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