Wasteland

Craig Kirchner: Wasteland

Wasteland

by Craig Kirchner

The forest thrived, nothing extravagant,

but a diverse group of trees that had

communicated for thousands of years,

through millions of roots and fungi,

peacefully, with no malice or hatred.

The maternal trees were proud of their young.

When the men came with their trucks,

and their removal technology,

the mycelium warnings were frantic,

but there wasn’t anything they could do,

nowhere they could go, and no way for them to

get to a refuge, had there been one.

They were there as their saplings were cut down,

and then the mothers too were cut, eliminated.

The forest that had thrived, had beautified,

had fed one another with its delicate system,

was now a barren wasteland.

The sun had nothing to touch, to nurture.

The men who had slaughtered were content in

their ignorance that this was their world,

and trees were just in it.

This forest had prospered eons before they

claimed this land, it seemed as if they

destroyed because they could.

Their lack of compassion,

shared by the throng back home,

despite the innocence of the trees,

didn’t seem misplaced, they had the power,

seemed to need the carnage to stay in power,

and assured one another they needed the wood.

Craig Kirchner thinks of poetry as hobo art, loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review, Wild Violet, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Ariel Chart, Cape Magazine, Flora Fiction, Young Ravens, Chiron Review, Yellow Mama, Valiant Scribe and several dozen other journals.

KJ Hannah Greenberg is eclectic. She’s played oboe, participated in martial arts, learned basket weaving, and studied Middle Eastern dancing. What’s more, she’s a certified herbalist, and an AP College Board-authorized teacher of calculus.

Her creative efforts have been nominated once for The Best of the Net in poetry, once for The Best of the Net in art, three times for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for poetry, once for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for fiction, once for the Million Writers Award for fiction, and once for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. To boot, Hannah’s had more than forty-five books published and has served as an editor for several literary journals.

Check out her latest short fiction collection, An Orbit of Chairs:

https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Chairs-KJ-Hannah-Greenberg/dp/B0CWMMM73T

Within its pages are two tales originally published at Yellow Mama: "Alive Another Day" and "Light Notes."