creative writing on environmental justice
“If we ever wanted to, our friend group could transition nicely into a BDSM circle,” I announce to my friend George as we stare at nearly $1,000 worth of locks and chains in a pile on the living room floor.
“Is that a thing? A BDSM circle?” he asks, looking up from his project of color-coding keys to locks with iridescent nail polish.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “You can . . .
First Jeff Martin bought the narrow strip of land between the river and Banks Road from the town, then he spider-webbed caution tape between the trees and nailed posted signs to their bark. The swimming hole where so many of us had spent our childhood summers was no longer ours. And this with each year hotter than the last.
Martin, who also owned The Weekly Gazette, . . .
The Submersible aQuatic Cetacean Communication Robot—professionally known as SQCCR, affectionately known as “Squawker”—splashes into the harbor from the starboard side of the Charlotte’s Web at dawn. A few brilliant, cool drops hit Julia’s skin.
The heat index is already 96 and aiming for the red by ten. What must the dolphins think of the extra three degrees . . .
Nothing at the bottom of the ocean bothers her. Nothing natural, that is. On a repair job in the Bering Sea last month, she encountered a lost Japanese spider crab hiking back to the Pacific, following a straight line of radiant heat from the subsea fiber-optic cable she had been dispatched to splice together at a break point. As she stripped the cut cables, the . . .
I imagine this building is somewhat well known in this fictional place. I think it was probably converted into living space while the world was busy being a little more post-apocalyptic than solarpunk, with new residents scavenging materials from whatever they could. It’s since grown into a sort of community art project, proud of its history, squatters’ rights, . . .
When I was little, my parents died trying to reach Lady Luck. My brother Maynard says the journey was hard back then. These days, it’s easier for people to worship at her feet.
What she demands as sacrifice isn’t so straightforward.
“There’s nothing for him in this town.” Maynard’s voice is bitter as he watches Clay skip off to school on his ninth birthday. My nephew . . .
This story begins and ends with the X that means both death and hope.
Three Xs, two strikes, one message: Solidarity.
26 November, 2017.
The Australian government would prefer that we forget this crime against humanity, this X in flesh in the air.
It’s a humid, sweaty, overcast day at a protest at Federation Square in the centre of Melbourne. Shen Narayanasamy . . .
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.
Akari saw the restricted tree first.
Wrestling the Agency’s sleek sedan around the treacherous holes in Zimmerman’s pitted rural driveway held my full attention. We’d passed the mailbox fifteen minutes back, leaving me certain we’d missed a turnoff to the old man’s place—then Akari slapped the dash. “Frank! Pull over!”
Akari snapped off her seatbelt . . .
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—