DAWID JURASZEK - POEMS & BIJOU ZHOU - ART

Dawid Juraszek is a bilingual author and educator based in China. A published novelist in his native Poland, his fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in The Remembered Arts Journal, Amethyst Review, The Font, Amaryllis, The Esthetic Apostle, Artis Natura, and elsewhere. Visit https://amazon.com/author/dawidjuraszek 

Bijou Zhou grew up in China's Hunan province. Having first learned painting from a local artist, she went on to receive a degree in Fine Arts, before moving to the USA to study English. She now lives in Changsha, China. Her artwork has appeared in Mused Literary Review, Artis Natura, Soft Cartel, and on the cover of The Cabinet of Heed.

CLINGING

​Arria

Shrouded in leaves and bark
its branches on the ground
made her look up

Against the concrete wall
she remembered
it stood
still

The lunch break all but over
the metal would be back soon
to finish the job

She touched what was left
raised her hand to her hair
and with the vision of herself
growing up as it grew tall
she pulled at a strand
just big enough
winced
groaned
and held it up high

'It doesn't hurt,' she said
as passers-by walked on
​

​Xerxes

Microplastics and CO2
Desertification and smog
Landfills and algal blooms
Flooding and deforestation
Mudslides and sand mining
Fertiliser runoff and oil spills
Fracking and feedback loops
Coral bleaching and droughts
Melting glaciers and tar sands
Heat waves and degraded soils
Toxic waste and failing harvests
Biodiversity loss and oil pipelines
Hurricanes and depleted aquifers
Light pollution and rising sea levels
Ocean acidification and tipping points
Albedo effect and collapsing fish stocks
Saltwater intrusion and extinction events
Thawing permafrost and radiative forcing
Methane clathrates and shrinking ice caps
Resource depletion and urban heat islands
Ecocide and anthropogenic climate change
Power structures, short-termism, and greed
This is why I'm weeping
​

​Cato

​Say they came and rescued you when you
had it all worked out thought through torn
down all loose ends tied no
leftovers and no one stood
to suffer more
than you would otherwise.

Say they looked at you with that warm
pity as if they knew better as
if nothing was about to come
crashing down and you knew they
would do it again if you did it again.

Say you wanted them to fail and never
again
stop you midway through or any
one else for that matter.

Take another shot at it for the
pain they caused you sue them re-
purpose yourself while there is time.

What do you say?