by Rita Wong
fluids that came from
swallowed water
that came from
a river that came from a lake
that came from a glacier
receding from industrial glare
pulse quickens
shoulder tenses
sorrow deepens
send signals down spine
fourteen facial bones adapt
mandible stretches, maw yawns
eyes float in moist sockets
while body sweats
& sweats, porous
ongoing experiment
rich in nurdles
poor in ecological literacy
atrazine in your armpits?
pcbs in your pelvic core?
furans in your feet?
dioxins in your diaphragm?
cells burst a chorus
a need for reprieve
iron, carbon, nitrogen flow
oscillate, oxidize, optimize
cellular symphony
perennially sheds, regenerates
walking mineral body
a watery deposit
chemical composition
shared with the pacific
kuroshio current within
dark salt, sunlit
benthic bowels
a family forest of microfauna
digesting come what may
but thyroid’s receptors confused
by polycylic pollution
getting mixed signals
hyper or hypo
as plasticizers slide into
sulfur, magnesium, phosphates
calcium carbonate
an orchestra of nutrients
infiltrated by capital’s loud shout
consumed while consuming
disoriented in proprioceptive profusion
seepage from decomposing bottle not just
plastic but democracy degrading
inner monster muscles up
as daily toxins come & go
a revolving door
heads & shoulders
knees & toes
nose & mouth
雨
flush
awaken to the gently unstoppable rush of rain landing on roofs, pavement, trees, porches, cars, balconies, yards, windows, doors, pedestrians, bridges, beaches, mountains, the patter of millions of small drops making contact everywhere, enveloping the city in a sheen of wet life, multiple gifts from the clouds, pooled over centuries and channelled to power us, rain propels our water-based bodies that eat other water-based bodies, mineral vegetable animal. when i turn on the shower, i turn my face and shoulders toward post-chlorinated rain. the tap releases free rain to slake our thirst, transformed through pipes and reservoirs. anonymous agent of all that we, unwitting beneficiaries, do. refusing the inertia of amnesia, i welcome the memory of rain sliding into sink and teacup, throat and bladder, tub and toilet. bountiful abundant carrier of what everyone emits into the clouds, be that exhale or smoke, belch or chemical combustion, flame or fragrance, the rain gives it all back to us in spates, a familiar sound, an increasingly mysterious substance
pounce
cloud meets retina
smell the air, wait for rain
iris refreshens with
full-moon maple
oceanic inhale
ducks dunk & quack
a migrating comedy
crows cuss & crap
badass neighbours
scouting the scene, the grime
alleyway moss
quiet lichen witness
this northern limit for the loquat
creeping up
skunk home, coyote cranny
teenage wasteland where
grannies sift through dumpsters
rebraiding scraps & sense
mizzle moistens sidewalk & skin
feather & fur
stubborn feral patience beneath
delicious tulip tree
plantain leaf persists
My heart under your foot, sister of a stone. – Sylvia Plath
sienna soaks in footsteps
of rubber rainboots
a light muck glistens
beneath the breezeway
arbutus bright, mud heavy
pollution dodged?
relocated, lodged
in moist fleshy folds
sweating a bullet
up & down thyroid glands
through veins of discontent
discombobulated frenemy
dispersed histories bioaccumulate
returning in media res icymi
bloodstream’s poisoned gift
giving & giving & giving
long after the plastic wrap’s
chucked in the landfill
trapped in economies
of scale, built on porous shale
see & do? unseen & undone
tweeting up a storm with intersex bass
riding the toxic rollercoaster
techno treadmill trouncing
underneath skin acting up
while eyes stay on the screen
that gets smaller & smaller
faster & faster
for the converted
& those held hostage
as filter bubbles pop
as the mines dug up outside
land inside body capsule
hormonal hurts releasing
tricks of the global trade
my endocrine disruption
for your muted phone
your cancer
for my keyboard
a slow release traffic jam
embedded each thin-skinned body
beside the jewelled transmission tower
a grenade
bisphenol ache bursts a cell wall leaks plasma limpid, laden with toxic gifts courtesy of duped ontology corporate cancer embedded in diets, morsel by muscle, blight by bite, gradually accumulated illnesses blossom in our bellies, breasts, bladders, intestines testify to trace amounts hoarded in blood & bitumen, brimming with slow malignant release, remind us that biology is determined by chemistry cartels infiltrating our shampoos & synthetic textiles, room deodorizers & tin can linings receipt paper coatings & hand sanitizers sing a slow song of poison by a thousand exposures
calm in chronic pollution, kindred water is a secret player reflecting industrial flaws back to us. naming the chemical creep is the first step in returning to our responsibilities, finding that duty itself is a ragged, fierce beauty, not just listing the toxins but disrupting their supply chain as we turn our gaze to how they seep intimately, expertly, into the creases we didn’t know we had, into our cracked lips & sweating armpits, moistening our dry eyes and callused heels. there is no substitute for earth’s authority, the living law of each inhale, each exhale, the quiet dignity of shared breath, necessary balance.
We are undercurrent, overburden, the rolling earth, the spin that won’t be doctored, the healers who want to live well on this revolving planet. Our needs are few and our desires many. We need clean water. We need clean air. We need to eat plants powered by sunlight and earth. We need kinship that builds peaceful relations. We need to respect our differences without letting them kill, destroy, displace, incarcerate and oppress us. We need the small picture and the big picture. We need to share. We want to share. We see that obscene wealth for a few is not merely a sign of merit or talent or ability, but also a spiritual sickness, a bloated ego, a reduced capacity to respond to the suffering of one’s kin. We want everyone to understand that the tumours in the moose and whitefish and our neighbours are a sign of our failures, not our successes. We are tired of glorifications of war and the reenactments of its impoverished logic in our bureaucracies. We want to restore balance, right relat
ions, ethical being. We cannot afford delusional hierarchies. We will not race each other to the bottom. We commit to live up to the future’s call. We want our lives to not be wasted.
motherboard
tractor with gas pedal for brake
rocks shovel rare earth selenium
titanium reinforces dead worms
dendritic fracked shale hydrogen
sulfide muds water steel caked urge
broken earth torn hole caterpillar
rubble silent rain atrazine spring
dirt dirge drip naphthalene
hydrochloric acid ammonia
benzene formaldehyde xylene
atrazine puddle DDT remnants
tree roots tree corpse petrified
beetle decomposed dinosaur
layers of ancestor bird bones
wolf scat slow water transform
old meat dead petals scattered
pollen bee legs pine memory rich
earth trickle groundwater house
foundations broken grandmother
old crow bark dust landfill moraine
millennial circuit current stream
holocene anthropocene morass
mangle hair cracked femur turned
dirt worms clay salt silt powder
bedrock shale forest corpse oil
burden beast beauty ferny mass
turned black depth night soil human
toil trinkets fish bones clam shells
midden not wasted topsoil air sun
photosynthesis over centuries old
jugs sheaves wheat compacted
earth ancestor owl dried blood
magma gravity packed stone water
flash memory
grassy knoll water-carved valley
ice-scratched dip glacial deposit
pebble sand silt dirt accumulation
wet accretion wind-blown layer
packed deep rain sink storm trace
cloud release catchment tree debris
root tangle great-great-great-grandmother’s
hair turned soil protein turned nitrogen
phosphorus magnesium clay carbon
history cousin bone disintegration
beetle rebuild worm transformation
micro eats macro makes hummock
grows beans coal extraction burns
plankton corpses dries groundwater
rain replenishes as withdrawals
accelerate competing rates immerse
and deplete the wonder worms wield
thin inches of earth skin soil
on which to perch grow food
reorganize molecules mastodon
robin crow bear beaver hide
buried in transformed by dirt
millennial dirt eons coexist beneath
north shore sewage story
crows party
at the wastewater treatment plant
hop, skip, skim the scum
for meaty delectables
released from urban drains
crows swoop
the bubbling froth
with the grace of gravity
one lone monkey puzzle tree
sits at the lions gate
witnesses sludge stream
gas flares
the huge digesters process
what we have left behind
our discards sifted
chlorinated, pumped out
into the burrard inlet
primary treatment
was built to handle good shit, not
phthalates & flame retardants
birth control pills & antidepressants
morphing fish anatomy
decreasing sperm counts
infiltrating fishy homes
while i long for tertiary rescue
the crows salvage
what they can
from cities industriously pumping out
chemical consequences
transgendering water & children
testing ocean temper
lupus, a doubled being
who looked after romulus and remus
who blossoms in my twin cousins’ bodies
who teaches the price that “progress” extracts
from our bodies’ immune systems
from the seeds of empire
come the dangerous fruit of empire
born on wind & wave
by air & by sea
tempered by kidneys’ confusion
filtering the truck of steamships, containers
precious cargo is double-edged, sore with steady emissions
stolen from the source, from underground chambers
taken in industrial mission & precision
mechanical, predictable, implacable onslaught
fist grasp? out slips anorexia, pleonexia
the unrelenting refrain of more, more, more
can subside or crash on our shores
the left brain knows but doesn’t believe
in limits to earth’s skin, the sacred cave’s bonds
the right brain believes but doesn’t know
how to stop the lemmings’ fall, mass filicide
disney-manufactured in white wilderness, alberta
fiction is flashier than truth, a plastic-signed detour
exported by pipelines, tankers, digital propaganda
that forgets & even sells the ground holding it up
caveat emptor in temporary transaction, transition
to be shed like a stiff vinyl coat that no longer fits
& doesn’t breathe. if or when sun-fed cedar
provides a cleaner home, a quiet trail, once overlooked
but returned to through cancer’s call, earth’s quake
a ring of fire that burns through freeways for
sacrifice or spacious sanctuary
somewhere, a wild swimming wolf looks on
We are wet premonition, ferocious spirit waiting for the master’s dams to crack, the inexorable and unrepentant rain, the tidal waves taller than tankers, the vigilant survivors of neoliberal snakepits and slimy advertorials. We are the ones who cannot be bought, the ones who will not sell out, the ones who refuse to be bullied, the damp, trembling ones who feel fear in the face of intimidation tactics and propaganda, yet act or bide our time with courage. We will not drink the patented chemical-laced Kool-Aid because we love the taste of spring tap water. We refuse the leaking plastics and insulting poisons that threaten our beloved rivers and oceans. We are freshwater & saltwater, blood & bone, liver & gall bladder, intestinal fortitude, without borders, without names. We are your very breath, the ancestral memory you inhale and the promises you exhale. We are the protocol of life, the Council of All Beings. We are your mother’s cervix, your cousin’s ulcers, your wake up call after one too many corporate lies insolently or obliviously proclaimed.
for bing ai
whose orange tree
whose window
whose bedroom
whose hearth
submerged beneath
dam
three gorges
dammed
yangtze
cursed, hearsed
unless the baiji return
whose shack by the side of the road
resists baseline drift
who travels an hour by bus
to reach the empty bank
who knows the why in wise
who speaks earth
through water
秉愛
白鱀
threefold return
cast into the well that endures blood ambush
encampments, walled cities, whole empires rise & fall
the well reclaims the depths, nourishes moon and pig
the town may be changed, thieves, toil, transitory
but the well cannot be changed
architecture inexhaustible, abundance
wheel gentle, gradual, honest, simple, subtle
ineffectual, careless, disastrous
ditches, bent and straightened
a breaking of the jug
sudden collapse, neglect
trigram exhorts organism, grey-haired, broad forehead
parts co-operate for the benefit of the whole
swampy lowlands, submerged in mud
calculated waiting, white of the eye, shifting thigh
deep heavens in the waters:
thunderclouds, stumbling horse, wrecked chariot
odor to the far shore
dangling, submit to
apprehension & anticipation
long, high, advance and retreat,
in its own time close to the grain
strength within, danger in front. midwinter pit, chasm.
strength in the face of danger does not plunge ahead but bides its time
whereas weakness in the face of danger grows agitated, has not the patience to wait
perseverance brings good fortune
it furthers one to cross the great water
a light will develop out of events
clouds rise up to heaven: hardwood joyous and of good cheer
it will rain. we’re ready. persistent, ear*
* poem generated from found language at http://www.ichingonline.net/
sunset
dreaming of a red chamber she is stranded from her blood’s rice paddies spewing sick roses & smokestacks instead of couplets & odes to guava harvest tilapia cultivation pomelo promise the day is as long as the shore of the continent sometimes she cries without knowing which affront in the rampage marketed as progress, or which unstoppable grace powered by the sun, caused it the throat’s fullness, the heart’s hesitation, remind her that intuition is a wild horse struck by constant itch in the invisible night she has never seen waters so clear & lucid before scratch the surface & meridians abound underneath linking foot, ear, heart, liver in the body’s complex orchestra accompanied & enabled by spirochetes & microflora the channels of return are unpredictable they follow the paths of dreamtime that evaporate with sunrise she is held in a moon chamber clouds recharge
