November 2020 – TINY SEED LITERARY JOURNAL

Facing the Fire

Almost Halloween

30 Nov 202028 Nov 2020

Here in California it is October, almost Halloween. To my Eastern eye the colors are off: no orange, no rust. Even the pumpkin patch of a seasonal entrepreneur emits a…

Facing the Fire…

The Pullman Car Factory Fire

30 Nov 202022 Nov 2020

July 13, 1973 Salvation never arrived.…

Facing the Fire…

Children of Fire

29 Nov 202029 Nov 2020

Once we fled dry season fires like other beasts, but then we learned to stay along the edges, to go back in when the charred ground cooled, where there was…

Facing the Fire…

Spring Burning

29 Nov 202029 Nov 2020

Meadow renewal with burning – flames cleanse, consume seeds unwanted plants and sprouts thickets, trees crowding grass – all gone! Invasive species restrained, now ash. Grass again can roam…

Facing the Fire

Natural Disaster

28 Nov 202027 Nov 2020

The fire came from the national forest, the firemen pumping water from my brother’s pool later said it jumped over his house and the street roaring down the backside of…

Facing the Fire…

Creek Fire Bear

28 Nov 202027 Nov 2020

Red scabs Where embers scorched away fur, Blistered paws From the last rush through flames, An eye burned white, Staring at nothing, You stand below Sheep Creek. Among boulders snowbound…

Facing the Fire…

Walking Black Earth

27 Nov 202027 Nov 2020

for Alvin Greenfield We’ll begin with materials unknown for rebuilding, and fail at trying to file the fire like a death certificate in our brains, burned around the edges. I…

Facing the Fire…

A Meeting With The Riverman

27 Nov 202022 Nov 2020

Went down, to the riverbank, to meet ‘the riverman’, one autumn afternoon, I had a few questions, of my own, to ask them, this time. A dead branch, half-submerged,…

Facing the Fire…

Nightmare

26 Nov 202022 Nov 2020

A little flickering fire upon a hill We’ve had our eye on for a while, until It suddenly decides to be our fate, Jumping the road with no fuel…

Facing the Fire…

Red

26 Nov 202024 Nov 2020

The euonymus are flaming. Their little feather leaves, red as coxcomb and wattle on a rooster’s head. Red standing out from the rest, like the wheelbarrow (in that poem)* so…

Facing the Fire

Burn Zone, Six Years After the Fire

25 Nov 202024 Nov 2020

At first all you notice are the charred branches sticking this way and that like an x-ray of life, naked without their familiar brush, wood bones marking summers past, hands…

Facing the Fire…

2020 Summer Sommelier

25 Nov 202019 Nov 2020

swirls her wine’s smoky aroma which makes easy to identify burnt oak’s origin near current Sonoma uncontrolled raging fires. Poem by Gerard Sarnat Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco…

Facing the Fire…

Jumping the River

25 Nov 202025 Nov 2020

By Carol Amato Carol Amato's poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently: The Peterborough Poetry Project Anthology; The Poet’s Touchstone (New Hampshire Poetry Society); 2019 Connecticut River…

Facing the Fire…

Fire on the Inside

24 Nov 202019 Nov 2020

Sacrum root, spine trunk, branches on fire, each lifting its own pain flower. Poem by Mary Salome Mary Salome is an Arab- and Irish-American Buddhist, writer, and media activist…

Facing the Fire…

As If the Green Swamp Wasn’t Enough

24 Nov 202023 Nov 2020

We sit around a fired glow steeped in talk of rivers, knowing full well streaming water is the same as blood flowing in muddy veins, our blood, and the great…

Facing the Fire

Playing with Fire

23 Nov 202022 Nov 2020

The scent of burning leaves drifts upon the autumn air. The softness of the evening is disturbed by exploding acorns. A woman, wearing a sweater over a faded housedress appears…

Facing the Fire…

Fire and Blood

23 Nov 202015 Nov 2020

The color red has guts the paint on our front door the sports car I always wanted my mother’s hair blowing in the wind a geranium red an anemone…

Facing the Fire…

sublimating in combustion

22 Nov 202022 Nov 2020

a log barks skin ignites first, warns flame commands the canvas of amber pyrotechnics alive in the darkest, midnight hours as heat reaches the pores microscope cells expand pressure ruptures…

Facing the Fire…

Fire and Earth

22 Nov 202024 Nov 2020

Stripped of beauty on denuded hillsides they stand mute bare arms reaching towards unheeding smudged skies. Just yesterday blue spruce fluttered supple eyelashes at wooing birds rustling Douglas…

Facing the Fire

Lines Composed 750 Miles West of Charlotte, North Carolina, on Hearing of President Trump’s Scripted Plea for Unity Drowned Out by the Raucous Crowd Chanting ‘Lock Her Up!’ October 26, 2018

21 Nov 202019 Nov 2020

— with nods to, and a last line from, Wordsworth’s “Tinturn Abbey” I’m watching smoke wander upward through its pyramid of black briquettes, hover like a parched fountain slowly stirred…

Facing the Fire…

Burned Site

21 Nov 202017 Nov 2020

-Herbert Abelson HTA is a retired academic physician, husband, father, and grandfather who writes prose and poetry about a grand career and life.

Facing the Fire…

The Fire This Time

20 Nov 202020 Nov 2020

Wildfire Noon Policy Matters Fire in the Mountains Art by Neil Berkowitz Neil Berkowitz is a visual artist living in Seattle. He pursued a dual major in…

Facing the Fire…

Charcrushed

20 Nov 202015 Nov 2020

Photo by Jeff Dunn Jeff began an interest in graphic arts in 2007, when he became the only critic to illustrate his own music reviews online with ironic commentary…

Facing the Fire…

The Power of the Flame

19 Nov 202019 Nov 2020

"Oh, dance with me!" She exclaims. Her naked flames ablaze, Roaring red and orange diluting the night. Slicing through shades Of black and navy blue. Jagged waves of flames…

Facing the Fire…

In the Smoke

19 Nov 202013 Nov 2020

Smoke sweeps through Oakland like a serial killer ravaging lungs while inside a woman says to her friend, The smoke no longer carries burnt bodies from the people of Paradise.…

Nature

Reflections on Henry

19 Nov 202019 Nov 2020

We lost Henry on Sunday, my wife and I, Our hearts fractured as he took off More than a bird, than an African Grey Her companion since childhood They sprouted…

Facing the Fire

Aftermath of a Fire at Waterton Lakes — Alberta, Canada

18 Nov 202017 Nov 2020

Facing the Fire Heat, fuel, oxygen, a family of sorts fire is born light, heat, comfort, renewal fire lives and breathes but never dies Controlled, it is useful…