OLGA MARKELOVA 1. That night all the trees in the capital city set out on a crusade – the single-footed, the many-fingered, the curly-canopied and those stripped bald, those stunted and bark-bared, those wire-throttled, and those cemented up to their…
NADIA ANJUMAN No desire to open my mouth, what should I sing of . . . ? I, who am hated by life. no difference to sing or not to sing. Why should I talk of sweetness, when I feel…
GABRIEL TORRES CHALK 玄德 The strokes carved on the black walnut are the work of a fungus. I discovered the codification of the Universe in those images/symbols. It is the magic moment of the teamwork between the tree and the fungus.…
PAUL SCOTT DERRICK Ian Sharp (b. 1954 in Louth, Lincolnshire) is an undiscovered talent. Except for a smattering of local exhibitions in the city of Valencia, where he lived from 1984 till 1996, and a few more in the seaside…
JONATHAN BOULTING DURAMEN for Nicole d’Amonville Alegría Olive acacia fig orange banana pine cypress lemon palm carob holly-oak – the truth about trees is this (in summer especially): unless, inescapable, one comes to pluck, prune or hack, their interests lie…
ANTONIA SUTZKEVER (researched and edited by) The Migration Memory Memorial website https://migrationmemorymemorial.com presents the archive of a radical Jewish family. Spanning almost one hundred years from 1890 to 1989, it includes a diary, letters and photographs. These documents reveal the…
BILL LEWIS Apple Pickers 1940 As they work, above them a Spitfire takes on a Messerschmitt. The daily dog fights of the Autumn days of nineteen forty. The Spit like a great broken Bird comes down in the orchard. The…
Take My Hands Take my two hands make eight feet of them give them to the spider I soaked in hot water in my kitchen sink. I will hide my arms in long sleeves, will finish the last painting with…
A. ROBERT LEE Tokyo Sakura Tree Yes, it’s a Japan-icon, the nation’s postcard. Cherry blossoms. Branch-born, bud to flower. Wind-gyres of floating white-pink petal. Imprints upon woodblock, flag, coin, kimono. Even upon street manhole covers. Japan’s colour code. But, at…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE On 1 March I invited four friends for a properly distanced coffee on the terrace, even though it was the first day of another red-zone lockdown, in response to a third wave of COVID-19. Squinting in bright,…
MARGARET MCCARTHY THE SELFISHNESS OF THE TREES I It is the cruelest spectacle, they put on such clouds of white that allow you to believe in some endless generosity; you remember how you looked this time last year and the…
STEPHEN WILSON All year long I’ve been waiting on the promise of a light green cocoon whose size increased in almost imperceptible increments its tepals unable to free themselves yet always on the point of budburst as if something inside…
SILVIA PIO Clouds crowd this instant suspended like a weightless veil wrapping the view while suns flow by in blue cuttings of sky. In the clouds we read stories of an existence floating above ours like a light touch upon…
OWEN LOWERY Had it always been prone and immense there between barbed wire strands and the cornfield, its roots feathering the wind? Not a leaf on it while it lived and was reborn with each visit. Husk and bark and…
KRYSTYNA LENKOWSKA Fragility You say that the earth we touch is only a landslide. We walk along the ridge of the tongue where homes grew with a hearth in the heart. We don’t know what happened to them later. Maybe…
