by Wren Tuatha

To date, less than 8% of residents have reoccupied
the Camp Fire burn zone in California.

Five months and my scream
can’t find my throat.
I see it out there, hovering
over dump truck convoys
and herds of naked chimneys,
all wrong with soot on their outsides.
My scream tails me to the Paradise
Walgreens, open limited hours,
to Paradise Starbucks where I select
an historic novel,
fistful of normalcy, from the giveaways.
My scream shakes you by the shoulders
on a sidewalk in Chico, while you ask
if my goats made it off the mountain,
then inform me I’m fine because my cabin
still stands.  Stands still and leaky,
its logs, loose fingers
cupping a smokey scream.

by Wren Tuatha

The anaconda
doesn’t really want the tuba.
She covets that real estate
on the floor of the Amazon
where it landed.

Who gave the orchestra
the smallest boat, anyway?

I can go anywhere on Earth
except the past.  That violent,
silent gurgle when life debated
rock and radiation.

Would I sit by that tide pool,
cradling a tuba
and fix my embrasure to sound, radiate
out through Earth’s juvenile atmosphere
and into space?  A foghorn,
calling /warming /noting the time

so that some afternoon in the future,
twelve musicians and an anaconda
play poker for possession of a tuba.

by Wren Tuatha

I don’t yet know how the bat gets in.
But it always ends by the banister,
cat acrobat,
the cat
taking flight.

There’s a number, abstruse to me,
that equals the count of insects
hauled into the whale mouths of bats
in my yard on a June night.

The moment death is born,
it is immortal.

I count clues, map the moment
I should have known the seller
was lying to me about that car.  Scooping,
when all I saw at dusk in Syracuse
was my chance at locomotion,
brain bats distracting, chewing on my scrutiny
with strobe light puppet aliveness.

My brain bats are houseflies of consciousness,
lifespan of a thought until my eye catches
a task forgotten or other shiny tempts.
No sooner is a gorgeous scarf of words born
than it is pulled from my hands
into the nearest kite tree.

Cat on the banister does laser point math, calculates
weakness — the prey’s, her own,
geometry of stairs and a slanted ceiling.
Factors when to multiply or divide her limbs,
when to launch, to spoon with fangs,
how to land with wings slicing
at her face, counting seconds and pulse beats
until the stillness.

by Gene Grabiner

I’m following the customs
of your country
by describing the weather.
So think of yourself as being here.
You see, this is how winter is
in this place.
Barren trees are black
against the sky.
The church bell tolls noon,
and you hear it, too.
Deep cold has returned
and large flakes are flying.
A crow sits on the
wire running off a telephone pole.
Yes, yes, I know you are
from a warm country,
a country with palm trees
and lush grasses.
But it’s winter
in the soul of my country.
And we don’t know
if spring will return.