The Bluebird Word

Morning at the Marsh

1 June 2026 / Editor

Nonfiction by Susan Pope

In early May at the shorebird festival in Homer, Alaska, I was invited to read my goshawk attack story at the site where it happened. Since the assailants were not yet nesting, I felt safe from any potential assault.

The event was a fundraiser for the land trust that had rescued a piece of forest and wetlands from bulldozing for development. Here was an opportunity to support a cause I believed in, plus a chance to plug my new book. Birding, hiking, storytelling, snacks. A perfect fundraiser. Local merchants donated food, the trust handled the logistics, the festival advertised the event, my friend Nancy provided bird identification assistance, and my husband Jim supplied the moral support. All I had to do was show up at the trail head, hike to the viewing platform, and read for ten minutes.

I visualized. I timed. I practiced out loud.

I was ready.

But not for leading the hike because the official leader, having no childcare, was forced to bring up the rear with her squealing, squirming toddler. Or for the frequent stops and starts to accommodate the grandma who thought she had signed up for pre-school story hour and kept sprinting off the trail to capture her rubber-booted fleet-footed three-year-old dashing after squirrels. Or for the six-year-old junior birder so eager to find those birds she slammed into my heels each time we paused to listen for one.

Or for the young moose who blocked our path and would not move—despite our clapping, shouting, and pleading—until she’d devoured every last fiddlehead fern. Or for the helicopter circling overhead at the viewing platform where I was to read my story.

Or for the Wilson’s snipe punctuating the roar of the helicopter’s rotors with a furious ack, ack, ack each time I imitated the goshawk’s scream in my story. Or for the pair of Canada jays who swooped in to raid our unguarded snacks when no one was paying attention.

But none of this mattered as I shouted my story in a very non-literary way to people politely trying to listen. The sun shone, the birch and willow leaves popped open, the wrens trilled and twittered, the sandpipers, ducks, geese, and cranes frantically fed or nested or headed north, and parents and grandparents did their best to ensure that the next generation had a chance at this one unpredictable and magnificent life.

Susan Pope’s work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction Short Reads, Alaska Magazine, River Teeth Beautiful Things, and The Bluebird Word Literary Journal, among others. Her memoir Rivers and Ice follows five generations of one Alaskan family in the rapidly changing landscape of the North. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

Joy

1 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Alexandra Newton Rios

As the sun sets red behind river birch, oak and elm
still copper and yellow only across their crowns
and the sky opens its spaces
I thank God for my legs,
for my eyes, for my heart
that still cross distances and open them
still feel sorrow
and have turned to transform
it into joy over and over –
as the day knows how to depart
and return full of possibility
over and over
as love knows how to forgive and rejoice
over and over.

Alexandra Newton Rios was raised in New York City, holds an MFA in English from the Writers’ Workshop and MFA in Translation in Comp. Lit. (University of Iowa). Nueva York Poetry Press recently published Poemas de Georgia/The Georgia Poems, one long poem to Georgia O’Keeffe. Mother of five children, she ran the New York City marathon in November 2025!

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

Speak to Me of Spring

1 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro

When I was little, my middle sister’s face
grew milky. Her thin body swayed, then wafted
to the linoleum like mimosa silk.

I thought she was dead.
I didn’t know you could mime death with held breath.

Today I want to write about daffodils, their yellow funnels,
bell-shaped coronas, and frills, how they trumpet sunlight.
But the breadth of war expands each day to bring more death.

I think of my husband’s staticky call, sirens blaring,
the day the Twin Towers fell, and how he came home
to me as he cannot now.

Today, I want to write about daffodils,
how after flowering, they die back into underground bulbs,
and in season, return to life.

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro has published essays in the NYT (Lives) and many anthologies. Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net, her poetry has appeared in Prism, Westview, Poet Lore, Rogue Agent, The Virginia Normal, Rougarou, Evening Street Review, and more. Connect with her at rochellejshapiro.com, @rjshapiro, @rochelle.j.shapiro, or @RochelleJShapiro.

Another Day at Sea

1 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Brian Christopher Giddens

How the body aches in the morning.
But what to do? Bed needs making,
dog wants walking, and garbage
overflows the bin. Life continues
even when the body wants to stay
inert, warm under the covers, listening
to the radio alarm, always set to NPR,
sharing stories about all the busy
people creating chaos around us.

Like an old dog, the corpus needs
nudging, as “no” isn’t an answer.
Things move slower, the world
spins faster, but the movements,
memorized, fall into place. With
a wince and a wobble, rusted
and ragged, the ship still sails.

Brian Christopher Giddens writes fiction and poetry from his home in Seattle, where he lives with his husband, and Jasper the dog. Brian’s writing has been featured in The New York Times (Tiny Love Stories), Passager, The Bluebird Word, Rabble Review, Hyacinth Review, Roi Faineant, Amazine, Glimpse, and other publications.

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

Trajectory

1 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Matt Zambito

The Moon grounds me so much
that the pressure leaves me
as if a pile of stable dust, while

the gravity of our planet is so weak
that I might float off and away
if I’m not careful. If I am careful,
I try to stare through the sand of

my glasses to see the particles
parting as if they weren’t as
they are but how they should be

if not for heat melting and space-
time’s curve pulling. To be safe
(or at least to be on its side), I’ve
got weighted boots on to tromp

over gray dirt hidden on Earth’s
surface, the force of being lessoned,
its meaning more than any orbit.

Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities, and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances. New poems appear in Freshwater Literary Journal, Braided Way, and Pioneertown. Originally from Niagara Falls, he now writes from Wilson, New York, where he resides with his rescue dog, Sadie.

Coorong

1 June 2026 / Editor

Nonfiction by Roger Funston

Today I walk a sixteen kilometer transect over coastal dunes and along brackish lagoons. We are keeping a list of the migratory birds we see—Eastern Curlew and Bar-tailed Godwit, critically endangered; Red-necked Stilt, vulnerable. These birds fly 8,000 miles from China and Siberia to winter in Coorong National Park. It is April 1985, autumn in Australia. Soon these birds will make their way back to Northern Hemisphere summer.

Coorong National Park is located on the southern coast of Australia on the South Sea, where the South Pacific and Indian Oceans meet. Mixing of the Southern Sea and the Murray River create estuaries of fresh and saline waters, world class wetlands that are endangered because of reduced freshwater flows and drought. Vulnerable Southern Belle frogs and Heath Goanna live in freshwater. Water birds nest on the saline lagoons and mudflats. The Cooring has one of the largest pelican rookeries in Australia.

Yesterday, I spent the day watching Whimbrels, Red-necked Stilts, Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, Red-necked Avocets through binoculars, poking their bills in the mudflats. Recording observations. Seemingly tedious to some, but this is science and necessary for developing a management plan. The day before we cored in these mudflats to see what invertebrates live there, trying to better understand behavior, important food sources, habitat needs.

Our team is half Aussies and half Americans, mostly short-timers in a long line of volunteer field biologists. The mix of participants is both surprising and wonderful. An executive with Esso, an engineer from mining company BHP, a phone company account rep from Orange County, California, who has brought along two large trunks filled with numerous wardrobes. Perhaps we are all closet environmentalists shedding our day jobs to revel in our passions.

We live communally in roadhouse lodging, sharing cooking, stories, laughter. Card games played at night. The Aussie winner shouts out “You beauty”. Tea and bikkies mid-afternoon. Evening barbies. Singing around the campfire, looking at the stars (bush telly).

Learned a lot of Aussie slang: dog’s breakfast (complete chaos), she’ll be apples (it will be alright), whoop whoop (middle of nowhere), bonzer (awesome), whinger (complainer), sheila (female).

The days are long. Tired at night, but a good tired. I will probably never see these people again. This was my first international field project. Many more will follow. But I will cherish the fond memories of this time and place and the people I worked with.

Roger Funston came to poetry late in life after a long career as an environmental scientist. He writes about his life journey, his travels, his tribe and things he has seen that you can’t make up.

Sudden Picnic

1 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by James Penha

enjoy life my husband says poolside
as he sets down the sandwiches
and salad he invented to help me
set aside the diagnosis rendered
the day before by a no-nonsense
doctor who prescribed an inhaler
to help me breathe for the rest
of the life my husband wants me
to enjoy as long as we both have it

Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him🌈) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. His story collection Queer As Folk Tales was published by Deep Desires Press. His chapbook of poems American Daguerreotypes is available for Kindle. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry.

Sunflowers

1 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Natasha Abell-Cwietkow

The thing about the sunflowers
Sat on the shelf, the ones that gaze at the street
From their tall pink glass house,
When they start to wilt and they start to fade
They will still be sunflowers though they may not be the same.
They will still be yellow and still called the same name.
The thing about the sunflowers
Sat on the shelf, wilting and wanting
From their tall pink glass house,
When petals are falling from minutes to hours
They may not be living but they are still
Flowers.
They may not be mine, but they were once ours.

Natasha Abell-Cwietkow is a poet and self-acclaimed adjective lover from a rural town in England. Her work explores love, grief, loss, and the ways we endure and change through life. She writes openly and honestly, showing little restraint with raw emotion, wearing her heart on her sleeve.

Make a U-Turn

1 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Diana Raab

The morning’s alarm sounds,
your copper-colored poodle scratches
on glass door—
time for his morning pee.

With phone in pocket,
you sprint to kitchen,
a voice says, “make a U-turn.”

You giggle and wonder
if your phone spouts nonsense
or your universe messages.

You press your brain
for answers and can’t think
how you would
have done anything differently.

You step onto the past’s path,
think about when you rolled out
of your adolescent bed at thirteen,
face covered with pimples,
not a dime to your name
and how you stole a skirt from Bloomingdales.

You ponder Thoreau’s words
that to regret deeply is to live afresh.
You wonder how many
have regrets and want to start over,
like your 95-year-old mother
who hopes staying alive
will give her another chance
to erase mistakes.

The doorbell chimes.
It’s a reminder
to begin your day.

Diana Raab, MFA, PhD, is a memoirist, poet, workshop leader, thought-leader and award-winning author of 13 books and editor of three anthologies. Raab writes for Psychology Today, The Good Men Project, Sixty and Me, Medium, and is a guest writer for many others. Read more at dianaraab.com.

Tourbillion

1 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Carole Greenfield

And didn’t we spark, didn’t we spin in our different skies,
the first time we unearthed veins of gold and silver threading
the lines between us?

Didn’t we emit quantities of white light, dazzled the darkness,
and didn’t your laugh snake itself round my heart,
a lovely writhing?

Didn’t we say to ourselves, This is the one I’ve been searching for,
my whole life long? And didn’t I try not to listen to the voices
telling me,

This is the serpent in the garden,
this is the key to the puzzle,
the end to my peace,

the reason why I will never
know Heaven again?

[Author’s note: Tourbillion, another name for a serpent, is also a type of star that spins in the sky and gives off large quantities of gold, silver, or white light.]

Carole Greenfield grew up in Colombia and lives in New England, where she teaches multilingual learners at a public elementary school. Her work has appeared in Stone Poetry Quarterly, Sky Island Journal, The Plentitudes and other places. Her debut collection, Weathering Agents, was released by Beltway Editions.

The Bluebird Word

Morning at the Marsh

Joy

Speak to Me of Spring

Another Day at Sea

Trajectory

Coorong

Sudden Picnic

Sunflowers

Make a U-Turn

Tourbillion

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