so, i've reading a metric shit-ton of ecopoetry lately and while it's not really my genre (mixing environmental justice and poiesis has never really seemed like a recipe for anything but disaster, but i digress), i thought i'd write a poem mimicking some of the gestures i see in a lot of these poems. let me know what you think!
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i'm eleven miles from pasco
traveling south on US-395
when it hits me
this smell that clouds the air
invisibly suffuses my car
slides through the air vents
and dives down my nose
at first contact it's
already too late
it's everywhere
i don't smell it as much as feel it
it punches my sinuses like a double shot of vodka
with slightly rotting sausage floating in it
at this point, my eyes are watering
the factory smokestacks dotting the banks of the columbia
in the distance
reduced to white smudges against a blue sky
after a few moments, my brain assimilates the assault crookedly
responding with both nausea and hunger
to a smell that makes less sense on the level of instinct
than the sensation of having your own arm hacked off
now, at various points in my life you could have rightly called me
hippie
bleeding-heart
inhumanist
vegan
idealist
granola
etc.
and it would have been accurate
but
i wouldn't be exaggerating if i said i would gladly give up
my car
my computer
my apartment
my guitars
my furniture
my bed
my bicycle
my microwave
my refrigerator
my records
my TV
and my shoes
if it would make it so no one on earth would ever
have to smell
that smell
again.
1 comments:
very cool.
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