Art: Earth in Distress by Britnie Walston

Two Poems by Yun Wang, from “The Book of Mirrors” (White Pine Press, 2021)

Sam’s Plan

The little planet is green
With lemonade ocean
Boys are blue
Girls are pink
They are ant-size

Forests are purple
Sky is indigo

If a spaceship approaches
It will shrink to mushroom size
Astronauts will be tiny
Boys blue
Girls pink

Little machines will help little people
Each is good and where it belongs
One will harvest lightning for electricity
Another will make sandwiches

I will invent the machines
When I land on that planet

Forecasts

Humans may evolve into machines. The internet weaves insidious threads. Roses
bloom by empty benches. Poetry fades on dusty shelves. Aliens may land in Kansas
tomorrow, or discover the jazz from Voyager a thousand years from now.

Computers can impersonate the dead. Machines may become sentient, keep humans
in zoos, or erase all biological organisms. In another universe, an ash tree’s roots
span a continent and shimmer into the air, weaving paths to other planets.

The elite may invent immortality, herd the masses into concentration camps. Aliens
may arrive with silver arks to ferry refugees to Andromeda. The Earth is an egg
about to hatch. We are the gametes.

The Universe will shrink back into a tiny bubble, or dissipate into space-time foam.
Only the soul can escape through a wormhole.

In the author’s words:

Yun Wang is the author of poetry books “The Book of Mirrors” (White Pine Press Poetry Prize 2020), “The Book of Totality” (Salmon Poetry Press, 2015), and “The Book of Jade” (Winner of the 15th Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, Story Line Press, 2002), and the book of poetry translations “Dreaming of Fallen Blossoms: Tune Poems of Su Dong-Po” (White Pine Press, 2019). Wang’s poems have been published in numerous literary journals, including The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, Salamander Magazine, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, and International Quarterly. Her translations of classical Chinese poetry have been published in The Kenyon Review Online, Salamander Magazine, Poetry Canada Review, Willow Springs, Kyoto Journal, Bat City Review, Xavier Review, Connotation Press, and elsewhere. Wang was born in China, and came to the U.S. for graduate school in 1985. She is an astrophysicist at California Institute of Technology, currently focusing on developing space missions to explore the Universe.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Mirrors-Yun-Wang/dp/1945680474

About the artist:

Britnie Walston is a Maryland based versatile artist and photographer, capturing energy through light, vibrant color, depth, and texture. The use of exaggerated brushstrokes and abstract color give her paintings life and voice. Her landscapes and abstract work consist of a variety of unconventional techniques to capture the elements portrayed. One of the most used techniques in her abstract paintings, is the method of mixing each individual color using acrylic paint, floetrol, silicone, and water. Together, they create “cell like” forms.

Britnie also achieves different designs and textures using household objects such as strainers, straws, and frosting spatulas. She aims to depict the emotions of liberation (“set free”) and freedom (“being free”). As a child who grew up around the Chesapeake Bay, her work as a whole, is inspired by nature and portrays the absence of human presence, bringing out the personality of nature itself, while providing the viewer the opportunity to escape and appreciate all the beauty that surrounds us. More of her work can be found at www.BNWArt.com.