Act Now
When I’m low, I hang out
with the slugs and sugar ants,
I ignore the emails, You will run out
of storage in the cloud.
The clouds
will always make space for me,
I already live in a fog
and there’s always room for more
photos, a virtual bookcase.
As much as I love
being able to type my sadness
to a stranger, my screen sometimes
reaches out and puts its hands
on my hips—stay here a little longer.
I know I’m brave
when I leave my earbuds on the table
next to my cat. And when my stomach
knots, it’s because I’ve hit reply all
and now Dick knows he’s living
out his name like a job description.
This is when I know
I need to stand up and stop
being another head without body, a mind
plus fingers typing. Sometimes
when I’m walking down the street
a neighbor runs up to me to tell me
how Crossfit is working for her,
I press Skip ad until I see the real-time video
of Max, the dog who lives three doors down
and is dealing with depression
because his owner just died.
This is when I reach down
and wipe the goo from Max’s eyes,
and realize how much happier I am
when I sit in the middle of empty road
under an unlimited sky
holding a dog who has no idea
why his owner isn’t coming home.
If We Had Better Lighting, Our World Would be a Soap Opera
Global warming is more than me leaving
the heat on 80 degrees in the guest room.
There’s a shadow on our planet’s lung
and the narrow road is what we drive now
because half of it has slid into the ocean.
We are living longer, but we’re doing it with less
sex and friends. The view from here is gorgeous,
but who to share it with? I am watching the world
turn, all my children becomes all my adults.
I try to count our steps to the grave—5, 100,
1000? More? I’m less than optimistic.
I’m the character who is drinking wine
at noon in her nightgown. The soap operas
are failed decisions and mistakes are real life
choices. Global warming makes my cheeks
flush. Climate change is another way
to introduce myself, to undress and dive
into the ocean that wants to swallow me.
Let me cry dramatically before the scene ends,
let the director drag me to the shore.
Sunflower, What Have You Gotten Yourself Into1
Tonight a neighbor told me how climate change
was a hoax as we stood under an orange sky
from the smoke of wildfires and when he coughed
because the air quality was not good enough
for his lungs I said, It hasn’t rained for years
and when the birds started falling from the sky
he said, That happens sometimes, it’s cyclical.
God bless the confused, I said to the waves
reaching over into our yards, to the oceans
so warm the icebergs are the ice cubes
the barista places into our lattes, this should
cool it. And at night when I walk home
in a tank top because what was once a winter
is a mild spring, I lean back and watch the bats
circle and eat up whatever insects we have
too many of and I think my god, we fucked this up
so quickly, as I admire the moon that almost winks
at me, as if it knows how many years we have left.
1Title from a line by Kim Rashidi.