In addition to featuring Madeline Cottingham’s work on the cover this month, we are publishing her photos of Antarctica in a photo essay. You can find out more about her work there. In place of our usual On the Cover writeup, we’ve commissioned a poem from Sparrow on his flightless avian cousin.
Ode to a Penguin
O lonely penguin,
etched on a
diminishing
glacier, teach
me your stoic
tuxedo-clad
wisdom, as
you pad
beneath the
Vitamin C
sky like the
valiant scout
of a lost
penguin army.
Existential
doubt never
stains you.
The New York
Times can’t
scare you.
You amble
along, with
Charlie Chaplin
footsteps,
towards the
forgiving sea.
—Sparrow
This article appears in March 2020.
