Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

We follow the ducklings
on their mile walk
from nest to water

    brown leaf litter
    fuzzy duckling
    feathers

Mother duck
smooth & elegant
leads the way

    at ground level
    the ducklings vault

 a fallen log sheltered
     in broken bark

              & green moss

dappled & playful
    as jazz

We wrap innocence
    around our secret
     places

In Atlanta
police dress up

    as soldiers
in a mock
    city

stand
   model blocks

in place of
   red oak

    hickory
      loblolly pine
    & sweetgum

In March, police
   arrest 23 people

   for having mud
      on their shoes

Weelaunee means
    brown water

Hundreds of trees
       shade

Gresham Park, by and large
a Black
neighborhood

    Tortuguita
    26 years old
    shot with their hands
    in the air

“God…”their mother
     said

Used to be chestnut
   here

 but blight remakes
    all American forests

Josette Akresh-Gonzales is the author of Apocalypse on the Linoleum (Lily Poetry Review Press) and the second-place winner of the 2025 Erskine J. Poetry Prize with publication in Smartish Pace. Her work has been published in The Southern Review, The Indianapolis Review, The Tampa Review, JAMA, The Pinch, The Journal, Breakwater Review, PANK, and many other journals. Her poems have been included in the anthology Choice Words (Haymarket) and in Breaking the Glass: A Contemporary Jewish Poetry Anthology (Laurel Review). She co-founded the journal Clarion and was its editor for two years. Josette lives in the Boston area with her husband and two boys and used to ride her bike to work but now works from home for a nonprofit medical publisher. Website: josettepoet.com.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx