[with 3 selections from Tar River Poetry]
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Letter to the Archaeologists of the Post-Anthropocene
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You know already what fools we were,
how like the dog that starts itself awake
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we jumped and bared our teeth
and turned to chase our tail, our fury
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rising as we spun – and how, unlike the dog,
we did not hold our caught selves
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gently, surprised to be at once the captive
and the captor, but chewed our own flesh
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bloody, sure we were destroying that
which would destroy us. You already know
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we killed our saviors, set fire
to our home, and ate
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our bitter hearts. We said
because we owned what we destroyed
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it was ours for the destruction,
and we destroyed it
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to prove that it was ours.
You know all that.
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You may not know, however,
just how much
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we loved what we destroyed, how much
we longed to have it love us –
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how even the cruelest among us
would stop sometimes to watch
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the polluted sky at sunset
turning gold then pink then indigo.
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Shane Sheely
from Tar River Poetry, Volume 62, Number 2. Spring 2023. © 2023 TRP
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Some ten years ago I became a phyto-heterotroph. Many people have asked whether it was a difficult transition and whether I have regrets. Not at all! To borrow a phrase from the general domain of heterotrophs, “Life is good.”
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This week I’ve been reintroduced to a community of fellow heterotrophs after a year’s absence. We met in the woods on Grassy Creek’s Forest Bathing trail as they emerged from the shady gloom, pale as the moon, a little creepy. Their scaly jointed fingers that are not fingers poked up from the leaf mould. They nodded their heads which are not heads. Not human, not fungus. What?
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These are plants, flowering plants, but stark white, utterly absent chlorophyll : Ghost Pipes (Heath family, Ericaceae, same family as rhododendron, azalea, huckleberry, but so eerily different). Kneel to inspect the nodding head and you’ll see that it’s a flower, one at the apex of each stem, and indeed shaped like the flowers on my blueberry bushes beside the driveway. I remember the first time I saw these odd creatures in the southern Appalachians, thriving in rich mesic woodland, clustered in deep shade with no need for photons. I was taught that they are white because they’re parasitic, taking nourishment from the roots of trees.
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Heterotrophic – fed by others. The opposite of autotrophic, feeding oneself. Most of the Plant Kingdom are autotrophs, industriously creating sugar and cellulose from the nothing of light and CO2. Quite a number in Kingdom Protist are autotrophs (algae, for example), and even a few in the Bacteria Kingdom (cyanobacteria). All the rest of us are unable to feed ourselves. I can make Vitamin D when sunlight strikes my skin, but as an obligate heterotroph I must consume autotrophs to survive.
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Personal and Planetary Health—The Connection With Dietary Choices. This is the title of a feature editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Society (June 6, 2023; Volume 329, Number 21). It isn’t difficult to imagine the message the editorialist will promote, but it is novel to emphasize the connection between choices that lead to personal well-being and and choices that promote global health. To quote: Physicians have historically focused on patient health and relegated planetary health to environmentalists and lawmakers. However, dietary choices are the largest driver of chronic diseases. National surveys indicate less than 5% of the US population meets dietary fiber recommendations due to inadequate plant-based food intake. Plant-based diets are also associated with reduced incidence of chronic diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and cancer in multiple studies.
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I became a phyto-heterotroph (it’s easier to spell vegetarian) not for personal health but to reduce my ecological footprint. Eating plants instead of eating things that eat plants has a frankly unbelieveable impact on agricultural water consumption, loss of habitat to grazing and animal feedstock production, and methane and nitrous oxide production (25 times and 298 times more potent greenhouse gases than CO2). Even the most diehard omni-heterotroph could probably tolerate a phyto-heterotroph diet one or two days a week.
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And those Ghost Pipes (Monotropa uniflora) – I read this week that they are actually myco-heterotrophs. Their roots entangle with and suck sugar from the fungal filaments of the mycorrhizal network that permeates all healthy soil. Alas, all fungi are themselves heterotrophs. They reciprocate with green plants to provide minerals and water in exchange for sugar, some of which they evidently pass on to the Ghost Pipes. Without GREEN, none of us would be here.
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Because the Demented World Repeats Itself
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In Europe again tonight,
a human being is dying
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under a bombed-to-rubble house
or in the street – bicycle basket
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spilling its loaf of bread.
This particular human is dying
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whose dying makes me despair
though I’m no one in particular
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and they’re no one in particular
to me. I’m just another human
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who will be dying, but not yet,
and who lies warm under my quilt
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of many blessings, wondering
what can be done about humans
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when I can’t dissuade the sparrow
who attacks our window
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slamming and slamming
his reflection – the enemy
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he keeps seeing but not
seeing as himself.
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Susan Cohen
from Tar River Poetry, Volume 62, Number 2. Spring 2023. © 2023 TRP
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I don’t subscribe to many literary journals, but I don’t let my Tar River Poetry lapse. Volume 62/Number 2 arrived last week containing a few familiar names but many more names that I now want to remain familiar with. Micro-themes seem to weave through its fifty pages of poetry like a carrier wave that fills the room with music. A few poems juxtaposed are having a conversation, but when the next in line picks up the thread the color and texture have suddenly shifted again. Always something new, always engaging, deeply felt, deeply connecting. Thank you to Luke Whisnant and all the perceptive editors who send me a fresh volume twice a year.
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Tar River Poetry is published twice yearly with the support of the Department of English, East Carolina University. http://tarriverpoetry.com. 113 Erwin Hall, Mail Stop 159, ECU, East Fifth Street, Greenville NC 27858-4353.
Shane Sheely has published three books of poetry and directs and teaches in the creative writing MFA program at University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Susan Cohen, author of three full-length poetry collections, is a former journalist living in Berkeley, California.
Steve Cushman’s first poetry collection, How Birds Fly, won the 2018 Lena Shull Book Award of the North Carolina Poetry Society.
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The Candiru Fish is So Small It Could Swim Up Your Urethra
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is what Mrs. Hart, my 9th grade biology teacher, said
thirty-some years ago, so when Julie says let’s go skinny
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dipping, instead of being excited I’m transported back to
Mrs. Hart’s class in St. Petersburg where all we had to cool
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us off on those Florida afternoons was one lone window unit,
so we sweated through her lectures until the day we sat up
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straight and listened as she discussed urethras and penises
and the dangers lurking beneath the surface. Come on, Julie
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is saying, naked now, her clothes in a stack at the shore,
her pale shoulders bouncing up and down at the water’s surface.
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I strip bare, tell myself we’re nowhere near the Amazon River,
run with everything I have into the water, into Julie’s arms,
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and again she’s rescuing me from myself, from my silly fears,
and those murky, dangerous things, seen and unseen.
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Steve Cushman
from Tar River Poetry, Volume 62, Number 2. Spring 2023. © 2023 TRP
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Glad to hear from you Jenny. May life continue to surprise . . . ---B