Ocean Water
Dasha Kelly Hamilton

The ocean pushes back
Alive and vigorous 
The heritage of habitat
Leans against expectation
Muscles its due respect
Without regard
Without warning
Without reorienting the ones
With swimming perspectives
Limitations of consistent temperature 
and painted cement walls

The ocean rumbles its sovereignty 
Full weight of freedom on my skin. 

Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer and performance 
artist. She is National Rubinger Fellow and currently 
Poet Laureate for the city of Milwaukee and the 
State of Wisconsen. In 2021, she received an 
Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. 

Most of Wyoming trees, the lesson (Gogyohka Sequence) 

in April
still asleep
shivering in the wind
like the children
in the war-torn land

in May
start budding
or flowering
like just awaken
lazy person in a hurry

sudden snowstorm
blankets the flowering trees
shuddering at the unexpected
after storm passes
dazzling smile

Wyoming trees'
lesson:
face the disaster
be patient
then rebound

©Byung A. Fallgren 

junipers don't need 
to be pruned by human 
nature did already

children don't need 
to grow under parental pressure
just put them in right track

what happens 
in woman's body
her choice

©Byung A. Fallgren

The Doe

when her son
was excluded
she
walks with him
in the night 


Sleep Aid

awake 
in the wee hour
no problem,
read book,
works better than pills


Rattle

wind 
blows all night
rattling the satellite dish
on the roof
for the rotten news

©Byung A. Fallgren

Windy Backyard Wisdom

Winds blow over
the white and green,
cascades from the hill
to the open, rippling in
silver gray, in hopes,

raise them into the air
and blow them away.
But they stay formidable,
roots in the soil,
like the stubborn youths’ will
to keep their land,

rebel against the invaders.
The ripples grow to sea waves,
claw the florets and blades, in vain;
the wings mean to fly,
the roots mean to stay,
like the incompatible lovers.

©Byung A. Fallgren

Dandelion & Iris

like a good friend
forget
each other's fault
just enjoy
being a good company

This piece is one of the six poems published
in The Weekly Avocet #491, May 1st, 2022.
Thank you, Charles, Vivian, Valeri for taking 
them.  

--Byung A. 

My six poems appeared in this journal: Spring Pasture; Learning the eyes of Sky,
turtles; Dandelion & Iris; For the Spring Sun; Spring Grass; Spring Tree Song.
Thank you, Charles, Vivian, and Valerie for taking these poems.

–Byung A. Fallgren

Inside me, a family
by Ching-In Chen

born from small 
waters. Each night,
I look for a paper
to feed this first litter
from a slow continent.

New trappers buy
their fetters and hooks,
dreaming of new skin
to drape. In the sky, a wound 

like river, opening up again
to bird. Neighborhood pushes 
against seams, dislikes 
a newcomer. This linked 
to history and forgetting--
a new gray house like a weed.

A monument rises past the window.
We sit and drink twice-steeped tea.

Ching-In Cheng is the author of Recombinant (Kelsey Street Press,
2017) and The heart's Traffic (Red Hen Press, 2009). A Callaloo,
Kundiman, and Lambda Fellow, Assistant professor in the School of 
Interdisciplinary Arts and Science and MFA in creating and Poetics 
at the University of Washington.  

View on the side of the road, a Message

Silver sky and the land join in the sea of smog;
Submerged, the wind turbines wave their arms,
Like the drowning octopuses.
 
Drying lake gives her way to the green invaders,
Like old soldiers with no weapons.
Hope the smoke will dwindle with winter's arrival;
Dried lakes will begin to refill 
As the irrigation stops in October.

In the smoke, the wind turbines point fingers,
As we panic at the foot of crumbling hills,
Fumbling on the sea of plans.

They say eventually Nature replenishes what it has lost,
But she cannot revive the perished creatures;
Polar bears, beavers, and others may live only
In the children's story book.
We can reverse that, can't we? 

©Byung A. Fallgren