April 2021

RIVER MEADOW By Margo Waring Juneau The quiet brown river punctuated by exclamation points of fallen trees. Standing in the forest shade surrounded by alder and spruce. Early spring quiet without insect hum. Listening to the call of Steller’s jay. Spot lit by sun a river meadow, edged by chartreuse of early blueberry; bright with […]

OVERLOOKED By Jonas Lamb, Juneau What it sees is not insignificant though at such scale and magnification we likely seem so much less than small. These bodies, their dark openings where we let in the light. Despite all our ruminations, our labors— blunt and bizarre we do not sparkle but blend in against the backdrop

GLACIAL REBOUND By Jeffery Brady, Skagway   Standing now where glacier towered seventy years ago, Blue ice of colorized photos, crevassed and crept upon By fanciful tourist picnickers, gives way to boulder erratics, Moraine, misgivings on move up mountain out of sight. How long does it take for land to start rising After such a

THE DAY I FINISHED MY SECONDARY EDUCATION CERTIFICATE APPLICATION By Jamie Lynn Buehner, Douglas The turtle that showed up and disappeared in equally mysterious ways did not make a good bedtime story. I know this, told it anyway, and was put into place by my daughter. I spared her the retelling of the recurrent childhood

THE MOUNTAIN THAT TOOK THE PLACE OF A POEM for W.S. By Doug Capra, Seward   There it was, stone for stone, the mountain that took the place of a poem.   He felt its cadence, its rhythm, even when the mountain hid in clouds   it reminded him of the steep journey toward meaning,

SOLSTICE By Daryl Farmer, Fairbanks   The sun today is a drooping eye its lid lifting over the horizon and then, in early afternoon drowsily closing again. The December stillness is like an old monk resting heavy against the sliding door, and sighing crystals onto the glass. I read Tranströmer’s poetry by dim lamp. A

MINDSCAPE By Amber Evan, Kongiganak   It frantically wrote- It anxiously scribbled stories in and out of the world. There, animals talked all the time. There, animals played all the time. (Well- they fought and made up, too.) There, a reality existed where people lived on Mars. There, these people made an amusement park using

PEDESTRIANS By Anne Coray, Homer   The names of whom we will never know; I thought to give them some—Mary, Jack, Rick, and Drew and Joe— No, too plain, a bit pedestrian—and so: Angela, Forrest, Martin, Aldo, Theodore. Their lives came next: implied By dress and the faces that they wore. The woman young, unprivileged,

ALASKA RAIN FOREST TOWN By Dan Branch, Juneau   On an early spring day when only pastel craftsmen homes remind locals of sunshine and drenched ravens harmonize with barking dogs, an imaginative man finds the will to pull on rain gear, push outdoors, ignore drizzle soaking his sensible if ridiculous Elmer Fudd hat. He hurries

LEAF OUT By David McElroy, Anchorage   Leaf out is begun, King James tells himself. Verily, the sap is risen. He strolls his boreal keep to the circumpolar forest, some of it his. He thinks of Easter, which comes late this year and that business of the angel with the big round stone. If it