Degree
Look up, the water is
rising again; the ocher ocean
is warmer today. The
sea mists rise, form grey clouds
named Harvey and Irma
and Jose and they reign,
mad royalty, over
earth. Hush: The brown waters
rush into
tributaries, to rivers, to the troubled chopped
sea, where
carbons heat the surface of salt; one degree,
and it rises hotter,
wetter, wilder, whipping waves
of wind, winding
toward us, a Kitty, Leo, Marie; a child,
looking at the sea,
will die today, Noah, alee.
Plate Histrionics
He throws a gold-lamé wedding-set saucer
at me, and spits, “There is no
global warm-ing.”
Today,
Irma evacuates Sarasota as b-
rother Harvey peers and
jeers, Ozymandiu-
s-like, Houston and Florida, look upon me.
A-s th-ese li-nes are bro-ken, so the dream-
s of cities, and those hamlets and towns a-
way
where we settled to breathe, hear our-
selves
think.
Cat
5, there is no stronger. An
evil fidget spinner,
Irma swirls out of a wet
hell, and I holler
CLIMATE CHANGE.
It is the
imitation
Wedgewood
gravy boat, h-
e
throws that next, jjjjjjjust before she
A
Sonnet Affected by Climate Change
The Earth is mud and shale gas, molten
magma, metamorphic—
Oh Sis, Oh Bro—and igneous, blast changing
in its last tic,
with a heady burst of ozone, all zones, a
corpse that ends in water.
Without us, climate will survive, change
fast, outlast—Oh Daughter:
The equatorial world endures, we fall, all
bone, all copses sick.
Paleoclimatology predicts our fate.
Put the conundrum on another generation’s
plate?
No, it’s now: in Africa, desertification
scorches,
torches farmland. (HUNGER!!!!)
And the people learn of a Great Satan, a
nation
that throws away food. Do you see
that they will fight because they must?
Whom will they trust? What is terror after
you’ve
watched your child die in
the land’s rust?
