“Disaster Wireless” by Richard Gilbert & Jennifer Hambrick

April 1, 2024Posted by

Richard Gilbert & Jennifer Hambrick

DISASTER WIRELESS

broadcast from the village loudspeakers, far away, like a scratchy 1940s radio. a language for bees or aliens. the nashi in the village orchards are coming into their sweetness. half the farmers are retired or dead. long lives swallowed by the soil. 
 
there’s no war in the forest, just trees disordered in their own way, steep hills, sculpted terraces. old, old stone walls bedded in volcanic loam. the echo of chisels. weaponry would be inhuman. 
 
I tend these woods like the man before me, subtracting myself from inoshishi trails, sightlines the doves fly through. the forest breathes all the time. shifting. familiar, yet ever-distant. 
 
cicada susurrus 
an alphabet of evening 
bells
 

—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Richard Gilbert & Jennifer Hambrick: “We enjoy a synergy at once powerful and playful and revel in making words dance across the page and across the thousands of miles between us. Richard lives in Japan, Jennifer lives in Ohio, and our colleagueship, friendship, and multi-dimensional poetic collaboration have unfolded entirely via email. The immediacy of email enables us to work quickly, and also gives us time to consider and research our responses before sending them. Beyond the logistics of our unique collaboration, we are quite intentional about fostering for each other a safe creative space. We give each other total freedom to play, suggest, question, and experiment, and we undergird that freedom with deep mutual affirmation. The positivity of our work together results in writing full of authentic feeling across the full range of emotions.”

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