Welcome to the 2016 Issue of Unearthed!
Unearthed is an online literary magazine published by SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and run by undergraduate and graduate student editors working in collaboration with the Writing Program and ESF Communications staff. The journal focuses on works that define the environment as what Glen Mazis calls “surround”–the natural and social world that species share. We honor the legacy of SUNY-ESF’s original print creative journal, Ecologue and seek to publish work in the genres of non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and artwork. We especially encourage works in new media and those that blend genres such as photo and video essays.
If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this issue of Unearthed!
Poetry
Kathlen Abrey: Against Ourselves/ Katharine Alys O’Connor: Any Moment / Chapin Czarnecki: Of Wind, Observations/ Rand Michaels: Staring Skyward/ Rebecca Rolnick: Catching the Light, Cloudwatching/ Savita Sharan: Naturalist’s Dilemma/ Simeon Spottswood: Vectors of Understanding, The I Am
Prose
Michael Mahoney: The Thaw/ Janet Rogers: The Siren/ Rebecca Rolnick: Oakwood Rambles, The Story Tree/ Simeon Spottswood: Contact Spinning A Fire Staff
Visual Art
Forrest Baird: Soils
Featured image by Unsplash
The Thaw
For all the talk of warmth and rebirth, spring is a really ugly season. Trails turn to mud pits and roads to rivers as the thaw begins to take hold, and the brown carcasses of what was left at the end of fall begin to reappear. The ground cover is a layer of partially decayed leaves, and all the damage the winter did is slowly revealed.
Of Wind
White Wind / Frozen layering like ice sheets, / Yet wicked and swift, / It carves and scours its path.
Staring Skyward
Arcturus / Leader of the lucida in their nightly procession, / The key: receiver of lightning
Any Moment
Eurydice didn’t look quite so lost yesterday / as I passed the sculpture garden on the way to class.
Observations
An ice footprint stays / long after maker is gone / snowfall soon obscures.
The Siren
Sometimes someone will drown in another part of the river and I can’t help, because the river is large and I am only one person.
Catching the light
The secondary rain shower / trickles from the leaves of the honey locust
Cloudwatching
wispy thoughts drift / across the dome of the sky / as I lay here / supported on the warm earth / in the stillness of the / wind
Contact Spinning A Fire Staff
“Many of us would say that we are conscious of our daily activity even though we are not actively watching ourselves executing these actions”
Oakwood Rambles
"I pause here only to gather my thoughts, but I am surprised at how much I have already observed."
The Naturalist’s Dilemma
Staring at blank faces while I speak / they’re like walls, plain and blank and even without interest; / now I’m frustrated and careless but flabbergasted nonetheless / as my tone it gets higher, the pace, it gets faster
Vectors of Understanding
I am content to know/ The protecting embrace of a maple/ Shielding me/ From harsh January winds/
Against Ourselves
After the Ides of March, four hundred / thousand pure casualties. / Darkness stole the glossy white pearl / Icy tundra untainted, solitary.
The Story Tree
“What is it about our need to tell stories, to leave a relic of our voice behind for the world? We speak, but sounds dissipate into the air, ephemeral as our own lives.”
The I Am
You ARE a moment/ you are a mystery/ blooming into infinity
Soils
I've never seen a dodo bird in the flesh. / I poke my skin in genetics laboratory. / And I'm not proud of my address / in Centennial Hall; / I've got Westcott envy.