Wilderness Interface Zone

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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 a major in English Literature. His first book of poems, Fracture, is now available.

Photo, “Lightning, Superstition Mountains,” by Robert Quinn via nationalgeographic.com, 2008.

Space exhaled a puff of air.
Caught in its stream
pathless terrene thought it well
to cleave a fresh path
form a new road
unzip the miles-thin protective layer.

Aeriform meteoric hand punched through.
Glass jugs exploded in a cosmic grand plie
windows shattered
crystalline light show
creation’s crumble
celestial chaff in its random wind.
Chimes clinking in twenty-part dissonance.

Cataclysm in its whimsical wake until
the bagmen scavenge bits to sell on eBay.

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He rides in and then canters out. Oftentimes, head bowed by reality; other times, proud to have said something noteworthy. Retired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, Sy Roth now resides in Mount Sinai, far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find solace in words.  He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in many online publications such as Red Ochre, Bong is Bard, Danse Macabre, Mel BrakE Press, Larks Fiction Magazine, Exercise Bowler, Otoliths, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, en brief. One of his poems, “Forsaken Man”, was selected for Best of 2012 poems in Storm Cycle.  Sy was also selected Poet of the Month in Poetry Super Highway, September 2012.  His work was also read at Palimpsest Poetry Festival in December 2012. He was named Poet of the Month for the month of February in BlogNostics. His work was also included in Poised in Flight anthology published by Kind of Hurricane Press, March 2013.

Folks, we’ve kicked around the idea of a workshop space for some time: a place where we can post a promising bit of poetry and elicit comments from our contributors, readers, and curious onlookers.

The magic will take place over at our Facebook page, so if you’re over there, like the page and join in.

The rules, evolving ever, will be these:

1) editorial staff will post a poem a week (tops) to allow adequate time and attention;
2) compliments are encouraged, criticisms are invited, suggestions are welcome;
3) keep it courteous.

The objective is to groom poems for publication, so we’d like to see rigorous and productive discussion about the poems we workshop. We’d also like to see comments that bear in mind WIZ’s general culture and purpose. For some insight into what that is, read this.

Chris Peck has agreed to be our guinea pig. Starting today, we’ll engage with him and his already very fine and very interesting poem “Memories of a Fallen Branch.” Come on over and weigh in. We’d love to hear from you.

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Image: Georges de la Tour’s “Saint Joseph charpentier, ca. 1640.

This is a rewrite of a post published here on WIZ that I’m including in my book Crossfire Canyon. I’m posting the rewrite today in response to finding a bounty-killed coyote on this morning’s walk.

April 8, 2009. As I walked out of a nearby canyon last week along a trail where I had previously encountered a curious coyote, my nose detected gases given off by putrefaction. Somewhere nearby, bacteria were at work breaking down formerly living tissue to simpler matter, dispersing an organism’s worldly good to its biological heritors.

To this we must all come. But who has come to it now, and where?

Walking deeper into the field of decomposition gases, I searched the ground, guessing what I would find. I was approaching the gravel pit, a dumping ground for domestic and wild animal carcasses and the scene of occasional war crimes of the sort some people commit against animals. It’s common to find coyote remains around the pit, along with elk and deer carcasses, tree prunings, the ashes of bonfires, articles of clothing, and aerosol cans–the residue of “huffing” parties.

My eyes had difficulty picking out the body of the coyote because his full winter regalia of desert-soils-hued fur blended in well where he had been dumped against the weathered juniper barricade a rancher erected decades ago to prevent cattle from wandering. I’m guessing the coyote was an adult male because of the animal’s size. Wind ruffled the luxuriant fur, and my own hand felt drawn to touch. But I didn’t. Touching the coyote might spark a response that under the circumstances I wasn’t prepared to support. (more) »

Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels
– Colossians 2:18

She thinks I am praying to her
Kneeling before her
Extending my hands to her

Her Egyptian ancestors earned their worship
Guarding food from mice, fighting cobras
Giving shape to perfume and ointment jars

Instead she beguiles her reward of me
Butting my hand with her head
Working her head under my palm
Waiting for my stroke along neck, back and tail
A nip on hand or arm if I don’t start over

When I stand she jumps off the bed
Sleeks the cat-lengths to the kitchen door
Leading me, pointing me, to her food
She does not worry that a full bowl may stale
She wants to see my hand go into the bag
To know there’s extra to cover the toy mice who live in her bowl

II

See thou do it not
–Revelation 22:9

“Angel’s gotten into a bag of feathers under the bed”
Soft as down, but not down
Scattered down the floor
Clumps of tortoise shell instead
Too late in the year to shed
No, she’s pulling hair from any place she can groom

No fleas in Utah, vet says, giving allergy shot
Clumps still scatter the floor
Cats can be OCD, Internet says, they don’t like change
She didn’t pull her hair for the rabbits
(Since killed by neighboring dogs)
Just snubbed Matthew for a time, times, half a time

A shot of progestrone helps OCD, vet says, but fur still downs the floor
Even “Listen Missy Moo, what do you think you’re doing?”
Doesn’t clean the floor
Her lower half shifts from tortoise shell to pink
When she sits her haunches, front legs holding her in a half stand
She looks less like Egyptian-mice-fattened Bastet
Than a scraggly, starving stray

Seeking my hand on her head
She looks more like one to pray for than to

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Harlow Clark lives and writes in Pleasant Grove, Utah, with his wife and son. In the year since Harlow wrote “Angel,” Matthew has transformed the play yard swing set and slide into a dog-proof rabbit cage and gotten two rabbits, who spent much of January and February in the downstairs bathtub after the weatherman advised bringing pets into the garage the family doesn’t have for the night. He is still cleaning the rabbit stains out of the tub. Matthew also has goldfish, bettas, assorted tropicals and 2 acquatic frogs swimming around the house. Angel stopped pulling out her hair for a time, but during the winter it has been appearing all over the house, though not as bad as before.

Through tangles of blackberry canes gallops a regal creature of the timber: Odocoileus virginianus, or the white-tailed deer. This one is a buck with cracked antlers, his coat birch brown. He sniffs the air before crossing the man-made paths. This veteran has survived so many hunting seasons because of his respect for orange vests and the pump of a twelve gauge shotgun. The whistle of a meadowlark shrills in a nearby gorge and the deer hops out of sight, perhaps to find an alternate path to the overflow creek where he can drink to his content.

No matter where I travel in the sprawling Sockum Ridge Woods in southeast Iowa, evidence of deer persists, whether in the form of flattened foxtail grass where a fawn hid from the strange newness of this world, a discarded antler on the winding path to Lookout Hill, or the beating sound of a herd moving through the hickory and oak trees to a safer location. At the turn of the 20th Century the white-tailed deer was hunted to devastatingly low numbers, but a regulated hunting system and conservation programs saw a steady proliferation in many sections of the United States. In Sockum Ridge, if you sit long enough in one spot and acclimate yourself to nature, you will surely see the white-tailed deer moving over the carpet of dead leaves, silent as Sunday School. If you are lucky enough, you will spot the patriarch of the royal family: the twelve point buck. (more) »

Migrate your creative work to WIZ

First item of business: Wilderness Interface Zone is issuing a call for nature-themed prose: creative nonfiction or environmental nonfiction, eco-criticism, interviews, hybrid literary forms, and short fiction, including novel excepts, that reflect on humankind’s relationship to the natural world, wherever writers engage it.

We’re especially interested in writing that demonstrates the need for and effects of what I call “green language”–rhetorical prowess that taps into the fertile realm of language’s most vital energies. One of WIZ’s foremost goals is to advocate for better behavior in the teeming yet at-risk environment of human language.

So, got nature in your prose? Please consider sending it to Wilderness Interface Zone. Before you submit your writing, please read our About and Submissions pages.

Item two: Poets, please continue sending your poetry. WIZ loves poetry! Please send your nature-inspired poems to Jonathon at WIZpoetryeditor@motleyvision.org.

Item the third: For the past three years, starting on or around the spring equinox, WIZ has launched its Spring Poetry Runoff, an annual, themed poetry competition celebrating spring’s highly anticipated arrival. Each year, the influx of vernal verse has graced WIZ with a garden of poesy. It’s been one of my favorite times of the WIZ year.

This year, Jonathon and I have chosen not to run the Runoff. We’ll bring it back in 2014 in new and improved form. However, we will host an informal spring fling featuring poetry and prose that revels in the arrival of warmer and brighter days, the annual emergence of life, and the onset of spring migrations that change life’s scenery.

Spring rises before the sun on March 20. Feel free to add a ribbon to WIZ’s literary maypole. Even if your poem, essay, short story or novel excerpt merely mentions spring and nature, please consider submitting it to the festivities.

(Edited 3/12/2013 at 12:10 p.m.)

Photo of Wageningen University Building in Lumen by Vincent is public domain via Wikimedia Commons Images.

In my quest for perhaps a wrongly-remembered story about beavers in Yellowstone National Park, I’ve watched several national parks shows, including Ken Burns’ America’s National Parks series. Since we finished that show–worth the watch, by the way–I’ve looked for other, nature-toned documentaries. We saw that Amazon Prime would let us view PBS’s Nature series for free, so we’ve tried settling into the 2012 season. The only time I watch television/movies is when I’m feeding my special needs daughter. Watching narrative takes parade across the electrified cave wall of our flat screen TV helps pass the half hour to hour thrice daily that I’m tethered to one spot while I get food into my daughter.

I haven’t watched Nature for 15 years, in part because I’m up to my neck in nature. Every day I’m at it–the struggles of helping my highly challenged family get through an hour, a day, a night, a week–hopefully, without losing anyone. When I watch TV, I really, really, really prefer something that engages me. Hard to find, me being the narrative maven than I am. We’ve watched maybe 6 episodes of Nature’s 2012 season now, and I’m pushing it to journey on. The overall poor quality of narrative in these episodes stuns me. The constant rhapsodizing on the more spiritually nourishing qualities of wilderness, even as we take in scene after scene of death and violence, is so lopsided that I think it does nature a profound disservice, forcing the behavior of other species into zoos of human thought. Not only does such captivating language do wild nature a disservice, I believe it’s doing human nature wrong. (more) »

Heart-iest thanks to participants who contributed to our sometimes sweet, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes citric Love of Nature Nature of Love Month.  The list includes:

Sue Halvorsen
Merrijane Rice
Ali Znaidi
Scott Hales
Enoch Thompson
Lee Allred
Theric Jepson
Karen Kelsay
Sarah Dunster
Percival P. Pennywhistle

Quite a spectrum to love this time around. Thank you all for the colorful month of feeling–smack dab in the drab of winter!

The Love Song of Ghouls Verne, formerly of Aarhus, DK
(Decomposed by Ghouls Verne, Esq, and Communicated to Professor Pennywhistle, PhD, Ed, via the medium of a Medium on 14 Feverary 1893, in the Low and Tortured tones of a Heartbroken shade, and a thick Danish accent)

Ten t’ousand leagues under de zea
Dat’s me
Doze ashen flakes you zee

For Yulia could not bear nor loss
Nor cost
And zo my ash she tozzed

Vrom off de rocky Danish reef
Her grief
Azzuagéd by relief

But mine vas not. Zo, pale and gaunt,
I haunt.

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©2012 Percival P. Pennywhistle, PhD/Peas Porridge Press

About the author

Ghouls Verne was burn on the Worst of Dismember, 1783, in a little crematorium outside of Aarhus, Denmark, on the Horsens side. He was revived by his parents, Karl and Grete Verne, twice, and by his new bride, Julia, once, but it didn’t take. Hence the cremation.

Percival P. Pennywhistle, PhD, is a poet and a purveyor of poetry for perspicacious and precocious people of all ages. “The Love Song of Ghouls Verne, formerly of Aarhus, DK” is part of a planned anthology of sickly sweet and darkly ironic poems and prose called Gothic Dreams and Other Things. You will wish to purchase it. You will also wish to sleep light after reading it.

Portrait 1 is a representation of what Ghouls and Julia might have looked like if they had married, lived in the late nineteenth instead of the late seventeenth century, and were named Peder and Severin Krøyer.

Portrait 2 is of Ghouls in happier times, when men whose heads were heavy with sleep or worry had the option of carrying them in the crooks of their fashionably (if somewhat poofily) clothed arms.