creative writing on environmental justice
When you really want to break someone,
you take their kids.
We’re a simple animal, and bearing costs.
After the storm I go down the beach,
visit time, lenses of shell on shell,
thousands of practical years of
canoes and oysters, fires on the sand,
veils of cedar and the red bark of madrones
bright against the bluffs.
I call a guy I know from the tribe and we walk it, together, . . .
Turns out poetic justice
—for me anyway—
might mean
dying in a flood.
At age twelve
I had the privilege
of swimming in The Great Barrier Reef.
Floating among dayglow coral,
a psychedelic spacewalk
through old growth aquatic forest.
At age forty
I met myself there
and asked him if
two thousand, seven hundred pounds of CO2
was worth it.
I screamed until
my face caught . . .
The fish eagle catches an updraft on its outstretched wings, momentarily becoming invisible in the glare of the sun, before diving to emerge from the glittering sea with a wriggling fish in its talons. The group of tourists collectively gasps at the display, raising phones and squinting at the cloudless sky. Their photos will be overexposed, the majestic alabaster . . .
After Hokusai’s Breaking Waves (Ink on silk)
The sea and the cliff
embrace like wrestlers,
he is merciless
gutting him with his waves.
Above, the sky is sparse,
and the trees are blurring in the wind.
What of the lake
at the foot of this cliff?
An audience of clouds gather
and the water leaves in ripples.
A village watches from a distance. . . .
Ruth Joffre’s story, “Icediver”, centers on Vira, a mer-human Alaskan who makes her way as a freelance underwater cable repair tech. During a lucrative and dangerously deep gig, Vira encounters a hidden mer community and an opportunity to learn more about her heritage.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
E.C. Barrett: What was your inspiration . . .
“How often does it happen, lad? You’ll never see another in your lifetime.”
The driver of the cart had not stopped talking since he’d found the boy, hot and alone, on the side of the road. The boy had the impression that he had never actually started talking, that he had been born with words tumbling out of his mouth and evaporating into the desert air.
“Once in a lifetime, . . .
Paved roadways run across my body like a complex system of exposed veins and arteries. Over the years, they’ve carried you from one milestone in life to the next.
By bus or by car.
On bike or on foot.
But our relationship, as it currently stands, is unsustainable. None of this will last forever.
1994: The first time you ever saw snow. Microscopic flakes fell from . . .
Naila Francis’s poem, “After encountering the grey whales in El Burbujon, Laguna Ojo de Liebre,” is a rhapsody of connection with nature and letting yourself be moved to action by an ecstatic moment. We spoke of grief and joy and learning to embrace big emotions and vulnerability as fuel for change-making.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. . . .
one.
Fall is the season of memory, or so my mother always told me. Every leaf turns in its delicate dance with death. They beckon us to recall what the world looked like flush with green newness, what it looks like revealing grey emptiness. My mother was scared of the winter, of an infinite dark sky, ashes falling from the clouds.
In the fall, she would instead ask . . .