Today’s New Verse News: ATMOSPHERIC RIVER and ALLURING MONSTERS
ATMOSPHERIC RIVER
by Pepper Trail
Storm-battered California communities are bracing for another round of likely flooding, mudslides, toppled trees, closed roads, power outages and even perhaps a few brief tornadoes as the latest in an unrelenting parade of atmospheric rivers hits the West Coast. The storms Monday into Tuesday are expected to bring another surge of hazardous heavy rain, mountain snow and damaging winds to California, where thousands are already without power and some have been ordered to evacuate or warned they could be asked to flee. —CNN, January 9, 2023
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Heavy current in the ocean sky Twisting between black cliffs of cloud You make yourself visible here below As deluge, as flood, as smothering snow Liquifying the air, breaking the fragile earth Unruly twin to your silent brother, drought You remind us of fables, forgotten curses Visitations of judgement long ignored As now we bend beneath your fury Mumbling the magic trick of prayer
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Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.
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ALLURING MONSTERS
by Imogen Arate
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Old games parade as old storms churn into nebulous knots to hypnotize the engaged gaze and whip the bewitched Ouroboros to stalk and swallow its own Tail then torso then head tuck into singularity's impish wicked wink before the glutted ingestion implodes to gush diarrheal waterfalls We gawk at the wondrous displays disasters dazzle before the eyes as brittle bones crack to form the new veins of sanguine traffic lanes Crimson lanterns blink our woes as greenbacks slush to blanch hope from budding evergreen while slid mud pools to crackle as scorched summer bark Ancient feast-and-famine tales we fantasize to tell as spirits of our progeny braid their flickering lifelines into the wispy fingers of another atmospheric stream
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Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Director of Poets and Muses which hosts a poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest, where Imogen had served as a national-level poetry judge in 2021 and 2022. You can follow her @PoetsandMuses and @ImogenArate on Twitter and Instagram.