Poplar
The world was warm and young.
Poplar fluff burned into smoke, into poplar smog.
We grew up quickly; what was honey turned into copper.
We saw the seam that runs in the heart of the universe.
Category: Reckoning 9
The Piano Player Has Eight Arms
“Dramatic Exit?” the man in the gray suit asks, pointing to the stingray leather menu as I shake a cocktail longer than necessary, fingers numb from frost fuzzing up the steel. Turquoise light ripples across his face from the water above us, the sun a lazy disco ball far above the dome.
Behind him, Onda watches us from her floor-to-ceiling saltwater tank in the . . .
Forfeit 280
“Forfeit 280” draws attention to how Monsanto committed 30 misdemeanor crimes related to a pesticide called Forfeit 280. Monsanto used the product in 2020 on corn fields in Oahu, Hawaii and allowed workers to enter the fields after it was applied despite a six-day restriction to enter.1 In addition to environmental injustices that farm workers experience, . . .
Turquoise Circles
I drive four hundred miles to my grandparents’
Angus cattle farm near Nestorville, West Virginia.
And walk up the knob, zenith and center of meadows
they mowed, cow paths, rust-roofed sheds, silo,
shrinking pond. Once, I knew how to find may apple,
trillium, and jewelweed. A crow says caw caw caw.
Maybe my lost ones are reaching for me. I stand
on the knob, I think . . .
We Will Not Dream of Corals
Alone on a lonely beach, Júlia watched the Atlantic Ocean spit out the world’s richest man.
Júlia knew who the man was even before the sea placed the body at her feet. She knelt before him and stared into his empty orbits and sought the corals. She saw none.
“Of course,” she whispered. “They wouldn’t want anything to do with you.”
Now our work begins, she imagined . . .
Rebellion
Not all growth is gentle, not
all bloom is a blessing. Some seeds wait
on the soil for the sun. Some, buried by force,
still rise. Language tangles like ivy, covers
what’s been razed: a garden drawn over scarred earth,
every vine tracing a line we forgot to erase.
They say plants are peaceful, but don’t you see
the struggle in each stem’s reach? There’s rage
in photosynthesis . . .
From the Editors: Persistence
Reckoning 9 comes to you from a year of reading and discussion—from intervals of not quite thinking we knew what this unthemed issue should look like to flurries of activity, enthusiasm and advocacy. Then, in a slow pull-back at the end of the submission window, everyone on the editorial team started to say okay, yes. Together with the writers, thanks to them . . .
From the Editors: Resistance
How does Twitter’s collapse relate to the climate crisis?
I’m far from alone in retreating from global social media to more private spaces—shared interests, affinities, locality. The most pertinent one here is my forest stewardship community. Even the solitary act of cutting up an invasive tree—mitigating centuries of damage caused by settlers to a formerly . . .
From the Editors: Grief
When we decided to leave Reckoning 9 without a theme, I wasn’t certain what to expect. Speculative fiction brings to environmental justice writing endless possibilities. Within speculative fiction, we explore difficult topics like climate change, pollution, and human displacement from the comfortable frames of comic sci-fi, cozy fantasy, and solarpunk. . . .