creative writing on environmental justice
I.
[Is ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Coastal Road worth ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ecology?]
we must speak about the land as an orbit an erosion
a map carbonized into the helm of cinderblocks
you are playing with Mumbai like we play a game of cards
death cheapens over layered petroleum / so
dense, fishes come upon land to un-breathe;
so dense: we the humans, pococurante—yet we
light torches for the final act of purification.
She drowned & kept
drowning, surrounded by water
like her country
submerged until neither
ghost nor body rose; she became
a foaming of wave,
a froth of tide,
an erased border—
They die in the heat, sometimes. They
die in the afternoon sun, they die
beneath the moon. They need
more water, more shade. They
need—
I could feed this garden
with my blood.
pretty thing come closer
your jaw so tense in the gardening aisle
I brush my knuckles against the
trigger hairs on your mouth, ask about your
waterwheel & sundew cousins,
when you last digested an arachnid, I
admire your hunger, the biology of it,
I read that it takes a tenth of a second
for your teeth to snap
Have you ever seen a behemoth? The ones brought in by the foreigners
after the silent war? I was a boy, eight, nine years old, when I saw it.
Have you ever seen a forest catch fire? Your entire village’s herd destroyed
in an instant? Of course not. The behemoth was eight feet tall & breathed fire.
It’s body was made of metal and painted black. The behemoth destroyed . . .
there will never be so many sea lilies.
they will never roll like meadows and lace
their brittle eyelash hands, nod
their heads and kiss. their endless
fields will smother
on ash. they will bow their necks
and break, the ending world
will fall on them like snow
soft shards of dead things.
one day you will lift
your withered hand and touch
the coffee cup to your paper . . .
The whole world is a feast of runaway craving,
of a curse that has outrun its uses.
Early on, our ancestors twisted up,
moved root through rock, spread fragile first leaves wide.
All land was new, mountainous, unsoiled.
The forests that grew have lasted so long,
spreading across the world at glacial pace.
We stretch and recede, grow up and move out.
Famine . . .
The world ended in ice
as scientists predicted
lab coat Noahs
ignored
as they counted the animals
two by two
into their ark
and lifted off
I will always miss grocery
shopping—what a word, what a
world where one could shop, verb,
optionality as its own activity, every
store a canvas of choice. Recall:
the last moment Home could be seen
from the viewfinder, blue yet parched,
one last marvel at the size of the beast
we emptied, body of which we tamed
but anger of which we could not
temper. I will back the . . .