http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/underwood

Today's haiku:                                                          Jan on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/jan.underwood.16

 Because nothing says
Christmas like climate crisis!                                 Find The Bell Lap Here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/601085
My new book is out.                                                Fiction by Jan:  http://www.funnylittlenovels.com/ 

Climate refugees fleeing an American West turned desert. A German couple trapped in a new European Ice Age. A sensitive young man drafted to fight in the Tar Sands Wars. Rebels persecuted by a dictatorship of the fossil fuel industry. These and other stories explore life in a climate-altered near future: occasionally whimsical, often grim, always deeply human in their response to catastrophe.

"Jan Underwood’s apocalyptic vision in these beautifully written stories is both thrilling and disturbing. Her ordinary heroes will resonate with many readers who wonder what lies ahead."
—Jill Kelly, author of When Your Mother Doesn’t and Fog of Dead Souls

"When we can no longer depend on the natural world for sustenance or culture for safety and meaning, what remains? The Bell Lap explores the dark and fragile perimeters of the human experience when the terms of our existence have been altered beyond recognition and must be renegotiated individually and collectively. As you travel to the other side of climate change in these elegant and evocative stories, you will reconsider who you are, what you value, and where your place is in the human family."
—Sage Cohen, author of Like the Heart, the World and Writing the Life Poetic

 Available in most ebook formats, including iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Nook, Kobo Reader, Sony Reader and others. Find it at your favorite ebook retailer.

Print version coming soon! Stayed tuned. 

Poetry

After Disembarking / Before Departure

I must say
I'm surprised by all the folks
who choose that door called "Nothing to declare."
They're handing you the mike, and you got nuthin'--really?
You wouldn't care to share,
say,
how you loathe the neoliberals
to the very center of your bowels?
Or
that you'd like to throttle
the person who invented that birdcheep ringtone?
You could disclose
what you really think of Woody Allen's latest,
because the other night at dinner
you were only being nice.
You never tell your dreams.
They're boring,
and no one wants to hear them.
You could describe them now
if only words could conjure up their dream-ness.
Or tell
that other kind of dream,
the one where
you finally learn to sail
and take a catamaran
down to Mexico.
Tell about
the chalkblue sky
of an early spring
doing its best impersonation of Vermeer,
and the way it tugs, each time, your wistful heart.
Nothing to declare?
Declare
Oh
how you love her,
unambivalently, sometimes.
Her bony wrists. Her rascal smile.
Those electric eyes.
That strange, electric mind.
Her easy laugh.
Her easy love of you.
Say
the thing you haven't said, quite.
Say
you're sorry,
detailing the what-for's.
Mean it.
Get it right this time.

J.U.
4/28/2014

more Poetics:  This page:  http://www.theportlandalliance.org/poetry
 

Jan Underwood:  After Disembarking / Before Departure
http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/underwood

more Jan Underwood:  http://www.ThePortlandAlliance.org/heartless

 

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