Kate Flannery’sNorthwest Passagesis tinged with more than just the happy memories of a childhood world that she cannot go back to because she has grown and changed. Flannery grew up in Southwest Washington near Mt. St. Helens and much of the world that she knew as a child was obliterated in the volcanic eruption of 1980. It is gone in a permanent way that few of us can possibly understand, the forest razed, the mountain gone. It was a place for her of quiet forests that few people visited and of innocent play; however, in her memory it was isolated, and as the only girl in a family of boys and as a girl in the male dominated society of a logging town, it was a place where she had to find herself by herself. Her collection chronicles all of the complex feelings that she has about her…

1.

At the San Francisco aquarium,
the celebrity inmate is in maximum

security lockdown. A serial
escapist, he keeps giving them the slip.

Neuroplasticity to the nth degree,

each limb a multi-tool, a career

burglar’s bump key that his jailors
can’t bed check away, he pours

himself into the water circulation system,
sensing his path through the maze

of inlet and outlet pipes, probing
by trial and error, for the real bay.

2.

The octopus is an offshore corporation,
a shadowy network of subsidiaries,
its governance hard to fathom.

Directives come down from HQ
but the details of their execution
are at the individual limbs’ discretion.

Cut one off (it will grow back),
the severed appendage shrinks
from the scalpel and slithers away.

If it meets something it considers
food, it will seize it, try to deliver

the morsel to where the mouth –
not unlike a parrot’s beak –…

The New Beginning

I’m in love with today;
up to my eyeballs
in the blah of Wednesday,
admiring how the blue

and white-collar lapdogs
on the bus
do the sit
instead of the walk.

Tuesday trails behind
in the rear-view mirror, waving.
Hot air leaves the vortex.
A bearded man stares

at me, sniffs his fingers.
Smells like a new beginning
full of potential.
Yesterday’s garbage

has been replaced,
the new skunked shit
dragging me with its fishing rod:
exciting adventures await!

Forgot my book
this morning.
I cup my hands
and pretend.

Rural Winter

Winter hillocks

Hoarfrost fencing

Faded Anthropocene,

The odd duck melded

Against scant storefronts

Temperature’s at a standstill

Caliginous roadways

Feculent black ice

Snowplows churning, tremoring with emotion

Merciful sunbeams poke

Through the midmorning haze,

Optic relief

As the earth drifts further and further apart from itself

I lie down
on a grassy knoll,
stretch my…

Since You Agreed to Just QuietlyListen

But why, Father?

Because you will learn much from this, son. If you just quietly listen.

Here; ‘s’ been twin ban-thwackies parlifixturicating o’er ‘his sunny day.

Hoo?

<sigh (westchnienie!)>

—okay, go along—

Patch; Imagine what?

Paulette; Knots.

Null. Null.

Nasty-splat? You bet, ya-yep. Null. Not me.

Hoot! Mui-Papa!

—dear God, please; why did we ever—

Brrrrr-r-r-r!

Wow. Where?

M-member? Pennsylvania!

Patch; B.

Picked-down honzonkafruit.

Paulette; Backtacratidenza!

Sonboy; li simple fiksrigardas.

Ha ha ha ha! Hah!

Eyebop patiquela sollyonne-slow.

Gash.

Splecklinda-tacular Joints.

What?

Gob! Cheeesh! Like Miss Bovine’s cud.

‘tis, yes.

Chew; The trap.

Chew; The ceiling.

Chew; The cabin.

Get it now, ole’ Gagg?

Paulette; Form what, great Father? (as they’d been scripted to exclaim at these junctures of such talks)

Patch; Stars.

Galaxies.

Animals.

Et-plantenettes too.

Yas! All rise, all point! Hats off, gentlemen!

Uh. What?

Mood, Moderator; this; force. Y’ a…

Two Whale Sharks Collide at Georgia Aquarium

The giant window is lit up like a cinema screen
and a crowd has formed, lapping against the glass.
For a few moments, the water is vast and empty,
just the murky shadow of a manta ray lurking
in the corner of the blue backdrop. And then they arrive.

Two leviathans, loosed from the chariot of Oceanos,
slide silently into view. A scattering of spots
shimmering on each back is a galaxy; stripes stretch
like swimming pool ripples. They are two games
of noughts and crosses drawn in nautical chalk.

These gormless Goliaths float towards each other,
mouths gawping, mirror images, drawing
closer like they are re-enacting a creation myth.
They appear to be gearing up for the gentlest joust
and the spectators gasp, lift phones and cameras,

preparing for the titans to clash. Disaster occurs
in slow motion as their fins brush…

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Planet

when mad oceans roar and rain’s a spear: when rage propels the rising tide
and sewers spill: when tempest roils around your head—do you believe
your gods will hear?

will you board up, hammering defiance at a yellow sky?
or duct-tape, making diamonds out of window-glass? will you seal
your basement, let your washer/drier die, so you can live?

to fill a bugout bag with bullets, hop the last bus to a better place—or stay?
freezing, powerless and huddled in your preacher’s tub: playing
truth-or-dare as water rises: praying to Beelzebub—

rapture, rapture! water’s lapping at your chin: Noah’s nowhere
and the only bird’s an albatross with broken wings—

flood insurance? I’m an ocean! can you swim?

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Jude Marr reads “Sinners…”

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Jude Marr (they, them) is a Pushcart-nominated nonbinary poet. Jude’s full-length collection,We Know Each Other By Our Wounds, came…