creative writing on environmental justice
The Society for the Preservation of Kynish Technology is proud to present the most complete artifact ever recovered from the Genetic Archive at Yor Yan. The following manuscript owes its remarkable preservation to its inscription on flesh paper, and its entombment in a bone box set into the foundation of the building. Both paper and box resisted even the hemorrhagic . . .
What is up with the sky? What is up with it and the clouds and the grasses and how everyone talks? Do you know this? Why they don’t stop as it goes closer to the end of the table, Jess? They could just say, “Oh my geez do you see that glass thing is nearly to fall off the table, drop and shatter on the floor?” That would at least be a step, don’t you think? As the glass seesaws, . . .
Tell the truth, but tell it slant.
The truth must dazzle gradually.
—Emily Dickinson
I often work in slant mode. Whether through abstraction, symbolic imagery, or magical realism, I like . . .
Ko wai ka kite i te hua o te kuaka? / Who has ever held a godwit’s egg?2
Not I. And I never will, I expect.
This whakataukī about having faith in unseen forces has become a bitter pill for me to swallow. The godwits lay their eggs in Alaska, then summer in Aotearoa from September to March every year. And in the time of Te Rāhuinui, also known as the Global Ecological . . .
As I walk past the sex store downtown, I think
of flags, how the zealots strap them on and
screw us. I am not interested in the fire
of your want, unless you want to stop
this world from burning, unless you want
to topple the men from their mountains
of heads, their slot machine eyes spinning and
spinning and spinning. No, this is not a love
poem. I will not . . .
I wanted to throw my arms around the thick white neck of my brother’s polar bear and cry I’m glad that you are safe from the endless water. I wanted it to nose me, too. I wanted my palm against the fur, and the warm skin beneath. I wanted to see our bones. I wanted to know they were strong. I wanted to be unafraid of being swallowed—by the bear, or the blue night, or the holes . . .
I meet Tara once and only once, on my last trip to Rose Isle, two days before Hurricane Zeta hits. The Category 4 storm is still spinning somewhere beyond the southern horizon, hundreds of miles offshore, as my crew and I reach the bridge from the mainland. Out the windshield, I can see the occasional cloud pushing past, and if I try hard enough, I can convince myself . . .
My neighbor through the woods
has cemented over half his yard
near the culvert, built brick walls
where white oak trees used to be.
I’m not sure what he was thinking.
Proud of his trail cam, he says
he’s a hunter, knows the land.
On the island, there is too much blood and not enough rain.
That’s because the wetleaf is gone. The soldiers told us to kill it: to slice and strangle the emerald vines as they flowed over our hills, those rivulets of paradise, seafoam soft. So we sliced and we strangled and we killed. And now we cradle the wetleaf in our palms, sitting with each plant as it dies.
The . . .
I.
[Is ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Coastal Road worth ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙∙∙ ecology?]
we must speak about the land as an orbit an erosion
a map carbonized into the helm of cinderblocks
you are playing with Mumbai like we play a game of cards