An estimated one billion Pacific Northwest sea creatures died in the heat wave that hit less than a month ago, cooked in their shells on the shore, but hey, we’ve got billionaires in space. If climate change had a soundtrack, Howlin’ Wolf’s “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)” has got to be on it, and just to cover our bases, we’d have to include Lucinda Williams’s version. Given that we seem to be going up in flames within this meat market dream, let us articulate the pyre for whatever Anima Sola may follow. Rabid Oak is proud to feature these seventeen works of poetry & prose, and we invite you to join these eleven beings in song.

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Wallace Barker: “Cylinder Turns and Triggers Warning Bell” and “The Working Class”

Cindy Buchanan: “Chains of Love” and “In Praise of Glacial Movement”

Dhwanee Goyal: “a meandering godship”

Rich Ives: “Don’t Give Back the Other Story”

Meg Johnson: “NoHo Hank Gets His Very Own Episode” and “Reluctant Sex Symbol”

Deborah Kerner: “Dirt Road”

DS Maolalai: “This poem is a lungfish” and “A wasp sting”

Benjamin Adair Murphy: “Wake Up When the Train Stops”

Brett Jordan Schmoll: “Just a Day”

Ronald Tobey: “Problem Child”

Kate Wilson: “folie-à-deux,” “fragment 4,” and “fragment 1”