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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

NO BALLS, STRIKES OR OUTS By Beatrice Franklin, Juneau   The small boy gets in his pitcher’s stance, lifts elbow for release. Though there’s no eager batter in box, no runners on base. Instead, he faces a seamless sea. Pitch perfect blue, china smooth. Temptress mirror. The blond boy in his Cub’s shirt has a

THE BIRCH By Eric Gordon Johnson, Anchorage An aged tree stood at the side of the road. Fist sized stones ringed its feet, beads on a rosary. White tattered paper bark fluttered in the breeze, frayed crepe from a long past feast. One black branch pointed to where I’d been, another to where I was

QUIET MOUNTAIN for Shawn Lyons Poem by Jim Hanlen, Anchorage He introduced me to the yin, the wet side of the mountain and its yang. Not that it mattered to him but I preferred the dry side to scale.   We talked about why some people like to live on the muddy side of their