Readings for Earth Day
With Earth Day around the corner, the folks at Washington Square Review have a few recommended readings to get you in the mood to the protect the environment. Below, you’ll find poems and short fiction excerpts interrogating topics from our planet’s essential biodiversity, deforestation, factory farming and more!
Radial Symmetry by Katharine Larson
“Statuary”
The late cranes throwing
their necks to the wind stay
somewhere between
the place that rain begins
& the place that it ends
they seem to exist just there
above the horizon at least
I only seem them that way
tossed up
against the gray October
light not heavy enough
for feet to be useful or
useless enough to make
gravity untie its string. I’m sick
of this stubbornness
but the earthworms
seem to think it all right
they move forward
& let the world pass
through them they eat
& eat at it, content to connect
everything through
the individual links
of their purple bodies to stay
one place would be death.
But somewhere between
the crane & the worm
between the days I pass through
& the days that pass
through me
is the mind. And memory
which outruns the body &
grief which arrests it.
Oceanic by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
“Self-Portrait as Scallop”
Let me see your shadow
feather across my hundred blue eyes
I probably won’t even notice
the sea stars circling around me
ready to nibble and foam for days.
Carry me in the gobble of our beak.
I’d rather be set like a jewel in your nest
A sweet surprise after the sun dissolves
into the Pacific like a gold ghost
sugaring my coffee. By then I will have
opened up to you. None of the eelgrass stories
I clung to in my youth are better than
this; I’m no longer silent. None of them told me
if you were hungry enough—the small hinge
of my umbo would creak and sigh.
Rush to the Lake by Forrest Gander
“Citrus Freeze”
To the north, along Orange Blossom Trail,
thick breath of sludge fires.
Smoke rises all night, a spilled genie
who loves the freezing trees
but cannot save them.
Snow fine as blown spiders.
The news: nothing.
Large rats breed on the beach
driving smaller ones here.
Today both traps sit sprung.
The Drowned World by JG Ballard
As the cutter moved off across the lagoon he went back to his chair. For a few minutes the two men stared across the table at each other, the insects outside bouncing off the wire mesh as the sun lifted into the sky. At last Kerens spoke.
“Alan, I'm not sure whether I shall be leaving.”
Without replying, Bodkin took out his cigarettes. He lit one carefully, then sat back smoking it calmly. “Do you know where we are?” he asked after a pause. “The name of this city?” When Kerens shook his head he said: “Part of it used to be called London; not that it matters. Curiously enough, though, I was born here. Yesterday I rowed over to the old University quarter, a mass of little creeks, actually found the laboratory where my father used to teach. We left here when I was six, but I can just remember being taken to meet him one day. A few hundred yards away there was a planetarium, I saw a performance once—that was before they had to re-align the projector. The big dome is still there, about twenty feet below water. It looks like an enormous shell, fucus growing all over it, straight out of The Water Babies. Curiously, looking down at the dome seemed to bring my childhood much nearer. To tell the truth, I'd more or less forgotten it - at my age all you have are the memories of memories. After we left here our existence became completely nomadic, and in a sense this city is the only home I've ever known—” He broke off abruptly, his face suddenly tired.
“Go on,” Kerens said evenly.
The Overstory by Richard Powers
First there was nothing. Then there was everything.
Then, in a park above a western city after dusk, the air is raining messages.
A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words.
It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering.
It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch.
It says: Every piece of earth needs a new way to grip it. There are more ways to branch than any cedar pencil will ever find. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.
Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth
Cleveland shut the door and disappeared. Janey waited. Saw the line of shadow cross the dark.
Janey came up behind her. Cleveland was bent over the backseat, a couple of chickens climbing out of the sack.
Cleveland could be fired. She could face criminal charges. She could go to prison. She could be charged with bioterrorism. She could…
“Hey,” said Janey.
Cleveland startled, straightened. Dropped the empty sack. She slammed the back door with menace.
“What do you want?”
She was wearing her fucking uniform.
“Why’s you do that?” said Janey.
“Do what?” said Cleveland.
INSIDE: BARN UNIVERSE. Completely enclosed in steel and concrete, seven tremendous aisles of cages soaring twenty-five feet high, eight tiers in two stories. A system of chains bringing in the feed, a series of belts carrying out the excrement. Powerful fans pulling through and out the carbon monoxide, the hydrogen sulfide, the ammonia, the dust. Twenty thousand one-foot candle bulbs at regular intervals, like a monstrous Christmas decoration, the sun rising and falling on a timer. The entire barn rumbling with machinery. A hundred and fifty thousand chickens stood there, waiting for what? for whom? On a wide conveyor, eggs slowly floated by.