Poetry by Ray Ball

continuing to name things that are yellow after my five-year-old niece stops playing the game

Sunlit leaves in autumn
and a lemon peel perched
on the rim of a glass brimming
with a pleasant but nondescript wheat beer
una sartén de paella compartida con amigos
exist in the same color family as choler.
Yellow bile. Yellow belly.
They flew yellow flags
when ships needed to be quarantined.
oh! The knitted wool of imaginary prevention!
Vast expanses: sunflowers and canola.
Before I was afraid all the time,
morning light dissolved into kernels
dancing across the cornfields
where I ran telephone pole drills.

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Dendroctonus rufipennis

At a party, a friend of a friend asks
do you have children?
And you respond
There are thirty times
more dead spruce
than five years ago.
They turned red
and then a discomfiting dun
after climate change
birthed a destiny of beetles,
manifest. Smaller trees can
flourish in a forest
of ghosts, but that
doesn’t always mean
that they do.

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Ray Ball, Ph.D., is a history professor in Alaska. She is the author of two history books and her creative work has recently appeared in Cirque, L'Éphémère Review, Okay Donkey, and The Cabinet of Heed. She tweets @ProfessorBall