creative writing on environmental justice
In Indonesia the IAP was shelling Jakarta, in China the PLA Navy was scouring the Eastern seaboard for survivors, in the UK Londoners were lining up at WFP stations for groceries, and, just twenty miles from Felix and Anya, in Muscatine the combined forces of the Louisa, Muscatine, Scott, and Cedar County police departments were performing rescue missions . . .
Henryk Król was washing dishes, looking out at the setting-sun light shuddering through the trees—considering, without real conviction, whether the trees should be trimmed to let more light through; whether he had any right to trim the trees, as after years of residence he was still unsure where his yard ended and the forest began—when the boy knocked on the . . .
Strange how even in the dark, the eyes find shape.
“The walls are made of flowers,” Amelie says, nestled against me. “White flowers, bigger than I can hold.”
“White as clouds,” I say. “Bright and soft.” Our voices are muted. Collapsed into the space we occupy, just as the space has collapsed into us.
“They smell . . . they smell like . . .
My father thinks it’s a good idea to row through these floods. To move a paddle and be above the water, finally in control of our bodies—that is to say, not drown.
But sooner or later, we’re all going to fall, because we can only stand so tall before we’re sinking: to our legs, to our knees, to our torsos, to our heads. Till there’s nothing left and we breathe in particle . . .
As a one-star Inspector General for the UN’s military police, I was uniquely positioned to assign myself any case that I chose, particularly after many years of hard assignments. I had chosen the matter of the mysterious Doolittle, a sort of multi-national guerrilla artist whose work I had encountered in my time amid the water riots of Bangladesh. The machines . . .
Olly, we know you can hear us,” said Jack. “So are you coming to The Green Man, or what?”
Olly opened his eyes, put his hand to his earpiece and disconnected himself from the cloud. He sat up, the thin plastic mattress rucking up beneath him.
“It’ll be fun,” said Selma, “an adventure. They serve mead. Real mead.”
“You’re shitting me,” said Olly.
“No, we are absolutely . . .
Someone who’ll forgive me,” the ghost captain said.
Gilly wasn’t sure what kind of answer she’d been expecting. What was usual, for ghosts? What were they likely to be looking for?
Silent, she studied him. Her head came level with the middle of his chest, and his limbs were broad with muscle; her kind of ship called for a dancer’s lightness, and his for someone who . . .
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Welcome to the Reckoning Press podcast. Reckoning is a nonprofit, annual journal of creative writing on environmental justice. This podcast will feature very occasional poetry, fiction and essays from the journal, plus interviews with the authors. I’m Michael J. DeLuca, publisher, and also the editor of Reckoning 2.
This is our second episode, and it’s long. If you’ve . . .
i.
Woke up today, like so many other days, aching on a riverbank, hair sticky with mud, arcane patterns fading from my skin.
This time, I really thought I was gonna make it.
It’s a cool, wet morning, and I’m sprawled on my back, my field of vision filled by the uniform grey of the sky, a frame of wet black reeds. A cloud of gnats circles overhead, curious, growing bolder. . . .
The spire grew from a tight mesh pushing out of the deep cracks of the street, converging into a pillar that loomed above the squat buildings, clipping one at the side. Alice circled high over the rising structure and the abandoned remnants of Krakow while her ship spit out the usual scans with a faint hum and stutter. This nanotech Grey was polite for such a big one, . . .