Fall 2023

LOOK TO THE SKY AND SHAKE YOUR HEAD

By Jennifer Bullis

With first sentence from Jim Harrison’s “Midnight Blues Planet”

We have misunderstood the stars. It is they who look earthward for guidance and clues to their personalities. We dream of traveling to them, but they arrived here before us, to install the gods who we think will save us from our wars. Mistaken, we open the ground and bring forth its carbons. We consider carrion a fair exchange for fuel. Said the birds a-swim in our thickening air, Try to remember you are role models. When the stars see our hurricanes grow larger, they hold off investing. When they see the moon blur behind earth’s browning atmosphere, they hurry to name their young after endings and beginnings. About us, the stars make no predictions. They believe we act of our own volition, that we intend the consequences we inflict. That we consider the future a sacrifice worthy of our power. As if we could serve as ancestors for each other, as if we could fashion mothers for ourselves.


Jennifer Bullis is the author of Impossible Lessons (MoonPath Press) and of work appearing in Gulf Coast, Terrain, Water~Stone Review, and Indiana Review. She is recipient of an Artsmith Residency Fellowship, Pushcart and Best New Poets nominations, and honorable mention in the Gulf Coast Prize. She holds a Ph.D. in English from UC Davis and writes from Bellingham, Washington, about foot travel, motherhood, horse-keeping, faith trouble, deforestation, repurposing myth, and women in the courtroom. https://jenniferbullis.wordpress.com/ 

Fall 2023