creative writing on environmental justice
I want to sit in my SUV
combust dead dinosaurs
into aerosols as tangible as need
I want the Monsanto magic
for my lawn, my Big Boy tomatoes
I want to wait in the drive-through—
engine roaring, gas escaping,
invisible music pumping into my box
sealed . . .
This is a memory: a white-washed picture frame around a needlework bouquet of roses. It hangs on a wood-paneled wall in the only direct sunlight in the room, a thin sliver of bright coming down the stairs and slicing in half the wall, the roses, the pull-out couch’s thin, raw-springed mattress.
I am holding myself very still, on my back, thinking about needlework. . . .
Lulu liked being in the barn with Papa on counting day. The air smelled of that comfortable mix of manure and sweet hay that tickled her nose. Usually she counted the feed sacks Jamie had pulled for the week, and Papa counted what was in storage. But today Papa’s face was all shadows and he didn’t ask for help—Jamie hadn’t pulled any feed.
Lulu sat on a hay bale and kicked . . .
The bull who bars the gate to heaven
remembers you from an instant
ago, when he stepped onto a New Mexico road
and you failed to hit the brakes.
You’re still adrenaline-charged as you confront
him again: flesh so hard it crumpled
your sedan’s hood, a skull that made
glass snow of your windshield,
and horns that pinned your hand
to the leather seat. Nobody but him
is . . .
It starts with me in a frozen parking lot in Detroit “on vacation”. I’m scanning my phone, looking at my friend’s facebook pictures from his vacation in Thailand. “Here’s me at the beach. Here’s me riding an elephant.” The barrage of social media sunshine gets under my skin. In retaliation I share a picture of a snowdrift at the edge of the iced over lot, its surface . . .
What do you take to the Place of Skulls?
Your head, brewing with the thirst for adventure. Your empty stomach to remind you when to come back home for lunch. Your spindly legs, dragging your chapped feet.
Who will you meet on the road to the Place of Skulls?
We don’t know. But we know if we see any simé-simé person; those ugly ones with a big mound of nose sitting between . . .
Once upon a time,” I tell my son, “a foolish peasant boasted of a daughter who could spin straw to gold.”
My child starves. Day after day, his eyes grow larger than his shriveling stomach.
“Drink water,” I say when I leave him. “But not too much. I don’t know when we’ll have more.”
He barely nods. Almost, I think he will speak. In the darkness of our half-collapsed basement, . . .
A curvy-topsy tornado funneled up, not down
uprooting the sky-trees from the cumulus-sea-above
dumping them on the ground where they are all
dying from lack of clouds and too much media attention.
Greenpeace has converted several transport slings
designed for beached whales but the sky-trees keep
falling through the canvas no matter . . .
I am a writing machine. Scratch that. My memory’s not keeping up with me. Let’s start over. I am a counting machine. I count the days, I count the numbers. I count the money, and I’ve even counted the years. You gain some you lose some. Dollars, I mean. Money too. Typing counting machine. One, . . .
Too many people dream,” he said, leaning against the door.
“What do you want them to do, stay awake?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll play Linganian flute to keep you up.” I smiled, miming tooting.
“No thanks. I don’t dream,” he said, walking away. A trail of multicolored fumes followed him, dodging in and out of his spiky hair. Butterscotch and shoe polish scents wafted my way, . . .
