POETRY

Given

By LIZA KATZ DUNCAN | 05 OCT 2022

Given a mass die-off of menhaden

Given the stench all spring

Given flies circling the houses

Given windows kept closed

Given a bridge over a tributary. You adjust to the smell, lose track of time

Given a great blue heron appearing from the phragmites, wading toward you across the mudflats

Given the thin white fish in its mouth

Given a siege of baby herons swimming into view

Given their neon-green eyes, their frantic mouths

Given two men downstream, their remote-controlled drone circling the bridge where you are standing

Given you don’t know whether to stay or go. The herons. The drone. The stench

Given the dead menhaden decomposing within weeks or months

Given their bodies returning to the nutrient cycle—the mudflats abundant with them, spawning
marsh elder, glasswort, cordgrass

Given the grass provides shelter for the birds

Given the drone above you, the highway behind you, the stench around you: you are still seeking
shelter—

Liza Katz Duncan is the author of Given (Autumn House Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, About Place, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Northwest, National Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She has received support for her work from Poets & Writers, the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, and the Tucson Festival of Books. She teaches English as a Second Language in New Jersey public schools.

POETRY

Malacca River

By KWAN ANN TAN

When the rain came, sweet earth bloomed. /
The river’s wound healed, swelling to meet /
the first lightning strike in a kiss. Still buried /
in the silt of the riverbed, I opened my mouth /
to taste the first drop—as acrid as raw honey.

POETRY

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By COLE DEPUY

standing on a slithering rock wall / my fingers / untangle your hair from a yew tree

POETRY

voice in air: afterthought

By VINCENT HISCOCK

I / stare at the spider’s manifold legs / & little clawed mandible flickering / with evening’s shine, tittering / corners of death’s bite.