According to recent reports, it's nine years before
climate crises reach their tipping point. Apocalypse is on
everyone's minds, everyone's lips, everyone's playlist.
Grate the cheese coarse or fine, you know it comes from cows.
In stores across the UK, activists take milk from shelves,
kick bottles across the floor after pouring out the contents—
melodrama of protest to turn meat-eaters and -producers
off their predisposition as carnivores. Couldn't that have
quenched the thirst of children in refugee camps,
served a purpose other than such lofty waste? What are we
under obligation to do, what could we even do? Today, #World-
WarIII was trending (again) after missiles blew up grain facilities.
You can make up stories if you want, but everyone's tired. Tired of
Zooming, tired of the virtual, of arguments over what it means to use
-x in Filipinx or Latinx or other gendered words for people.
Vintage clothing stores have popped up everywhere—
thrifting's become not only trendy but a way to cut waste,
reduce emissions and water consumption. Just look up the rate of
pollution caused by fast fashion. Upstate last summer, I
nabbed a Marimekko dress for $2 and was as happy as a
legit fashionista might be... I'm not digressing. All this is
just to say I've been wavering on a more daily basis between
heartache and fear of the inevitable: looming mortality,
fuse boxes shorting in the night while we sleep, the will I
drafted ten years ago, mostly listing my emotional assets—
but then, suddenly, I want a fedora and a faux fur jacket.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.