{"id":2350,"date":"2019-11-22T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/?p=2350"},"modified":"2020-01-10T22:18:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-11T02:18:44","slug":"friday-feature-mother-earth-by-rachael-ikins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/2019\/11\/22\/friday-feature-mother-earth-by-rachael-ikins\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Feature | Mother Earth by Rachael Ikins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mother Earth <\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

by Rachael Ikins<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

She is a big soft woman<\/span>
\na curled fetal ball.<\/span><\/p>\n

They swarm her like ants.<\/span>
\nAssault her; bombs, pile drivers,<\/span>
\nendless marching foot steps.<\/span>
\nStrew her skin with trash.<\/span>
\nPiles of nothing alive.<\/span>
\nGray dust cakes nostrils,<\/span>
\nA trickle of blood<\/span>
\nstripes her chin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A big anonymous woman<\/span>
\nforgotten by the entitled masses\u00a0<\/span>
\nwho wrangle and tromp<\/span>
\nall her secret places.\u00a0<\/span>
\nDigging, gouging, drilling<\/span>
\npipelines to suck her blood.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes she wakes from\u00a0<\/span>
\nthe nightmares she wanders:<\/span>
\nRolls her arm-earthquake shatters a city.\u00a0<\/span>
\nBlinks a tsunami-washes away thousands.\u00a0<\/span>
\nHer heart beats-volcano blows,\u00a0<\/span>
\nslashes of lava pulse away civilizations..<\/span>
\nShe melts ice caps, raises waters, pulls her land back.<\/span>
\nHer fury, her voice the sound of hurricanes shrieking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some say she is off her axis.<\/span>
\nSome say she is crazy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crazy with grief, ancient heart aches for humans who steal\u00a0<\/span>
\nlife from countless beloveds; her centipedes, honey bees, her elephants, rare orchids,<\/span>
\nsightless worms that linger by hot springs in ocean depths.<\/span><\/p>\n

With immune responses evolved when she was nothing but\u00a0<\/span>
\na star’s dream, she urges them to genocide and war, anything to rid\u00a0<\/span>
\nthe human plague that consumes her body until nothing will remains but<\/span>
\nbones of stone that flash past the sun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(They can never plunder<\/span>
\nthe sun, though they plot<\/span>
\nto send tourists to the moon<\/span>
\nand other far cold places.)<\/span><\/p>\n

She curls up again, exhaustion takes her.\u00a0<\/span>
\nShe sleeps again, prays for no dreams,<\/span>
\ntoo soft to face their sharp<\/span>
\nedges any more<\/span>
\nfor today.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mother Earth was inspired by a painting a friend gifted me. I met the actual artist at a gallery event years later. Global warming and human impact on the planet are a constant ache in the back of my mind.<\/h5>\n
Mother Earth was previously published in Fly on the Wall Press\u2019s summer 2019 anthology Planet in Peril<\/em>.<\/h5>\n

…<\/p>\n

Rachael Ikins<\/strong> is a 2016\/18 Pushcart, 2013\/18 CNY Book Award, 2018 Independent Book Award winner, & 2019 Vinnie Ream & Faulkner poetry finalist. She is author\/illustrator of 9 books in multiple genres. She lives by a lake with her dogs and cats.<\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Mother Earth was inspired by a painting a friend gifted me. I met the actual artist at a gallery event years later. Global warming and human impact on the planet are a constant ache in the back of my mind.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,165,181],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-feature","category-environment","category-global-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/IMG-5360.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2350"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4228,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350\/revisions\/4228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}