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| Issue 33: | August 2026 |
| Poem: | 81 words |
By Gary S. Rosin
Blackbird Calls
—Crescent Dunes Solar Project
(photographed by Reuben Wu)*
Blackbird in the desert. Blackbird sits on a solar panel. Blackbird perches on blue, rides a dry wave. Blackbird catches the light, glinting off the sharp edges of panels. Blackbird sees the horizon of hills— layers, gathering dark. Blackbird watches the full Moon reflect the sun behind our backs. Blackbird and the Moon watch the Sun set on the ordinary. Blackbird calls in the night of a new day.
*Publisher’s Note:
Rosin’s poem was inspired by an untitled photograph by Reuben Wu shot at the Crescent Dunes Solar Project, located in the Great Basin Desert a hundred miles north of the Great Basin/Mojave border:
https://reubenwu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/CF002737-Edit.jpg
That photograph, which Wu captioned “A lone blackbird in a plateau of mirrors” on Instagram, is from a series of eight that he shot in March 2016:
https://reubenwu.com/selected-works/crescent-dunes/
Links were reconfirmed in August 2026.
Gary S. Rosin’s
work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Chaos Dive Reunion (Mutabilis Press, 2023); contemporary haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022); Concho River Review; The Ekphrastic Review; Friendswood Ekphrastic Poetry Anthology (The Friendswood Public Library); MacQueen’s Quinterly; Notes of Light and Dark: Southwestern Nocturnes and Aubades (Dos Gatos Press, 2025); Sulphur River Literary Review; Texas Poetry Calendar; Verse-Virtual; and Visions International.
Two of his ekphrastic poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). Rosin is the author of two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing, 1990) and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum, 2008). He is a Contributing Editor of MacQueen’s Quinterly, and his work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and the Best of the Net Anthology.
More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond
⚡ Three Poems by Gary S. Rosin in Verse-Virtual (June 2026): “Electric Dreams”; “Short Pants”; and “Rush-hour Fugue”
⚡ Icelandic Reflections by Rosin in The Ekphrastic Review (4 August 2024)
⚡ What Simon Never Said in Verse-Virtual (July 2024)
⚡ Four Poems After Photographs by Gary S. Rosin in The Ekphrastic Review (4 June 2023)
⚡ Three Poems by Rosin (published March–May 2023) in dadakuku, experimental poetry of lilliputian length
⚡ Black Dogs, poem by Rosin in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 12, March 2022); nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
See also Two Readings: “Apparition” and “Black Dogs” by Rosin for Texas Poetry Calendar 2015 at the Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Texas (20 September 2014).
⚡ Out of the Haze, collaborative haiga with photograph by George Digalakis and poem by Gary S. Rosin in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 8, June 2021); nominated for, and selected for publication in, Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022)
⚡ Crossing Kansas in The Wild Word (7 February 2020); includes audio of Rosin reading his poem
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