Plan A

A sign near our campsite
In the redwoods
Lists what to do
Should we encounter
A mountain lion:
• Stay put
• Try to look enormous
• Shout rudely

There is no Plan B


By Buff Whitman-Bradley

Flashback

he shot the swine between the eyes

while she bathed in the ice-cold trough out back

there’s no silk like the edging of clouds

or fuel as useful as the scorched fruit trees

horses loosed on the wind-swept

plain of powdered zinc,

wick burning low as burlap works to towel off,

her eyes greenly marbled,

the raw earth holding erect

a spine calling flesh a man, his boots mud caked

By Jay Passer