2021

OPEN By Justine Pechuzal, Seward   When you feel ready you can open your eyes.   When you feel ready when you feel when you ready when   you   you can open can open open your eyes.   When you feel ready you can open your eyes. I can.

COURAGE HAIKU By Mandy Ramsey, Haines   Mountain slides to sea in fertile winter darkness broken town unites. ~ Why bright lights go out my broken heart needs to know Have they become stars? ~ Sunlight greets my eyes my courage tattered and torn Yet we have survived. ~ Enjoy each moment Every day a

SKATING AFTER MANY MOONS By Marybeth Holleman, Anchorage it’s a small lake, a pond, really, or not even that, a wet meadow in summer where our one kind of frog that contains some kind of antifreeze in its veins lives, the only one can survive this far north, our only amphibian, only cold-blooded being, and

SEPTEMBER HARBINGER By Sarah Isto, Juneau On the third morning that dawn frost stiffens yellow leaves on the path my daughter again hurries her oatmeal to scramble down to the creek in hope of being first to bring the news. A quarter hour and I see her careful return upturned hands stiff at her waist,

AS THE CROW FLIES By Peter Kaufmann, Homer   All that black and shiny knowing that the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line. From the first beat of heart to the stillness of last breath, laughter, tears, a slow blink apart   The spiral curl of ammonite emerges from crumbling bluff,

WEATHERED By Susan Campbell, Fairbanks The world weathers us — wind, water, sun and rain, delight, desire, grief and longing scour and scrape, a continual chafing. We resist exposure, shield ourselves, until the constant rasp of time reveals our ragged edges, vulnerable to more weather, more wearing away. Then what? Slowly, sometimes, a gradual uncovering,

EXPECTANCY By Thomas Pease, Anchorage   It’s March, but still too early. No nectar to nourish the depleted hummingbird, probing skeletal blueberry plants. No open water to bathe the trumpeter swan, webbed feet now improvised snowshoes, goose-stepping (the indignity!) across the frozen lake. The myth of the early bird shatters, its only reward starvation, freezing,

  Birds are coming to my feeder by the droves. I may have jumped the gun on putting it up. I’m still getting used to life in Anchorage, and one of the changes is that you’re not supposed to feed the birds until after the bears go into hibernation. That’s if the bears go into

  All my life, people have told me, “You need to read this.” I’m going to tell you a secret. On the one hand, I like book recommendations and I seek them out, as well as make them. On the other hand, the moment they’re too strong or the same few books get mentioned over

  Do Not Confuse News with Fiction by Anne Coray Like many of us, I’ve been thinking a lot the past few years about truth and fiction. With the rise of questionable news sources and conspiracy theories, one has to ask whether fiction can stand on its own anymore. The idea of “fake” news somehow