- Dawid Juraszek and Bijou Zhou
Silent Summer + Poems

Hercules
by Dawid Juraszek
No one shoots at them with swift arrows tipped in poison this is hardly up to date. No one is afraid of their beaks and their wings as much as of their viruses. Fluttering overhead shrieking and chirping fouling our windshields they are but a nuisance or a distraction. We don’t need a demigod a cat will do plus pesticides intensive farming and habitat destruction.
Chloris
by Dawid Juraszek
They say
you used to turn gods and humans
into flowers.
There must have been
many of them then.
We remember the meadows
the woods
the rolling plains
or perhaps we could.
They’re here
everywhere
in the past we exploit
for our present purposes.
But we don’t
a captive flowerbed
trimmed and encircled
being our nature of choice.
And why would we
walking
working
living as we do
on the paved-over mass grave
of them all.
Cover art titled Silent Summer by Bijou Zhou