I kneel in the night on a high hill in the back country, I bow my head,
and make this fervent wish, with the memory of green tendrils wrapped
around my heart, squeezing there, holding me fast against the earth.

By Kaycee
A solstice wish for the rains to come back and wet the cracked and dry
lips of our land, so thirsty, so cooked. A lush and whispering wish,
a green and liquid gaze, a beetle-wing hum and scissor of wings
to accompany a change in the wind, in the weather. Let the fireflies
come back, the poppyheads, the bare feet in soft dark earth. Come back,
you voluptuous nights that made me lose myself in the air, the air the exact
temperature of my blood. Nightswimming in you, I become weightless, invisible.

The membrane between my flesh and the dark green leaves, my heartbeat and the cicada
song grows so permeable that I nearly forget to exist, breathing there in the night, on the path,
no light but the moon. Lay me down between the rows, under that spicy canopy of tomato
stalks, sharp and greener than green. Heady and hot, stinging my upper lip studded with
silver sweat, the mosquito wail, the drip, the thunder. Come back dark clouds, furious black,
riddled with the swarming termites of heat lightning. Give me a tympani boom that makes
my little dogs shake and tremble, give me the insect alarm call, the pressure drop, wind lifting
the hair stuck to the back of my neck. Come feverish storms! Pound at my windows at the witching
hour, and maybe I’ll just fling them all open and let you in. Come back you tempests, you ponderous
fierce summer thunderstorms, bristling with electricity, gray wolves of cumulus hunkering at the horizon.

Denishawn dancers doing their Thai magic.
Bring back those nights where no one can seem to leave their porches, where your silk slips are soaked
though, even though you’ve barely moved a muscle in an hour. Laying there with your back glued to the
wood floor, watching the ceiling fan sway, the fat moths gossip, another lizard hunting party making a foray
back across the screen-door. “Iced tea and no deep thinking” indeed. Rum and cigars and dominoes and
no thoughts of work or money. Only your friend laughing with her red lipstick on, the fairy lights, that night.

Moth photographs by my friend, amazingly talented photographer L.E. Lake
I petition the leafy sea-dragons I have seen swimming beneath the skin of the sky for their watery blessings.
I will ask the creatures made of violet prism who live in little fires to make inquiries about where our paperwork
might have been mislaid. I’m sure we filled it out correctly, in triplicate even, but nixies can be tricksy I reckon,
and it seems we’ve been bumped to the bottom of the list. May their fiery ears be tickled by our wishmaking into
issuing benedictions, and may they be gentled by our songs, by our gifts. What else can we do now, but beg
elementals to take pity on us? Let our wishes be enough for them. Let them bring back our green world.


Photograph by Tamera Ferro – aka. Mlle. Verhext
This is the song a slow afternoon rain that would sing so sweetly, on one of those dim days
where you sit at the kitchen table with your tea and all the lights off, and wish
that the rain could be your lover, and come around every day at about 4 o’ clock,
like it does in New Orleans still. While you sit there clutching your mug and making wishes.