My name is Paul Rikotuma and in the last few days there's been a few things that have

gotten me down a bit.

Someday that I know is ill and then I got news that a poetry thing I'd applied for

I hadn't been successful in getting it and in the context of all of this I turned to poetry

because over and over again it's the creativity at the heart of poetry that alerts me to the

question of what does it mean to nurture the heart with enough creativity and the excitement

of language and something that sets me a light.

What does it mean to do that in order to be able to bring myself with energy and hope

and not a kind of an overwhelming sense of despair to questions about how I can be in

the world around me?

Rings of Fire by Craig Santos Perez, Honolulu, Hawaii

We host our daughter's first birthday party during the hottest April in history.

Outside my dad grills meat over charcoal inside my mom's steamed rice and roasts vegetables

They've traveled from California where drought carves trees into Tinder paradise is burning

When our daughter's first fever spiked the doctor said it's a sign she's fighting

infection Bloodshed surges with global temperatures which know no borders

If her fever doesn't break the doctor continued take her to the emergency room

Her strikes detonate hospitals in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan

When she crowned my wife said it felt like rings of fire

Volcanoes erupt along Pacific fault lines, sweltering heat waves, scorched Australia, forests

in Indonesia are raised for palm oil plantations, their ashes flock like ghost birds to our distant

ribcages Still I crave an own filtered cigarette even

...