by Kasandra Larsen
In Louisiana, an expert: we’re not seeing catastrophic impacts.
In China, a submerged fireman can’t move:
he’s pulled from toxic soup,
dripping ooze. I don’t drive, but I’m surrounded
by plastic, so I’m sucking up my share of crude, too. We’re pigs
wallowing in goo. In Canada, a pipeline rupture
sends a warning shot, a letter across the border;
in the news, we see strangely camouflaged geese, silent,
dark as eclipsed sky. Down south, fortunate pelicans still fly;
we count the ones that die
while searching for some secluded bit of planet
where black gold hasn’t reached: maybe some icy beach
in the Arctic? But no, Shell’s there already. At the opposite pole,
sludge frequently flows from cruise ships that have crashed
or sunk. We’re drunk
on fuel, folks, distilling destruction, acting globally
as only humans can. We can agree, at least, that hope
is not a plan. For most, though,
hope’s the closest thing they have.
Denial drips from its practitioners
in black.
