The Sealey Challenge, Day Twenty-One: All night in the new country

 

I think I bought this little volume by Miriam Bird Greenberg in 2013 or 2014 at a Word Temple or Sixteen Rivers reading, or perhaps at a Petaluma Poetry Walk. It's signed "To Rebecca with so much gratitude!" (perhaps for enthusiasm I'd shown post-reading?)

The book is published by the illustrious Sixteen Rivers Press; I have many Sixteen Rivers books, and they're all solid, and beautifully produced. But Greenberg's is uniquely dystopian, reading like some of the poems I'd written in response to a post-apocalyptic world designed by a friend for a role-playing game. The pieces in this book are are especially haunting right now, while the pandemic and fires rage on.