Dear Ark Review, Volume 6 is a special one. First off, it is with great honor and hope that I welcome Ark Review's next generation of editors. The pieces in this volume were painstakingly curated by the brilliant Jennifer Ku, Mikayla Schmidt, and Sean Filler, the journal's new Editor-in-Chief. The beautiful cover graphics were designed by Matthew Hung. Volume 6 is especially remarkable because of the wondrous, lyrical, blunt, subtle, bold, critical, and loving pieces which

Around your neck rest round black rocks just take their word that they’re volcanic born of heat The liquid earth like your aspirations soon form on their own without sculpting hands accept this future ground its firmness a timeline beyond life stand on what’s been made The best you can do is break pieces fashion them after fashion create after creation Like the language in your mouth lava stones formed in invisible worlds something on your tongue from

engrossed with millions of americans in others’ misfortunes movement distracts me from the nearly two-hundred pound nine year old on tv you carry a juicy earthworm in your bone-colored beak to feed three tiny, ravenous chicks nestedinthefosterholly outside my window the image of padlocks on pantries screaming boy man, sobbing mother then you again – wings spread victorious return with another twisting morsel millions of pixels s

Warm waters, wet air, swirl over your skin, smooth and free-flowing through your hands. The taste of salt flushing through you. Saline snot gags the throat, burns the sinuses. The body’s instinctual reaction – foreign substance, repel the invasion, expel. You cough it out, but it sticks with you. A flutter through the tall grass in your periphery, a grieving cry lilts over the water. Insects drone gently – filling your ears, filling your mind. You feel dumbstruck and heavy. D

- a tree that was present during a significant glacial, natural, or historical event As the glaciers recede, near Glacier Bay interstadial stumps of a Sitka spruce, sheared off 9,400 years ago by glaciation, reappear and now witness the throb of streams tumbling into a new river. In 2013 in Managua, the metal Klimtesque Trees of Life were a garish multimillion-dollar gift from Vice President Rosa Murillo to herself. Tourists driving out of Managua at highway speeds to s

Early on a late-summer morning as the monsoon faded, I watched a tribe of golden monkeys descend the steep, slick side of a valley wall and vanish into a farmer’s cornfield. They tried not to sway the browning stalks as they harvested ear after ripened ear. Each knew that a hunger-rushed pluck could stir the village into alarm. Maybe I should have told someone instead of sipping my masala tea, but I felt the same conflict I often feel watching deer slip into our soybeans at d

No one knows better than you that there are plenty of fish in the sea swinging around your rod your silver trophy hanging hook-penetrated through the eye blind-baited as they are pulled heaven bound to their asphyxiated fate it is meant to be a mercy to be thrown back to this wet saliva ocean I would rather you leave gasping than for you to drown my world Fiona Hartmann is a writer living in Toronto, Canada. She is interested in creating thought-provoking fiction that cre

I. Iowa City Natural History Museum The feathers unnaturally smooth will never fluff again. The glass eyes don't search. Polished bills aren't grasping bugs to beaks in a breeze. But these birds hold a place in the world. Harbingers of life long removed from us. Just the recording of their song to soothe their empty eggshells. Encased, they tell us The world once Quaked under the beating of a billion wings. But our cracking gunshots, They are muffled by the falling feathers

I thought I was the first to lay tracks through the snow blanketing the boardwalk this morning. But when I stepped onto the wharf two sea otters were wrapped in each other like children tussling on the playground. Their oil slick coats – tinselled. Whiskers ice caped. Paw prints – the bare feet of perfectly pressed snow angels. I watched as they twisted and braided tails, nudged and butted black button noses. I swear they were laughing lost in a world outside the slate banks