honest to god, people --
i’m tired of living in a fucking science-fiction novel! but do we have to let this crisis go to waste? the prez sez cars kill more people than covid. ok — so, let’s quarantine cars, too, how bout? but what will pandemic do to global efforts to save the globe?: "rapid spread of c-virus could derail major climate conferences that provide a crucial platform for countries to commit to more ambitious goals to cut carbon emissions”: lots of dependent clauses in that definite declaration: trans: the suits can’t spew kilotons of co2 into the blue jet-setting to big to-do’s where countries do nothing for you . . . (make that “for countries to commit to more ambiguous goals that they have no intention of meeting anyway”) but here in topeka, as loretta lynn sings, the door keeps a-slammin’ . . . yesterday, hi w/in 7˚ of norm; but it’s the hi lo’s that get u: 52 f v. 36 norm — i.e., the humidity abateth not one crisis here and one’s on the waaaaay . . . great lakes stay at record high water levels just in time for spring rains; with hail in san francisco, feet of snow in the west, & 100+ f heat in the south; power goes out & 2 die in aden flooding; morocco’s govt. promises 2.5 m quintals of barley to droughted farm regions, leading to the question: what the hell is a quintal? plus: a veritable drought of x-treme weatherclimate news; it slowed to a trickle small as an australian river . . . sure, there’s the usual stuff: the locusts still spread throughout e. africa; 100,000s of climate refugees cheek-to-jowl in (infected?) displaced-persons camps; a hunk of glacier the size of atlanta plops off into the sea in antarctica, which may have just had its highest temp ever; krill #s down, so penguins, too; worst bleaching event ever in great barrier reef; (this isn’t that complicated, u know) even weather modelling suffers: too few research planes in the air (pandemic & all); o & speaking of ‘stralia: they’re still counting up costs: dead livestock, ash-filled rivers (dead fish and oysters); aboriginal communities a- palled with grief & money- less-ness; everyone sucking in the black smoke, then hunkering under the pelting rain. now: shelter in place, y’all! but as nietzsche & kanye say, that which does not destroy me makes me stronger -- w/that “sense of community; we were all in it together to help each other. it was in- spiring and it gave you a lift. you weren't alone. that's all finished” — until something destroys me . . . & in the second-to-last chapter, the 1%ers decide they’ve lost too much damn cash & it’s time for you to go back to work-- “back to work, you!” -- into the pandemic pandemonium, to suck it up, work it out somehow — & you say “please sir i want some more,” giving us some foreshadowing of what the last chapter might hold, when they mutter “that boy will be hung. i know that boy will be hung.”
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |