Community Voices – Page 3 – The Abstractaphy Initiative

Complexity

By Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts sitting by a streamenveloped in subtle autumn beautyfeeling solid ground beneathbreathing invisible life-giving airawareness awakens verdant summertime leavesconceal yellows and orangesredsmaroonsand complexity beyond measure introduced species small and largeexotic flora and faunasuppress more delicate autochthonesof many huessmall and largeand complexity beyond measure death, demolition and destructionhide and inflamegrief and feardespairdesolationand complexity beyond measure rising seas and rampaging wildfiresscreaming winds and persistent droughtovershadow and obliterate connectionto earthy soil and solid rockiron core of earthand complexity beyond measure sitting by a streamwatching beloved children at play quietlyunexpectedlytouching griefbeyond words beyond comprehension beyond endurance that simmers…

One October Morning

By Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts One October morning, the Merlin app on my phoneheardonly a single dark-eyed Junco.Nothing else. My earsheardcars and trucks on the road beside my house,distant heavy machinery, clanging and banging,and a chainsawnot far off.No birds. My imaginationheardthe trills and chatter of the woodland edgeduring the dawn course of spring–cedar waxings, red wing blackbirds,yellowthroats, rose-breasted grosbeaks,and more.So many birds. My imaginationheardthe silence of the woods and meadowspunctuated only by the murmuring wind in the trees,bird calls,animals scuttering in the litterand water tumbling in a rushing creek.Nothing more. My heartheardthe single Junco aching for the absent birdsand filled the…

Some Things Never Change

By Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan I get in line with the seabirds. They seem to be looking at their reflections in the thin film of water behind the retreating wave. So I look down. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit with a snorkel in my left hand. It’s hot, and the water smells like gasoline. A kid runs by and the birds scatter. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit – all alone. a bald tireon a patch of icethe world turns First published in The Other Bunny, January 6, 2025.

The Gardens of Antarctica

By Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan The gardens of Antarctica breathe free. Free of the hideous white. A dense green silence remembers the blinking ice. Dewdrops heavy as stones hung about the neck. The overpowering poetry of tears. summerthe millstonegindingthe donkey First published in Sunrise in a Rabbit Hole, publication date November 3, 2025, Cyberwit.com.

Tide Ledger

By David Anson LeeBellaire, Texas, United States We keep a ledger of small losses: one slipper at the pier, two gull nests, ten breaths of air no one thought to save. The ledger rides in the pocket of a coat that remembers salt: buttons looped with a child’s braid, a coin pressed thin as a fossil. Once a year we walk the shoreline and record what the tide returns: a plastic comb, a glass bead, a photograph of a town no longer printed on any map. We bury each entry in a jar and plant a willow above it. The…

Dispatch from the Thinning

By David Anson LeeBellaire, Texas, United States They said our town still had a forest, though it clung to the highway like a frayed sleeve. At dawn the trucks came, counting trunks the way bankers count coins, and left behind a geometry of stumps the birds could not decipher. The library taped a notice to its glass: “Community Meeting. Seeds Needed.” Women arrived with seed packets folded like blessings. Children wrote tree names on scraps of paper, as if naming could mend the thinning air. We planted where runoff carved salt into the soil and hoped the roots could read…

Building a Birdhouse

Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan That stuff is for the birds, the builder says, when I point out the loss of shade where the trees would be. He is coming from a power lunch with the architect, a former tightrope walker in his father’s circus. Seems like there was a discussion about an extension to the go-kart track. Noise pollution, apparently. What about electric karts, I say, and an aviary just before the final turn? Fat chance, he says. That little hole in front, beneath the red-peaked roof, is too small for the kid’s albatross. First published in Sunrise in a Rabbit Hole, publication…

Atlas of Small Things

By David Anson LeeBellaire, Texas, United StatesWhen the last map burned,we traced new roads from thumbprints:salt in the seams,a country stitched by small hands.A child learns the coastby listening for gulls;an older woman counts orchardsthe way she once counted prayers.Every mouth carries a river’s memory:names of fish, the taste of rain.We lift the globe like a bowl,tilt it until teaspoons of lightslide into the cracked placesand teach the woundshow to flower.

A Southern Woman Nails Up Her Theses

Rebecca DrouilhetPicayune, Mississippi, USA I have an announcement to make: It’s the end of the line for idiotkind. The Civil War ended 157 years ago, and if you can’t understand that, get off my train. I’m going on without you. We need to leave our ancestors in their historical time. Some in our society are trying to resurrect the Confederacy and its symbols, not to honor their ancestors and to learn from them, but to build new nightmares, using the worst of the past to create bizarre new mutations with the potential to destroy the last 157 years of progress…

Skin and Bones

Pegah Rahmati NezhadTehran, Tehran province, Iran skin and bones with a bulging (b)elly African child fed up with kwashiorkor

Depravation Darlings

By Colin JamesMassachusetts The acronym B.L.A.H.written on the clubhouse door,because legends are human.I will follow you anywheresuitably hydrated, then demobbedin the Arizona desert.Behold The Cave Of Reason,much better than a dusty clubhouseand your mother's provincial sandwiches.The sunsets here are dramatic,my headaches and carpal tunnelsoftly pressed between cactus flowers.

The Meaning of Color: Portrait of Else Lasker-Schuler

By Richard WeaverSan Diego, California, USA As the Prince of Thebes, I always dress in silks and bright bangles. You say I am my artliving through the rapt eyes of others. They see Berlin or Munich in my mirror, but look away, embarrassed, confused when I enter a room because I am a Jew. Their laughter chases me down the street. Ridicule, my ungrateful friend, my servant,my only living child, dances alongside me. And now you are dead. First Georg.Now you, Franz. Why you? Why does God . . .This war promised to free us but stains the sky daily with migraines. I curse it and those who…

Geologic Doom

By William DoreskiPeterborough, New Hampshire Ashen silence molds itselfinto the shape of geese driftingon a gray lake. The angleof their wake is acute enoughto suggest they’ll get somewhere, despite their casual poise.Soon they disappear in a mistso fine we can hardly feel itsoak through and reveal our bones.The far shore has faded away. Maybe the planet has erodedso its rough edge approaches uswith threats we can’t understand.Maybe the lake is pouring intothe vacuum of absolute space. You tire of these uncertaintiesand claim we live by maps and chartsthat prove the geologic doomI fear can’t possibly happen.Geese can happen. Loons and…

Floral Derision

By William DoreskiPeterborough New Hampshire Fragrant lilies critique the pond.Subtleties of their punctuationleave us gasping for response. The water is a dirty pane of glass.Looking at rather than through itreveals only dinge and drab. No wonder aquatic disdainextends to dry land where voicessail across wooded places and boomerang back to intellectsthat lack both form and content.The lilies remain so aloof, although rooted in the shallows,that no one considers plucking themto place in ordinary vases in rooms where reckless children roam.The August days simper and preen.The pond water smell of decay although fish and amphibians thrivedespite the threats of climate change.The…

Yimakh Shemo ( יִמַּח שְׁמוֹ)

by Gerard Sarnat May his end be to be cut off; in another generation may their name be blotted out.—Psalm 109 verse 13Curse is placedafter exact nameparticular enemiesof my Jewish people--may any remembrancealso get ERASED forever:Recent starter obviously’s Hitlerbut 97-year-old mentor/Auschwitzsurvivor just last week told me that shewill consider adding to list Trump and Bibi.

Annunciation

Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA Days after the latest school shooting, I wake to the sound of shotgun blasts announcing Labor Day: open season on mourning doves. Small bodies bleeding under a stained-glass sky. last rays—a downy feather clings to my sole Background information