creative writing on environmental justice
On the phone, she didn’t have to call it
danger. We all know how to flirt our way out
if you have to. Watch your drink, park under a light,
walk so you can see between the cars.
We held hands to leave, though they hooted
at us to kiss when they saw. But how else to
hide the shaking. Bruises on her ass, her
wrists, her thighs. She called them geography.
Bad joke. Lessons they . . .
In the grove of trees there is total darkness, shrouded
by the curvature of the hills and concealed by the community
garden, the back of the baseball dugout, the stone wall
around the stone house. Why bother parking the car
when seclusion waits right there out in the open for us?
I teach you the practice before you learn the words.
I have dirt on my knees below the skin; . . .
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys & desires.
—William Blake
At first, laid down on clay tablets
like the footprints of a slender bird,
then, progressed through dried skins and pulp,
burgeoning past parchment
to a flood of writs so numerous
as to be incomprehensible—
mulled by the nine
in their archaic robes, . . .
Not so long ago, my baby floated in amniotic wai.
Oceans within oceans, and beneath them—wai.
Kunawai spring makes a way through concrete,
beneath streets, alongside apartments, burbling wai.
Double the word for water in Hawaiian and the sum
means: goods, value, worth, wealth, importance—waiwai.
At Red Hill, the US Navy stores 200 million gallons of fuel . . .
the peas are in the ground and maybe it’ll work
this time. I kiss your shoulders and crack jokes,
one day on, one day off, just like our doctor said,
and when the clock reads 11:11
our fingers twine, and we hold on so tight.
downborder, they’re stealing bodies: put her in the dirt
and chant the words, she’ll do your furtive will. a million
Murder Legendre brides reduced . . .
*left eye* the moon/chewed and spit across the sky
*right eye* a slender girl/leaning on a lamppost/her body newly claimed
*neck* hands/uninvited/ !
*nose* seven starlings wheel across the sky/bear her weight
*hair* wild horses/meandering attention/the half-life of respect
*lips* curl of waves/a flag/or a siren
*ears* silence packs its bags and disappears/the . . .
We were prickling
pine we were humming
horn we were sand
smudged by sea
we were weed wrapped
and swallowed antler crowned
hum of rubythroat before we were
White is not a color is the absence
a result . . .
A granite skull rose from the desert floor,
symbol of our demise,
in the 115 degree searing Egyptian heat.
We took a selfie with the Sphinx
for the fun of it, and titled it,
our seven thousand mile carbon footprint.
And then, we were off to Paris, to dine
near the Spanish Steps, and
post a photo of our dinner on FB.
From Paris to our favorite restaurant . . .
*after Greta Gaard’s Toward a Queer Ecofeminism
But maybe nature isn’t even
a “her” . . . . When nature is feminized
and thereby erotized,
and culture is masculinized*,
the trouble starts, and it’s the bad kind.
When the girl puts on a summer dress:
“she’s asking for it”.
When the soil is “too rich not to steal”:
“she’s asking . . .