through darker, down until the black could not be more devoid of star or sunlight, o my soul, near freezing in sub-photic stillness past the fragile strands of glowing jelly radiant with tentacles to sting, and bioluminescent … Read more
SPILL by Angela Sorby
Spill First I thought it was my furnace: a black metallic odor seeping through the glass-block window into the yard. Then I guessed it started under my car: a shimmery river of darkness. Then I figured: my lawn- mower. Did it blow a plug? What was that weird smell? Where were the plovers, the sparrows, … Read more
The Day After The End of History: A Birthday Poem by T. Clayton Wood
The Day After The End of History: A Birthday Poem Flit from ATM to ATM as Frey would say “like bees.” Dispensed like a rind, I fall into the uncanny valley and into the trap- pings of the post-human. For Leif, fall is when leaves roam free. So let spring rains ring! In augury, a … Read more
from KETJAK by Ron Silliman
from Ketjak Revolving door…. Revolving door. Fountains of the financial district. Houseboats beached at the point of low tide, only to float again when the sunset is reflected in the water. A sequence of objects which to him appears to be a caravan of fellaheen, a circus, camels pulling wagons of bear cages, tamed ostriches … Read more
TWO POEMS by Tamiko Beyer
Look Alive, Dark Side Since our boat days we’ve trusted the stars’ chart across dusk-to-dawn. Now we climb. Stone as cold as metal rivets. When men go they do not know how they will die, but they will die. In space, all machinery floats away. Blue flash, quick skate through atmosphere. This is not … Read more
OIL by Judith Barrington
Oil Oars dip and pull. Blades lift, soundlessly dripping oil into the slick sea. Oarlocks squeak and mist shrouds the rowboat where we huddle inside our coats. Somewhere in these shallows birds are dying. Oars dip again and the mist opens for us. When I look back it has closed like the net curtain let … Read more
![Poets%20for%20Living%20Waters[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/poets20for20living20waters1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Poets%20for%20Living%20Waters[1]")
FIVE POEMS by James Wagner
RE 40 (SUMMER) Mr. Garlic?, a dumb funnel, man your tan. Smug solo cloud over anthropomorphic The ocean knows you ~~~~~~~~~~ RE 49 The heart mat ters in a world of tin foiled shit. ~~~~~~~~~~ RE 66 (TIRED FROM SLEEPING) : closure as value : to a so-sigh-ity : of others : of boxing up, … Read more
![brolaski[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/brolaski1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "brolaski[1]")
THREE POEMS by Julian T. Brolaski
who is not your cousin? bears may be brutal but they never did n/t to bruise up the earth & englyshh is so filled w/ periphrasis metal band seeks bassist in which one searches amerikka backward I pay money for money who holds up thir coffee by way of hailing a taxi for pigeon read … Read more
![feetinwater[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/feetinwater1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "feetinwater[1]")
HATCHLING by Lisanne Thompson
Hatchling Mistakes were opened like a scalpeled breast as machines obeyed history and crude surged from the Gulf’s cyan cellar. Newspeak: spill. The ceaseless nature of crying. Slick milk nest otter mink turtle, “containment,” “effort,” “those responsible” washing hands. Trust was still unblemished, its wide mouth sanctuaries and bandaged places on the legs, sanguine seraph … Read more
![JanHellerLevi[1]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/janhellerlevi1.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "JanHellerLevi[1]")
TWO POEMS by Jan Heller Levi
Why We Don’t Have Solar Energy found poem from Capital It was partly the want of streams with a good fall on them, partly battles of super-abundance of water in other respects that compelled the Dutch to resort to wind as a motive power. The wind-mill itself they got from Germany, where its invention was … Read more
THREE POEMS by Sam Schild
Alligator mississippiensis* large black head hole for prey passing fourth tooth tucked lower to top of rounded snout. fresh (relative term) water homes, atop biome, apex predating, built up land round digging holes, plant flows through living through swallowing whole broad snout holes. spilt coffee gonna can’t sleep away, species’ll slip, ocean crawls. inflow both … Read more
SLIPPINGGLIMPSE by Stephanie Strickland, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, Paul Ryan
slippingglimpse [click title or image for poem] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT slippingglimpse is a collaborative interactive Flash piece using videos shot off the coast of Maine. This poem is based in the profound conviction that we need to be in conversation with the … Read more
ODE TO THE PELICAN by Alison Pelegrin
Ode to the Pelican Brown or white, you are the goofiest of birds. Bird of crash dives and the infinite wattle, creature most likely to be caricatured in blown glass, to be carved and clown-painted in Oaxaca. Albatross of the Gulf, usherer in of fishing boats, even the psalmist took note: I am like a … Read more
TWO POEMS by Nicole Cooley
Old Gulf Coast Postcards Between the already-over and the now-gone, on a corner of the wrecked downtown, in the Gulfport Pharmacy, my daughter and I spin the black rack— Broadwater Beach. Biloxi Harbor. Pass Christian where two girls splash in a Technicolor ocean so blue it burns your eyes. Last year turned historical: Welcome to … Read more
GREAT AWAKENING by Rodrigo Toscano
Great Awakening a minimally staged dialogue for two players {B being pulled over by cop, nervous, skittish; A “cop” walks up from behind wearing shades, aggressive, zealous, knocks on the “window”} A: The lord can—give you a will, for the right search. B: I twitch, jerk, and quake—as a prime example—of that search. A: The … Read more
FORT MORGAN by Joseph P. Wood
Fort Morgan Say a place & said place loses seagulls & amberjack beyond periphery too busy caught in the pre-Civil War cannon amphitheater & derricks seeking where the world went wrong. Say a place & its ammo shells lie like dogs at one’s feet. Move the feet: one tunnel leads to a prison molding, another … Read more
THREE POEMS by Gordon Massman
183 And there I am on a rubber raft, saltwater washing through my mouth, giggling at seven in the knowledge of parents: a father with coarse, black hair and a mother like a crow, strong with flight feathers. Jewish boy on the beach, pail and shovel, drenching sun, roar of the surf, Portuguese men-o-war washed … Read more
OIL SPILL by Tara Betts
Oil Spill When the knife enters and rotates, hemorrhage spumes into currents. Black blood tinged red laps pulse into blue flushed with viscous night clouds water. Fish bellies, obscured white, still gills, stiff as clotted feathers weighed down. No touch stems the flow. Teacup ships float in a flood. The knife turns deeper when a … Read more
“WHO HAS NO LAND HAS NO SEA” by Fady Joudah
“WHO HAS NO LAND HAS NO SEA” –Mahmoud Darwish If the catastrophe goes on, it has gone on/ dragonflies will mime, mummify in despair until one grows an aardvark’s tongue, licks its wings and legs free to procreate new “lines of flight”/ and the egret now a brown duck, will find a ship or … Read more
THREE POEMS by Philip Metres
1. Invocation Of lotions and unguents rubbed each morning Dispelling the scale and ash of hands Dried overnight by the heated house, Mid-winter, of the clicking stove catching Flame, to bathe the coffee beans picked By Nicaraguan fingers, thick with callous And tusk-like nails, until, their sack full, They haul them overhead into the maw … Read more
![headshot2cropped[1].jeffnewberry](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/headshot2cropped1-jeffnewberry.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "headshot2cropped[1].jeffnewberry")
THREE POEMS by Jeff Newberry
In the Cross Maker’s Tent Port St. Joe Seafood Festival The old woman carved crosses from driftwood, Displayed them on lattice board, ran balsa Hands over one as she spoke: I find the pieces Each morning, washed up from the bay. Some days, Webs of seaweed tangle them, but I find the best Pieces this … Read more
TWO POEMS by Kirsten Kaschock
reduced to quatrain Again. Down at the water birds tread— feet in mire, wings mucked. Once-fish wash up and a few beaks pick at, twitch inside them. The dead and half-dead littering the shore are plastics. Am I terrified that these immensities of what I’ve done are licensed? Yes. Rage erupts, and me—part-owner of a … Read more
THE HAND THAT SLANTS by Patrick Durgin
THE HAND THAT SLANTS the hand that slants the sea slants tandems to hand planned here adjacent to light in planned tandems light to light in planes it planned the hand adjacent that hand the light hand slants it –Patrick Durgin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Patrick Durgin’s most recent publications include the chapbook of poetry (Imitation Poems) from … Read more
TWO POEMS by Alicia Ostriker
GAIA REGARDS HER CHILDREN Ingratitude after all I have done for them ingratitude is the term that springs to mind yet I continue to generate abundance which they continue to waste they expect me to go on giving forever they don’t believe anything I say with my wet green windy hot mouth ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DEAR GOD … Read more
![Carly08_sm_cropped[2]](http://poetsgulfcoast.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/carly08_sm_cropped2.jpg?w=440&h=240&crop=1 "Carly08_sm_cropped[2]")
THREE POEMS by Carly Sachs
Ahimsa for Brian Ahimsa sounds like wind, a soft sigh or breath, the way wheat moves in a field or the way sun warms the body. Ahimsa is the ocean waving to the shore, the dance of water and land, a continuous invitation of movement. Ahimsa is outside and inside, it is blood circulating through … Read more
THREE POEMS by Kate Schapira
Poem in an egg Doctor, thicken the walls of the future that etiolate at the nursery edge, too many of one kind, not enough of another arbiter. When rescue workers don’t chicken out, but spread themselves thin, when the sea comes in, you are the one who is shaped, skimmed, scooped, messaged, modeled, sexed up, … Read more
BIRDS AND WORDS by Bill Marsh
birds and words we think to sync: cheater cheater till all else stops words to stop a stillness people on the morning bus chatter in rounds to stop a still rolling injustice cheaters cheaters always the other push to get a point across pulls the next wave of emptiness out of the box a little … Read more
ATLANTIS MADE EASY by Evie Shockley
atlantis made easy orange was the color of her address, then blue silt : : whiskey burned brown down the street, then a dangerous drink whirled around a paper umbrella : : intoxication blue across the porch then rose in the attic : : bloated tuesday taught us, she’s never been dry and never will … Read more
IF THE CATASTROPHE GOES ON by Franz Wright
IF THE CATASTROPHE GOES ON April 20-May 22, 2010 Every dawn a fog of dead leaves, a wintriness of voices past, whispers along the wires of a deserted Midwest, the capital inexplicably deprived of electricity, all computers down, and at night the streets dark as a noble person’s chances on election day, I saw this; … Read more
Call for Work – Gulf Coast Poems
Poets for Living Waters is a poetry action in response to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico begun on April 20, 2010, one of the most profound human-made ecological catastrophes in history. Former US poet laureate Robert Pinsky describes the popularity of poetry after 9/11 as a turn away from the disaster’s overwhelming enormity to a more manageable individual scale. … Read more
