Issue IX
June 2022
Dear Reader,
As I sit down now to reflect on the release of Issue IX of Bracken, I think of how difficult life has recently been for so many—terribly difficult in some places, such as in Ukraine since Putin started his war there, and in other places where men wield guns blindly, where contagion has taken great tolls, where nourishment and shelter are tenuous…and difficult enough among many who live with too much uncertainty, whose belonging is in doubt, whose government is more threat than protection, who must fear to speak freely…and even among those who appear to be secure enough, it seems there’s a rising tide of what Thoreau called “quiet desperation.”
Read more…
Poetry
Jane Zwart The House in its Wisdom
Beverly Burch Two poems
Robbie Gamble Tadpoles
Grant Clauser Cottonwood
Anna Swanson Four poems
Jenny Della Santa Associations with impaired cognitive function, my mother’s necklaces
Diana Whitney Two poems
Suzanne Edison When I Joined the Worm Brigades
Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan Flight
Jacob Boyd The Lifeline
Shannon K. Winston Three poems
Katherine Fallon Bryn Mawr Winter, 2002
Charles Rafferty Newtown
L.I. Henley and Kristin Bock Three poems from Animism
Athena Kildegaard Two poems
Meghan Sterling North and South
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach Two poems
Hayden Saunier Two poems
Gustavo Hernandez Cienega
Marie Gauthier Night Watch
Julie DeBoer Prayer
Tina Schumann Just Yesterday the Crows
Kathryn Petruccelli The Leap
Kelly DuMar Misadventure with Peas
Tracy Zeman from Interglacial: Lake
Jo Angela Edwins Snail Trails
David Constantine Translations from the Greek Anthology
Carolyn Oliver Poem with Koi, Oak, and Reindeer-Hedgehogs
Anna Gruver Two poems translated from Ukrainian by Anna Gruver and Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Art
Marco Mazzoni
