creative writing on environmental justice
You should have seen this, Rowan.
From the observation platform on the converted oil rig, I watch the giant conveyor lift the chunks out of the ocean, see them climb to the coastal plain, see the freeway width of the belt disappear over the horizon, and feel like a Lego figurine in a life-sized industrial zone.
The solid wall of noise makes me sweat as much as the heat . . .
Rivers lament over why they were born, they
Question their existence, ask their maker if any
The rivers weep copious tears no one can see
For the loss irreparable. Clinically dead, they
Seem to wait for a time when news echoes in
The air: the wasteland returns. Cuckoos will
No more sing to declare the advent of spring
Deadly and ear-piercing cries of humans and
Animals . . .
Expect of me no high editorial remove. Not this year. I opened this project for submissions six months ago in a different world. Nothing is as I imagined it would be.
Yet I find that almost everything I wanted out of Reckoning remains the same—and suddenly it means a lot more. The individual, personal, visceral ways injustice and exploitation affect us mean so . . .
The reckoning continues apace.
— Reckoning (@reckoningmag) November 10, 2016
I thought about calling this “Love in the Time of Reckoning”, but I’m afraid I’m not quite there yet. I’ll write that next, hopefully.
A disastrous thing happened a few days ago the consequences of which I fear will necessitate a great deal more reckoning, . . .
At the moment, it’s 136 degree days in Iran, 120 degree days in India, thawing permafrost in Greenland. It’s the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lived only on a few coral islands in the Great Barrier Reef, extinct as of June 2016. It’s the remarkable but temporary upsurge in cephalopod populations in the world’s . . .