Dearest readers,
What does it mean that we look to the youth for wisdom to propel social change? I cannot stop watching Greta Thunberg's fearsome address to the UN, just as I couldn't stop watching Emma Gonzalez's denunciations of gun violence. Thunberg is right to be angry in her latest address: "This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school... Yet, you all come to us young people for hope! How dare you?" As she points out, we've had clear data pointing to the dangers of climate change for over thirty years. Indigenous communities have been fighting against fossil fuel industries for even longer. And yet, here we are in the year 2019, so close to total climate chaos, looking to a 16-year-old to provide us moral compass. Will we adults also rise to the occasion?
The moment always takes us to the poetry. Emily Montgomery foments a poem from Climate Strike protest signs, while Pesach Rotem looks to Genesis to trace the beginnings of our environmental grief. Kate Burnham traces the moment's origins from colonialism, when so many lost their remembrance of "how to pronounce / God's true name." Alan Paleaz Lopez createsa recipe for mourning femicide, after a mayor from Oaxaca, Carmela Parral Santos, was murdered, in another tragedy highlighted by #NiUnaMenos.
Caitlin Gildrien writes on the woman who swam the English Channel four times without stopping, in a record-breaking move, a year after battling breast cancer. And Kim Harvey leaves us breathless with this question: "How did you escape?"
J Spagnolo
Strategic Director
Poets Reading the News
We're Not Showing Up For School Because You're Not Showing Up For Our Future
By Emily Montgomery
The Lorax was right—
our house is on fire.
What will we do? 100 corporations
produce 70% of emissions.
We can’t drink oil.
We can’t breathe money.
There is no Planet B.
The world is not
a commodity. A species set
on endless growth is
unsustainable. Listen
to the scientists,
time is running out.
Act like you live here.
The climate is changing—will
we? If you’re waiting for a sign
this is it.
A Big Mistake
By Pesach Rotem
And God said, “Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
And the fish of the sea said, “Uh-oh.”
And the fowl of the air said, “Looks like trouble.”
And the cattle said, “Lord have mercy.”
And the creeping things that creepeth upon the earth didn’t say anything at all.
And it came to pass that man imposed his dominion over all the earth
And he extinguished species
And he destroyed habitats
And he poisoned rivers
And he warmed the atmosphere
And he empowered the greedy.
And there was evening and there was morning
And God saw that it was bad
And He said, “I think I might have made a mistake.”
And it might not be too late to salvage something of this planet Earth
But it is getting awfully damn close.
Voting Demographics in 2020 A.D.
By Kate Burnham
Make America great again. Donald Trump
campaigning like Julius Caesar to make the
Roman Empire great again, eagle banner
waving overhead a talisman of extinction.
Buy my red bill cap and I’ll crown you with
the bays, my dear voters—democracy, putting
a new roof on a crumbling foundation.
Jared Diamond would have choice words for you,
POTUS, about flirting with falling, but words are
just that. No one trusts their sources anymore,
because all the writing on the walls is fake and filled
with lead, like the water in Flint, Michigan, like
the thickened blood of its children, retarding growth
and scrambling the cerebral cortex and hippocampus.
Debase the currency until it dawns on all
that gold is not what we should have been
hoarding—for when the stock market crashes,
when the government collapses from within—
but rather seeds and mason jars full of pickles.
Forget Non-GMO-Verified USDA Organic white
privilege. Should we have been digging holes
in the desert, like Stanley Yelnats, to hide out in
with caches of Sploosh and tequila, waiting for
Jesus to return from the East?
There are curses older than man that we
have been tasked to break, but we have lost
our language, our deep grammar and mother
tongue with which to speak the right invocation—
some words are not translatable from one language
to another, and if they were, they would only
alter the consciousness of the learner, causing
a psychotic break. And then where would we
be? In a field of black telephones ringing,
with Emily Pettit, Sartre, and Wittgenstein,
assessing a problem?
We were all indigenous once—once we were all
Pocahontas or Geronimo, colonized and penetrated
and left with our language amputated, removed
like an organ harvested from our bodies and sold
on the black market, the dark web. Now we are
sitting on our brittle bridges in middle America,
in the middle of our eroding Highway 66, with a
Ouija board, trying to contact the spirit world
because we don’t remember how to pronounce
God’s true name. We are asking if we are not alone,
if someone is with us, inviting the demonic. We are
asking to become possessed.
Chicatanas for Mourning
By Alan Palaez Lopez
for Carmela Parral Santos, #NiUnaMenos
I. Ingredients:
• the strength of five generations of ancestors
• 2 dozen roasted chicatanas
• 2 roasted garlic cloves
• a love for all things Black
• two white candles
• a cup of dry Black beans
• 4 tree chilis
• quarter of a roasted onion
• 2 adobe bricks
• a commitment to Indigenous life, everywhere
• 8 roasted coastal chili peppers
• water OR tears
• salt (no salt if using tears)
• Carmela Parral’s photograph
• freshly picked mint
II. Cooking Instructions:
Open twitter and search #NiUnaMenos
& you will encounter one of the many
afterlives of colonialism in the Americas.
Most recently, Carmela Parral.
Reader, please search her name and print her photo.
On twitter, Mara Itahí tweets the news:
“Asesinaron ayer a mi amiga Carmela Parral,
Presidenta de Estancia Grande (municipio Afromexicano).”
In the afterlife of colonialism, one woman
must announce the murder of another sister.
Reader, please place the chicatanas,
garlic cloves, tree chilis, coastal chili peppers,
and slice of onion in a molcajete and grind them
together.
(Feel free to add a pinch
of water and salt, or tears.)
In this cooking process,
you must remember
the strength and power
of Black and Indigenous
life; you must commit to
liberation if you want this
recipe to work.
Reader, please channel
the strength of your
ancestors as you grind.
Now, take a step away
from the molcajete to
open your own twitter
and tweet her name:
Carmela Parral,
Carmela Parral
(tweet until there
are no more characters
left in the wordcount).
Reader, please return
to grinding and add
water until you
have reached the ideal
consistency of your first
salsa de chicatanas.
Let the salsa cool in fridge.
While the salsa sits in
it’s aromas, pick up the
adobe bricks, place one
on its long side, and the second,
flat against the edge of the other.
Stand Carmela’s photo
on top of the flat adobe
brick and let it rest
against the other brick.
Arrange the white candles on
opposite ends of the bricks
and as you light them, say
her name: Carmela Parral,
Carmela Parral.
Gather the Black beans
and offer them to
Carmela’s village
by placing them
around the adobe bricks;
search for a small teacup
and fill it with water,
offer the water to all the
trees the Mexican government
is willing to cut to construct
the Maya Train—which
Carmela opposed, the reason
she was murdered;
approach the fridge, scoop
a few tablespoons of the
salsa you just made onto
a small plate, and offer
the salsa to all the murdered women,
girls, and third
fourth & fifth
genders whose names
we do not know.
Finally, reach for
the mint, bring the tender
plant to your nose,
inhale, and commit to
continue experimenting
with life; commit to care.
Please place mint anywhere
on the adobe bricks.
Dear reader, take this recipe
and offer it to others—
encourage them to
experiment with life,
always.
Fathomless
By Caitlin Gildrien
Sometimes the human body is a grace, is a galaxy, is indeed
an ocean, a channel running rough between the shores
of eternity on either side. Sometimes determination
is a tide stronger than the current pulling back.
Sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes
you go under. Sometimes all the will
and wanting are swamped
by a greater wave.
But sometimes,
sometimes,
sometimes—
sometimes the body
breaks through the undertow,
again and again, sets out again
against the current, even when the rest
you had hoped for is denied. One stroke at a time.
The hand cleaves the water. Reach and pull. Reach and pull
the body forward. You can swim through this night.
you can swim through this night. You can swim
through this night.
You can.
Standard Credibility Inquiry for Displaced Plant Life
By Kim Harvey
Are you now or have you ever been considered an invasive species?
How long can you survive in the desert without water? Have you ever
lied to the U.S. government? Are you lying now? You let me know
if you need something to drink. To what fungi have you been exposed?
Are you infectious? Do you carry contagions? Are you viable?
How much attention do you require? Are you wild? Tell me why
you are afraid of fire. What is your country of origin? Do you seek
the shade of others? Do you plan to uproot established trees?
How far back can you trace your seed? Are you a clone? Are you
barren? Are you a weed? Will you reproduce incessantly and choke
the perennials? Why were you harmed? When were you harmed?
So you were witness to a violence. Are you damaged
at the cellular level? Under what conditions will you wilt
or wither? How did you escape? And where have you been since?
On whom or what do you depend? Are you a hallucinogen?
Are you medicinal? Are you lethal to domestic animals or people?
Can you be bought and sold? Are you illegal?
And the Plant Answers Back [Redacted]:
(muffled, inaudible)
…my sister was burned part of me
died too I don’t know how
I got out
I will tell you I flew
I was a samara on the wind
I can still feel her
like a phantom limb
[ ] I could [ ] smell her [ ] singed skin [ ]
raining down
around me
[ ——– ] Even now
I hear her
howling