Wilderness Interface Zone

Sophisticated trees line State Street,
elegantly avoiding one another.
They pose
with thin, black limbs
silhouetted against the sky
and roots sunk deep
beneath concrete.
Up the canyon,
the rabble crowds in close.
Scrub oak brushes up to aspen groves,
listens for whispered rumors.
Expectation spreads with the wind,
rattles bone-­weary stands,
stirs the lofty thoughts
of quorumed pines.
Sap rises, buds swell, branches reach
to embrace dawning spring.
Back in the [...]

Got spring?  Got verse sprouting up with it?
I don’t know about anybody else, but I can’t let spring arrive without making lyrical mention.
The 2012 Vernal Equinox arrived Tuesday, March 20.  I know, I know–WIZ is running a bit behind the sun this year, due to unforeseen circumstances.  I toyed with the idea of cancelling this [...]

As we walk—side by side—down the long sloping trail, we pass gray trees and black igneous boulders peppering the otherwise white, sedimentary landscape. The earth is a mirror reflecting the hot yellow sun that has so recently removed winter’s snow. I point out traces of vanished streams; you find lizard footprints delicately decorating their sandy [...]

Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poetry, edited by frequent WIZ contributor Tyler Chadwick, made its debut at 2011 end in impressive style. Tyler reports that Fire in the Pasture has “risen as high as #2 in both Hot New Anthologies and Hot New Inspirational & Religious and #12 in Hot New Poetry.”  The [...]

It snowed today, for the first time. October 6th.
When my family moved to southeast Idaho, we knew that Winter was one of the by-products we were choosing. That “W” is capitalized, because winters here are real winters—you couldn’t survive without shelter. In Utah Valley, where we’ve lived the last ten years, you likely couldn’t either, [...]

blue birds
cut
and hover
over rich
reds
and pumpkin
leaves –
swell
with lush
lilies lying
nude
along the cold
stream, peeling
effigies
of a great painter.
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Bradley McIlwain is a Canadian-based writer and poet who lives and works in rural Ontario. His poems have been published in national and international print and online magazines. He holds a Bachelor of Arts, Honours, from Trent University, with [...]

Part One here.
Lala sat down on the curb and motioned for Davey to sit next to her. As he slowly sat down and settled his feet into the orange leaves filling the gutter, Lala was opening up her laptop and getting it ready for a little presentation.
“All right, now first of all, look at this [...]

Davey Dow was walking down the street a bit earlier and a bit happier than was usual for a Friday afternoon (Friday, usually, being the least halcyon of his days), and anyone on the street who may have known him would have swiftly gotten out of his way with that long and peculiar sidelong glance [...]

Make
like a tree* and
grow, bloom and bear fruit,
give shade, give shelter, sow seed,
weather storms, dig deep,
breathe deeper.
Be useful
in your
death:
frame
well,
burn
bright,
enrich
the soil,
and,
mulch
made,
resurrect
a tree.
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*This is, of course, a variation on the common adage to “make like a tree and branch out,” and the less common adage, used primarily among canines (the dogs, not the teeth), “make like a [...]

She was feeling vaguely seditious so she bought the Diet Coke. Any other night she would have gone with a Sprite, but tonight, Jen bought the Diet Coke.
Rebellion, huh? This is a new phase, she thought.