creative writing on environmental justice
Magic! That is the word I could use to describe where I came from, my island. It was not owned by any individual but a collective of small dwellers surrounded by bodies of water, a small place where I knew our neighbors’ names, where I woke up to the serenity of the waves greeting me. I almost took this view for granted and lost my wonder of her.
I once lived close to the . . .
The mystery behind humans and their avarice for power is unfathomable. Over the years this enigma has perturbed our hearts; still no answer is readily available. For so long our forefathers have been water nomads, leaving abruptly at the sight of humans and their heavy machineries polluting our waters. It has become a habit for us, expecting them to always invade . . .
rising again stumps of oak pine birch willow hazel
emerge from the sand Noah’s trees
their roots stiffened underground protectors . . .
Slender frogs spring, weightless,
weaving through bog cotton.
Rows of cut turf monuments come to a sheer drop—
the bog hole: a cliff of richest fudge
feeding into a red wine gorge, thick with tannins.
Here, all pleasures compress: dull, heavy, glutting.
At this end of the field everything pulls
down with a gravity of its own, draws us
into sumptuous density.
Grant . . .
A new oceanographic
ice fades from underneath.
they knew. Tunnels rut
miles of eyeless organisms, carry
of earth to pole. The ice looses
empties itself. Crust crumbles
revelation: glacial
The ocean plumbs deeper than
floor, caverned under
water from belt
its undersides,
into iceberg-speckled sea.
Once the glacier stiffed its lower lip,
Now she slopes, . . .
when you realize there’s nothing
you can do,
your limbs fill with light.
you rise above lands
cordoned off like VIP areas.
watch the tide swell
over the sweet bodies
of dead bees, smoke
the last air, crown
yourself in final
trees, set yourself
on fire. . . .
“There’s no fixing this.”
My grandmother waves at the tv.
Polar bears are stranded on a shrinking ice floe.
I shut my eyes.
I meet with a student.
She’s dealing with an anxiety disorder.
Her brown eyes pool with tears.
“Sometimes it can seem all too much, you know?”
I tell her that just showing up every day is an act of courage.
News coverage of Hurricane Fiona floods . . .
A lumberjack has accidently sawn through his friend;
this sort of thing happens quite frequently. But there is
plenty of wood one might use for their coffins, collected
from a rainforest stripped for its crude oil. Incidentally,
this provides plenty of barren soil for one to bury them:
the split-in-half lumberjacks, interred in a felled mausoleum. . . .
My granddaughter Nisha bounces on the tips of her toes, with flutter kicks in between, a hummingbird barely touching the sidewalk. I adjust the rebreather plugged into my nostrils and push myself forward. Keeping up with her has gotten harder, not just because of my age. Walking is different now. The air resists my habitual gait. Little hops lift me into the thickened . . .
Marcia Mejia and her Indigenous community, the Eperara Nation, live along the banks of the Naya River in Colombia. Her settlement of Joaquincito sits right at the delta where the Naya reaches the Pacific Ocean. The Naya was a major site of conflict during the 50-year-long Colombian civil war. The Eperara, together with 64 Afro-descendant communities along . . .