Wilderness Interface Zone

by P. G. Karamesines
On the east rim the fire rose blossoms,
Its pink-gold tongues
Blushing rock and sand,
Licking up night’s tinajas.
In sand grains beneath me,
The coolness of stars—
Those winking violets
That glamour the shadow.
My face
Inclines to the light.
Hands soften, spread—
Blood blooms.
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Originally published in Glyphs III: Poems and Stories of the Colorado Plateau, Moab Poets and Writers Inc. Regional [...]

(For Leslie Norris)
By Tyler Chadwick
Day’s last reflections
catch on wind-swept ripples
as two geese throw shadows
across watered silence.
Embraced by echoes,
each circles the other.
Tracing this current,
I watch Hudson’s pair
venturing back
across the continent:
Her wings bear no scars
of hapless encounter
with fox or wolf or man;
his body carries
no hunter’s spray,
the lead that felled him
to the dogs. They bask
in this dusking plane,
watching [...]

Guest post by Saul
Mom came home at just after 11 AM on Saturday and told me that she wanted me to finish what I was doing and go down into Crossfire Canyon. She explained that the creek had stopped flowing, leaving some fish stranded in a puddle, at the mercy of garter snakes.
I was working [...]

This is the first part in a two-part Field Notes entry written by two authors.  I’ll take the first part, my son Saul the second.  It wasn’t my intention to put up Field Notes again so soon, but this story is just too good to wait for.
July 11, 2009.  As I take Coyote Way into [...]

by P. G. Karamesines
The weedy clouds of spring
Grow on the peaks, break off, then drift
In tall gardens over sandstone blue
With the bruise of squalls.  I stand
Two thousand feet above the coils
Of a river that has burnt its way,
Leaving behind the red stubble
Of the canyons.  Buds of lightning
Burst and wither at once;
The air is rutted with [...]

June 2, 2009. I hiked into Crossfire Canyon via Coyote Way.  The morning had a warmth to it I didn’t feel while I walked topside through currents of wind blustering north out of some rise of weather.  But as I followed the trail down into the canyon the breezes thinned.  Then holes formed in them, [...]

Theric Jepson is best known in Mormon blogging for his Motley Vision post on Mormon comics. That and his other Motley Vision work are listed at http://www.motleyvision.org/about-theric-jepson/ along with essays and short stories hosted at other sites. He is the editor of that Fob Bible thing that all the cool kids are talking about. His [...]

“The Island for Poi” is a short story written in the “And that’s how the fox got his red coat” tradition, except with a twist: this story is about how the fantastic and mysterious relics found on an island came to be there.  Also, the story is told by a first person narrator who learned the ”truth” in [...]