creative writing on environmental justice
The pump jack on the horizon reflects sunlight so brightly, it could be an x-ray shining through flesh. It unsettles me, so I fumble for the sun visor. A truck passes to my left, and my car sways. I try to keep my eyes straight. I know this highway and its pump jacks, but I can’t resist another look at this one.
The light’s already changed; that’s how it is on the prairie. . . .
Because I have a large spleen
and can hold my breath
but am traumatized enough
to keep my head swiveling,
I ask Nani, an island child like me,
What’s the most landlocked
state you can live in?
The boy in his Sunday clothes stared at the pelicans scattered blackly on the shore like slick and globous stones, right where the monster had left them. He remembered them flying in great lines above the oil rigs at dawn, dropping singly into the ocean like Saint Peter in his doubt and then floating fishful and satisfied, as though everything had been resolved. . . .
The salmon are flocking we got in the habit
of doing without them their scales scraped
prickles across clotted current and made us whole
The smell of burning wood is pouring in the open window over my bed, filling my nostrils before I even have the chance to open my eyes. The last time I smelled smoke this strong was two summers ago when the corner of my trailer was on fire. I don’t jump out of bed, though. These fires are an emergency of a different kind. The winds have been blowing from the northeast for . . .
You are asking the wrong question—
that is my fault
in part;
it’s not about any bird but why
the bird is nothing like
you and how you
must therefore take it
as far down your throat and into the soft cell
as possible.
Changing leaves colored
Cruel luminous
Red then yellow safety
Was it all a confused dream?
That week when August
Tripped into September
People trapped in a sports stadium
A woman carries
a collie to safety
In Egypt, at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), a South Pacific leader asks the world to bear witness to the death of his homeland. He is speaking from a screen. In a full suit, flanked by the flags of his country and the UN, he stands behind a lectern on the shore of a nondescript island. His voice carries over the sounds of water on sand, wind . . .
I try to banish it from my brain, these dreams where I am bulbous & beautiful. where I am the butternut & she is the squash bug, burrowed into my bosom, my bowels, the base of my spine. her vine. a buzz betrays a blush of bees & bougainvillea above me. I blink & the bubble-gum blossoms crumble into beetles & blistered bark. the little bug . . .