i remember nafta.
when it kicked in, 25 yrs ago, the zapatistas rose in chiapas, chanting “first world ha ha ha” nowadays, as the soil dries out & the crops fail in s. mexico, are they laughing at australia? in on the beach, australia’s the last place the apocalypse happens, the only place not covered by the radioactive pall that’s killing everywhere else in this apocalypse, they’re first in line – their hottest day ever – avg. hi 107 f +, breaking the previous record, set the day before. & in the 100s everywhere. and on fire. 60+ of 120 blazes labelled “uncontrolled”; sydney “blanketed” by thick smoke, iconic opera house “shrouded,” one “megafire” inching towards the suburbs; & their p.m. in hawai’i (also sweltering in record heat) on holiday. all this after driest spring on record; farm profits ↓ 22% (we don’t talk about other species on this poem, so we won’t mention the “1000s of kangaroo corpses” – & certainly not what’s happened to those cuddly li’l koala bears) “i’m not sure we are shocked by much any more,” sez the aussie climate bureau head forecaster. meanwhile, in russia, there’s no snow – a few flowers bloom – low of 43 f overnight breaks 133-yr record; “this is not our winter,” sez the pensioner. “it came from somewhere else.” yes and no. already the warmest dec. on record in switzerland; in britain, they’re growing peaches & nectarines now; now then: that isn’t so bad, is it? canada’s had a year of wacky weather: “it's the same old weather that our grandparents talked about, but it's just that the statistics are different: the frequency, the intensity, the out of season, out of place, anything like that that just seems to make it different than it was" (don’t think worse, think different); record # of tornadoes in oklahoma, home to all those oil-wells welling carbon-burning oil, had a record number of tornadoes (oklahoma!!) hey first world: ha ha ha joke’s on us
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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. |