Terrain

Weather Psalm That button on the continent’s dashboard? Push it. Let the sky fill up with parachutes, let the sky set us down in some magic future where the wind sends light through our wiring. See that sign on the sun through your telescope? Those hieroglyphics spell “High Voltage.” So the Angels of Rain and Snow have spoken. Until we show them that we’ve heard, they can’t return.

In the Backcountry of Grand Teton National Park, Wearing a Trucker Hat that Says, Jackson Hole Queer, I Remember Wyoming’s the state where Brokeback Mountain took place. Each pastoral poem I write gets hit in the head with a tire iron. The steel-toed sunset kicks me in the eye, clouds purpling like a bruise on the bloodstained horizon. These mountains stick out of dirt like chipped teeth loose from their gums, bones poking through skin. The valleys jut like shoulders thrown out of their sockets.

I always wanted to find a ruined place and settle there and work to make it better. An island probably. Maybe a peninsula. Green land, lots of sun. White birds, lots of sun. The men would arrive in ships, not rafts, never rafts, and depart a short while later, leaving the place ruined. Or they would die among their death, seep like poison into the poisoned ground. It doesn’t matter.

Dawn breaks. To my surprise, I’m still alive. Overnight, snow has piled up, topped with a layer of icing that smooths out the rough edges and blankets the world in silence.

The Terrain.org Podcast In this episode of the Terrain.org Podcast, our nonfiction editors Elizabeth Dodd, Achilles Seastrom, Jennifer Case, and Eric Aldrich discuss how they became editors, the submissions they long to discover, and which types of essays are and aren’t a good fit for the journal. They also describe how editing has affected their own writing and reveal where else they look for impressive new environmental literature.

Sweetgum Silhouettes The leaf silvers at dawn when light travels across the horizon over the ridges I wake to find the morning’s keen starlight starfish the leaf’s liquid borders shapeless over the ridges across the horizon to the dawn where my eyes release their birds shapeless liquid borders of leafy starfish on the river’s glass surface the letter falls The dawn releases her birds to the softer eye A falling leaf pinwheels to the water the leaf tumbles and spurs to the glassy surface At...

The Cradle of the Housatonic River When the ducks submerge their heads, Their feathers rippling as their bodies move deeper into the water, Scanning the silent, submerged world underneath for sustenance, Could they still recognize you? Or, when they see your reflection, are you all strangers to each other now?

Per ancient legend, a swan sings most beautifully at the end of its life. While this notion has been debunked, the phrase “swan song” has come to represent an individual’s last act before death, or their final opus before retirement, particularly if it is interpreted as meaningful, contemplative, or somehow prescient. Famous examples include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9; Frida Kahlo’s final painting, Viva La Vida; and Kurt Vonnegut’s 2005 essay collection, A Man Without a Country.

American Dream the bullet hits doesn’t shatter the windshield rippling into a sea glass a gleam oh light the bullet hits bounces back to the barrel revolving counterclockwise until the first bullet becomes but a bore left by a sandworm on a quiet beach far away the bullet hits fails hits the concrete a poet yesterday side-walked on dreaming the impossible light sun shimmers on gentle waves lapping rocks the bullet hits mists into sea spray salt the salt of kiss that quickens the lips long ago...

America, A Love Story By Camille Dungy Wesleyan University Press | 2026 | 104 pages What happens when a place you love threatens to kill you and those you love most in the world? Camille Dungy’s America, A Love Story attempts to answer that question in this deeply personal and political new poetry collection.