creative writing on environmental justice
Tourists blocked the entrance to the caves. I’d known they would come, eventually. You can’t keep a thing like this silent in the information age. Downdee, population 1,320, home of the Singing Caves™.
They were told ghosts of mermaids and embraced that tale. Course we of Downdee know the truth: mermaids are horrible singers. No, it’s the caves themselves . . .
The year the plague doctor came to town, winter came early and held on into spring.
Up on the mountain this described almost every winter, yet somehow this year was worse. The road to the house was impassable and had been since the beginning of October. Robin’s parents were glad for the isolation, but for her and Bret it meant long snowmobile rides if they wanted . . .
On hands and knees between two rows of dry
potato plants, I sweated far from the rest.
Otōsan had dug the ground for me with two
great sweeps of the tractor, up and back, so that
the roots of all came loose at once and made
simple the task to fill my red pail heaping.
No rain for weeks made cracks appear that sliced
the soil into great slabs, heavy as rock,
and those I moved—teeth . . .
Atiador,
I hope you read this. I know we did not part well. Prexim says that your lungs are bad enough to confine you to the arboretum. I hope you’re not climbing the walls like a penned animal. I suspect it is a vain hope, but it’s my hope all the same.
Is it true that you finally managed to get one of the lacrimosia to take? You devil. I’d give my right arm to know how you . . .
I’m not sure who the sky is
when it’s not the sky
but I think I know this river
was once a beautiful woman
viewed from above all bodies
of water look like someone
you once loved and the color
of the trees only matters
when there are trees at all
and sometimes I imagine
that we can solve everything
design cities that fit into
the . . .
New Jersey
New Hampshire
Wisconsin
Montana
Over the course of a couple of years, I have managed to catalogue the most commonly listed invasive species for all 50 states using the USDA National Agricultural Library as my primary source. The difference in font size is directly dependent on the number of invasive plant species categorized as such by each state . . .
She is green in the sunlight
standing at the brink of her little home
little because she is little.
We are an odd direction life took
because life takes all odd directions
the little ground-dwelling bees,
they carried pollen when plum trees and apples
bloomed early,
a direction odd to honeybees and bumblebees.
I have a chickadee in my plum tree;
plums by the grace . . .
The first time your worlds crossed paths you felt your fate short-circuiting. It had been a whetstone-dull day, and you had stopped counting the dull days. They bled into each other; you never knew when to make a hatchmark on the wall. But the air was thick with meaningless perfume-smog and you stopped to examine something on the ground.
A bumblebee without its . . .
These found poems are drawn from interviews with elderly citizens of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation recorded in 1937-38 as part of the Indian-Pioneer History Project sponsored by the federal Works Progress Administration and archived at the Oklahoma Historical Society and the University of Oklahoma.
Older and Very Sour
1
the creek indians had . . .
“I like a boy.”
Julia silently pushed a button on a remote control lying in front of her on the table, on a pile of celebration stuff. A larger than life fir cone in the lightest corner of the room hissed out nine tentacles of unequal length. With a loud spat of suction cups, the treerootlike offshoots firmly attached themselves to the floor. The cone erected and started . . .